Here are links to books I’ve become aware of, but don’t have the time to read. Maybe I’ll get to them, or maybe this is the start of a monthly book recommendation services, or it dies. Let’s see.
Tag: books
The Man Who Took on Amazon and Saved a Bookstore
Add to the large pile of things I didn’t know: the privately owned Harvard Book Store owns a print-on-demand service which will print out books from Google Books, out of print titles, or hard to find books and will deliver them via bicycle:
Essentially, Jeff installed a printing press to close the inventory gap with Amazon. The Espresso Book Machine sits in the middle of Harvard Book Store like a hi-tech visitor to an earlier era. A compact digital press, it can print nearly five million titles including Google Books that are in the public domain, as well as out of print titles. We’re talking beautiful, perfect bound paperbacks indistinguishable from books produced by major publishing houses. The Espresso Book Machine can be also used for custom publishing, a growing source of revenue, and customers can order books in the store and on-line.
You can walk into the store, request an out-of-print, or hard-to-find title, and a bookseller can print that book for you in approximately four minutes. Ben Franklin would be impressed.
But you don’t even have to go into the store to get a book. If you live in Cambridge and neighboring communities, you can order online and get any book delivered the same day by an eco-friendly Metroped “pedal-truck,” or a bicycle, as I like to call them. Beat that Amazon.
via The Man Who Took on Amazon and Saved a Bookstore – Forbes.
Reading and print isn’t dead, just transformed cf., Newspaper Club and Blurb.
Books as Social & Cultural Signifiers
Khoi talkes today about Reading “Game of Thrones” in the Real World:
One thing I had completely forgotten about is how communal popular books can be. A few people have spotted “A Game of Thrones” in my pocket or saw me reading it on the subway and then started friendly conversations with me about it, something that never would have happened if I were reading it on my phone, where every book is effectively invisible to everyone but me.
I’ve often thought about this unique digital problem: Once we go to a completely digital delivery system of long-form reading material, including books, how do we signal cultual cues to others? How will my friends communicate that he reads both the New Yorker and the Economist without annoyingly working into conversation stories he’s read from the magazines? We will no longer have a physical bookshelf.
We can look to music, as CD’s are falling out of fashion and only the most obsessed still buy LP-records. Going to live concerts, browsing Pitchfork and listening to Pandora radio seem to be the new cultural signifiers. Record of these events are now being recorded on people’s Facebook wall, blogs and twitter stream (don’t get me started about recording live music with your phones).
I wonder if Pinterest-like apps are the new bookshelf.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
If you, like myself, have never read a single Potter book and was wondering what exactly happens at the end, read Wikipedia’s article, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and you can short-circuit 7 volumes of questionable literature
Diagnosing Medical Diseases With Dickens
Michael Crichton, global warming denier, writes critical journalist into Crichton novel as child rapist
Steven Johnson (The Ghost Map) on a Multimedia Realm Where Book Meets Blog
The Lonely Planet Guide to Micronations: An Interview with Simon Sellars
Does the Constitution need to be rewritten?
In-depth look at the layout of books: Making Castoff
In-depth look at the layout of books: Making Castoff (via)