Today was a big day in Oprahland. It was the day that reclusive author Cormac McCarthy confided in Oprah during his first ever television interview.A man who is barely seen in public, was asked during the interview if he "cared that millions of people were now reading his words" and replied "in all honesty I have to say I really don't," was now confiding in Oprah.It gets better.The Chicago Reader is running a story by Julie Rickert claiming that one of the books heavily promoted by Oprah in her post-Frey world, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, "appears to contain at...
Shelf Talk: The Sorted Books Project of Nina Katchadourian
Since 1993 Nina Katchadourian has assembled more than 130 "book clusters" for both private libraries and public collections.She gets there by "culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves."The photo above is from a group of clusters titled BookPace she did for San Antonio collector and art patron Linda Pace.She has also created clusters for the journal of art and poetics...
Thoughts on the Book Pyro
Talk about an independent bookstore going up in flames. Tom Wayne just had his 15 minutes of Warholian fame. How long he will live in infamy is another story.You see Tom Wayne has decided to burn all the books he couldn't sell and hide his actions under the umbrella of protest.He was protesting "what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word." He called it an "act of art."The burning of books no matter what the motivation can never be a positive. It is ultimately, a selfish act of destruction and to claim that nobody wanted them as...
What the Candidates Should Be Reading
There has been a little buzz recently around presidential candidates and books.In a recent post about Presidential Libraries I proposed that every candidate have a Shelfari or a Librarything page so we can have a look at what books are in their library. I know it would be a tremendous help in my process of choosing who gets my vote.Then the AP did a story asking candidates what the last book they read was (the question actually was "What is the last work of fiction you've read?" but enough named non-fiction books that it is safe to say last book...
How Far Will The LongPen Reach?
In a few hours Margret Atwood and company will unleash LongPen on the BEA. From London to Walla Walla authors will be signing books for BEA attendees from the comfort of their own home (or publishers office).It is billed as "the world's first real time, pen and ink long-distance autographing device" which produces "legally valid" signatures.LongPen is the next generation of the Autopen, a technology first invented in 1803 (it was called a polygraph) and was used extensively by Thomas Jefferson.These days it is a required technology for many politicians, celebrities and sports stars who simply cannot personally keep up...