Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo discovers e-books on Amazon’s Kindle platform.
Don’t get me wrong. Book books still have some clear advantages. Kindle is a disaster with pictures and maps. But I didn’t realize the book might move so rapidly into the realm of endangered modes of distributing the written word. I was thinking maybe decades more. The book is so tactile and personal and much less ephemeral than the sort of stuff we read online.
Recommended with reservations.
In the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley reviews Richard Mason’s Natural Elements.
Alison Flood at the Guardian notes that “debut novelist Joanna Smith Rakoff was forced to change the title of her book after it emerged that acclaimed Irish author Colm Tóibín had plumped for the same name for his own forthcoming novel.”
Recommended.
In the New York Times, Jennifer Schuessler examines the furor surrounding Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones.
National Public Radio’s All Things Considered has a short segment on e-books and digital restrictions management.
Chad W. Post of Three Percent reviews Can Xue’s Five Spice Street.
