When you listen to Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World"), which the Czech composer wrote just before he left New York in 1895, you can hear his awe at the open spaces of this grand new country - awe at our unlimited sky, endless grasslands and the energy of a people with the space to dream, think, plan and act. What if we are suffering from a failure of imagination?
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Virtual Watercooler Effect
The literary blogosphere is fighting back. Just when it looked like what you might call challenging fiction was ready to go on life support—at least, judging by what people like you and I have written regarding its decline at publishing houses and in terms of media coverage—along comes the Litblog Co-op, a cooperative effort among 20 literary blogs that intends to find strength in numbers to build support for their cause.
Are books a byproduct of culture or of entertainment? Both, of course. These two events—the creation of the Litblog Co-op and Judith Regan’s loudly proclaimed move—are two sides of the same coin. The culture buffs are always small in numbers, but on the intensity scale, they’re off the charts.
Bloggers attempt to tap a new group of viewers
• Bravo and Brava, I say [This has been my lucky week ... Just two days ago, I was informed by e-mail that I had won a Honda from England. As if that's not exciting enough, yesterday I got another e-mail informing me that I had won the British National Lottery! Megabits and pieces ; via Boyton: The Role of the Author in Topical Blogs]
• · Oprah has decided to launch a series of hardback books spun off from stories from her magazine Oprah hardcover series to extend brand ; Everyone from my literary agent, to the publisher at St. Martin's Press, has been totally astonished by the display of a Keith Thomson's blog's sales power: Author's Blog on Lycos Drives Upcoming Book to Number One on Amazon Advanced Sales List ; Do you own up to your mistakes? To paraphrase an old song, it's not for everybody - just the sexy people Now What: A daily blog on choice issues
• · · The Monthly, a new magazine of ideas, is being started up by Morry Schwartz, the man who brought us the Quarterly Essay. Better yet, you can sign up for a free issue by going to their website before April 27 Last Day: The Monthly ; More variety does not, by itself, always encourage more demand: Tyranny of Choice The Economics of Variety ; I love movies. I love music. I love television shows--the good ones, anyway. I think all of these are very worthy art forms. However, they don't compare to books for me--though they all come close in certain ways Writing and storytelling in general is, I suppose, the oldest art form and it is, as far as I'm concerned, the truest art form
• · · · Vote: Be the Judge of the Amazon web-films ; What They Did For Love Welcome to the world of the novel-in-blogress, BEYOND YOU & ME, by W. S. Cross; It’s not an original idea for a story but, hey, there’s something to be said for sticking to the standards. Boy meets girl. On a train. She disappears into the urban anonymity of . . . oh, make it Tokyo Beauty and the nerd: a net tale ; Tokyo-Japan v. Beijing-China: When Chinese censors axed a novella about steamy sex in the People's Liberation Army, it was the timing of its appearance earlier this year that proved most crucial in effecting the ban. No room for sex in China's army
• · · · · Who's worse: people paying cops to enforce the law, or cops that won't enforce it unless you pay them extra in order to arrest vendors of pirated DVDs Police Payoff Probe ; When Death Comes to Suburbia: Original
• · · · · · NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reports on the increased influence of Internet Web loggers -- known as "bloggers" in the book publishing world... What happened to Karen? Bloggers Influence the Publishing Industry ; The Elegant Variation Literary Web Log Live From Ucla - Los Angeles Times Book Awards