Holes In Thoughts

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Google's Used Books

Google has settled its suit and now has the authority to scan and sell the text of about ten bazillion out-of-print books. The good news for readers is that it's obviously that it will be much easier to find previously-difficult to find books. The only real losers are small used book shops, which was not exactly a thriving market to begin with.

However, I don't think that all is lost for those businesses, simply because Google will not take trade. Bookmans, for many people, operates like an unusually cool (but paid) library: They bring in books/CDs/electronics for trade, and walk out with stuff they're not tired of. They don't usually get out for free, though, because there's too much cool stuff.

So as long as used book stores stay smart about what they buy (in particular for collectors who want the real, physical item) and stay smart about how much they give and take with trade-ins, they should do OK.

One thing I'm interested to see in this is whether or not "indie" culture will start spreading more quickly across books. Thanks to torrents, iTunes and other digitalization in music similar to what Google is doing with books, anyone can access ultra-rare recordings. In the age of freely-accessible music, it is no longer remarkable to have heard highly obscure music. You can buy U2's impossible-to-find Celebration single on iTunes, or download a nearly-infinite number of indie bands from torrent sites. Indie music snobs can fill their iPods all the pirated lame early hip-hop, obscure classical that they only pretend to like to sound smarter, and terrible indie music (the more obscure the better, obviously). I wonder if they'll be filling up their Kindles in a similar way soon.

Labels: Bookman's, books, capitalism, Google, music

posted by Steve @ 10:42 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Others' work no. 2: Grammar

An excerpt from Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It's an acerbic, very British book about people being snarky about proper punctuation... and it's about as witty and funny as a grammar book could ever be (and of course was written by a British lady).

This is the passage that completely sold me on the book:

Churchill said hyphens were "a blemish, to be avoided wherever possible". Yet there will always be a problem about getting rid of the hyphen: if it's not extra-marital sex (with a hyphen), it is perhaps extra marital sex, which is quite a different bunch of coconuts. ... The two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would be lost without it.

There you go. Indulging in my grammar nerdiness. I also helped proof a bunch of my colleagues' descriptions of their term projects. Just wait a few years and I'll be a mad crusader online, or running around my school after class demanding to see that my students' text messages are grammatically correct...

Currently reading: Eats, Shoots & Leaves : The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
By Lynne Truss

Labels: books, grammar, joke, obsession, school

posted by Steve @ 9:58 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

A Funny Thing Happened Today no. 5: I get the impression I'm a stranger in my own skin

I don't know if this happens to anyone else. In the midst of a very good book - in today's instance this is The Historian - I become so completely mentally involved in the literature that, after hours of inhabiting this space an author has created for me, I return only reluctantly to my own world and mind.

I feel really wierd sitting in my own skin, as though it's not my own, like watching a very boring television program. I am simply waiting for the narration to clue me in on my very strange new story. You could call it a Matrix Moment if you'd want, though that's a bit dramatic.

These moments are useful for their disassociated and analytical perspective on my life - conveying the urgency with which I need to get better (I've been sick), get some work done and maybe foremost, get a new but equally well -paid job that I do not loathe.

Of course the irony of it is that I often find the book's world a far more comforting and seductive place than my own; it is a real tragedy that this still applies when I am reading an academic-toned horror story! Its irony is that I do not wish to use that proper and analytical perspective but rather I would curl up and continue reading with my back to my life's continued decay.

Currently reading :
The Historian
By Elizabeth Kostova

Labels: books, movies, random, sick

posted by Steve @ 3:52 AM 0 comments

About Me

Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think.
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