February 2011
64 posts
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“Every whole person has ambitions, objectives, initiatives, goals. This one...”
– The opening paragraph of “Backbone” by David Foster Wallace.
One of the OR staffers actually has this talent. Just kidding. My cat Beesly isn’t technically a member of the staff. She just helps me proofread manuscripts in the evening for fun. What a dork!
Posted by Graydon
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Revolt of the Librarians
Not that we wish Rupert or his minions any ill at all, but…via Internet archive:
via @teleread, there is a “boycott HarperCollins” movement over the change in ebook lending terms http://boycottharpercollins.com/explanation
Posted by John
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Housing Works Bookstore Cafe: Happy International... →
wnyc:
We’ll be celebrating! Any traditional songs or foods linked with this day?
— Jody
housingworksbookstore:
February 28th is The International Day of Bookshop Tumblr Celebration! I just declared this essential worldwide holiday for two basic reasons:
1) Bookshop tumblrs are objectively The Best.
2) Sam of McNally Jackson fame and I have the same birthday.
Please celebrate this reverent...
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The legendary editor, teacher and writer, the always eloquent but otherwise unpredictable Gordon Lish (Collected Fictions), makes a rare appearance Sunday, March 13 at NYC’s KGB Bar: http://bit.ly/g3BR0R
Posted by John
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Look ma, no glare
scribnerbooks:
Get ready to be excited… it’s the new Kindle commercial!
And yes, that’s their selling point: No Glare! (in hipster-y lower case.)
You know what also doesn’t have any glare? A BOOK.
Just sayin’.
Hear hear!
On that note, another way to avoid glare:
Posted by Joana
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“Assange’s aim is not reform but destruction. In WikiLeaks and the Age of...”
Hey, Whatcha Readin'?
fridayreads:
Yep, it’s Friday again! Reblog this post with a line about what you’re reading this week to join FridayReads and be entered to win wonderful books.
Friday! Books! Two things we love. Here is what we’re reading:
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy (But not the same person who was reading it last week. How mysterious.)
Are You...
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Why the "GameDay" Guys' Deal with Nike Matters for... →
Look! A sports thingy written by our own OR staffer, Graydon Gordian. Graydon is quite the connoisseur of sports, and you can find more of his recent musings at normaneinsteins.com.
Posted by Joana
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The spread of technology...
Via the inimitable Peter Brantley, of the Internet Archive: check out this map of the spread of the printing press during the Renaissance….
Posted by John
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“We wanted to change the way people bought books. We’re bourgeois...”
– Dale Peck at last night’s Housing Works event organized by Mischief + Mayhem. He may be talking about his publishing collective, but we think “boring and exciting” also fittingly describes Valentine’s Day.
Posted by Fern
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Sassy indie publisher seeks special e-book...
When it comes to our significant others, we here at OR Books have exacting standards. A sense of humor, intelligence, good looks: We require the total package.
However, when it comes to our e-book converters, we don’t require all that. It won’t hurt if you happen to be excessively charming, but mostly we’re just looking for someone who can swiftly and economically turn around a...
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Being Female - Eileen Myles →
tremblebot:
“I am desperately running towards what anyone in their right mind would be running away from. Which is femaleness, which is failure.”
GOD DAMN. Everything about this piece is fucking awesome.
Pretty much.
Posted by Fern
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“A mother loves her son. And so does a country. And that is much to count on. So...”
– Today on The Awl, Inferno author Eileen Myles delivers a heart-stopping piece on the life of a female writer. It’s a long one, so Instapaper it if you must, but be warned: we almost choked on our feelings while reading it in draft form when walking down the street the other day.
Posted by...
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Give me an F!
fridayreads:
Give me an R!
Give me an….oh, what the heck. Just tell us what you’re reading this week.
Reblog this post to join thousands of FridayReads participants worldwide and be entered to win bookish prizes.
Little known fact: 85 percent of publishing professionals are illiterate. It’s as tragic as it is farcical.
OK, onto to the books that (the literate 15 percent) of the staff...
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WatchIn the afterscape, there’ll be little opportunity to read books, what with all the roving hordes of technology-starved cannibals and the high price of candle wax. So if you were gonna wait until after the oceans overtake the coastal cities and oil hits $1000 a barrel to check out our website for Welcome to the Greenhouse, you might want to rethink that decision.
There’s reviews! And...
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The State of Publishing →
The good news is that there isn’t as much bad news as popularly assumed… Young adult readership is far wider and deeper than ever before.
(Stephenie Meyer high-fives teenage girls everywhere.)
Posted by Joana
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Shop Talk
HERE is why we at OR dread dealing with intermediary sellers—sure, by spurning a behemoth like Amazon, we can feel morally superior (strange to think that Barnes & Noble is today’s underdog)—but that’s not the primary reason. It’s that the big stores are such whiners, and unfortunately they’re whiners with clout. Case in point: we sell Douglas...
The Paris Review's Spring Issue
The Paris Review is going to serialize Robert Bolaño’s The Third Reich over the next several issues and I have to admit, I am rather excited. I’ve always wanted to read a serialized novel, because it will allow me to disguise my penchant for procrastination and instead parade it around as a preference for “savoring” the novel. (“Savoring” will consist mainly...
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WikiLeaks, Assange, and Why There's No Turning... →
Today on The Huffington Post, read an exclusive portion of Micah Sifry’s WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency, the upcoming book that’s both a comprehensive history of the online transparency movement and a rousing manifesto calling for its proliferation.
Posted by Fern
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“I was also really struck by Eileen Myles’s memoir Inferno (published by...”
– Carla Blumenkranz (via nplusonemag)
Inferno is only available at orbooks.com!
Posted by Joana
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Tumblr Tuesday Strikes Again
Tuesday again already? Time flies when you’re enjoying these fine folks:
Soup
The Monkeys You Ordered
LongReads
Lisa Simpson Book Club
Posted by Joana
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“I’m terrified that we’re relying on these corporate entities to enable this kind...”
– Micah Sifry (via soupsoup)
For an expanded discussion of this danger, order Sifry’s WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency and check out its advance praise from the digerati (Arianna! Clay!) here.
Posted by Fern
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AFTER A THOROUGH BATTERY OF TESTS WE CAN NOW... →
What concerned us most about The Newspaper was its lack of Wi-Fi. Information on the system was locked, while on other e-readers it was open, ubiquitous and current. Eventually, however, we found this advantage to be overstated, even misleading. Engineers using The Newspaper typically did so 30 to 60 minutes a day. Afterward, they went outside, formed relationships, and took in what life had to...
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“I’ve heard of tragically sensitive types who get a bad review and spend the next...”
– The Millions : On Bad Reviews
Posted by Graydon
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Internet is easy prey for governments →
Program or Be Programmed author Douglas Rushkoff writes:
For all that the revolution in Egypt tells us about the power of networked media to promote bottom-up change, it even more starkly reveals the limits of our internet tools and the ease with which those holding power can take them away.
Yes, services such as Twitter and Facebook give activists the means to organize as never before. But the...
