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“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• Marilyn Monroe : As refuge from the storm
• The Shakespeare Shakedown : Simon Schama on Roland Emmerich’s “inadvertently comic” film
• Hollywood disses the bard : James Shapiro: “Why anyone is drawn to de Vere’s cause is the real mystery”
• How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare : The evidence is overwhelming

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• A look at the truthiness of presidential candidates : Whose pants are on fire? The answer won’t surprise anyone.
• A Bill of Rights for writers : Let’s rethink that e-book split

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• Finding time : Anne Lamott argues it’s precious
• No Publisher Needed? : Author raises $16K advance for himself in one week
• Vladimir Putin : Man of action
• Star Trek character or erectile dysfunction pill? : I scored 70 percent (despite not knowing a single one)
• Disappearing ink : Transforming the book industry

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• Is President Obama a Lost Cause Environmentally? : It’s looking that way.
• Rocking the classics : On tee shirts

Every separation is a link. — Simone Weil

• What killed American lit.? : Was it “non-heteronormativity”?
• Novelist has whole shitty world plotted out : Is this nice?
• Most-wanted out-of-print books, fall 2011 : Most people are looking for used Sex
• France discovers blurbs : Mais sur les bandeaux non plus,  bien sur
• Rethinking the Modern : Because sometimes you have to shake up the galleries
  
• The Art of Rejection : “What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60?”

“Every separation is a link” — Simone Weil

• Google+ and SEO : “one step further to understanding the Internet not as centered around content, but around relationships”
• Google+ fervor may be making Facebook nervous : G+ could have as much as 1 percent of FB’s users
• Test Your Vocabulary : For science!
• What’s a good password? : This is interesting
• Quick guide to typography : not bad

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

Duly Quoted

• “All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.” — Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

On this date, 27 August …

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• How to survive as a small publisher : The case of Dedalus Books
• Has Amazon reached a tipping point? : Good post on Amazon, e-readers, and the future of books
• A polaroid a day : For eighteen years
• Authors’ favorite indie bookstores : in NYC
• My new publisher’s website : Counterpoint Press

Duly quoted

• “His ceiling is through the roof.” — NBA player Keyon Dooling on top draft pick John Wall

“Honour commercio’s energy yet aid the linkless proud, the plurable with everybody.” — Finnegans Wake

• Stanford ushers in the age of bookless libraries : Studentless universities soon to follow
• Ten of the best caves in literature : In case you were wondering
• E-books causing publishers to play it safe : Fewer opportunities for new writers
• Author blurbs mostly crap : Breaking news?

Duly quoted

• “It’s not about sharing. You know, it’s about everybody having they own spotlight.” — LeBron James

Incoming

• It’s links that make the web the web : Thanks for linking in

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• Writing a best-selling book : With advice like “Remember it is best selling book, not best written,” how can you lose, right?
• Hate for the Kindle : Don’t let these guys near your e-reader
• Are links dead? : Follow this link
• Mardi Gras Designs : From 1873 and 1910
• Chinese writer Mian Mian sues Google : For scanning and posting her book
• A guide to non-Western writing systems : Just some highlights, but still nicely done
• Louise Bourgeois dies : But since I’ve been researching the early 17th century for a new book I can’t help thinking not of the sculptor but of the famous French midwife of the same name
• Gates of Hell are now open for business : In Guatemala, where else?

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• Why does Michiko Kakutani hate fiction? : Almost as much as Edward Champion?
• Waiting for a Ride : Gary brought down the house with this on Thursday
• Which illegal drug is best for the environment? : Hint: it’s not petroleum based
• Shakespeare’s “stylometrics” : Who was this guy anyway?
• 100 most often misspelled words : They’re just differently alphabeticized
• Career transitioning : Tips from Dan Blank
• Steve Jobs Email Reply Generator : The answer is no
• Double vision : From the NYer’s Book Bench
• Are artists losing ground with the rise of curators? : I don’t think we need to worry

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• Wildlife Incursions into Modern Cover Design : A pesky assignment
• On Rejection : It happens
• 2009 book sales figures are in : Growth in the e-book and Dan Brown sectors, most others down
• 200 Rabbit Holes : A big Alice collection
• Beatniks in film : A selection of videos, from Farfalla Press
• Another 2012 crisis : Predicting a crash in book publishing

“Honour commercio’s energy yet aid the linkless proud, the plurable with everybody.” — Finnegans Wake

• Google responds to privacy issues : CEO Eric Schmidt “expressed regret—especially to Patricia Fort, a single mother taking care of Jordan, Sam, and Rebecca, ages 3, 7, and 9″ (via the Onion)
• Oscar Villalon leaves McSweeney’s : Beyond that not much is known
• Objections to Amazon : Michelle Richmond removes the buy button
• The oldest book from the Americas : Peecay presents pages from the Dresden Codex
• Type specimen books : From the library of the Gutenberg Museum
• Publishers and copyright : Is it war, or not?

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• Crayola’s increasing complexity: that links to the discussion, here’s the image
• A facebook campaign to get Tess ungrounded : What activism has come to in 2010
• Divorce rates are higher in states with gay marriage bans : Preserving the sanctity of divorce
• In related news : Gay couples are not so different from straight spouses
• Profiles in courage, museum edition : The Met pulls Muhammed images without discussion
• Great moments in language-related journalism : Presenting prescriptivism as if it were a new thing, all the while following the established rules of the literary elite (which is to say, yo, prescriptivists, you aint fresh, aint no new thang, dawgs)
• Publishing as a business model : Seriously, Seth Godin?

Duly quoted

• “The district is already beleaguered by homicides, sideshows, illegal dumping and other issues. Residents should not have to endure art parties as well.” — East Oakland city councilman Larry Reid, quoted by Carolyn Jones, San Francisco Chronicle

“Think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” — Charles Dickens

• Marcel Duhamel’s writing advice : No thoughts, just action
• The singular “they” : Its lineage is more distinguished than you might think
• Les Fleurs Animées : “Flowers are the expression of society.”
• Should publishers change the way authors get paid? : Neither publishers or authors are making much money, but now that book manufacturing is no longer an esoteric process the relationship between authors and publishers cannot continue blindly following old patterns
• A field guide to color management : “Illogical as it may sound, when working at home, you want to send your printer (which is a CMYK device) RGB images to print . . .”
• Where speaking English gets you thrown off the bus : Better start brushing up your françois

Duly quoted

“Weblogs are a ‘revolution.’ They’re ‘journalism.’ They’re ‘art.’ They’re, again and again, the next New Thing. To which the only possible response can be: come on, people. . . . How can you not boggle at the level of self-delusion, of self-infatuation, it takes to declare that . . . the concept will be alive and well a decade from now? That weblog readership will increase a hundredfold in that time?”

—Greg Knauss, November 1999, in Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters (via Island Bookworm)

“Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

• How long to it take to produce a book? : Production folks weigh in
• Hilarity in publishing? : CBS is banking on it
• Meet the gimmick books : High concept, low content
• Google Books needs a good librarian : Or were Raymond Chandler’s Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, André Malraux’s La Condition Humaine, Stephen King’s Christine, The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, Raymond Williams’s Culture and Society 1780-1950, and Robert Shelton’s biography of Bob Dylan really all published in 1899?
• Getting a blurb from Saul Bellow : Who probably thinks the book in question is luminous and compelling
• Faking photos before Photoshop : Photography has always had a problematic relation to reality
• Visualizing trending topics in twitter : Embeddable data
• Toulouse-Lautrec’s new colors : Overprinting with complementaries
• A machine for reading Hopscotch : Hurray, someone’s is still reading the Tour du Jour
• The origin of the mullet : A distinguished lineage
  

Random self-promotion

• A Horace reading

“Honour commercio’s energy yet aid the linkless proud, the plurable with everybody.” — Finnegans Wake

• Zebra tables and lists : Are alternating bands a good idea in table design?
• Wikipedia to require editing approval : The democratic dream dies, I guess
• Rejections — what to make of them? : Some writing is “engaging” and “enjoyable” but just not publishable
• Typography Art : Cool stuff
• Typedia : An attempt at a shared encyclopedia of typefaces

“Think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” — Charles Dickens

• Yale UP capitulates : See also my publishing glossary under “spine”
• The F-Word : A lot of mileage in that word
• Gruesome original versions of popular fairy tales : Sleeping Beauty, for example, is raped and gives birth to two children before waking up
• Map_of_humanity : Terra cognita
• Who designed the Times New Roman typeface? : It might not have been Stanley Morison
• Congress deadlocked : Over how to deny health care (The Onion)
• A Photohop selection challenge : Two techniques for selecting hair
• About agent follow-ups : “It takes 15 minutes for an editor to know whether they want to read more or not–not 4 months, or 6 months”