So many books in the world

Google counted, and there are 129,864,880 books in the world. Click through to see how they counted or, if you read one a week, you can get started on the next 2.5 million years of reading.

My free time was eaten by goblins

But I still put together a round up at PMN. Go, read, conquer. Or something? Damn goblins.

This dead air is brought to you by...

Work being out of control! Will post intermittently as things are hilarious.

Besos to you all.

Oh magical publishing eight-ball, show me your ways

Susan Orlean's story of bouncing from editor to editor and house to house is disheartening, yes, but is pretty normal. Hurray for an industry that pays little enough that the slight pay bumps you get from constantly moving are enough to make you repeatedly scuttle your entire life at a single place!

Secret love lives that kind of ick me out

Today was apparently the day of love stories that make me go, "...oh..."

First, we've got the Anne Frank novelization, plus boning. That's just awkward. I understand that she was a teenager, but, I don't know. It's just weird.

Also weird is the Emily Dickinson potential love story. And, hey, I'm not saying she shouldn't have had a man-friend of some sort. I'm saying that the way they describe it is creepers:

Over the next few months, Emily turned to [Otis Phillips Lord, her father's friend] the handsome widower – not as a father but as a suitor of sorts. Later, a granddaughter of Dickinson’s confidante Elizabeth Holland suggested that Lord’s tenderness had “long been latent in his feeling for her.”

I'm sorry, the words "father figure" and "lover" should really not go in the same sentence. That is creepos.

Apple buys into my biggest pet peeve in e-books

Apple contends that the iPad accounts for 22% of all e-book sales, which is most likely bullshit. Because Apple is so known for its transparency, no one can really replicate the numbers, but:

Still, Mr. Jobs said that iPad owners downloaded over five million books in the last two months, or 2.5 books per iPad. Although it is not clear how many of these books are free, this is still a troubling trend for Amazon.

Why? Why do people do this? Because they're assholes who equate downloads with sales. These are not sales if they are free. I'll take anything that's free! But I'm a discriminating consumer when it comes to spending my actual money. There is a difference, Apple, so don't inflate your numbers.

...End pet peeve.

Author estates: Super complicated

We all know how effed Steig Larsson's estate is. Well, it turns out his problem is not so uncommon. The answer, of course, is to 1) write a will, 2) never produce anything anyone cares about, or 3) leave it all to me, and I will milk every last penny out of your blood, sweat, and tears.

Fingerprinting for library books

Because library cards are so old hat, the school system in Machester wants to use fingerprints to check out library books. What, the retinal scans were too expensive?

This is quite clearly appalling,” said Phil Booth, national coordinator of NO2ID, a privacy campaign group.

“For such a trivial issue as taking out of library books the taking of fingerprints is way over the top and wrong.

“It conditions children to hand over sensitive personal information.”

I think the real point is to crack down on library theft more effectively. You don't return your book? Your fingerprints are already in the system! So when you, 13 year old Joey, get pulled over for speeding and arrested for assaulting an officer, they'll match your fingerprints to your stolen library book and fine the crap out of you. Libraries saved!

Twitter and grammar, things that make me vomit edition

I have a personal policy, that involves eschewing e-contact with all people who use text speak, can't spell, and abuse emoticons (you get one per conversation. This is a strict rule that is enforced with real-life slaps once we finally meet up). That said, I choose to avoid the bad spellers (Firefox has built in spell check. Use it, please), the terrible grammarians, and emoticon abusers. I don't seek them out or, God forbid, try to fix their mistakes, like these Twitter grammar jerks.

And yes, I realize that someone who has a blog dedicated to commenting and occasionally judging stuff (who, me?) is throwing rocks from a glass house, but seriously, this is like going to visit the monkeys at the zoo and complaining when they throw shit. It's what monkeys do. Sure, there are some non-shit flinging monkeys, and some grammatically correct Twitter-ers, but not many.

Plus, seriously, it's like bailing out the Titanic with a thimble. Smoochy was wrong: you can't change the world, and you also can't make a dent.

Spellings, I haz it?

After the previous news about cooking with "ground black people," the Book Bench put together a list of poor spelling and copyediting through history.

This includes the Bible that encourages, "Thou shalt commit adultery." In other news, this Bible has been sanctioned by the Anglican Church to only be valid on opposite day.

PS I considered writing this whole post as a LolCat, but decided against it. Ur welkomz!

And the bans played on

Sometimes society feels a need to band together and say, "Heck no, our chittlins should not be reading!" And when that happens, Mommy kisses Daddy, and the angel tells the stork, and the stork flies down from heaven, and leaves a diamond under a leaf in the cabbage patch, and the diamond turns into a banned book.* Yes, the explanation doesn't make much sense, but the books that get banned also don't make much sense. Little Women? The dictionary? Nice work, America.

*Five imaginary dollars if you can tell me a) what movie that's from and b) why it is the greatest movie of all time.

Miley Cyrus and Nicholas Sparks, oh my!

Nicholas Sparks and Miley Cyrus did a joint interview, in which they admit they're not familiar with each other's work. Awkward!

Haterade, 40 ways

A bunch of academics came up with a list of the worst 40 books, which is really 40 academics discussing one, several, or no books at all that they think are terrible. Of course they were roundly chastised by the internet via Jacket Copy, and the best, best thing was said by one of the commenters:

A friend of mine was at an academic conference session about "Ulysses." Someone on the panel referred to an episode where a character in the novel had coffee at a restaurant. The rest of the panel turned on him, and one of them hissed, "It was cocoa!" Now do you see why this ridiculous list came about?

Plus sized must mean any size on the plus side of zero

We all know that fashion does not realistically depict women, in that most women weigh over 80 pounds. It's a good thing that books do not fall prey to this slimmed down version of reality. Oh, wait, never mind.

I think where Jezebel is particularly on the money is that the covers highlighted (at the link above) are not supposed to represent just any women; they're meant to represent large ladies as protagonists. Like the Bloomsbury cover whitewashing debacle(s), this shows that publishers think that no one will pick up a title with a big girl on the front (even if the title is "Big Boned").

One day soon, reader types, we will not be treated like idiots. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

Mon dieu, racist Gerard Depardieu!

Given our previous Alexandre Dumas news, it should come as no surprise that the man is a drama storm. Gerard Depardieu was cast to play Dumas in a biopic, in which he darkens his skin and changes his hair to play the biracial author, a la Ben Kingsley as Ghandi.

Non-white celebrities, some Dumas experts and black organisations are angry because they say that the producers missed a chance to celebrate ethnic diversity in France and remind the world of the writer’s origins. “There is a mechanism of permanent discrimination by silence,” Jacques Martial, a black actor, said.

France has a pretty terrible record when it comes to not being racist (and religiously tolerant), so I am not surprised that people are mad.

The copy and paste generation

I am a member of the copy and paste generation, both by age(-ish) but also, hey, look at this blog--it is almost all commentary on what others have written. This puts me in the same generation as Helene Hegemann, Germany's 17 year old bestselling author who is accused of plagiarism. Alas, by payment standards we are leagues apart, and she has done way more than I did by her age. But I digress.

Hegemann lifted a page from a novel by another writer without attribution, in addition to other unattributed bits and pieces. However, she doesn't see this as stealing, but rather "mixing," and others agree with this:

“Obviously, it isn’t completely clean but, for me, it doesn’t change my appraisal of the text,” said Volker Weidermann, the jury member [for the Leipzig Book Fair fiction prize] and a book critic for the Sunday edition of the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, a strong supporter. “I believe it’s part of the concept of the book.”

Robert McCrum at the Guardian writes that Hegemann doesn't understand what plagiarism means because of her age and "the Internet age." And yea, maybe it is part of her shtick, because her novel is all about remixing, and here she's remixing other texts. But I take offense to the idea that because people in their late teens and early 20s grew up with the internet they (we) don't understand what is and is not stealing.

We aren't stupid, and we're no more unethical than those who grew up with the telegraph (although that already ruined journalistic integrity). This smacks of the nastiness toward Tavi Gevinson, the 14 year old fashion blogger, in which her every mistake is because of her youth, and her successes aren't credited.

Respect for others: The Twilight edition

Summit Entertainment, the god of the Twilight movies, is putting the kibosh on a documentary about Forks by Topics Entertainment, because they are also putting out a Forks documentary. Summit of course has to protect its nest egg of vampire blood, which means they must screw over other companies and, of course, the Quileute people must suffer, through the Trail of Tears of Twilight fanatics.

Texas prisons ban books, people are up in arms

Titles by Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Alice Walker, John Updike, Pablo Neruda, Pat Conroy, Hunter S. Thompson, James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen, John Grisham, Sapphire, Jenna Bush, and Jon Stewart have all been banned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. And some people are mad.

Inmates who don't read, for example, have a harder time finding jobs, said Marc Levin, a criminal justice analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

"Literacy, or lack of it, is one of the biggest problems we have with respect to re-entry," Levin said. "Inmates who want to read should have that opportunity."

Guys. I'm sorry. There are 89,795 titles on the approved list. Maybe my heart doesn't bleed enough here, but if you're in prison, you give up certain rights. Like your freedom, but also your right to read whatever the eff you want.

Ack, hipsters

The blog "Stuff Hipsters Hate" has a book deal. I'm sorry. Do these things sell? Does anyone buy these? Do people really want to invest money to get a bound copy of something they can get for free? Is this not, in essence, a stupid acquisition? The agent said:

The blog to book projects seem tired because so many of them have been one-trick ponies. They're based around a gimmick: They tell a joke and then they tell it again and again....The ones that have been really successful, and have a chance of making the backlist, have had a clear editorial voice: there's an honest critique or cultural observation built into the ostensibly humorous project....Their humor is not a result of a cheap gimmick (unlike another hipster book out there, LOOK AT THAT F***ING HIPSTER, which is the thinnest concept ever, and has no shot a backlist because of it); they have voice.

Oh, sir, thank God you're here to explain life to me! I was under the impression that most book acquisitions were for the immediate profits, not for the long range backlist potential. I must have been erroneous, good sir! It's not like hipsterdom is a cultural flash in the pan or anything. Hipsterdom, like beatnik culture, mod, and grunge, is here to stay, allowing for this backlist pontential.

And indeed, your product is totally different than "Look at That F***ing Hipster." Sure, both may be by young Brooklynites making fun of hipsters, how they dress and what they think, but your product has more text, and is thus superior.

Just...ugh.

Twilight plus manga equals Twanga

EW got an exclusive look at a page of the forthcoming Twilight graphic novel, as well as part of an interview with Stephenie Meyer. And, yea, that's not particularly interesting, but I love love love the comments at EW. People are crazy. Go read the trainwreck!