Bookcasts Part Two

Welcome to the second installment of "Bookcasts", where I give you a brief rundown on the podcasts that I follow. Those that don't have books as their primary subject matter will be marked with an asterisk. Part one is is here.

In Our Time*

In Our Time is a long-running BBC Radio programme that's very much like CBC Radio's Ideas, although the topics turn more frequently to literary matters (I'm not sure if it's still up in the archives, but there was an excellent show on Borges a while back).

The Good: Even though his pronunciation can be a little idiosyncratic, Melvyn Bragg is a spectacularly good host. He's well-informed, well-spoken, and he manages to keep the discussion on track so that as much of a given topic can be covered—although it should be noted that the discussion doesn't ever descend into superficiality.

The Bad: Once in a while Bragg will try to push the expert guests into discussing popular preconceptions about the issue when they clearly don't want to, but otherwise I've got nothing at all bad to say about this podcast. It's probably the one I anticipate most eagerly.

KCRW's Bookworm

What we have here is an excellent series of author interviews from a radio station in Santa Monica.

The Good: Michael Silverblatt (the host) asks the most sophisticated questions of any host in any of the podcasts I listen to, and the guest are always obliging in that they give equally sophisticated answers.

The Bad: His voice, while eventually soothing, takes a little while to get used to, and sometimes I think that you need a literature degree to follow the show.

New York Times Book Review Podcast

The New York Times delivers essentially an irreverent version of its weekend literary supplement in this podcast.

The Good: The podcast offers an insider look, not at the literary imagination, but at the behind-the-scenes world of publishing and criticism. The best thing about it is they present it like they're just a bunch of folks getting together to talk about books. And they just happen to be smart and connected.

The Bad: Sometimes they get a little bit too into the inside world and forget that they are broadcasting to an audience that doesn't know these people personally, and it can be hard to follow their banter. The telephone interviews don't always have the best sound quality either.

Part three tomorrow, probably.

Posted by August on 02.08.07 at 1:40 AM | Comments (0)

Bookcasts Part One

I am lucky enough to have a job that lets me work with books. I am doubly lucky in that my job allows me to listen to headphones, and rather than listen to music, I listen to audio books and podcasts, most of them dealing with the subject of books. As this is, of course, a book-related blog, I thought I would share those I listen to with you. Those that only occasionally deal with books (their primary subject matter being something else, or perhaps even simply general interest) will be marked with an asterisk. There are quite a few of them, so I will spread the out over two or three posts.

Authors On Tour—Live!

Recorded in Denver at an indie bookstore called The Tattered Cover, this podcast is a weekly series of author readings. It features authors from a multitude of genres, from fiction authors of all stripes to historians, politicians and journalists.

The Good: Most of the authors are clever speakers and often they show a personal side that doesn't come out in formal interviews.

The Bad: The sound quality can be hit and miss.

Barnes & Noble's Meet the Writers

This is a series of extremely short interviews with authors, conducted by Steve Bertran (sp?) on behalf of American big-box bookseller Barnes & Noble.

The Good: For such short interviews, Bertran does an enormous amount of research, asks intelligent questions and has an easy rapport with most of the writers.

The Bad: If Bertran doesn't get the answer he expects he will often rephrase the question two or three times in what seems like an effort to elicit the desired response. The authors don't seem to notice so much, but it can be irritating at times.

Books on Guardian Unlimited

The Guardian podcast is a mix of book news, author interviews, and every so often features a "book club" Q & A session with a live audience.

The Good: The Guardian is extremely professional and covers stories that won't always appear in the North American press. The book club segments are exceptional.

The Bad: The audio quality sometimes borders on amateurish, and updates are few and far between.

CBC Radio: The Best of Definitely Not the Opera*

Hosted by my long-time celebrity crush, Sook-Yin Lee, the show mostly focuses on whatever topic strikes Ms. Lee's fancy on any given week. The show airs every Saturday on the CBC, but the podcast only airs certain portions of the show (the music, for example, is cut out for reasons of copyright).

The Good: Sook-Yin Lee! The show is funny and irreverent, and many of the guests can be extremely entertaining.

The Bad: Book-related content is fairly rare, and when it appears over the airwaves on Saturday it doesn't always make it into the podcast on Sunday. Also, many members of the DNTO team don't seem entirely comfortable in a radio setting (Sook-Yin, while still cool as hell, does better on television, for instance), and as a result it sometimes feels like a college radio show with a budget.

CBC Radio: The Best of Ideas*

Ideas is probably one of the longest running programmes on CBC radio, and also one of the best. Every week features a new topic, normally unrelated to the previous week, and spanning nearly every conceivable subject. Literary subjects are fairly rare, but they do pop up from time to time.

The Good: This show is remarkable in the depth and breadth of its reportage. It would be impossible to say too many good things about it.

The Bad: Sometimes the show falls into the CBC cliché of addressing its audience as though they are all senior citizens, and additionally Paul Kennedy's voice is somewhat cloying.

CBC Radio: Words at Large

Words At Large collects book-related content from a variety of CBC Radio programmes; everything from interviews, news items, and short documentary pieces from the CBC archives.

The Good: The content is varied and the hosts are obviously long-time broadcast professionals.

The Bad: The content is sometimes trite. Many times a book will be mentioned only to spark a conversation about the topic of the book with little or no attention being paid to the actual content of the book itself, or issues like the writing process or literary creativity. An episode just before the holiday hiatus featured a wine-related book, and the episode felt like an extended advertisement for the LCBO's wine section. It often feels like an infomercial rather than a serious radio show.

Part two will be up in a day or so.

Posted by August on 02.07.07 at 1:28 AM | Comments (0)

DIY Publishing

Current web-app superstars (or arrogant prima donnas, which ever you prefer) 37 Signals have written a book and are distributing it solely as a PDF, for $19USD a pop. They are now claiming that because of their success with the book (1750 copies sold so far) that there is "a new sherrif in town" (ie. DIY publishing).

But is there really? Kottke chimes in as usual with a look at raw numbers rather than context and calls it good (well, "an interesting expirment" is his final declaration, but the rest of the short post seems more optimistic than that), but then I expected no less.

What I think we really have to look at is this:

  1. Who is their target audience? In this case it's tech-savvy entrepeneurs who are trying to get the most out of their budgets and still learn from people who are successful. Go to the business section of your local bookstore and you will notice two things. First, you will notice that the market is glutted and that it's hard to determine (from the way the books are designed and placed and so on) whose reputation is actually worth a damn and who is a two-bit huckster. Second, you will notice that these books are grossly over-priced. $19 probably looks pretty attractive from proven industry insiders (the questionable quality and originality of their material aside).
  2. What's the shelf-life of this book? Probably not very long. They've already updated it and it was really only out for a day, which means two things. It means they weren't really ready to ship it (which a decent editor would have been able to tell them) and that they don't expect the book to be a long-time source of income for them. Now you may think, "whoa, if they keep updating it then they do mean it to be a source of long-term profits". Not so. They're using their initial buyers to tweak the product and then they are going to let it slowly drift away after the initial market buzz is over. Continually updating it will mean a lot of work for the customers who have already paid for it to keep up with a book they've already bought, and that is something readers really hate doing, and I'm sure the 37 Signals crew knows this.
  3. Would this approach work for other markets? Literature for example? Probably not, at least not widely. We all know about Corey Doctorow giving his books away for free online, but his success, I would argue, is more from novelty than from a real shift in the market. The market for literature (with the exception of science fiction readers), history, and so on is notorious for being aggressively luddite. The printed book hasn't changed fundamentaly (and not for lack of trying) in four hundred years, and there are reasons for this, though I'm not going to get into them here. There's also the problem of grabbing the reader's attention. 37 Signals is an established name with an established readership based on a very specific technology. Most writers in other genres have no such thing backing them and therefore no easy way to reach their market. Yes they could start a website or something, but how many writers are really that tech-savvy? How many know how to promote a website? How many readers browse personal websites looking to buy books? The answer to all those questions is "not very many". The publishing industry is hugely flawed, but one of the things that it does is get books where readers will see them, in bookstores. A bookstore is not going to spend what little money it has on an author that nobody has heard of that hasn't even passed through the (albeit questionable) gateway of quality control represented by a publishing house.

New sherrif indeed. What we're really looking at here is a success story based on acurately reading a very specific market that has very specific tastes and a certain degree of knowledge that renders the electronic learning curve moot. What we do not have is anything even remotely resembling an industry shift. Barely even a twitch.

Posted by August on 03.03.06 at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

Novel School

Last month Louise Doughty (apparently a widely acclaimed author, although if I had a nickel for every widely acclaimed author I haven't heard of I would be far better off than I am today) began a column on, essentially, how to write a novel in a year.

Throughout 2006, I will be writing a column in this newspaper called Write a Novel in a Year. Can you write a novel in a year? Well, yes, if you don't do much else and you work hard and are talented.

But in actual fact, if you follow the column, and do the exercises I set (yes, exercises) what you will end up with will not be a novel, it won't even be the first draft of a novel, it will be a body of work, the raw material, which you may one day be able to shape and work on until it becomes a book.

It seems like an interesting idea, and the Telegraph has even set up a message board for the project, but I'm not entirely sure how it's going to fly. For instance, a quick search of the Telegraph's site for Doughty's name only yields the one column. How are we to follow her advice if we can't find it? Maybe it's for print customers only. That woud be a shame.

Posted by August on 02.24.06 at 4:50 PM | Comments (0)

Somebody Alert Jason Kottke

Blogs are not journalism. Jarret McNeill, one of the bloggers over at Maisonneuve has taken a crack at the question that seems to be preoccupying half the bloggers out there (and all the political bloggers); is blogging journalism? MacNeill says no.

Jason Kottke ought to be notified. Jason seems to be of the opinion that any change in the way we communicate, no matter how minor a change (or how little it actually conflicts with or circumvents existing forms of communication) is revolutionary.

MacNeill writes,

Blogging is not a revolution, but it is a fucking megaphone that enables conversation between the gilded towers of the media elite and we, the tiny people. If blogging serves any function within the framework of journalism it is to remind the big boys, from time to time, when they neglect a story that either deserves attention or, for whatever reason, has caught the attention of a mass of people. We are a check of sorts, and only in specific instances.

No one will ever, despite the popular hemming and hawing to the contrary, replace the New York Times or Washington Post, or any other respected and objective news source, in the services they provide for the simple fact that those institutions have funding and resources no single blog, or even a unified voice of blogs, could ever provide. Reporting will never go out of fashion. Reporting will never be unnecessary. And reporting can only be provided by organizations that have the means, the will power, and the resources to provide it. As the commercial says, "I like the way the New York Times surrounds a story."

Which is not to say that these powerhouses are infallible, or even cool (whatever that is, and whatever that's worth), because they certainly are not. Blogs can be occasional reminders of that, but never through a single site, and only through an amplitude of voices. It's a checks and balances thing, on a microscopic level.

I think blogs can help spread some good ideas, and I think that many blogs are home to some excellent writing. But yeah, definitely neither journalism nor a revolution. There is no digital equivelant of Che Guevara.

Posted by August on 04.01.05 at 8:53 PM | Comments (0)

Belated Bookslut Commentary

Like just about everyone in the book blog world, I'm an avid reader of Jessa Crispin's Bookslut blog. For the last several months she's had a fellow blogger, Michael Schaub, making posts. In fact, he seems to be consistently out-posting Jessa at this point. Which leads me to my next point.

Jessa should fire that guy. I'm sure they're friends, but he's bringing the quality of the site down. I can't decide if he's an idiot, a jerk, or is pretending to have no taste and a bad attitude because he thinks it's cool, and I don't particularly care, because he comes accross like all three assessments are correct.

That is all.

Posted by August on 03.14.05 at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

Hack the Gibson

William Gibson, the foundation on which cyber-punk is built, and author of one of the finest books I've read in a long while (Pattern Recognition), has resumed blogging. Most of his posts seem to be dealing with issues of American politics, which is not what originally made his blog interesting, but he is an intelligent and articulate enough man that that it remains interesting.

Posted by August on 10.17.04 at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

She Hates Liver

In what is quite possibly the strangest blog post I have seen in quite some time, an intern at Maisonneuve has put out a call to artists and designers.

Posted by August on 06.25.04 at 3:13 PM | Comments (0)

The Linking Fiasco

Could people new to the Internet please stop telling us shit we already know?

I mean, good lord, courtesy links are nothing new, and they aren't a requirement. To get upset about them is just plain childish. Welcome to the Internet. Despite what AOL might have told you, it's not a very friendly place. In fact, the best communities around are often openly hostile. Get used to it.

Posted by August on 02.23.04 at 3:02 PM | Comments (0)

Book Blogs and Other Wastes of Time

I'm hoping you folks can help me out. Recently I've been reading a number of blogs like Bookslut and The Elegant Variation. These are wondefully well-read and well-written, and I was hoping that you, my readers, might be able to point me in the direction of more. Perhaps from Canada? Canadian literature (and literary discussion) seems in such a sombre state lately (Mr. Barnes, Mr. Winter, this means you!) that I'm hoping to find something fun.

Posted by August on 02.17.04 at 5:08 PM | Comments (0)

Issue Two!

Issue two of Wooden Fish is up! Go! Go! Go!

Posted by August on 01.12.04 at 1:20 AM | Comments (0)

My Only Resolution

I will have issue two of Wooden Fish up by the end of the week, or die trying.

Posted by August on 01.04.04 at 5:16 PM | Comments (0)

Designing with Web Standards

I've just finished reading Jeffrey Zeldman's latest book, Designing With Web Standards. I will post a full-scale review soon, but for now let me just say this: if you build websites, buy this book.

Posted by August on 11.05.03 at 4:42 PM | Comments (0)

Coming Soon

Just a quick announcement to let everyone know that the second issue of Wooden Fish will be out very soon. Jon and I are putting the finishing touches on it now.

I will, of course, announce the launch of the issue.

Posted by August on 10.22.03 at 2:04 PM | Comments (0)

Yellow is Hot

The current P*rate is absolutely mind-blowing. If you're not already a fan of Jemma's work, go now, and you will be.

Posted by August on 10.09.03 at 5:15 PM | Comments (0)

Over and Done With

Yesterday was my last day of classes as an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo, and much to my displeasure, classes were cancelled due to the so-called ice storm.

On a slightly better note, Neil Gaiman posted a message from me on his blog. Scroll down to near the bottom of the April 4th entry.

Posted by August on 04.05.03 at 1:37 PM | Comments (0)

Of Coure They're Real

I awoke this morning to find that Scott is now telling us that he lied, and the words at Enlumine (the site I posted about last night) are not, in fact, real words. I beg to differ.

First, it was rather obvioius that the words in question were not of the order of, say, "dog", or "catharsis". The fact that Scott made them up does not make them any less real. In fact, I had actually thought, based on the contextual examples given, that most of the words were "made up" by authors of fiction (nobody would seriously believe that "osculathe: A machine on which a kiss is held & spun while being shaped by a fixed cutting tool" would be found in the OED, would they?) . I suppose that's a bit of a compliment to Scott, who is a good writer in his own right. The words are useful, and they are available, and as such they are real. I will use them, because they demand to be used.

Posted by August on 04.01.03 at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

Enluminating

Scott David Herman has just launched Enlumine, a site which

endeavors to enhance your personal lexicon by presenting words of interest and utility with which you may find yourself unfamiliar. Definitions and contextual examples are included, for your edification and occasional entertainment.

The words chosen so far are creative, useful, and amusing. I'm not entirely sure that most of them are in the public lexicon, but that's part of what makes the site so much fun. I'm looking forward to using some of the words. This one is my favourite thus far.

Posted by August on 03.31.03 at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)

Thirteen Feet

Christine Hamm, one of the fine contributors to the first issue of Wooden Fish, has launched a new online literary journal called Thirteen Feet.

Her attitude toward the project is excellent, and while her poetics are not my poetics (I like Shakespeare and Eliot, she doesn't; she likes Gertrude Stein, I don't), I encourage you all to submit your work. Projects like this deserve to succeed. I know I'll be submitting as soon as I have something suitable ready.

Posted by August on 03.13.03 at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

Two New Sites

I'd like to announce to the world two new websites.

First, we have Soul of the Web Magazine, which includes work by (and I believe was also co-founded by) Jim. In their own words, their goal is "to provide new articles on a quarterly basis, leading you to discover more of the people and places around the web we feel have Soul." This first issue is pretty good, and I hope you'll all go and take a look.

Secondly, I'd like to announce the launching (or rather relaunching) of a project I've been involved in. The New Quarterly, a Canadian literary journal, has just relaunched its site, which I redesigned for them. It's simple, easy to use, and gives you a good glimpse of what you'll find in the journal.

Posted by August on 03.01.03 at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

Sundry Things

Thing the first:

I just returned from my first screening of The Two Towers, and while reactions to this film have been overwhelmingly positive, I have mixed feelings. One of the strengths of the first film was how closely it followed the book(s), with the possible exception of Tom Bombodil, who is a delightful character, but ultimately serves a function unnecessary to the film. At the same time, the actors were allowed to do their jobs, which is to create believable characters through, well, acting. The Two Towers does not follow the book quite so closely, particularly with the addition of the scenes with Liv Tyler. I think this is a good thing, because it humanizes the relationship (and its potential problems) between Aragorn and the Horse-Princess, and makes Aragorn's moral dilemma quite sharp in our minds. We feel for these characters in ways the book does not allow us.

Sadly, the rest of the film distances us in ways the first did not. The first film was very human, very real, very much alive. This film is not. It seeks to be grandiose and full of fear and glory, and while it succeeds, it does so only to a point. Just like much of the book(s), it became simply an exercise in deus ex machina, which always struck me as rather sloppy on Tolkien's part. I have always felt that deus ex machina is a tool for the weak writer, unless said writer happens to be penning an ancient Greek play. By the end I was sick of watching characters in hopeless situations being saved by extremely powerful coincidences (involving, for the most part, very powerful beings or many armed men).

I was extremely impressed by Peter Jackson's sense for space and texture. I could see pores, dirty cuticles, dust, dirt, sweat, hair, grass, chips, scratches, tears; I could see everything, and it looked real. These didn't look like actors in costume, they looked like people in the world. Likewise with distances: I didn't once get the impression that there was a camera in the room with the actors. It seemed like the characters could touch all four walls, pick up all the props, touch all the statues... It was a real, three-dimensional world.

Thing the second:

Jim recently accepted a challenge to post 100 times in a single twenty-four hour period. He did it, and many parts of it were extremely amusing. But I think it's a bad idea, and here's why.

When I looked back at my daily blog before revamping it, at first all I thought of was how ugly it looked, and how inefficient it was. I was also ashamed at how infrequently I updated it. But the more I examined it, the more I realized that it wasn't the number of times I updated that I was ashamed of, it was the quality of those updates. I had not taken the time to think about why I was posting, and I posted more about myself than about my interests, but worst of all, those posts about myself were not amusing, and did not speak to my audience.

How does this relate to Jim? Well, Jim is a great writer (he lacks self-confidence, but he has a clear voice and a clear mind, both of which make up for his lack of faith in his own abilities). But he's a great writer because he takes the time to think about what he's writing, and why he's writing it (he often claims he doesn't, but I think he's lying). With his one-hundred posts in twenty-four hours project, he had to post an average of 4.16667 time per hour, which I don't think gives him a lot of time to think about what he's posting, or why he's posting it. In other words, he can't play to his strengths. It was an admirable experiment that had some interesting results, but ultimately I would rather wait a week for a new, well-thought out entry than have him post twice as often but with lesser quality (potentially: like I said, the experiment did yield some good things).

Of course I'd like to remind folks that experiment or no, Jim is one hell of a guy.

Thing the third:

Laura Trippi has moved to a new location. She bought a domain! You should go read her work at http://www.netvironments.org. She has also undertaken the monumental task of teaching me something about zWikis, but seeing as how she does that sort of thing for a living, I have high hopes.

Posted by August on 01.19.03 at 2:27 AM | Comments (0)