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.

Where does Stieg Larsson stand on the ladies?

I haven't read any of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, but I'm a bit confused on his feminist message. And it turns out, I'm not alone (warning, hey, there are spoilers at the link and heading forward, which are now spoiled for me, I need to stop reading so damn much):

This macho make-believe doesn’t negate Larsson’s professed feminism. But it does cast a shadow over how I read the many, many scenes of horrific violence inflicted upon female characters. One victim is choked to death with a sanitary napkin down her throat. Another is tortured, then decapitated with a saw. Lisbeth is raped. The crimes are unspeakable — which you could argue is the point for an activist like Larsson: Bring it into the open, try to prevent it from happening again. Still, Larsson seems to want it both ways: to condemn such savagery while simultaneously exploiting it in graphic detail for titillating storytelling purposes. And that makes me uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, as Missy Schwartz says at the link, Larsson is a little too dead to help untangle the tangles...

Ruh roh, I'm illiterate

I hear that linking makes you a worse writer:

A sentence that's written to include hyperlinks won't necessarily make as much sense without them. You write differently when you know you can't dodge explaining yourself by fobbing the task off on someone more eloquent or better informed. You have to express what you want to say more completely, and you have to think harder about what information ought to be included and what's merely peripheral. (Knowing what to leave out is as important to writing well as what you include.)

Well, shit, I'm illiterate city. Woe is me?

Overheard from your life

There's a new writing project afoot, called the Bugged Initiative, in which British writers eavesdrop and use conversations they hear as inspiration. It's the British version of Overhead in New York, but less mockery based. Maybe.

Dear Daddy Long Legs, please do advise

Some might suggest that, of women in literature, Juliet Capulet might not be the best for love advice. Mostly because she was 13, and my love advice at 13 involved having friends talk to boys for you and wearing Bonne Bell Lip Smackers.

I would prefer to ask...erm...I actually can't think of anyone I would prefer to ask. Awkward. Thoughts?

Erotica saves publishing, peasants rejoice

Apparently erotica is one of the few growth industries in publishing. To quote:

Exactly why erotic literature has become so popular now is a matter of speculation, though it doesn't seem entirely coincidental that the creators were mostly raised in the era of Madonna videos on MTV, open discussion of sex during the initial HIV scare, and the mainstreaming of porn. Much of the new erotica is simply porn moved to the printed page, only smarter and largely aimed at women.

Once again, Madonna is at fault. Damn you, Madonna!

That's what she said: Literary haterade

Writers are notoriously cranky, reader types, not only in regard to their own work, but also in regard to the work of others. And sometimes, they just want to throw down. Like Faulkner on Mark Twain:

A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.

That is what the kids would call "a burn," I believe. And there are 49 more! Click click, sirs and madams.

Also, thank you michael for sending this along!

The art of the anonymous review (hint: only do it if you're nice)

People really love to leave mean comments on blog and nasty reviews on Amazon. But guess what--you may be unmasked! This happened to Dr. Stephanie Palmer, the wife of a British academic, who flamed other academic texts on Amazon.

Well, that blew up in her face.

Librarians won't tell you what to do...

They'll just send you really passive-aggressive notices.

Amazing. Click click, sirs.

How to write the sexy bits

Russell Smith put together a guide to writing your own graphic sex in novels (not sex in graphic novels, although perhaps the advice would also apply?). I think the trick might be, "If you are snickering, so is everyone else."

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.

The interwebs ruins reading, part one thousand and four

Normally, I would mock someone who said technology is hindering her reading. But this rang so true for me:

My reading has taken on a strangely driven, guilty quality, as I try to justify the cost of all those subscriptions and all that hardware by consuming fiction in an unprecedentedly multiplicitous and simultaneous way. Secretly, I long to return to a world in which I had a loving, stable relationship with one paperback at a time.

Snaps to this, reader types. I get this kind of book anxiety all the time, and wish I read more non-internet texts, in part because reading War and Peace is impressive, whereas reading the same length in blog posts is...kind of sad.

A preemptive bookshelf eulogy

Woe to the world, reader types--the bookshelf is dead! Well, not actually, but it's coming. Ok, not really soon, but eventually. Russell Smith writes:

People come to see my minuscule new living room and say, hmm, you could have another foot and a half without that wall of bookshelves. True, but then you would never be able to distract yourself, while waiting for me to dress, by pulling down, at random, Weapons of World War II and 100 Erotic Drawings.

But you’d probably have brought your own e-reader with you, which you’d be looking at anyway (checking Facebook, updating: “I am so mad right now”). Book-walls are just aesthetic now, just an unusually dense wallpaper: We don’t really need them for consultation....And all our books will be invisible, like our music: The sum total of our literary experience will be a list of file names on a grey plastic machine in a briefcase.

After careful consideration, I think Smith is overreacting a little here. There will always been a need for secret bookcase passages, and a place to store trophies.

Girls are better readers, also cooler in general

A survey of students aged 5 to 16 showed that, while boys and girls read the same number of books, girls choose more difficult titles than boys. Ladies: always awesomer. What I found interesting was this:

High-achieving children - defined as reading two years above their age - are not challenging themselves enough when it comes to reading as they tend to opt for easier books than their reading ability warrants, the report suggests.

[...]

"If they [children] are reading books that are below their independent reading level it may give them enjoyment but it won't extend their reading ability and literacy rates are at risk of continuing to decline," [Professor Topping] said.

I have trouble believing that, considering the difficulty getting kids to read in the first place, the article judges children who read for fun. Also, content often dictates reading level to some degree, and you know what you're getting into, more or less, when reading YA fiction versus adult fiction--something pretty obvious when you consider the large number of adults reading the Twilight novels.

Editors: Yay or nay?

Carole Baron put up a post at the Huffington Post about why authors still need editors (which, as Gawker points out, really could have used a copy-editor). Baron lists ten (valid) reasons we still need editors and traditional publishing, but I think Scott Sigler gives us an even better reason, through his own foray into self-publishing.

Sigler founded his own imprint to put out his latest book. He says he made ten times the profit per unit, but only sold a tenth of the copies he has sold through a traditional publisher (which, for the not so math inclined, implies he made the same amount both ways). Sigler, an established author, was built up first by himself through his website, where he distributed audiobooks and podcasts, and later by the publishing machine, which put out paper copies of his work, to be a profitable brand of Sigler-ness.

While he points out that his particular self-pubbing method can be profitable, he seems to believe (and rightly so) that it will only really work for established authors who "defect" from traditional publishing--his example being Stephanie Meyer. And yea, she could self-publish and make a ton of money, but a) she was created by the publishing machine, and b) anyone who doesn't have a huge cult following isn't going to do so well.

Sigler says, "[T]hat's the kind of kind of thing that could take away from big publishing and put some of that control back into the hands of authors." What he really means is that control would be in the hands of established authors, who want to take on the responsibility of editing, copy-editing, designing, and producing their own work, but editors and publishing writ large are still necessary for the unknown who wants to be a profitable author. And, perhaps more importantly for this argument for authorial control, if a number of large cash cow authors did defect, publishing houses would lose those profits, and would no longer be able to take risks on new authors, who would be in a worse position than they were originally.

Maybe Meyer could defect, publish her own books, and then start Meyer House. That way, in 50 years we can complain about Meyer House's place in big publishing, quashing the hopes of the masses.

If monks can rap, so can I

My name is Laura and I'm here to say, rapping monks are a-okay. Kansho Tagai, a.k.a. Mr. Happiness, is a rapping Japanese Buddhist monk.

Next up for this guy is tap dancing while chanting, and potentially the samba. This just goes to show you that working in an office is either looking terrible or really good in comparison. I choose the latter, because my last dance recital ended with a five year old Ombreviations arguing on stage with a friend about steps while everyone else danced their way offstage. These scars run deep, my friends.

Watch out for steampunkers

Because they now have working guns. Boing Boing highlights these functional blunderbusses. I am officially frightened, and will be more careful around the steampunk inclined in the future.