NY Times Fiasco

via Mercury News

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19634121?source=rss

Kindle Deal of the Day

I recently found this and I think anyone who owns a Kindle should know about it (if they don't already).

The Kindle "deal of the day" has a different great book deal each day of the week. Today's deal (7hrs left at the time of post) was 99 cents for The Life of Pi (one of my favorite books).

Click the link below to get it! I'm excited to see what's coming tomorrow!

Kindle Deal of the Day

Interesting Web-Site

Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America
http://www.abaa.org/

On Book Thievery

"For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner ... let him be struck with palsy, & all his members blasted. ... Let the bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, & when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever."

-Anathema in a medieval manuscript from the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona

This is the opening to the book, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much.

Top Book Stories of the Week

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/12/christopher-hitchens-death-reaction.html

http://www.newsday.com/sports/football/jets/prison-taught-plaxico-burress-value-of-reading-1.3392854

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/10/NSQV1LPK1N.DTL

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/books/review/hedys-folly-by-richard-rhodes-book-review.html?_r=1&ref=review

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/best-books-of-2011/2011/12/06/gIQANFuwcO_gallery.html#photo=1


sorry, still trying to master this hyperlink thing

Tinker, Trailor, Soldier, SPy

I hear it comes highly recommended by a Sir D. Warmer

December Book of the Month: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre

Kindle (under)Fire

via Yahoo News and The New York Times:

By DAVID STREITFELD

The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success with many of its early users. The most disgruntled are packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer.

A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky.

All the individual grievances — recorded on Amazon’s own Web site — received a measure of confirmation last week when Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, denounced the Fire, saying it offered “a disappointingly poor” experience. For users whose fingers are not as slender as toothpicks, he warned, the screen could be particularly frustrating to manipulate.

“I feel the Fire is going to be a failure,” Mr. Nielsen, of the Nielsen Norman Group, a Silicon Valley consulting firm, said in an interview. “I can’t recommend buying it.”

All this would be enough to send some products directly to the graveyard where the Apple Newton, the Edsel, New Coke and McDonald’s Arch Deluxe languish. But as a range of retailers and tech firms could tell you, it would be foolish to underestimate Amazon.

Amazon sees the Kindle line of devices as critical for its future as a virtual store, and is willing to lose money on the sale of each one for the sake of market share. Once dominance is achieved, it plans to make money on the movies, books and music that users download directly from Amazon.

First, however, it needs to make the devices ubiquitous. Promoting them every day to its tens of millions of customers at the cheapest possible price will surely help. If Apple brought the notion of the tablet into the mainstream, Amazon is making it affordable.

The retailer says the Kindle Fire is the most successful product it has ever introduced, a measure of enthusiasm that reveals nothing; it has not specified how many Fires it has sold, nor how many Kindles it has ever sold. It also says it is building even more Fires to meet the strong demand. But, at the same time, it acknowledges that it is working on improvements.

“In less than two weeks, we’re rolling out an over-the-air update to Kindle Fire,” said Drew Herdener, a company spokesman.

There will be improvements in performance and multitouch navigation, and customers will have the option of editing the list of items that show what they have recently been doing. No more will wives wonder why their husbands were looking at a dating site when they said they were playing Angry Birds.

Amazon declines to say, but soon — probably in the spring — there will be an improved version of the device itself. One more shot is all the retailer will get, Mr. Nielsen said. “If that’s a failure, then the Fire is doomed to the dust pile of history.”

Despite Amazon’s silence on the matter, analysts have been estimating the company will sell from three to five million Fires this quarter. They are neither raising their estimates nor lowering them.

Amazon’s devotion to this product line is such that it has stripped down the original Kindle e-reader, reduced its price and begun to sell it through other retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart for $79, as well as prominently on its Web site. If Amazon had Apple-like margins, analysts estimate that the basic Kindle might cost $180.

According to calculations by the research firm IHS iSuppli, the $79 Kindle costs Amazon $84 to make. That sum does not include research and development, shipping or, with a third-party retailer, the wholesale discount. Add these up, and Amazon might be losing as much as $20 on every $79 Kindle sold at, for example, Best Buy.

For most hardware makers, that would be a recipe for corporate suicide. But once the device is activated in a buyer’s home, the losses stop and the consumption begins.

“What else are you going to do on this Kindle?” asked Andrew Rassweiler, senior director of teardown services at iSuppli. “Nothing. It’s a useless device unless you’re planning on putting books, a lot of books, on it.”

The Fire is trying to do much more than be an e-book reader, a function some say it does not do as well as the original Kindle. Slightly more than a third of the 4,500 reviewers of the Fire on Amazon have given it mixed to negative reviews, three stars or fewer. Of Amazon reviewers of the iPad 2, 22 percent have given three stars or fewer; for the original Kindle, that number is 11 percent. (There are a few caveats. At least some of the iPad reviewers bought not from Apple but from resellers, the real target of their ire. As for the original Kindle, after four years it has both a huge number of reviews — over 34,000 — and the advantage of being a known quantity.)

Many of the initial customers of the Fire seem to have bought it on a mixture of faith and hype. The striking thing even about some of the one-star reviewers is that they are regretful rather than angry. One review, couched as an open letter to Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, began: “I have spent thousands on your outstanding site. I own and love the original kindle. When asked about why I would buy a Fire when I had an ipad, I said that half of me wanted to just support your effort and that I believed amazon just did things right.” The reviewer is now recommending that friends skip lunch to buy an iPad.

Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, has been tracking the opinions as more reviews are posted on Amazon. Since Nov. 18, five-star reviews have fallen slightly, to 47 percent from 50 percent, he says. One-star reviews have held relatively steady at about 13 percent.

“I would have expected things to be even worse at this point,” Mr. Munster said, adding that initial buyers were usually the most critical. Pricing will save the Fire, he predicted. At $199 versus $500 for an iPad, “Amazon has a lot of air cover to have a B-level product.”

Mr. Nielsen, the consultant, disagreed.

The 7-inch Fire does a good job displaying sites optimized for smaller mobile devices, he said, but stumbles when it tries to show pages designed for 10-inch tablets. “Like squeezing a size-10 person into a size-7 suit,” Mr. Nielsen wrote in his report. “Not going to look good.” As for displaying desktop sites, forget it.

It is true that the device is only $199, but so what? “Look at your hand. Is it thin or fat?” he asked. “If it’s fat, you just know it’s going to be bad.”

The device does do one thing well, he said. Shopping on Amazon is a breeze. “If I were given to conspiracy theories, I’d say that Amazon deliberately designed a poor Web browsing user experience to keep Fire users from shopping on competing sites,” Mr. Nielsen said.

More 2011 Book Awards

http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice/2011

Follow the above link to goodreads.com's top book winners of 2011. There are 22 categories of books.

Below is a video of Veronica Roth, author of favorite book of 2011 winner Divergent

Top Books of 2011

To view the NY Times top 10 list:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/10-best-books-of-2011.html?_r=1&hp

To view Amazon.com's top 20 list:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=pe_184240_21893570_pe_btn/?node=3321372011

To view the Pleasant Hill Book Club's top pick...you'll have to wait till February!

Happy Holidays From the Book Club!

Happy Holidays! (I'm actually just posting this so I can get a coupon from Shutterfly. Shameless, I know. Enjoy!)

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

One Trick Pony

Saw this in my New York Review of Books a couple weeks back. I wonder if he gets tied of writing about whales. It seems like most of his other books are also boating related.

Went to the movies...

and guess what I saw.



It's already getting paned by fans of the book. I'll still watch it though. If you've never read the book, go to the library today and pick it up! (or download it, etc.)

Hunger Games Trailer

Kindle Lending Library

Amazon.com has introduced its new 'library' for Kindle owners. Before you sign-up, however, I suggest you read the following article.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/11/kindle-lending-library/

November Book of the Month: Plan B and Jonathan Tropper

via goodreads.com

Turning thirty was never supposed to be like this. Ten years ago, Ben, Lindsey, Chuck, Alison, and Jack graduated from New York University and went out into the world, fresh-faced and full of dreams for the future. But now Ben's getting a divorce; Lindsey's unemployed; Alison and Chuck seem stuck in ruts of their own making; and Jack is getting more publicity for his cocaine addiction than his multimillion-dollar Hollywood successes.

Suddenly, turning thirty-- past the age their parents were when they were born, older than every current star athlete or pop music sensation-- seems to be both more meaningful and less than they'd imagined ten years ago.

Jonathan Tropper's wonderful debut novel is about more than friendship, love, celebrity, addiction, kidnapping, or even turning thirty-- it's a heartfelt comic riff on what it means to be an adult against your will, to be single when you thought you'd have a family, to discover you are not, in fact, immortal, and to learn that Star Wars is as good a life lesson today as it was when you were six years old.

One Last Thing

I was watching a repeat of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain and this segment of the show made me think about those whalers at the end of their journey (if you know what I mean).

Nantucket Whaling Museum Digital Achives

enjoy.

http://www.nha.org/sites/

Ender's Game Series Flow Chart

Here it is. Enjoy. (via wikipedia.com)

More on the 2011 Reading Challenge

Skimming through some of the participants I came across people whose goal was 100, 300, 900, and even 1000! Of these participants they have combined to have read 1 book. Well done!

I decided I would try to outdo all of these absurd attempts and entered as my goal 1 and held down the zero button for about five seconds. I was then alerted that the max I could enter was 5000. 5000! How is that even a possible goal? 5000 is just as ridiculous a number as 1 billion. That would be reading over 13 books per day!

Not sure why I am obsessed with this. New post coming soon, I'm sure.

2011 Reading Challenge

I revisited this today and came across some noteworthy statistics that I'm not quit sure what to make of.

1. 145,000 plus participants have read over 3.5 million books which is an average of 24 books per person

2. As of October, participants are only 36% of the way toward reaching their goal.

3. The average goal set was 67 books. For the year. Seriously. Even if I was retired and my kids were grown up, I don't think I could pull more than a book a week.

to visit the reading challenge go to: http://www.goodreads.com/challenges/2-2011-reading-challenge

October Book of the Month: In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

via goodreads.com

In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex--an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

In the Heart of the Sea tells perhaps the greatest sea story ever. Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy. At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.

"Nathaniel Philbrick has taken one of the most horrifying stories of maritime history and turned it into a classic. This is historical writing at its best--and at the same time, one of the most chilling books I have ever read." --Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm

Nathaniel Philbrick, a leading authority on the history of Nantucket, is director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association.

2011 Reading Challenge

http://www.goodreads.com/challenges/2-2011-reading-challenge

a little late but...

Fun Book Quiz

http://www.sporcle.com/games/bazmerelda/babel_book_babbles

September Book of the Month: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

via goodreads.com

The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.

Is Ender the general Earth so desperately needs? The only way to find out is to throw him into ever-harsher training at Battle School, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when his training begins. He will grow up fast.

But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. His two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Among the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

August Book of the Month: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

"Sentimental, heartfelt novel portrays two children separated during the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. In 1940s Seattle, ethnicities do not mix. Whites, blacks, Chinese and Japanese live in separate neighborhoods, and their children attend different schools. When Henry Lee’s staunchly nationalistic father pins an “I am Chinese” button to his 12-year-old son’s shirt and enrolls

him in an all-white prep school, Henry finds himself friendless and at the mercy of schoolyard bullies. His salvation arrives in the form of Keiko, a Japanese girl with whom Henry forms an instant—and forbidden—bond. The occasionally sappy prose tends to overtly express subtleties that readers would be happier to
glean for themselves, but the tender relationship between the two young people is moving. The older Henry, a recent widower living in 1980s Seattle, reflects in a series of flashbacks on his burgeoning romance with Keiko and its abrupt ending when her family was evacuated. A chance discovery of items left behind by Japanese-Americans during the evacuation inspires Henry to share his and Keiko’s story
with his own son, in hopes of preventing the dysfunctional parent-child relationship he experienced with his own father. The major problem here is that Henry’s voice always sounds like that of a grown man, never quite like that of a child; the boy of the flashbacks is jarringly precocious and not entirely credible. Still, the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages while waiting for the story arc to come full circle, despite the overly flowery portrait of young love, cruel fate and unbreakable bonds. A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those
injustices." - Kirkus Reviews

Best of Both Worlds!

Check it out:

http://www.sporcle.com/blog/2011/07/play-on-sporcle-win-a-kindle/

Thomas Edison: Elephant Killer

The afterward of Water For Elephants mentions an elephant execution carried out by Thomas Edison. Apparently these were common in these days when an elephant had killed 3 or more workers(or 1 rube). This particular execution, of Topsy the elephant, was filmed by Edison to show the dangers of his rival's alternating current method. This 1903 version of Faces of Death was then shown to audiences around the country.

I won't show the video of this here, but it can be easily found on youtube.com for those interested.

Harry Potter Quiz

Can you guess the Harry Potter characters who own these license plates?


http://www.sporcle.com/games/waffle_of_action/harry-potter-license-plates

Another Reason Not To See Water For Elephants

About half way through reading Water For Elephants I realized that the film was going to be very different than the book and decided I probably wouldn't go see it. In reading reviews for the film I came across something far worse than deviating from the original story. As the video below will show, the elephants used in the film were subject to animal cruelty (bull hooks and electrical shocks) in order to have them perform their tricks. I know this isn't shocking news for anyone to hear that animals don't dance and stand on their heads naturally, but you would think that in an age of CGI, movies wouldn't have to resort to these measures anymore.



PS- There are also reports that an unknown primate (probably an orangutan) was shaved, topped with a blonde wig, and forced to play the character of Marlena

South Sudan

Last year I read a very powerful book written by Dave Eggers titled, What is the What. It tells the heartbreaking story of a Sudanese Lost Boy's journey out of the civil war hell in his country to the United States. You can follow the label at the bottom of the post to read the book review.

You will notice a banner on the side of the blog that will remain for the remainder of the summer welcoming the soon to be independent South Sudan. This is a move that will hopefully bring an end to all the horrors that land has experienced.

10,000 Hits!

Last Friday our humble blog reached the milestone of 10,000 hits! It only took about 3 years to do it!

(note to self: add more posts about Harry Potter)

Pleasant Hill Library Parking Lot

I'm pretty sure the county and city are doing as much as they can to passively get people to stop going to the library. Their parking lot is a minefield of gigantic potholes. So much so that I need an army engineer to make my way out of their parking lot with out my car snapping in half. In the past six years or so I have yet to see one of these holes be fixed. Eventually, I think the P.Hill library will eventually become the world's only library that you need to zip-line into.

The Handmaid's Tale: The Movie

Really, really bad. I only got through half of part one, but the video's should link together if you want to see the whole thing. Really poorly done. Enjoy!

Water For Elephants: The Movie Trailer

July Book of the Month: Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

via goodreads.com

Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell.

Jacob was there because his luck had run out - orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on this locomotive 'ship of fools'. It was the early part of the Great Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any job at all. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss with a wide mean streak. And Rosie the elephant was there because she was the great gray hope, the new act that was going to be the salvation of the circus; the only problem was, Rosie didn't have an act - in fact, she couldn't even follow instructions. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

WMc's Summer Book List

Reposted from McMadness.com

I just finished a very disappointing book that was released last month--Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan.  It was touted by an author I generally enjoy as the "perfect summer read" on her blog.  I am a sucker for perfect summer reads, and I even pre-ordered the book and dug right in as soon as it arrived on my Kindle. It took me nearly a week to finish this book and I was left disappointed.  I found the characters mostly lacking positive attributes and I am still wondering about all of the loose ends the author failed to tie up.  I am annoyed that a week of summer reading was sacrificed to something so falsely advertised when I could have been spending my precious reading time with something better.

To counter my bitterness, I am posting my own summer reading list, with books that I would classify as "perfect summer reads."

Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holoman.  Exactly what it sounds like.  Small town makes giant cheese for a cheese contest and has to transport it to be judged.  Well-written and hefty.  You will get lost in another world.  That is, unless you are a small town dairy-farmer, then it might hit a bit too close to home.

The Dirty Parts of the Bible by Sam Torode.  No, this is not Bible porn.  It's a whitty adventure story set in 1936 when 19-year-old Tobias is sent from Michigan to Texas to find a bag of money his father, a newly ousted baptist-pastor, hid many years ago as a teenager himself.  The characters are complex and fantastic in a way that cannot really be described.  I liked this book so much that I emailed the author after reading it. Bonus, it is only $2.99 for the Kindle Edition, although I would gladly pay more for it.

Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons by Lorna Landvick.  Women's literature at its finest.  This book completely enraptures you in its characters while touching on serious issues, spanning generations and having moments of all-out hilariousness.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith.  Voted best book of the year for 2010 by my book club, which is saying a lot because it had a lot to compete with in 2010, including the book below.  Historically accurate with some vampire, it is a great balance of intellect and straight up fluff.  And I generally dislike vampire books.

The Hunger Games series by Susan Collins.  If you have not already jumped on the bandwagon, please do. You will not regret it.  And no, it is nothing like the Twilight series which I could never understand the hype behind.  See comment above regarding my general feelings on vampire books.

Books on my summer reading list include (note, the large amount of Young Adult science fiction/adventure is due in large part to the current obsession of the genre by many of my coworkers, whom I get a lot of my book recommendations from.  Lawyers reading teenager books en masse.  We all get our brain breaks somehow.):

• Switched and the next two books in the Trylle trilogy by Amanda Hocking
• Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winslow  
• The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
• Matched by Allie Condie
• Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner (available July 12, 2011)
• Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

Less Scandalous But Equally Exciting Harry Potter News

Something all of you Pott Heads will love.

wwww.pottermore.com

Harry Potter Admits to Being a Filthy Drunk!

via Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) - Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has revealed that he was so worried about his drinking that he vowed to give it up and has become teetotal.

The 21-year-old actor told GQ magazine that his life went off the rails for a time when he turned 18 and was filming "Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince."

"I became so reliant on (alcohol) to enjoy stuff," he said in an interview to be published in GQ's August edition. "There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person's lifestyle that really isn't suited to me."

Radcliffe says he was fortunate that the paparazzi never captured his worst behavior.

"I really got away with that because there were many instances when a shot like that could have been taken," he added.

Radcliffe, who says he has not touched a drop of alcohol since August last year, admitted that he would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks but that just doesn't work for him.

"I do that very unsuccessfully. I'd just rather sit at home and read, or talk to somebody that makes me laugh," he added. "There's no shame in enjoying the quiet life."

Radcliffe was just nine when he was picked to star in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series and, according to British press reports, has amassed a fortune of around 45 million pounds ($72 million)

The final Potter film, "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part II" has its premiere in London on Thursday and will hit the theatres on July 15.

Only A Few Hours Left!

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2011/06/indie-day-giveaway-win-amazon-kindle.html

THE INDIE DAY GIVEAWAY: Win an AMAZON KINDLE featuring M.R. Mathias’ Entire Bibliography + E-Books from his Favorite Independent Authors!!!

Three Panel Book Review by Lisa Brown

See more at: http://www.sfgate.com/columns/threepanel/archive/

Book Borrowing Etiquette

What is the correct etiquette when borrowing a book? That is when someone, unsolicitedly, gives you a book they would like you to read. Meaning that you did not request this book, this person just gave you a book to read that they think you would like? Does that jump to the top of you reading to-do list? Or do you read it when it comes up at its place in your queue? What if your queue is ten books deep and you know it will be months before it is returned? Does the giver of the book understand the indefinite time period of this loan? Will they be insulted if you don't read it right away? They have essentially told you that they found this book interesting and would like to discuss it with you at a later time. Is it rude to ignore this cry for help and read it at your leisure?

Personally, I don't care when books I lend out are returned (as long as they are returned at some point). Although my usual motive is to clear space on the Tokyo-like overcrowding found on my book shelves and not the aforementioned need to discuss the book. With that said, however, I did once lend someone a copy of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2010 Pleasant Hill Book Club Book of the Year Winner) and it just sat on their shelf for months and months completely untouched and that was kind of annoying. I wound up taking it back with out telling them to see if they noticed. That was weeks ago and no mention of it yet.

Notes:
1. 'unsolicitedly' is not a real word. It sounds like it should be though.

2. I think this breaks the record for most question marks in a post. Don't you agree?

3. The book that inspired this post actually looks very interesting.

4. Please leave your opinions, if you have any, in the comments section.

Disquieting Hunger Lames Movie News

1. No Madge. Katniss' only friend and the one who gives her the mockingjay pin will not be a part of the movie. Apparently Prim will be the one giving her the pin. Lame.

2. Gale is a real love interest. He is even reported to be sneaking into the games to help Katniss. This is an attempt to create a Twilight like love triangle. Super Lame.

I know books are always better than the movie, but I didn't think it was so intentional. I have gone from 'can't wait' to 'never in hell' will I watch this movie.

We're on Facebook! (again)

Pleasant Hill Book Club is now on Facebook! (For real this time) You will notice a like button at the top of the page. Click it and you will get automatic feeds to your Facebook page! Hooray! Share with your friends!

For All of You Potter Fans Out There

http://blog.movies.yahoo.com/blog/1589-a-mysterious-harry-potter-site

For Those Who Love Great Sports Writting

ESPN.com columnists Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman have debuted their new website called Grantland. You can visit it at grantland.com. Klosterman writes the first featured column, "Three Man Weave", about a 1988 North Dakota juco basketball tournament game in which a Native American team won the game despite playing with only 3 players with more than a minute to play.

If you know these writers than you know you can expect great, well-written, engaging stories about sports, pop-culture, or a mixture of the two.

June Book of the Month: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

via goodreads.com

It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed.

"And We Thought We Had It Bad" or "A Peek Into the Future"

via sfgate.com

Jean Quan's tax plan riles Oakland library backers

Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has proposed cutting 14 of the city's 18 libraries, including a venerated African American museum and library, unless unions slash their pay or voters pass an $11.2 million parcel tax.

The proposal has riled library supporters, who have come to council chambers en masse to demand that the council place the tax on the ballot.

"I feel that the parcel tax is a small price to pay for adequate city services," said Nina Lindsay, 40, a homeowner who has lived in Oakland since she was 4 and is a children's librarian.

But the proposal from Quan has some wondering whether it's just political theater.

Prominent Quan supporters, including her husband, Floyd Huen, have been regularly lining up at council meetings to speak in favor of the tax, which has been blocked from reaching a ballot by council members Libby Schaaf, Ignacio De La Fuente and Desley Brooks.

"I urge the council to please put the measure on the ballot," Huen said Thursday after criticizing council members for not supporting the tax proposal.
Other ideas suggested

Brooks has suggested that Quan, a huge library supporter, was manipulating voters about the libraries by saying a parcel tax was the only way to keep them open. Brooks added that pension or City Charter reform might also free up money for libraries.

Without looking at all options, Brooks said, Quan's parcel tax push is "disingenuous."

The mayor replied that if others wanted to put reforms on the ballot, they were welcome to. Quan said she just didn't have the time to do so herself because of the demands of the budget.

But the mayor's budget numbers themselves have raised eyebrows.

The four libraries that would remain open in this scenario include the 81st Avenue, Dimond and Rockridge branches. In addition, Quan's budget says, "the main library will remain open with full programming."
Tiny staff budgeted

But Quan has budgeted the equivalent of 4.6 employees to run the main library even though it currently has 46. Her spokeswoman, Sue Piper, said it was library leaders who came up with the figures. But even library leaders question the plausibility of five people running the three-story, 87,500-square-foot main library, which has separate rooms for children, meetings, a teen zone, magazines, history and a computer lab.

"That's not possible," said Gerry Garzon, the library's associate director. "It's just not."

Part of the reason that the library cuts would be so severe is that Quan's proposal assumes that the city would not receive parcel tax revenue from Measure Q. The 2004 ballot measure provides libraries with $14 million from a parcel tax as long as the city contributes roughly $9.1 million. Quan trumpeted Measure Q as a mayoral candidate, saying she led the effort, which prevented branch libraries from being closed.

But the current budget is so tight, Quan says, that the city would not be able to afford the $9.1 million contribution. Instead, she proposes contributing $3.6 million - which means losing the parcel tax revenue and an overall decrease of $19.5 million in library funding. Residents would stop paying an $86 parcel tax.

Quan is drawing on sentiment, not fiscal reality, in her most dire budget proposal, said Joe Tuman, a former mayoral candidate and current board member of Make Oakland Better Now, a good-government group.

For example, he points to the fact that Quan also proposed shuttering four fire stations, even though the city's interim fire chief said it would only save $300,000 annually.

"These, to me, suggest a pattern of exaggeration in the purpose of scaring people to support a parcel tax," he said.

Piper said skeptics don't understand the reality of the budget. Every department gets cut when police and fire account for 75 percent of the budget, she said. Libraries are not alone.

"One hopes that's not the case, but it's reality," she said. "It's not a scare tactic."
Transferring museum

On another budget matter, the city wants to transfer operation of the Oakland Museum entirely over to the Oakland Museum of California Foundation, a nonprofit. Both say it would save money, including $1 million a year for the city alone.

But the union representing some of the city workers, IFPTE Local 21, says the move violates the City Charter, which prohibits contracting out work that leads to employees losing their jobs.

The city says the equivalent of 7.6 people would be laid off. The union says the number is 45.

E-mail Matthai Kuruvila at mkuruvila@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/29/BAE31JKE3G.DTL

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.

Some Final Notes on Henrietta Lacks

If you want to contribute to the Henrietta Lacks Foundation (created to help pay for the education and medical needs of the Lacks family) visit:

http://henriettalacksfoundation.org

If you are interested in more stories concerning HeLa, or Lacks recognition, a simple Google search (as mentioned in the book) will turn up thousands of results.

Also, if you haven't watched the YouTube video on the HeLa cells yet, I highly recommend it. Definitely worth the time.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has made a steady move to the top of the Bay Area Paperbacks list this month. Coincidence? I think not.

Finally, it appears that Oprah has bought the movie rights to the book and is planning on producing one for HBO sometime in the future. Although, there is nothing listed about this on imdb.com which means this project is still at least 2 to 3 years away.

Henrietta Lacks Receives Honorary Degree

via npr.com

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/23/136587856/henrietta-lacks-receives-honorary-degree

Its the End of the World! (Protect your glasses!)

The Way of All Flesh (BBC)

watch the rest on youtube

Greg Mortenson Being Sued

via csmonitor.com (by the way, Mortenson is also being sued by Afghan tribesman who he claims were Taliban)

By Marjorie Kehe / May 9, 2011

In today's litigious society, it was the inevitable next step: There is now movement toward a class action lawsuit against "Three Cups of Tea" author Greg Mortenson.
(Author should also be in quotes-Ed. PHBC)

Mortenson, whose popular book has helped him to raise millions to support his efforts to build schools in central Asia, was one of America's most respected and best known philanthropists – until last month. That's when author Jon Krakauer appeared on "60 Minutes" to allege that Mortenson had lied in his book, misused the funds entrusted to him, and misrepresented the degree of the success of his school-building mission.

Mortenson has admitted that he "compressed" the timeline of some of the incidents in "Three Cups of Tea" but otherwise denies any claims of wrongdoing. His charity, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), has stated that in order to "address the recent media allegations" it is "gathering relevant facts from our field managers in Pakistan and Afghanistan to provide more comprehensive reporting." According to those close to Mortenson, pending heart surgery has prevented him from being able to speak out more fully in his own defense.

5 essential truths in "Three Cups of Tea"

CAI board chairman Abdul Jabbar says that once Mortenson is "[a]rmed with a healthy heart" he will be ready to face the press and answer questions.

But even if Mortenson is not able to move forward at the moment, events are moving rapidly around him.

In federal court in Missoula last week, two Montana legislators – state Reps. Michele Reinhart and Jean Price – filed a claim against Mortenson, stating that they were duped into buying "Three Cups of Tea" and then giving to Mortenson's charity because they thought the stories in his book were true.

The legislators have suggested that millions of others who bought the book, heard Mortenson speak, and/or contributed to his charity could potentially became part of their suit.

Reinhart, Price, and others "purchased the book because of his heart-wrenching story which he said was true," says Alexander Blewett, attorney for Reinhart and Price. "If people had known all of this was fabricated, they would not have given the money."

The suit that Reinhart and Price have filed seeks to pursue charges against Mortenson and the CAI under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act because Mortenson used the US mail to solicit donations.

Mortenson and the CAI are also under investigation by Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock.

"Three Cups of Tea" was published in 2006 and has garnered a wide and wildly enthusiastic audience. The book was on The New York Times bestseller list for three years after the release of its paperback edition. (The hardcover version of the book was not a big success and the paperback took off only after Mortenson persuaded his publishers to give the book a more hopeful subtitle.) It has since sold more than 4 million copies and been published in at least 39 countries. The book is required reading on many US college campuses and for all US service people bound for Afghanistan.

Mortenson, who also published a second book, "Stones into Schools," in 2009, draws huge crowds when he speaks about his work and has raised millions of dollars for his charity through both his books and his frequent speaking tours.

The suit being pursued by Reinhart and Price proposes that any monetary damages awarded be placed into a trust and directed to schoolchildren in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's books editor.

May Book: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

via goodreads.com

Who, you might ask, is Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) and why is she the subject of a book? On the surface, this short-lived African American Virginian seems an unlikely candidate for immortality. The most remarkable thing about her, some might argue, is that she had ten children during her thirty-one years on earth. Actually, we all owe Ms. Lacks a great debt and some of us owe her our lives. As Rebecca Skloot tells us in this riveting human story, Henrietta was the involuntary donor of cells from her cancerous tumors that have been cultured to create an immortal cell line for medical research. These so-called HeLa cells have not only generated billions of dollars for the medical industry; they have helped uncover secrets of cancers, viruses, fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. A vivid, exciting story; a 2010 Discover Great New Books finalist; a surprise bestseller in hardcover.

Hunger Games the Movie- Update

Since our last speculation, much of the cast and crew of the Hunger Games movie has been set. Katniss will be played by 2011 Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) and will be directed by 2003 Oscar nominee Gary Ross (Seabiscuit).


Read more about it:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/fullcredits#cast

Rare Book Found in Utah

via yahoo news:

500-year-old book surfaces in Utah
By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Brian Skoloff, Associated Press 27 mins ago

SALT LAKE CITY – Book dealer Ken Sanders has seen a lot of nothing in his decades appraising "rare" finds pulled from attics and basements, storage sheds and closets.

Sanders, who occasionally appraises items for PBS's Antiques Roadshow, often employs the "fine art of letting people down gently."

But on a recent Saturday while volunteering at a fundraiser for the small town museum in Sandy, Utah, just south of Salt Lake, Sanders got the surprise of a lifetime.

"Late in the afternoon, a man sat down and started unwrapping a book from a big plastic sack, informing me he had a really, really old book and he thought it might be worth some money," he said. "I kinda start, oh boy, I've heard this before."

Then he produced a tattered, partial copy of the 500-year-old Nuremberg Chronicle.

The German language edition printed by Anton Koberger and published in 1493 is a world history beginning in biblical times. It's considered one of the earliest and most lavishly illustrated books of the 15th century.

"I was just absolutely astounded. I was flabbergasted, particularly here in the interior West," Sanders said. "We might see a lot of rare Mormon books and other treasures, but you don't expect to see a five-centuries-old book. You don't expect to see one of the oldest printed books in the world pop up in Sandy, Utah."

The book's owner has declined to be identified, but Sanders said it was passed down to the man by his great uncle and had been gathering dust in his attic for decades.

Because of the cotton bond paper it was printed on, not wood pulp paper like most present-day works, Sanders said the remaining pages have been well-preserved albeit literally coming apart at the seams.


"Barring further calamity or disaster, it will last another 500 years," he said.

And Sanders is certain it's not a fake.

"It passes the smell test," he said. "I'm not sure there's ever been a forger born who is ambitious enough to hand-create a five-centuries-old book in a manner sufficient enough to fool people."

But what's it actually worth? Turns out, not much.

It is believed there are several hundred copies in circulation worldwide, making it not-so-rare of a find, and about two-thirds of its pages are missing.

Still, it's not the monetary value that excites Sanders.

"Just the opportunity to handle something from the very beginning of the printed word and the book itself, especially, ironically, in the 21st century with all this talk of the death of the book, and here we have a book that's survived 500-plus years," he said. "It's just exciting. ... The value of an artifact like this to me is the least interesting part of it all."

Sanders is displaying the copy at his rare book shop in Salt Lake City.

San Francisco-based antiquities book dealer John Windle said if this copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle were in mint condition and fully intact, it could be worth up to $1 million.

One in such shape sold last year at a London auction for about $850,000, Windle said, but not so much because it's such a rare find.

"The rarity of the book has almost nothing to do with its value," he said. "If you're collecting monuments of printing history, monuments of human history, if you're collecting achievements of the human spirit through the printed word, this is one of the foundation books. ... Every book collector wants a copy of that book or at least some pages from it."

Windle noted that while its worth to collectors is priceless, it is "probably the most common book from the 15th century making its way onto the market these days."

"We have a saying in the book trade: There's nothing as common as a rare book," he added.

Because of this book's tattered state, Windle said it's likely worth less than $50,000.

"It basically kills the value," he said. "If it turned up in perfect condition in Salt Lake City, now that would be amazing. That would be astounding."

Luise Poulton, curator and head of rare books at the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library, called it an "exciting find," but largely just because of the way it surfaced.

"It's that classic story," said Poulton, who has several pages from another copy of a Nuremberg Chronicle on display. "You really never know what's in your attic."

Video of Story:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/first-person-buying-a-book-from-1493-25016254

David Benioff Discusses City of Thieves

R.L. Stein: Off Putting

I was flipping through the LA Times Festival of Books 2011 program guide and came across something incredibly off putting. R.L. Stein's portrait shot. Now, I don't expect much from author portrait shots (no offense) but I found this one stood out as particularly...the best word I can think of is smarmy.

Exhibit A:


As I did more research I found that this was not an isolated incident. It would appear that Mr. Stein is not just a master of young adult thriller and horror novels, but a master of the completely disinterested portrait shot. Please enjoy the remaining evidence.

Exhibit B:


Exhibit C:


Exhibit D:


Exhibit E:

For Those Unfamiliar With Stephen Glass

This was a great movie made a while back called "Shattered Glass". It stars Hayden Christianson (Darth Vader) in probably his best acting work.

Where are they Now? by Mike Krumboltz

Via Yahoo News

Frey, Glass, and Blair: Where are they now?
By Mike Krumboltz


By Mike Krumboltz mike Krumboltz – Tue Apr 19, 5:28 pm ET

The recent "60 Minutes" story on Three Cups of Tea co-author Greg Mortenson sparked an avalanche of online interest. The segment, which aired on Sunday, raised questions as to whether Mortenson fabricated or exaggerated significant portions of his best-selling memoir about building schools in the Middle East.

Mortenson says he stands by the book. However, many Web searchers are already lumping him in with three infamous writers who took liberties with the truth. Following the expose, online lookups for James Frey (author of A Million Little Pieces), Stephen Glass (former writer for The New Republic and Rolling Stone), and Jayson Blair (former writer for the New York Times) all surged. Here's a look what those writers are up to now.

James Frey

In 2003, James Frey (pictured above) released A Million Little Pieces, his memoir of drug addiction and recovery. It sold millions of copies, earned inclusion into Oprah's book club, and helped turn Frey into one of the hottest young writers in America. But then it was revealed that a significant amount of the book was fabricated, and Frey's life quickly took a turn for the worse.

Frey has (wisely) moved on from the pseudo-memoir genre into pure fiction. In 2009, he formed Full Fathom Five, a publishing company specializing in young adult novels. The company had a big win with the "I Am Number Four" series (one of which was turned into a poorly received film). Frey co-authored those books with Jobie Hughes.

On his own, he wrote Bright Shiny Morning, a novel. Publisher's Weekly said it's "a train wreck of a novel, but it's un-put-downable, a real page-turner--in what may come to be known as the Frey tradition." Long story short, Frey landed on his feet after finding his true home in straight-up fiction.

Stephen Glass

Cast your gaze back to the early age of the Internet, when fact checking involved more than a few web searches. Journalist Stephen Glass worked for the highly respected magazine The New Republic. He wrote fabulous and hilarious reports on everything from Young Republicans gone wild to an incredible tale of a teenage hacker hired by the United States government.

Amazing stories, but they weren't true. And when they were discovered, the bottom quickly fell out for Glass. Disgrace and depression quickly took hold. A film, Shattered Glass, starring Hayden Christensen, was released in 2003 to strong reviews. Glass described watching the film as very difficult.

Glass has largely stayed out of the public eye. He wrote a novel called The Fabulist, but it failed to garner much attention (or sales). According to various sources on the Web, Glass went to law school at Georgetown following the scandal and applied to join the bar in California and New York. According to Vanity Fair, Glass also did some "first-person storytelling sketches with the L.A.-based comedy troupe Un-Cabaret."

Jayson Blair

The one-time reporter for the New York Times was in a heap of trouble after he was found to have fabricated quotes and plagiarized from other sources.

Blair was dismissed by the Times, and the paper called the scandal "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper." Not surprisingly, Blair left the journalism field, and tried other ventures.

A few years ago, Blair became a "certified life coach" in Northern Virginia. According to his official site, he specializes in "career assessment, attention deficit disorder, pervasive developmental disorders, mood disorders and substance abuse disorders."

(Author James Frey listens during an interview before a book signing in New York, Tuesday May 14, 2008.: Bebeto Matthews/AP)

Random House Book Club Forum April 26th

Random House representative Ron Shoop will be presenting book club recommendations April 26th at 6:30 at the Ygnacio Valley library.

I went to this last year (click the label link below) and thought it was a relatively ok experience. The presentations of new books are well done, informative, and at times entertaining. Although, he did give some REALLY bad advice on the Thomas Steinbeck novel In the Shadow of the Cypress which was a horrible use of paper and ink.

There was also a raffle at the end. I was hoping that the winner would be able to have a pick of books. While that was not the case, I (the winner) did get a bag of books. This was pretty nice, although only one of the books looked interesting, I wound up giving all of the books a way (which was not a easy task I assure you). By the way, I'm pretty sure the only reason I won the raffle was because I was the last person to put my card in.

Regardless of all the shortcomings, I do intend on attending this event and recommend that you do as well.

The Yak Crap is Hitting the Fan

I'm sure by now most of you have heard the fraud allegations brought up in this past Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes against Greg Mortenson. To learn more about this situation follow the links below. (I recommend reading the comments section of the 60 minutes video for added 'entertainment')

60 Minutes Video:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7363068n

60 Minutes transcript:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/15/60minutes/main20054397.shtml?tag=currentVideoInfo;segmentTitle

Central Asia Institute Website With Responces to 60 minutes story and questions:
https://www.ikat.org/

The American Himalayan Foundation:
http://www.himalayan-foundation.org/

NBC Today Show Video:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42647480/ns/today-books/

Bozeman Daily Chronicle:
http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/article_ee83bfae-6a32-11e0-983e-001cc4c002e0.html

Google's Loss: The Public's Gain by Robert Darnton

Gets a little too much into the legal mumbo-jumbo, but interesting nonetheless.

via nybooks.com

It is too early to do a postmortem on Google’s attempt to digitize and sell millions of books, despite the decision by Judge Denny Chin on March 23 to reject the agreement that seemed to make Google’s project possible. Google Book Search may rise from the ashes, reincarnated in some new settlement with the authors and publishers who had taken Google to court for alleged infringement of their copyrights. But this is a good time to take a backward look at the ground covered by Google since it first set out to provide access to all the books in the world. What went wrong?

In the forty-eight-page opinion that accompanied his decision, Judge Chin indicated some of the wrong turns and paths not taken. His reasoning ran through each stage in the evolution of the enterprise:

• 2004: Google started digitizing books from research libraries and displaying snippets of them for online searches. You could find short excerpts from a book online but not the full text.

• 2005: The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google for violation of their copyrights.

• October 28, 2008: After arduous negotiations, Google and the plaintiffs filed a proposed settlement with the Southern Federal District Court of New York.

• November 13, 2009: In response to hundreds of objections filed with the court, Google and the plaintiffs submitted an Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA).

• February 18, 2010: Judge Chin conducted a fairness hearing at which more objections were raised.

• March 23, 2011: Judge Chin rejected the ASA.

What began as a project for online searching metamorphosed during those seven years into an attempt to create the largest library and book business ever imagined. Had Google kept to its original plan, it might have won its case by invoking the doctrine of fair use. To display a few sentences in the form of snippets could hardly be equated with reproducing so much text that Google was effectively appropriating the bulk of a book. The early version of Google Book Search did not amount to commercial competition with publishers, because Google provided its search service free of charge, although it linked its displays to advertisements.
Then the lawyers took over. For more than two years, the legal teams of Google and the plaintiffs wrangled over details of how their differences could be resolved by a partnership in a common commercial enterprise. (The lawyers’ fees for the various parties eventually came to $45 million.) The result, Google Book Search, had many positive aspects. Above all, it promised to provide millions of readers with access to millions of books. It also gave authors an opportunity to have their out-of-print works revived and circulated widely, instead of lying unread on the shelves of research libraries. The authors would collect fees from the retail sales of the digital copies, and the libraries would gain access to the entire data bank, consisting of millions of books, by paying an annual subscription fee. If the prices were moderate, everyone would benefit.

The settlement had many other advantages: free service on at least one terminal at public libraries, special measures to help the visually impaired, and access to Google’s database for large-scale quantitative research. Its main disadvantage, according to many critics, was its commercial aspect. Google asked libraries to supply it with their books free of charge—not quite free, actually: Google paid for the digitizing but the libraries shouldered heavy transactional costs. (Harvard paid $1.9 million to process the 850,000 public domain books that it furnished to Google.) In return, the libraries were required to buy back access to those books in digital form for a subscription price that might escalate to a ruinous level. The subscription rate would be set by a Book Rights Registry composed of representatives of the authors and publishers who had an interest in maximizing their income. Therefore, the settlement could look like a way to conquer and divide a lucrative market: 37 percent of the income would go to Google, 63 percent to the plaintiffs, the authors and publishers who had become its partners. No one represented the public interest, and no public authority was empowered to monitor an operation that seemed likely to determine the fate of books far into the digital future.

In his opinion, Judge Chin did not dwell on the commercial aspects of Google Book Search, except insofar as they posed a threat to restrain competition. Two memoranda from the Department of Justice had alerted him to the danger of a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and he especially objected to the way that threat applied to the digitization and marketing of “orphan” books—books whose copyright owners have not been identified. Orphan books—and unclaimed copyrights in general—are crucial to the entire enterprise, because there are so many of them, perhaps five million, according to a recent estimate. Most of them date from the period between 1923 and 1964, when copyright law is particularly ambiguous. Any database that excluded them would be disastrously deficient, but any enterprise that included them would expose the digitizer to ruinously expensive lawsuits. Damages would probably run to at least $100,000 per title. The settlement solved this problem by giving Google exclusive exemption from litigation. If any owners of unclaimed copyrights identified themselves, they would be compensated, but they could not collect damages.

In its original version, the settlement went further. It made Google and the plaintiffs effective proprietors of the orphan books and permitted them to pocket the income from their sale, even though hardly anyone involved in Google’s enterprise had ever had anything to do with the creation of those works. The amended version of the settlement eliminated that provision, but it continued to give Google exclusive legal protection in a manner that would discriminate against potential competitors. It amounted to changing copyright law by litigation instead of legislation.

In objecting to this aspect of the settlement, Judge Chin insisted that issues of such importance should be decided by Congress, all the more so since the settlement would determine future activities instead of merely remedying damages that took place in the past. Class action suits that affect the future look dubious in court, and the Google Book Search case also included a doubtful opt-out provision. It provided that any author of a book that was covered by copyright but no longer commercially available (that is, essentially, in print) would be deemed to have accepted the terms of the settlement unless he or she explicitly notified Google to the contrary. Judge Chin noted that 6,800 authors had opted out, an indication that the settlement may not have looked acceptable to a considerable proportion of the class that the Authors Guild claimed to represent.

How large is that class? The Guild has 8,000 members, but there must be far more than 100,000 living writers who have published a book during the last fifty years. Many of them are academic authors who do not depend on the sale of books to make a living. Some of them sent memoranda to the court saying that they preferred to have their out-of-print books made available free of charge, because they cared more about the diffusion of their ideas than what little income they might derive from sales. Of course, professional writers have a vital interest in sales, and they understandably pressed hard to make the most from the deal with Google. Judge Chin did not disparage anyone’s motives, but he showed concern for the representativeness of the class composed of authors that was involved in the class action suit and the antagonistic interests of different groups of its members.

Judge Chin also mentioned other problems that had been stressed in the five hundred amicus briefs and memoranda that had been submitted to the court. Two stand out.

Foreign authors and publishers objected that the settlement violated international copyright law. Google digitized many of their works without their permission, even though they held copyrights in their home countries. The settlement treated them as if they belonged to the same class as the American rightsholders, despite the fact that they had little possibility of studying the terms of the settlement and opting out of it. The ASA met most of those objections by eliminating copyrighted books that were published abroad, except in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. But foreigners continued to protest about the potential violation of their rights and noted that they, too, had an orphan book problem.

To many who sent their objections to the court, as well as others, Google Book Search threatened to violate their privacy. In the course of administering its sales, both of individual books and of access to its database by means of institutional subscriptions, it would accumulate information about the private activity of reading. It would know who read what, including in many cases the precise passages that were read and the exact time when the readers consulted them. The ASA provided some assurances about this danger, but Judge Chin recommended more, should the ASA be revised and resubmitted to the court.

He also urged the possibility that a further revision of the settlement might be acceptable to the court if its key provisions were switched from opt-out to opt-in requirements. In that case, presumably, the authors of copyrighted, out-of-print books would not be considered to have accepted the settlement unless they gave notice of their intention to do so. If enough of those authors could be located, or volunteered to consent to the settlement, Google Book Search might build up a large database of books published since 1923. But the logistics and the transaction costs might make that task unfeasible, and the problem of orphan books would remain unsolvable without congressional legislation.

The cumulative effect of these various objections, many of them endorsed by Judge Chin’s decision, could give the impression that the settlement, even in its amended version, is so flawed that it deserves to be pronounced dead and buried. But that would mean the loss of its many positive features. How could its advantages be preserved without the accompanying drawbacks? The answer that I and others have proposed is to create a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)—that is, a collection of works in all formats that would make our cultural heritage available online and free of charge to everyone everywhere.

Having argued so often for this alternative to Google Book Search, I may fall victim to the syndrome known in France as preaching for one’s own saint. Instead of repeating the arguments previously made in these pages and elsewhere,* I would like to show how the case for the Digital Public Library would look if seen from the perspective of similar projects in other countries.

The most impressive attempts to create national digital libraries are taking shape in Norway and the Netherlands. They have state support, and they involve plans to digitize books covered by copyright, even those that are currently in print, by means of collective agreements—not legalistic devices like the class action suit employed by Google and its partners, but voluntary arrangements that reconcile the interests of the authors and publishers who own the rights with those of readers who want access to everything in their national languages. Of course, the number of books in Norwegian and Dutch is small compared with those in English. To form an idea of what could be done in the United States, it is better to study another venture, the pan-European digital library known as Europeana.

Europeana—which already has offices in The Hague—is still in a formative phase, but its basic structure is well developed. Instead of accumulating collections of its own, it will function as an aggregator of aggregators. Information will be accumulated and coordinated at three levels: particular libraries will digitize their collections; national or regional centers will integrate them into central databases; and Europeana will transform those databases, from twenty-seven constituent countries, into a single, seamless network. To the users, all these currents of information will remain invisible. They will simply search for an item—a book, an image, a recording, or a video—and the system will direct them to a digitized version of it, wherever it may be, making it available for downloading on a personal computer or a handheld device.

To deliver such service, the system will require not only an effective technological architecture but also a way of coordinating the information required to locate the digitized items—”metadata,” as librarians call it. The staff of Europeana at The Hague has perfected a code to harmonize the metadata that will flow into it from every corner of Europe. Unlike Google, it will not store digital files in a single database or server farm. It will operate as a nerve center for what is known as a “distributed network,” leaving libraries, archives, and museums to digitize and preserve their own collections in the capillary system of the organic whole.

A digital library for America might well follow this model, although Europeana has not yet proven that it is workable. When a prototype went live on November 20, 2008, it was flooded with so many attempts at searches that the system crashed. But that failure can be taken as testimony to the demand for such a mega-library. Since then, Europeana has enlarged its capacity. It will resume functioning at full tilt in the near future; and by 2015 it expects to make thirty million items, a third of them books, available free of charge.

Who will pay for it? The European Union will do so, drawing on contributions from its member states. (Europeana’s current budget is e4,923,000, but most of the expenses fall on the institutions that create and preserve the digital files.) This financial model may not be suitable for the United States, but we Americans benefit from something that Europe lacks: a rich array of independent foundations dedicated to the public welfare. By combining forces, a few dozen foundations could provide enough money to get the DPLA up and running. It is impossible at this point to provide even ballpark estimates of the overall cost, but it should come to less than the e750 million that President Sarkozy pledged for the digitization of France’s “cultural patrimony.”

Moreover, in building up its basic collections, it could draw on the public-domain books that are currently stored in the digital archives of not-for-profit organizations like Hathi Trust and the Internet Archive—or (why not?) in the servers of Google itself, Google willing.

Once its basic structure has been erected, the Digital Public Library of America could be enlarged incrementally. And after it has proven its capacity to provide services—for education at all levels, for the information needs of businesses, for research in every conceivable field—it might attract public funds. Long-term sustainability would remain a problem to be solved.

Other problems must be confronted in the near future. As the Google case demonstrated, nearly everything published since 1923, when copyright restrictions begin to apply, is now out of bounds for digitization and distribution. The DPLA must respect copyright. In order to succeed where Google failed, it will have to include several million orphan books; and it will not be able to do that unless Congress clears the way by appropriate legislation. Congress nearly passed bills concerning orphan books in 2006 and 2008. It failed in part because of the uncertainty surrounding Google Book Search. A not-for-profit digital library truly devoted to the public welfare could be of such benefit to their constituents that members of Congress might pass a new bill carefully designed to protect the DPLA from litigation should rightsholders of orphan books be located and bring suit for damages.

Even better, Congress could create a mechanism to compensate authors for the downloading of books that are out of print but covered by copyright. In addition, voluntary collective agreements among authors of in-print books, similar to those in Norway and the Netherlands, could make much contemporary literature accessible through the DPLA. The copyright problems connected with works produced outside the United States might be resolved by agreements between the DPLA and Europeana as well as by similar alliances with aggregators on other continents. Items that are born in diverse formats such as e-books pose still more problems. But the noncommercial character of the DPLA and its commitment to the public good would make all such difficulties look less formidable than they seemed to be when they were confronted by a company intent on maximizing profit at the expense of the public and of its competitors.

In short, the collapse of the settlement has a great deal to teach us. It should help us emulate the positive aspects of Google Book Search and avoid the drawbacks that made Google’s enterprise flawed from the beginning. The best way to do so and to provide the American people with what they need in order to thrive in the new information age is to create a Digital Public Library of America.