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Here is our daily round-up of what’s going on in the world of books:
Publishers Sue Google over Pirate Sites
I was just having a conversation about a recent survey about audiobook consumption that had a pretty startling statistic: 47% of respondents report getting an audiobook through a file-sharing service or YouTube. And that reminded me that I have heard about ebook piracy in awhile And speaking of YouTube, you know who owns YouTube? And guess who now is getting sued by a group of publishers for being in cahoots with file-sharing/pirate sites? Google. Apparently publishers have sent “tens of thousands” of infringement notices to no little or no avail. It’s not even that Google lists these sites–it’s that these sites run ads through Google for their pirate sites! No one ever said pirates were abashed I guess, but that is really something.
Denis Johnson Kept a Huge Commonplace Book. And You Can Download it.
Twitter is still good sometimes. I don’t know how else I would have found out that Denis Johnson collected quotes about writing (or that he thought could be applied to writing), and that you can download his commonplace book just as a regular old PDF. No ads or popovers or sign-ins or anything. And what a treasure trove it is. I am going to be thinking about this one from an August Wilson interview in which Wilson cite the Bhagavad-Gita (I told you this is a gold-mine): “You have the right to thework but not the reward.”
n+1 Turns 20 With The Kind of Fancy Literary Party That People Imagine Happen All The Time, But Really Don’t and Are Indeed Fancy, But Not All THAT Fancy.
First of all, kudos to n+1 for making it twenty years. They were a kind of inspiration, frankly for Book Riot in a way. I had been reading them for awhile, saw that they were making it, and thought two things. First, it could be done–make a new bookish thing that hadn’t already been around for 100 years. Second, it was and is pretty heady and I thought there was space for something for more generally interested book readers. Ok, on to the party itself. I don’t care about parties, fancy literary or otherwise. However, I would like to take a smoke break (I don’t smoke but I would choke one down) to have Fran Leibowitz talk to me about how much she doesn’t know Brooklyn and how great sitting down is. I also enjoy sitting down, and while I do know Brooklyn a little, I would be happy to nod appreciatively.
The “It Books” of June
Recording the monthly “It Books” episode of the Book Riot Podcast is the most fun I have at work. And this was especially fun because we realized we had sorta messed it up and had to reconsider the whole thing. And that’s the lark of it–these things are impossible to guess and the pleasure is in discussing and wondering and talking about books and what they could be.