Skip to content

Tag: iPhone

Published November 18, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, November 18th, 2009

Lusting After Lustig — Designers Charles Brock and Tim Green share their collection at FaceOut Books.

While Amazon announced the Kindle will be available in Canada this week, The New York Times looks at reading on phones:

Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can do so on the smartphones that are already in their pockets — bringing a whole new meaning to “phone book.” And they like that they can save the $250 to $350 that they would otherwise spend on yet another gadget.

No. Shit.

But, on the subject of e-books… Steve Haber, the president of Sony’s digital reading division, talks to TechFlash (via TeleRead).

A History of 16 Science Fiction Classics, Told In Book Covers at i09 (including the brilliant cover for A Clockwork Orange pictured above and yet more covers for 1984).

A Winter’s Tale — Ali Smith (The Accidental) on The True Deceiver by Finnish author Tove Jannson, creator of the Moomins:

If the Moomins are Jansson’s most celebrated legacy – a community of inventive, big-nosed, good-natured beings who survive, again and again, the storms and existentialism of a dark Scandinavian winter through simply being mild, kind, inclusive and philosophical – what will happen when a real community is put in its place? What will the outcome be when Jansson tackles, naturalistically, the life of a tiny hamlet in a dark, wintry landscape – and in a book so close to real local life that the original Swedish publication carried a disclaimer saying it was in no way based on any real place, nor its characters on anybody living?

You had me at “existentialism of a dark Scandinavian winter.”

The Genius — The awesome Tom Gauld interviewed at It’s Nice That. Limited edition letterpress prints of Tom’s Characters for an Epic Tale are available now.

And finally…

UnderConsideration’s Brand New looks at the new logo for The New York Public Library (via Daily Discoveries on Design)

Comments closed
Published December 12, 2008

Something for the Weekend, Dec. 12th, 2008

The 10 Commandments of Book Giving by Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and Senior Editor of the Washington Post‘s Book World (via Right-Reading):

Over the years I’ve gone through all kinds of Christmas presents, and nearly all of them quickly broke or have been long forgotten. Not so the gift books, whether Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and the Golden Lion, a paperback copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses or the Pléiade edition of Stendhal’s Oeuvres Intimes. Given to me by relatives, teachers and friends, they helped to make the season bright — and they also helped to make me who I am.

“Book apps for the iPhone keep getting better” according to Maud Newton (via DesignNotes)

Lying Liars: “Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to try to impress friends or potential partners”, the BBC reports.

Nintendo launches ‘great books’ package:

The creator of Donkey Kong and Super Mario is hoping that Austen and Dickens will prove as great a pull to computer game fanatics. It has worked with HarperCollins to select 100 titles – from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Gulliver’s Travels, Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities and Treasure Island – which will be available in a single software package for the Nintendo DS

Mwa ha ha! Chip Kidd discusses Bat-Manga! (via Books Covered)

The Age of Mass Intelligence — Are we actually smarter than we think we are? John Parker thinks so (via kottke):

One of the commonest complaints by cultural doomsayers is that nobody reads good books any more. Yet in the past two years, the Oprah Book Club in America recommended Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and three novels by William Faulkner–good by any standard, and they all made the bestseller lists. This year, Waterstone’s, which owns over 300 bookshops in Britain, asked two celebrated novelists, Sebastian Faulks and Philip Pullman, each to choose 40 titles and write a few words of recommendation. The chain then piled copies of the books on tables next to the entrances of its main shops and waited to see what would happen. Faulks and Pullman hardly dumbed down their choices: they included Fernando Pessoa’s “Book of Disquiet”, Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”, and Raymond Queneau’s “Exercises in Style”. The sales increases for these books over the same period the year before were, respectively, 1,350%, 1,420% and 1,800%–clear evidence of latent demand. If you offer it, they will come.

In this brief interview at inFrame.tv, award-winning Australian artist and author Shaun Tan discusses his work and the adaptation of his book The Lost Thing into an animated movie (via drawn):

And on a similar note, stills of the 25 minute animated adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ book Lost and Found (to be broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on Christmas Eve) can be seen on the STUDIOaka website. Looks lovely.

And this is probably my last regular post for the next couple of weeks. In the extremely unlikely instance you get withdrawal symptoms, you can always check out the links in the sidebar and/or send me an email!

See you in the New Year!

1 Comment
Published December 10, 2008

“A hint of optimism”

Publishers Weekly is reporting that following “one of publishing’s bleakest weeks” in living memory, there’s a reason for us to keep on living in the form of two recent digital announcements from Penguin and Random House.

Penguin have launched Penguin 2.0 which includes more online content, e-books and POD, as well as an app imaginatively called ‘Penguin Mobile’ which makes the features from Penguin’s website available on the iPhone.

In the meantime, Random House have announced a partnership with Stanza “the popular iPhone e-book reader from Lexcycle” that will make e-books by several RH authors available for free on the platform. According to the press release, the books available “will be drawn from each author’s backlist and will include excerpts for any new hardcovers coming in 2009.”

I have to say I was really surprised how much I like e-books on the iPhone. But what does this mean for single-purpose devices like Sony’s e-Reader and Amazon’s Kindle?

Comments closed