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Oh, great. More thoughtful.

Just asking: when did tome become synonymous with book? I ask because, in a Chicago Tribune article about the Kindle yesterday, the writer stated how many “tomes” the device could carry. Talk about a tin ear for the English language. My trusty Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (though a print artifact, only marginally a tome) [...]

On NPR, Rick Kleffel talks to Victoria Blake of Underland Press about a new form of fiction: the “wovel” (“The Wovel: Literary Alternative to Browsing Blogs“). Basically, it’s a serial novel with a Choose Your Own Adventure twist at the end of each installment–the readers vote on what should happen next. Voting is open from Monday [...]

Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Gustave le Clézio, speaking at the Swedish Academy (Le Clézio uses Nobel lecture to attack information poverty,” by Richard Lea, The Guardian): “To provide nearly everyone on the planet with a liquid crystal display is utopian,” he said. “Are we not, therefore, in the process of creating a new elite, of drawing [...]

It goes without saying that you shouldn’t write in library books. But when you’re reading a library book, isn’t it always interesting to see what the scofflaws have written? Here’s a photo of a piece of marginalia, from a book believed to be The Plunder Squad, by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake), that proves [...]

There’s a nice post by Anne Trubek on the GOOD blog, seconding James Gleick’s NYT Op-Ed (“How to Publish without Perishing,” also linked Monday). Gleick wrote: Forget about cost-cutting and the mass market. Don’t aim for instant blockbuster successes. You won’t win on quick distribution, and you won’t win on price. Cyberspace has that covered. Go [...]

Dan Kraus just reminded me to take a look at the Book Design Review‘s Favorite Book Covers of 2008. I love this stuff. Seeing books that are physically beautiful is a great reminder that, no matter how handy a Kindle can be, e-books will never be as satisfying as a book made of paper–just as an [...]

At Likely Stories, we cover book covers, with a little help from our friends. First, you can test your skill at judging books by their covers–it’s a shameless but quite clever way to drum up a little revenue from Amazon’s associates program. (Thanks, Ben!) Second, Bookninja has a funny book-cover contest. (Thanks, Dan!) Hope no one [...]

And while I’m cribbing from Galleycat, I love this stuff:

I’d better post something while my blog is working–I’m still having some esoteric technical issues locally. Galleycat linked to this video, Sam Ita’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, that sheds some light on the process of designing pop-up books: While I agree with Ron that it “arguably features more music than it needs, and less [...]