Five YA Books with Fabulous First Sentences
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The last book that got its hooks into me struck at Chinggis Khan airport in
Ulaanbaatar. A friend and I were returning from a long stay off the grid
with...
Reversion by Nin Harris (audio)
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This episode features "Reversion" written by Nin Harris. Published in the
August 2017 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text
versi...
Jay Kay Klein Photographs Digitized
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UC Riverside and the California Digital Library have digitized nearly 6,000
photographs from the Jay Kay Klein archive, part of the Eaton Collection of
Sci...
Personagens de férias
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Vêm aí as férias e as minhas começam já amanhã. Ao contrário do que é
costume, interrompo-as a meio do mês e venho trabalhar semana e meia para
voltar a ...
Blimunda #62
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A Blimunda de Julho já pode ser lida no Scribd ou descarregada em PDF,
aqui. Como sempre, há muito para ler. Da minha parte, contribuo com uma
entrevista a...
In Hell
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I'm doubting if knowledge killed religion and pushed Western civilization
to the path of scientific bliss. This may be pure historical interpretation
throu...
Amanhã na secção de Livros da revista ‘E’
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– Entrevista com José Maria Vieira Mendes, a propósito da edição simultânea
de Uma Coisa e Uma Coisa Não É Outra Coisa (Cotovia), por Cristina Peres –
Os P...
SciFi Lx 2015
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O SciFi Lx 2015 assumiu-se como sendo o "ano zero", depois de um primeiro
evento organizado no ano passado. Se essa primeira experiência tinha
servido para...
A Relíquia - Crítica no Menina dos Policiais
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A Relíquia é o primeiro livro da série protagonizada por Pendergast, uma
personagem carismática no universo das tramas da dupla Preston e Child. É
uma sé...
Roberto Mendes, responsável pela revista Dagon, traz-nos mais uma iniciativa dentro do Fantástico. O conceito é simples: juntar na mesma publicação o trabalho daqueles que dão agora os seus primeiros passos no mundo da escrita, com o de autores mais reconhecidos, tais como Afonso Cruz e Luis Filipe Silva, proporcionando assim uma diversidade capaz de agradar a um leque mais alargado de leitores.
O formato acarreta, no entanto, algumas desvantagens, entre as quais se destaca uma discrepância considerável na qualidade dos contos. Os autores mais inexperientes, talvez pela ânsia de fazer passar uma mensagem, de tornar evidente a simbologia de determinado evento, acabam por debitar informação directamente, retirando todo o encanto à sua história. A grande maioria dos contos incluídos na antologia apresenta uma ideia-base sólida, mas nem todos conseguem executá-la de forma competente, comprovando que não basta conceber algo na nossa mente, é também necessário saber dar vida ao que imaginamos.
Não obstante a oscilação na qualidade, a Vollüspa contém vários contos bem conseguidos. Se das faces mais conhecidas isso seria expectável, a verdade é que alguns dos novos autores conseguem surpreender pela positiva e, através de uma aparente simplicidade da narrativa, mostram como é possível aproveitar as potencialidades do conto e deixar uma forte impressão no leitor.
Gostaria apenas de deixar uma nota final. Ao longo dos últimos anos o fantástico tem vindo a ganhar visibilidade no nosso país, em parte devido ao sucesso internacional das obras de Tolkien, Rowling e Martin, mas também devido a projectos realizados por pessoas ligadas ao apelidado “fandom” que, embora não isento de conflitos, revela uma paixão genuína pelo género. Graças a esse trabalho, a quantidade de publicações e eventos tem vindo a aumentar. Creio, pois, que estes desenvolvimentos abriram uma oportunidade única para educar os leitores, mostrando-lhes que o Fantástico está longe de se limitar ao que se pode encontrar nos títulos mais recentes, assim como para contribuir para uma melhor produção nacional dentro do género, aumentando o grau de exigência ao invés de divulgar indiscriminadamente o trabalho de autores portugueses. Falta espírito crítico no meio, especialmente por parte dos próprios autores, alguns dos quais beneficiariam da leitura desta antologia, dado que nela poderão verificar como é possível impressionar o leitor através de uma ideia bem concretizada, mas também como é fácil desiludi-lo com uma execução medíocre.
Copyright is dying. Bit by bit – quite literally it turns out – copyright law is being undermined by the unrelenting realities of the information age: digitization, instantaneous copying, borderless transactions, user-generated content, and so on. Despite efforts to salvage it – including the hotly contested new “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) bill – there is no putting the genie back in the bottle.
W H Smith has launched a colour WiFi Kobo e-reader, priced £169.99 and with a multimedia touch screen and social media tie-in.
The Kobo Vox, which is available from today (23rd November) in more than 650 WHS stores and online, has a seven-inch, anti-glare screen, and a full colour screen as well as video and audio technology meaning it can be used to listen to music, play games and watch videos as well as readng e-books and viewing illustrations. It also has Kobo's social media tool feature, Pulse, which enables users of the Vox to share book reviews, comments and conversations on Facebook, Twitter or within the book itself.
The ease of access has caused the lack of effective gatekeeping to cast its net much wider than just the Internet. Increasingly, traditional publishers seem to be publishing whatever they can get their hands on and in whatever condition they grabbed the book. The dark side of the Internet is the lowering of quality acceptance/expectations and the increasing demand for lower prices. This is not to say that as price increases, quality increases; there is definitely no upward correlation between the two as the Agency 6 prove on a regular basis. However, there is a correlation between lower price and lower quality — absent sufficient revenue, essential production services, such as editing, are bypassed. (Yes, I, too, can point to examples of outstanding quality ebooks that are free; yet being able to do so doesn’t negate the validity of the statement when discussing the broader ebook market.)
The lesson is that we need to work harder on figuring out a way to correlate price and quality and find that sweet spot that satisfies both. I expect that within the next few years we will come close to resolving the matter even though I currently have no idea as to what is a practical solution.
No texto, Meek lembra depois que houve um tempo em que as bibliotecas eram privadas, a que se seguiu o momento das bibliotecas públicas e hoje estamos na época em que a Amazon tem o top “Most Highlighted Passages of All Time”, “ranking” das frases mais sublinhadas pelos leitores nos ebooks da Amazon. Este é também o tempo em que as bibliotecas já começam a ter serviços de empréstimo digital e, desde há duas semanas, a Amazon norte-americana anunciou um novo serviço de empréstimo de livros aos leitores. Por enquanto só está acessível a quem tem um Kindle, vive nos EUA e é membro Amazon Prime (custa 79 dólares por ano, traz outras vantagens como acesso ao Prime Instant Vídeo, filmes em “streaming” sem limite). No The Kindle Owners’Lending Library estão disponíveis obras de ficção e não ficção. Podem ser lidas de graça em todos os modelos de Kindles e também no tablet da Amazon, o Kindle Fire.
Online environments don’t signal the death of reading – far from it. They can actively promote books to children, and pique their interest in new characters and stories. But just as a child will clamour to see a film adaptation of a favourite book, so they will seek out the virtual environment that brings that book to life. An online world that presents new challenges, new content and new games for a child is like giving them a new variation of that film every day, and letting them star in it.
It is hard to imagine that any publisher would not pursue digital initiatives, given the speed with which they are being adopted, but like the booksellers, they also confront distribution and production challenges that are formidable. If the past is a useful guide, there will be continued dynamic change, with winners among them--the iPad, Nook, Kindles, Canadian-based Kobo, POD machines, and such innovators as Mitchell Kaplan--and losers, the most spectacular case being the collapse of Borders in 2011, which sharply reduced the retail shelf space and thus further increased the appeal of e-books. What we can say with certainty is that the transformation of publishing currently under way has demonstrated the viability of books in the digital age. And that is definitely good news.
There will be no fixed price for electronic books in The Netherlands. Secretary Halbe Zijlstra from the Department of Culture wrote this to the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
Early last year, former Minister Ronald Plasterk announced a study on the impact of the e-book on the book market. According to him, the e-book could develop into a serious alternative to the physical book, and therefore it had to be seen whether a fixed price would be desirable.
In looking ahead, there has to be a number of get-your-shit-together moments. From publishers, it will have to be over how much risk they can accept when it comes to their digital properties. Until then, we will be at the mercy of their whims. For librarians, it will be about the actual cost of access and availability of eBooks. We can’t trade our dollars and principles for materials that do not match our institutional values. There will be some more dustups, more drama, and more blowups between publishers and librarians. I know we’ll get through it, but I’m not optimistic about how that might look in five or ten years from now. In the meantime, I just ready myself to be disappointed.
A Marka concebeu e desenvolveu, em parceria com engenheiros formados e universidades portuguesas, uma ferramenta inovadora de Gestão de Bibliotecas Digitais
“As Bibliotecas já dispõem de um sistema de gestão de conteúdos digitais que permite a disponibilização de eBooks de uma forma de fácil, de rápida implementação e sem utilizar recursos humanos ou informáticos (hardware ou software) das bibliotecas aderentes”, informa comunicado da empresa.
Entre as suas vantagens para as bibliotecas estão: a liberdade de escolha dos ebooks que desejem disponibilizar aos utilizadores; a liberdade de escolha do fornecedor do livro digital.
New York Times E-Book Best Sellers
A version of this list appears in the November 27, 2011 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings reflect sales for the week ending November 12, 2011.
“Nunca precisámos, como hoje, de defender os direitos dos autores e da criação. Se não tomarmos providências, uma atitude legislativa, daqui a uns tempos vai restar-nos apenas o veículo [Internet], o que é muito injusto para os criadores, para a nossa História, e é injusto que o talento seja confundido [com o meio]”, frisou.
The developments in the book world are regularly compared to those in the music industry. The outposts warn time and again that publishers now, shouldn’t make the same mistakes as the record bosses did then, substantiated with data, studies and their own experiences. Unfortunately, these comparisons and warnings are not always heard by their colleagues. So, this requires action. Therefore, a joint series of blog posts was written by Timo Boezeman and Niels Aalberts, with important additions and nuances by Erwin Blom, Eric Rigters and Jelte Nieuwenhuis. All work(ed) in book world and/or music industry. The goal: the ultimate overview of the digitization that is taking place in both worlds.
Cambridge University Press’s new integrated eBook and digital content offering, University Publishing Online, launched today (31 October).
University Publishing Online, at www.universitypublishingonline.org, provides aggregated content from the Mathematical Association of America (based in Washington D.C.), Liverpool University Press, Foundation Books (based in India), and Cambridge University Press. Access to content from Edinburgh University Press and Nottingham University Press will be available from early 2012.
Just last month, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) rolled out its Kindle Fire, the first Kindle designed as a full media device—not an e-reader with some frills. That announcement was followed by Kobo’s announcement of the Vox. And, as expected, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS)—which already had a touchscreen color e-reader that some hackers were converting into an inexpensive Android tablet—announced its Nook Tablet.
Each wants to offer its current e-reader users an option that keeps them from shifting to the iPad when they go tablet and to appeal to new users who will spend money on books, magazines, apps and more after the hardware investment. In Amazon’s case, it literally is unlocking the video experience it has been building for computers and connected TVs but that has been unreachable from anywhere else. These aren’t just e-readers on steroids—they are playing in a new category now.
The new service worries Wall Street, too, because it increases Amazon’s out-of-pocket costs. The company is paying wholesale prices for some of the books in the lending library. For others, such as the titles from Lonely Planet travel guides, it is paying a flat fee for a group of books over a period of time. (It will report sales figures on individual titles back to those publishers.)
Beyond short-term earnings, however, the lending library is just the latest innovation to raise big questions about the whole publishing ecosystem. In an environment where books are increasingly digital, what’s the most effective way to create value for readers, for authors and for intermediaries? And -- the biggest question -- which intermediaries will survive the transition?
In fact, going bookless is not particularly popular. Books are strongly and positively identified with libraries, and libraries that ditch them get into trouble with the communities they serve, even when they have good reasons for reducing the number of books sitting on shelves. But there's no denying that academic libraries now spend far more of their budgets renting temporary access to knowledge controlled by a few big corporations than they do on buying and cataloging paper things.
My prediction about books in the early years of the 21st century: readers, writers, and bibliophiles in general will look back on the cross-fertilisation of the digital world with the global recession, and marvel at the strange fruit that flourished in the paradise of texts.
These may not be sustainable advantages. Tools can be provided. Workflows can be changed to permit faster responses when that’s necessary. The established houses can raise their royalty rates. How fast things will change in the big houses is an open question (and the answer is different for every house), but it is undeniable that the decision-making structures that worked for print books readily accepted time lags that are a real handicap in the evolving ebook world.
New York Times E-Book Best Sellers
A version of this list appears in the November 27, 2011 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings reflect sales for the week ending November 12, 2011.
