Holtzbrinck Online

Quit Playing Games!

In order to promote "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters" by Gordon Dahlquist, Random House has put up a text-adventure game for readers to play through.  Despite what the intro paragraph on the game's website would have you believe this style of game has been around for quite some time (at least back to the Commodore64, if not earlier) and its nice to see the form being used in new ways.  If you beat either adventure (there are two different plotlines to follow) you are entered into a sweepstakes to win a signed copy of the book.

While I am amused by this promotion for several reasons (most notably the text in the image in this post, click on it to enlarge), I have to give Random House credit for doing a great job of implementing an online game.    While the text based adventures I remember were always clunky to use and left me guessing at what commands to enter I found this program to be surprisingly smart, and it often recognized alternate verbs or would kindly take for granted that I picked up an item prior to using it.  In addition, a text base adventure will be much easier on bandwith than the sort of webquest that the DaVinci code hosted, while also being far closer to the actual experience of reading than any other type of game.

Via Joystiq

Living Online: "I'll have to ask my friends"

The New Scientist website has a really interesting opinion piece about social networking, and how it might not be such a great thing. Reading it, I was reminded of Kraftwerk's seminal and increasingly prescient record Computer World, thinking that the age of complete-connectedness is rapidly approaching. Again, whether or not this is good or bad remains to be seen, but it certainly sounds good (in terms of Kraftwerk, that is).

Excerpt: "Our new intimacies with our machines create a world where it makes sense to speak of a new state of the self. When someone says 'I am on my cell,' 'online,' 'on instant messaging' or 'on the web,' these phrases suggest a new placement of the subject, a subject wired into social existence through technology, a tethered self."

Living Online: I'll have to ask my friends

Night Draws Near Giveaway

Sean-Paul Kelley, the editor of The Agonist has posted a giveaway for Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid, which was recently re-issued in paperback by Picador.   

And if you would like to read the first chapter of "Night Draws Near", you may do so here.

"No city in America boasts more character ... than Brooklyn!"

Or so declares Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz, on the Brooklyn Book Festival Web site. I went to check out the festival at Borough Hall on the 16th (and to lend a hand at the St. Martin's Press booth, but Monica and Angelin, SMP's reps, had everything humming beautifully), and to catch a glimpse of Paula Fox. Says the festival council's chair and the publisher of Akashic Books, Johnny Temple, "Culture is pumped out in Manhattan, but the creators live in Brooklyn. That's always been true—with Walt Whitman, Richard Wright and John Steinbeck, and now Coleson Whitehead, Jhumpa Lahiri and Paul Auster." In spite of grumblings prior to the launch of the event about whether we need yet another book fair, and as annoying as I find the festival's theme ("smart, hip, and diverse"), it was great to wander about the various booths as well as to watch others celebrating the book. I missed Paula Fox, though. (Oh, and I wanted to add that I think Monica and Angelin rock! The SMP booth looked fantastic.)

Happy Roald Dahl Day

The UK is celebrating the first ever Roald Dahl day today, on what would've been his 90th birthday. 

If you're up for it check out RoaldDahl.com or get into the celebration and take the Roald Dahl Day Challenge.  One of the missions is to drop the word "gobblefunk" into a conversation.  Check.

If you read him as a kid, you should totally check out his short stories in the Best of Roald Dahl.  Totally.

Maximum Fun

The Sound of Young America podcast for this week features Andi Zeisler and Lisa Jervis, founders of Bitch Magazine and author's of  FSG's Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine.

Check out the podcast here.

Portable Politics

Okay. You probably can't make out the image, but it is the first installment of Donick Carey's cartoon, Lil' Bush, chronicling the mishaps of grade-schooler, George Bush and his young cronies, Lil' Condi, Lil' Rummy, and Lil' Cheney. Cary, who couldn't get any of his project ideas picked up by the networks, was offered an Orson Wellesian deal by Amp'd Mobile to produce a show with creative authority over content. Lil' Bush debuted on 1 September, and new episodes are scheduled to be released every week for six weeks (read more). Amp'd is obviously interested in enticing new subscribers with video options (as are ESPN Mobile and Virgin Mobile, with varying degrees of success), in particular, the holy grail of all demographics, talkative 18- to-24 years-olds. With such technologies, you're forced to look at the big picture rather than immediately evident bumps in profit; only 3% of mobile users (that is, 7 million customers) purchase video services, but this number is projected to triple in the next few years. What intrigues me is the potential of cell phone technologies and shows specifically created for this platform to spur political debate. I wonder how long it will take for the political right to come up with a video riposte to Lil' Bush.

Amazon's E-Book Reader

Well, there are precious few details available, but Engadget has a post up about Amazon's eReader device - the Kindle.   There is no price and no release date info, but there are a slew of other features that, combined with Amazon's pre-existing retail platform, look absolutely amazing.    Presumably the screen is e-ink (the screen is 6", 4 color greyscale and the troubleshooting guide says that flashing between pages is "a normal part of the display refresh process", which sounds like e-ink), it has EVDO wireless, audio, a keyboard, and a reading light.    Presumably with the wireless the device could function as a web-browser (albeit a poor one since it only displays in greyscale), but I think that will probably only be used to connect to Amazon and buy more eBooks.   

Most importantly, it has a cover.  Because the design aesthetic for this is somewhere between a child's educational toy and a DeLorean.   Its closest cousins are ancient graphing calculators and dot matrix printers.    I'm not usually too bothered by a device's looks, but this is just awful. 

After This

Alice McDermott's latest book After This has just been published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. McDermott's other titles include Charming Billy and Child of my Heart.

Her new site featuring the title can be found here and there's a review in the New York Times.

Tor-ing the Country

Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott, two lovely ladies published by Tor will be heading out on tour soon to promote their new books, Spellbinder and Spirit Gate.  They leave for their joint book tour on the 17th of October and you can get a behind the scenes look at the action on their tour blog.    They will also be taking an .mp3 recorder on the road with them, so we're looking forward to some candid podcasts later in the fall.    In the meantime, you can go to the site to find out some information about the books, get the tour dates and locations, and see what's on their minds this close to their book publications.