This comes from the Åland Saltvik Vikingmarket in 2009. It’s far more demonstration than the fights we’ve seen in Minot, ND. They aren’t playing by the same rules, but there’s some appeal here. It’s a crime they cut the video too soon.
Amazon Plays Hardball with Publisher Hachette
In 2010, Amazon disputed its arrangement with Macmillan on ebook prices and removed the publisher’s books from its site. Today the largest book dealer on the Internet is refusing pre-orders on new books from Hachette and delaying shipment on existing titles. Stephen Colbert is one of the authors with un-new books on the shelf, and he isn’t amused by the delay of what he says could be 30 of his books sold in a year. J.K. Rowling’s new book is coming out soon, which means thousands of readers would have pre-ordered it through Amazon by now, but cannot–not for ebook or print.
Since Amazon has 65% of the ebook market, working a deal with them is important to any publisher, but they aren’t the only ebook dealer. Barnes and Noble, Powell’s, and others are available, and maybe conflicts like this will make any argument for DRM pointless. If I have a Kindle and want to buy an ebook, do I need Amazon to sell it to me?
No More Plagiarizing, I Mean It.
“There is a difference between inspiration and imitation,” so stop copying Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in this workshop. (via Prufrock)
All righty then.
In other news, they had automated hot dog machines in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the 1950s.
The Ideal Reader, Who Doth Know?
Patrick Kurp talks about writing and discusses the diary of WWI veteran: “The ‘ideal reader’ is a phantom. The writer who says he writes exclusively to please himself is a solipsist, and one who writes exclusively to please others is a whore. Neither is worth reading. I won’t pander just to pack the house, nor will I resort to fashionable chatter.”
Romantically Heroic: Midnight in Europe
John Wilson talks about Alan Furst’s latest novel, thirteenth in the series, Midnight in Europe.
“A lot of spy fiction prides itself on a pervasive sense of world-weary disillusionment. Note that, while in one sense self-consciously “anti-romantic,” these books are often quite romantic in their own way. (Are you, Reader, among the few willing to look into the dark heart of things?) By contrast, Furst gives us idealized but not impossibly heroic versions of ordinary people making moral choices. Romantic? Sentimental? OK, sure—as long as you acknowledge that those labels apply equally to John lé Carre.”
Shakespearean Improv at Church
Tim Keller writes about his congregation sponsoring a full Shakespearean play improvised by the Improvised Shakespeare Company. For example:
The company takes a title or theme from the audience and then improvises a full Shakespearean play, complete with couplets, iambic pentameter, and the use of Shakespearean plot-lines. When asked for a title someone in the audience called out “Cat food for Breakfast.” The company proceeded to improvise a multi-act play based on that unifying theme, bringing it to a satisfying and hilarious conclusion. Most of the people in the audience I talked to afterwards said they couldn’t remember the last time they laughed so long and hard.
After the performance the director, Blaine Swen, shared how his Christian faith shaped his work as an actor and improv artist. He said “since Jesus has solved the big issues—he died on the cross for me—I am free to go on stage and have fun.” This is a powerful resource that all Christians have available for their work. We don’t go out on the stage or into the workplace trying to find ourselves, trying to justify our lives through our performance.
Help Launch “The Pastor’s Kid”
Barnabas Piper is asking for help launching his new book, The Pastor’s Kid, due out in four weeks. You might consider reading it too.
Remembering “The Shack”
Tim Challies has been writing about bestselling books from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, and today it’s one that sold 20 million. Twenty, um, shall we say, million. It’s William P. Young’s The Shack. You probably know as much as you want to know about that book, but you may not know that Forest Whitaker is adapting it for film.
I’m disappointed to learn Young has left the church, saying “[The institutional church] doesn’t work for those of us who are hurt and those of us who are damaged.” This is the fruit of evil sown early in his life. I hate it. I know different churches have different weaknesses, but I hope to learn that the majority of them are healing places for everyone wounded, broken, and confused. But perhaps that is a humanistic hope. I mean, how many wounded and broken people can you have in one congregation before they start wounding each other? Our hope is the Lord who heals, not his people per se.
Thai People Are Protesting by Reading Books
Angry at Thailand’s military dictatorship, protesters are taking to the streets in silence to be seen reading 1984 and other dystopian books.
Pimsiri [an activist] watched dejectedly as Thailand’s military moved in to seize power last week, for the 19th time in 80 years. Speaking on the phone the day after the second book protest, she says she feels what’s happening in her country now is frighteningly close to the fictional state of Oceania in Orwell’s novel, where independent thought is crushed and the Ruling Party is omnipresent.
“My friends told me when they read 1984 for the first time they could never imagine there would be a country like that, but it’s happening now in Thailand,” says Pimsiri. “People are really watching you, your computers are being monitored… and many people have been detained in undisclosed locations.”
Minnesota is the Place for Noir
“A sculpture hangs above the central atrium of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s headquarters in St. Paul. From a distance, the sculpture looks like a series of enormous Sherlock Holmes–style magnifying glasses. A closer inspection reveals disconcerting details: suspended within the hoops are dissected sections of a human body, each part made out of stained glass, each giving clues to a different forensic discipline (such as flies for entomology). The sculpture represents the body of a murder victim held up for inspection. It’s disturbing, matter-of-fact, and artistic.
“This is Minnesota noir.” A few books are recommended, including Standford’s Prey and Virgil Flowers series. (via Books, Inq.)