booktwo.org

Phil Gyford, who amongst many other things curates the excellent and veritable http://www.pepysdiary.com/, is rightfully annoyed at HarperCollins for pulling a bait-and-switch with their print-on-demand reissues: The new volume, again on the right, is much whiter. It’s only when you compare standard books with really white paper that you realise they’re usually a bit yellow, […]

I’ve been playing with glanceables and synecdoches for a while now, until I came up with something that had to be got out of my head, and into the world. So here it is: Romance has lived too long upon this river; a single-serving web page that tells you how high the tide is at […]

BBC7 is currently doing Gibson’s Pattern Recognition as this week’s Sci-Fi serial. If you’re in the UK you can listen via iPlayer. It’s being read by Lorelei King, “one of the most successful and accomplished American actresses working in the UK today.” She’s good at voices but (and, Lorelei, this is no criticism if you’re […]

There it is, just sitting on a shelf, in a little electronics store in the corner of Khan Market, in New Delhi. Like it’s a totally normal thing. An ebook reader. In a shop. In India. It’s only a little over four years since I wrote Birth pangs of a new literature. Publishing then didn’t […]

Back from India. It was amazing, as ever. Couple of things to talk about. First: If we’ve ever talked about India and books, you’ll know I’m slightly obsessed with One Night @ The Call Center by Chetan Bhagat. I first read it and wrote about it when I was in India last year, and it’s […]

I’ve just launched a blog and a wiki over at Open Bookmarks – if you missed the original post about the project, it’s here. The blog’s for keeping up to date with the project: subscribe to the RSS to keep up-to-date. The wiki is where the discussion will happen. At the moment, it’s read-only, but […]

I’ve noticed some really nice Google Earth / maps things recently. Starting with today’s Big Picture, on Florida developments and the Human-made landscape: There’s these satellite prints by Jenny Odell, such as: Approximately 1,326 Grain Silos, Water Towers, and Other Cylindrical-Industrial Buildings and Empty Carparks: You’ve probably seen Globe Genie, it’s been around for a […]

I recently spoke at Web Directions South in Sydney, which was a lot of fun. I was invited to talk about the future of the book, and I did… sort of. In this post, I want to expand on some of the thoughts in that talk, which tied together a common thread from several previous […]

Today sees the launch of Fiction Uncovered, a new UK literary promotion for writers who deserve recognition but have yet to receive a major literary prize or media attention, or be picked for retailer promotions. The brainchild of Sophie Rochester, who is also behind the excellent Literary Platform site, Fiction Uncovered places itself squarely where […]