Ever since I bought my first shirt dress (a polo teeshirt dress, that is) I’ve been a bit partial to how cute but not overly girly they are. Modcloth’s Peach, Plum, Pear dress is just that tiny bit old school and it’s got pockets. I love pockets in dresses, it gives me a place to put my hands.
Whaddaya mean, if? (Previously.)
In light of Pakistan’s outrage at David Cameron candidly speaking his mind about the Pakistan-terrorism issue, this interview with Jere van Dyk is pretty enlightening.
Wylie Agency authors and authors’ estates (Vladimir Nabokov, Ralph Ellison, John Updike, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Louise Erdrich, John Cheever, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Evelyn Waugh, Oliver Sacks, Orhan Pamuk, V.S. Naipaul, Martin Amis, and Jorge Luis Borges) are going to be published electronically — and exclusively, for two years — to the Kindle store, and only the Kindle store.
Big trade publishers (your Random Houses, Penguins, and Harper Collins) are predictably unhappy about this (they spend the money to acquire, edit, produce, market, and sell the physical copies of these authors’ novels), as the (probably correct) impression is that Wylie and Amazon are riding on their coattails with what they’re doing.
This is clearly Amazon’s next move in its war to be the dominant player in the market for books. It’s pretty uncool to try and force people to use the Kindle, though. I also know who is actually producing these ebooks on behalf of Odyssey Editions, and unless they have some sort of super airtight contract with both parties, what’s to stop them from cutting the software company out altogether (Amazon is a software company, after all)? Surely Amazon knows the ins and outs of Kindle much better than they do.
Other authors are also dealing direct with Amazon and Apple to release exclusive ebooks, which is fine if they’ve made that conscious decision (and still hold the rights) to ignore other platforms. Maybe an interesting side effect would be a small uptick in sales of physical books if ebooks are not available for some devices.
I’m finding it pretty complex trying to imagine the fallout / effects of this. The books are mostly backlist (i.e. older books) — are people more likely to buy a backlist title in ebook format? Should traditional publishers look hard at their backlists and design covetable new editions (a bookshelf of beautiful books is just so much sexier than a page on a screen)? There’s apparently a huge issue with ebook royalties — I would propose that if authors were keen to command higher royalties, they should be much more willing to work harder on marketing and publicity online, since the online space is exactly where readers expect authors to reach out to them.
An open letter to Singapore’s attorney general regarding Alan Shadrake. While I reckon it won’t make a whit of difference, it’s good to share this information as widely as possible. (Previously.)
I’m currently obsessed with prints of vintage anatomy sketches / art. There’s a shop I pass every day that has an amazing one, and I plan on buying some cool stuff off Etsy — vintage illustrations on dictionary pages — so we can actually start putting stuff up on the walls of our flat (yes, it’s been a year and we haven’t even framed our paintings, let alone hung them).
So I’m liking this tank top from Urban Outfitters. It’s highly unlikely that I will get a tattoo of the back muscles from Gray’s Anatomy, so one must settle for less-permanent alternatives.
Continuing with the inside is out theme, the print on this tank top by Lip Service is mega. I forget who it was I knew who was dead into HR Giger, but the whole bio-mechanic genre has always interested me. I’d never get a bio-mechanic tattoo, but the art is dazzlingly descriptive.
The only thing that detracts from this tank top is that its entire back is fishnet. There’s nothing I find more shallowly thoughtless than women wearing regular bras with their backless tops / dresses — what’s the point?! And fishnet on a top is skirting dangerously close to string vest territory. Not a good look.
I was a teenager when I first encountered Anais Nin’s writing. I think my sister had borrowed a copy of Little Birds and I felt, shall we say, a wee bit ‘uncomfortable’ and definitely titillated by the contents.
This is an old edition that I was very recently given (thank you, Lulu). The introduction / preface consisting of Nin’s diary entries was enlightening — she wrote these stories for money. It struck me, reading this collection, that the men who paid for these stories had… er… unusual tastes. Quite a few of these stories didn’t feel sexual, more like cultural curiosities.
So while I did quite like the style of writing, the topics and sexual acts were a little too weird for me. Penthouse letters have nothing on Anais Nin.
I know I’m getting old when the latest pop sensation to grace the BBC Breakfast couch is less than half my age. Only just, but still.