Despite the credit crunch, an entire industry has sprung up to cater to an increasing number of customers willing to spend thousands of pounds on luxury books from the shelves of the world’s most exclusive shops.

Many “superbooks” target wealthy sports enthusiasts – the kind who can afford a corporate box at a cup final. A luxury biography of the boxing legend Muhammad Ali, published last year by Taschen, featured four silver gelatine prints by the photographer Howard L Bingham, signed by Ali himself, and cost £5,000.

How did she do it?

To write a conceivable chronicle of Heath Ledger’s final days, writer Lisa Taddeo visited the actor’s neighborhood, talked to the store owners and bartenders who may have seen him during his last week, and read as many accounts and rumors about the events surrounding his death as possible. She filled in the rest with her imagination. The result is what we call reported fiction. Some of the elements are true. (Ledger was in London. He was a regular at the Beatrice Inn and the Mirö Cafe. And he was infatuated with Nick Drake.) Others are not.

An Open Letter to My Across-the-Street Neighbor Who Always Does His Yard Work in His Scrubs

Dear Neighbor,

Yes, I know you’re a doctor—well, OK, almost a doctor. We all know you’re almost a doctor. And I promise, on behalf of all of us on the block, we won’t forget that you’re almost a doctor. So, if you want to just wear ordinary clothes like the rest of us while doing your weekend mowing, watering, weeding, etc., go right ahead. It’s fine. Really. We won’t forget.

Sincerely,
The guy in the yellow house

“If you were an author, would you want your book reviewed in the Washington Post and the New York Review of Books, or on a web site written by someone who uses the moniker NovelGobbler or Biogafriend?” Michael Dirda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, wrote in the Washington Post. “The book review section … remains the forum where new titles are taken seriously as works of art and argument, and not merely as opportunities for shallow grandstanding and overblown ranting.”

Lit-blogger Edward Champion fired back, ridiculing the notion that only printed book reviews matter: “It’s okay for the lit blogosphere to exist as a version of your Mom’s book club — it’s okay for us to talk books and authors and compare notes on favorites, as long as we keep our place,” snapped the San Francisco writer, who runs the Return of the Reluctant website. “Have you got that? We must not think for a minute that we contribute anything beyond serving as accessories to the real literary discussions…. We should buy books but not dare to offer well thought opinions on them.”

The accusations flew back and forth. But now there is a growing sense that enough is enough — and that the friction between old and new book media obscures the fact that the two are in bed together now, for better or worse. Often the same people who churn out literary blogs are reviewing books for mainstream reviews. (Champion, for example, has a review appearing in this week’s Los Angeles Times Book Review.)

What’s your take on all of this?

From GQ.com:

But to be sure that Colbert possesses the moral authority America so desperately needs, we subjected him to a highly confidential background check. Then, because we are the media and have no morals, we decided to betray his trust and publish his answers. Click here to read a selection, accompanied by Mark Seliger’s revealing portraits of GQ’s candidate.

via the BBC

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

Q: Your book is a mystery set in parallel universe, about a police detective trying to solve a murder in “Alyeska,” the territory that Alaska could have been had it become a homeland for Jews during the second World War. In an odd way, the story comments upon September 11. How did you come up with the idea?

A: It grew out of an essay that I wrote several years ago that was a response to this strange little book called Say It in Yiddish. There’s a series of Say It books: Say It in Swahili, Say It in Spanish, etcetera. All of the others in the series have countries or regions associated with them. So, I started wondering in this essay, what’s this book for? Where would you take it? In the course of speculating on that, I considered possible Yiddish-speaking countries that might have come into existence if things had happened differently. I had read about this proposal once that Jewish refugees be allowed to settle in Alaska during World War II. I made a passing reference to it in the essay, but the idea stuck.

What’s more is that there is also an excerpt of the new novel.

As interesting as this news item is to automotive industry watchers and others, the above linked to article, which is Bloomberg’s article on this deal, contains this nugget of history:

Ferdinand Piech, whose family controls Porsche and whose grandfather started up Volkswagen in the 1930s under Adolf Hitler, has increased his control over Volkswagen since Porsche bought a stake a year and a half ago. A combination would realize the Porsche family’s goal of uniting two carmakers their relatives began and would be the largest takeover ever in the industry.

I pause to think of what a significant step backwards it must be for Porsche AG to have a connection to Hilter pointed out in the context of today’s corporate activity, especially given that we are taking about a take over.

Click here to view the embedded video.