The Next Wave in Books, The Vook

In an effort to stumble over the next best thing publisher Simon and Schuster has partnered with a multi media company and will start promoting the vook. As reported in the New York Times and seen in their promo the book has been revolutionized beyond the trappings of just reading.

Interspersed within the text of books offered on iPhones, kindles, and youtube, will be short videos pertaining to the book. Not only that, readers will be able to blog about the text and even direct how the author will continue writing the storyline:

“Everybody is trying to think about how books and information will best be put together in the 21st century,” said Judith Curr, publisher of Atria Books, the Simon & Schuster imprint that is releasing the electronic editions in partnership with Vook, a multimedia company. She added, “You can’t just be linear anymore with your text. In some cases, social-networking technologies enable conversations among readers that will influence how books are written. The children’s division of HarperCollins recently released the first in a young-adult mystery series called “The Amanda Project,” and has invited readers to discuss clues and characters on a Web site. As the series continues, some of the reader comments may be incorporated into minor characters or subplots."

That is all fine and good. I encourage interaction between the author and readers and the world of reading and the relationship to the text is quickly transforming. But there are some cases where this doesn't work for me.

“It really makes a story more real if you know what the characters look like,” commented Fred L. Gronvall in a review on Amazon.com. The videos, he wrote, “add to the experience in a big way.”

I'm sorry, but my Brobdingnagians are not yours and I don't need a video insert to flesh out my Marlowe. He's just fine tucked away in an intimacy Raymond Chandler and I have developed over the years.

The romance writer Jude Deveraux wants a more sensory experience from the reading experience:

"Ms. Deveraux said she envisioned new versions of books enhanced by music or even perfume. “I’d like to use all the senses,” she said."

God forbid Ms. Deveraux and Simon and Schuster tackle the epic retelling of Andersonville prison camp where 13,000 Union soldiers died in fetid conditions. Or, maybe that's the perfect use of this new technology. We shall see.

Waysgoose 2009!

Waysgoose 2009 was another rousing time for families, artists, printers, and steamrollers. The fifth annual printer's party held each spring at the bookstore brought in artists and printers to show their wares and show people how its done in hands-on exhibits. Kids and well, everyone, love to roll their own prints. For a second straight year a steamroller was used to create 3 by 4 foot prints outside the store and the weather held off long enough to allow for some magnificent printmaking. Some of the large prints will be auctioned off later this fall and the proceeds donated to Tacoma Public Schools libraries. We thank everyone who showed up and participated in this Waygoose, and we hope to see you at the auction, and at next year's Waygoose!

We also thank Kevin Freitas who showed up and took some pictures, we were far too busy to get the camera steady. Here are more photos from his webpage:

Alice Paul and Ordinary Equality

"There is nothing complicated about ordinary equality."—Alice Paul

The newest broadside of the "Dead Feminist" series from Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press and Jessica Springs of Springtide Press has arrived.

Here's info from the Anagram Press webpage -

"Printed from hand-lettered original typography and hand-drawn illustrations and patterns (in fact, everything was done by hand, the hard way!). This piece is a collaboration between Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press and Jessica Spring of Springtide Press, who think everyone deserves an equal slice of wedding cake.

The wedding cake illustration is inspired by the architecture of San Francisco, epicenter of the battle over Proposition 8 in California. "Prop Cake" made its debut at the 2009 Codex International Book Fair in Berkeley, just in time for Valentine's Day.

The poster was printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press. Each piece is printed on archival, 100% rag, recycled paper, and signed by both artists. Edition size: 108. Paper size: 10 x 18 inches.

Colophon reads: Alice Stokes Paul (1885-1977) continued the work of the suffragists, and helped form the National Woman's Party to demand equal rights. The NWP engaged in militant demonstrations and the first picketing of the White House; these "Silent Sentinels" were mobbed and imprisoned, then force-fed while attempting a hunger strike. Public and media support for their cause grew and by 1920, women secured the vote. Alice Paul continued to work on their behalf, writing the original Equal Rights Amendment in 1923."

This is a great limited hand press series by two of our favorite artists. Well worth coming in and taking a look.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Seeds of Victory

The second broadside of a series celebrating feminists has arrived. The broadside, illustrated by Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press and printed by Jessica Spring of Springtide Press, features Eleanor Roosevelt. Printed in an edition of 76 copies and signed by both this is another beautiful print by these artists.

From the text of the broadside: "Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962) transformed the role of the first lady in the White House, where she served from 1933 - 45. In an effort to cultivate self-sufficiency and patriotism, she planted a Victory Garden on the White House lawn. Spurred in part by the first lady's example, more than 20 million Americans had home gardens and grew 40% of the country's produce during World War II. Today, amid rising food prices, climate change, and the finite supply of fossil fuels, we encourage the next first lady, Michelle Obama, to follow in Eleanor Roosevelt's footsteps and set an example for sustainability and hope once more - beginning on the White House lawn."

The Future is One Year Away?

Over the long holiday weekend we were having discussions with new book sales representatives and the prospects of the world of publishing. There was talk of the announcement by Houghton Mifflin that they wouldn't be acquiring new manuscripts which struck us as a very bad idea for a company that publishes new titles. We were concerned with the seemingly anachronistic publishing method of acquiring manuscripts from authors and then beginning the process of editing, marketing, producing then distributing the title. A process that can take up to a year if not longer for the title to arrive at your bookstore. A process that's about as nimble as an elephant in quicksand. This system is the way publishing's been done since the beginning of time, and that time is over.

It seems the only authors this will be workable for in the future are authors that publishers want to cultivate to customers that already have an unwavering love for the author. An author like Toni Morrison who gives you a "big" book every four years or so.

More and more titles are being published that are derivatives of blogs and bloggers and the 24/7 world of information is quickly making the old time frames of publishing moot. How many customers will be willing to lay out $35.00 for the next Bob Woodward hardback expose in the near future when his latest was concurrently available for the Kindle at $9.99?

James Gleick recently had an article in the New York Times that addressed this problem and the future of publishing. While he rightly believes that the book will not disappear because in its essence it's the perfect medium for reading he does come to an unavoidable truth:

"For some kinds of books, the writing is on the wall. Encyclopedias are finished. All encyclopedias combined, including the redoubtable Britannica, have already been surpassed by the exercise in groupthink known as Wikipedia. Basic dictionaries no longer belong on paper; the greatest, the Oxford English Dictionary, has nimbly remade itself in cyberspace, where it has doubled in size and grown more timely and usable than ever. And those hefty objects called “telephone books”? As antiquated as typewriters. The book has had a long life as the world’s pre-eminent device for the storage and retrieval of knowledge, but that may be ending, where the physical object is concerned."

Save the plodding world of publishing books for books that we'll want to savor again and again. As Gleick states, "Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it."

Chestnuts and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We've recieved a beautiful new broadside from Jessica Spring of Springtide Press and Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press. Illustrated by O'Leary and printed by Spring in recognition of a woman's right and responsibility to vote. 44 copies (in recgonition of the upcoming election of the 44th president of the United States) were printed by hand at Springtide. A quote from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who wrote many of the speeches for Susan B. Anthony, graces the broadside, "Come, come my conservative friend wipe the dew off your spectacles and see the world moving."
If only the election process could be as well done as work like this.

Here at Kings Books we always know when autumn has hit full bore. We know by the chestnut tree across the street and from the throngs of local citizens wielding thier brooms and extendable poles slapping at the tree and knocking down the chestnuts to make that Japanese delicacy Ku Ri. That's really taking the local food movement to heart I'd say.

Seattle Loses More Bookstores

Couth Buzzard Bookstore in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle closes it doors as reported by the Seattle Times. And Couth Buzzard is not the only one, M Coy Books and All for Kids Bookstore also closed this year, among others. Although Seattle still has the most bookstore's per capita then any other city, rents and buying habits are taking its toll on the traditional open bookshops left open.
Yes, you can buy your book from Amazon but you can't get the same satisfaction of browsing a well stocked local store and find the book you weren't looking for. It's what I call the happy accident of discovery that makes the difference.

thanks to Shelf Awareness for the lead.

It Was Great and Bad Beginning

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was announced. Named for the author who brought us the famous opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night". This year's effort was entered by Garrions Spik of Washington, DC:

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

I love the taxi reference, good work Mr. Spik!

Bombproof Horses, Nude Mice, and Joyous Chickens

From theBookseller.com a forthcoming book celebrating 30 years of the oddest book titles of the year. An annual prize, The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, will be having a vote for the oddest title in the last 30 years. The people at the Booker prize recently did this but this is so much more fun. "To mark the occasion, Aurum Press will be releasing an illustrated collection of some of the winners and nominees of yesteryears, How to Avoid Huge Ships (£9.99, ISBN: 9781845133214). It features original jackets of 50 of the best-loved titles since the prize began, and an introduction from The Bookseller's former deputy-editor Joel Rickett."
I can't wait to see the book as it looks quite delicious.
Here's a list of some of the winners, enjoy!

Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
The Joy of Chickens
The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling
The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
How to Avoid Huge Ships
Reusing Old Graves
Bombproof Your Horse
People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the tip.

Roller Coasters, Smoke Jumpers and Amazon Flexes

I just returned from the road on business and pleasure and here's the landscape as I saw it. There's nothing like forgetting the business of books for an afternoon of riding Santa Cruz's famous wooden roller coaster, The Giant Dipper, the third oldest in the country, with your teenage daughter. A great ride, so much fun in fact that we rode it all day. A memorable afternoon with life's rich pageant on the boardwalk.
Yreka, CA at the Oregon/California border has been living in a smoky fog since the 800+ forest fires starting in California. Asked to the locals, it's been like that for months. It's very eerie.
Ashland has several great plays this season; Othello, with one of the strongest casts I've ever seen of this play, and Arthur Miller's "A View From The Bridge" are stunning productions. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is always a great stop.
Visited several bookshops - Albany, Corvallis, Ashland, Santa Cruz, San Francisco - and the general consensus is that business is well, difficult all over. Everyone is tuning to the 'buy local' campaigns to keep a foothold on the slippery slope of retail book selling. Some are doing better than others, but none are seeing much growth at all if any. In the 90s it was the rapacious targeting by Barnes and Nobles and Borders that buried local independents. Now, its Amazon that's thrusting the final twist of the knife. As more and more people buy on-line though Amazon less people are making the effort to go into their local shops. A shame, as going into a good local bookshop is a far better experience than shopping on line. Couple this with the news when I returned from the road that Amazon just bought ABE Books.com, the largest on-line used book site, it seems only a matter of time before Amazon chases into the corner the on-line book market. The third largest on-line bookseller, Alibris, I predict will be bought out by Amazon in some form within five years.
So it goes, its always a challenge for booksellers and now the landscape will just get more interesting.

Illuminated Manuscript, Modern Interpretations

"In the 8th Century, near what are now Scotland and England, Benedictine monastic scribes created a Bible that today is one of the longest surviving monumental manuscripts in the Western world.
Nearly 1,300 years later, renowned calligrapher Donald Jackson approached the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s University and Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, with his life-long dream: to create the first handwritten, illuminated bible commissioned since the invention of the printing press. The Saint John’s Bible uses ancient materials and techniques to create a contemporary masterpiece that brings the Word of God to life for the contemporary world."

Coming to Tacoma Art Museum is this remarkable document, The St. John's Bible, the first illuminated bible since the invention of the printing press. And it's not small feat.  More than 1,000 vellum pages measuring 2 by 3 ft. Done by artists the world over using ancient techniques and modern interpretations this is a monumental effort.  

We're also looking forward to the talk by Beautiful Angle co-founder Lance Kagey “Typography through World History”, 7 p.m. July 17. It should be a great event for the Puget Sound region.

Sea Queens, Pirates, And a Pop-Up Moby-Dick

New arrivals for Tacoma grand festival of Tall Ships - a visit of over 20 masted vessals including the great three masted CGC Eagle. Impressive weekend for Tacoma which was voted the best port for the previous Tall Ships festival in 2005. This year should prove to be bigger and better.

Jane Yolen, the great children's author, has just come out with a great new young adult title, Sea Queens - Women Pirates Around the World. Yolen brings us to Artemisia, the admiral-queen of Persia in 500 BC; Grania O'Malley, the Irish "pirate queen" who challenged Queen Elizabeth I's British ships; Madame Ching, who sailed the South China Sea in the early 1800s; and then other female pirates on their ships, in battle, and in disguise.

Another great book for the festival - Moby-Dick, A Pop-Up Book, by Sam Ita. The epic struggle of Ahab, Ishmael, and Queequeg as they chace the fabled whale across the seas is redone in a pop-up graphic novel. As Robert Sabuda says, "Unlike any other version of Moby Dick ever created."

Both books will take you back to the days of sails, yardarms, and chanties. And what a great weekend to take in the sea and watch the ships go by.

A Human Face At The Beijing Olympics

From the New Yorker's Book Bench blog a notice of a cool photography volume coming out about the Olympic buildings in Beijing:

"Last December, the photographer Helen Couchman shot portraits of a hundred and forty-three Chinese laborers at the construction sites of the two most iconic buildings of the Beijing Olympics, the National Stadium (a.k.a. the Bird’s Nest) and the National Aquatics Center (a.k.a. the Water Cube). According to the publisher of her new book, “Gong Ren” (“Workers”), she was able to bypass the authorities and approach her subjects individually—a feat that seems extraordinary, given the government’s intense micro-management of what is essentially the nation’s global coming-out party.
As Paul Goldberger noted in a recent review, these new Olympic monuments were “made possible partly by the presence of huge numbers of low-paid migrant workers”; the construction crew for the Bird’s Nest alone “numbered nine thousand at its peak.” He expressed reservations about the price exacted for the sky line’s glory:
In both conception and execution, the best of Beijing’s Olympic architecture is unimpeachably brilliant. But the development also exemplifies traits—the reckless embrace of the fashionable and the global, the authoritarian planning heedless of human cost—that are elsewhere denaturing, even destroying, the fabric of the city."

Engulfed In What It Is, A Lush Choice of Books

Some fine options for the suitcase of your summer kick-off reads.


David Sedaris packs in smoking, Japan, and more sharp observations in hid latest take on the human condition with When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Sedaris will be visiting Tacoma's Pantages Theater in October. Don't leave your butts outside for this.

Lynda Barry has a wonderful new volume out about what it takes to be creative, What It Is. A "crazy book" destined for the "crazy book section". In typical Barry fashion she brings to light a great melding of art and memoir. There's a nice write up of her from Philly.com. I'm not surprised she'd end up living in a Wisconsin town named Footville fighting windmills.

Richard Price's latest novel, Lush Life, is a stunning tour de force examination of the lower east side of NYC and the vast array of humans trying to navigate life there. Part procedural, part sociological study, part tenement history, Price weaves all these elements in a timeless study of too many people fighting off too many demons.

Summer Reads, how about 411,422 choices

An intertesting post from the Boston Globe reporting from Bowker, the publisher of Books in Print, that the number of book titles printed last year by American publishers was 276,649, a slight increase from 274,416 the year before. This includes discrete titles; that is, books with separate ISBN numbers. Bowker further notes that if you include public domain titles and print on demand titles that number grows to 411,422.

And the death of books is when? There was talk of this more than 10 years ago with the introduction of the e-book and it still hasn't happened. But there is always new technologies and ways to try to interest the public to publisher's offerings.

From the LA Times an article about new publisher tactics in getting the word out in new formats:

"At Random House, publishers produced four "webisodes" telling an original, live-action story that bridges the time from the end of one Dean Koontz "Odd Thomas" book to the next. More such videos are planned, possibly for other, less well-known authors."

"Barnes & Noble, the nation's largest book chain, has created an online "studio" with more than 1,000 author videos, making it one of the largest such online sites. The goal is to link the ambience of a bookstore -- including author appearances, musical performances and other events -- with desktops and mobile devices."

Innovation is always important in any industry but I can't imagine getting the "ambience of a bookstore" through my desktop. It just doesn't compare to visiting any of the local bookstores near you.

50 Best Cult Books, Or What Haven't You Tossed Since College

The London Telegraph has a great article of the 50 best cult books. I'm a sucker for book lists and I particularly like the British take on things.

"Cult books include some of the most cringemaking collections of bilge ever collected between hard covers. But they also include many of the key texts of modern feminism; some of the best journalism and memoirs; some of the most entrancing and original novels in the canon."

Is there anything better in the book review world than a terse British take on a volume? And this list is full of them. Here's their view on Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly which took the world by storm: "For decades, the cowed menfolk of the world ambled about in pinafores, dusting ornaments and saying "yes, dear". Then Robert Bly wrote Iron John, invented mythopoetic masculinity, and the daft creatures all rushed off into the woods together, hugged, bellowed, wept, painted their furry parts blue and felt re-empowered to wee standing up."

They also point out beautiful novels that defy time:

"TheMaster and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967) Satan

live and in person, a man sized black cat, a magician and his
helpmate, Pontius Pilate… Classic text of dissident magic realism, banned for years under Stalin: now you’ll struggle to find a Russian who hasn't read it. Essential stuff, and with the finest description of a headache yet committed to paper."

It interesting to note what's left off, they include Ann Rand's Fountainhead but leave off Adam Smith, both canons of Republican sway.


And I can't imagine anyone involved in the home birth revival of the 60s without a copy of Spiritual Midwifery by Ina Mae Gaskin by the bedside. But all in all, its a wonderful list to contemplate and to see if you still have many of these stashed beside all those colleges book you never tossed.

Candidate for UNESCO Post Theatens Book Burning?

An interesting post from the Israel News claims that the Egyptian culture minister, Farouk Hosni, said that he “would burn Israeli books himself if found in Egyptian libraries.” An interesting outlook for someone who's up for appointment for the cultural and education arm of the UN.

"The anger in Israel over Hosni’s statement is especially emphasized due to the fact that Hosni is Egypt’s candidate for the UNESCO position, as the United Nations’ education, science and cultural organization secretary-general, and he has good chances of being chosen."

The Botany of Farmers, Desired Again

Tacoma's downtown version of the Farmer's Market returns today and that's good news for anyone looking for healthy locally grown produce. I've been reading my way through Michael Pollan's great books about plants, farming, the follies of monoculture and the industrialization of the food chain. His trilogy of titles, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire explore the gross misstep's of our government's handling of the U.S. food chain. The problems of Iowa's reliance on the monoculture farming of corn, the push by industry for seeds that can't reproduce naturally (thus insuring a ready market for next year's planting), pesticides and the vast cities of penned-up cattle, hogs and chickens are all looked at from several different angles by Pollan. The story of what we eat, when we eat it, and how it gets to us is mesmerizing. Its not often that books stop me in my tracks, but there I was looking at a box of crackers in the grocery store and was just struck dumb by the packaging and claims on the box. The information is correct but as Pollan points out it's the process of how the contents get there that matter most.
His premise is that grass is king and the underlying nexus of our food problems. He visits farm that respect grass, the process of the pasture, and plan accordingly. The grass grows, cattle eat, drop manure which chickens then peck apart and process starts over again. It's a process that harkens back to the tenants of Rodale's Organic Gardening. Pollan also brings up the thoughts and agricultural concerns of Wendell Berry. An early proponent of localized food sources and the relationship of sustenance, people, and the land, Berry explains the importance of the short food chain and how we're all interconnected. Intoxicating reads and worth considering as the farm season warms up.

Best of the Booker Prize Goes Public, Vote!

The short list was announced today for the Best of the Booker Prize Award to mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known in short as the Booker Prize, is the literary prize awarded each year for authors of novels from England, the Commonweath, or Ireland written in English. It is considered one of the important literary awards of the year.

This year the Booker vote goes public as readers world-wide can cast a vote for the six novels on the short list, Pat Barker's The Ghost Road; Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda; J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace; JG Farrell's The Seige of Kishnapur; Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist; and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

This is great list of novels and its interesting that the Booker Prize is allowing public votes. What better way than this to get the public involved and turning its attention to some of the best novels written in the last 40 years.

Paper Science, Core Structures

From The Popular Edge, a pop-up books art site, comes an interesting look at Matt Schlian and his paper engineering project with the University of Michigan as they look at protein mis-folding of Alzheimer’s disease which Schlian works into paper models. Beautiful paper scuptures from a terrible disease.

"The root cause of Alzheimer’s disease is protein mis-folding. The modular arrangements in which protein strands are formed, break down and incorrectly fold. This causes a chain reaction of erroneous folding. My approach to understanding this is hands on; the microscopic folds can be mapped on a human scale out of paper and used as a basis for sculpture."