Harry Potter, Meet your Biggest (And Most Famous) Fan

After the fifth book of the Harry Potter series was published, Francisca Solar decided JK Rowling's version of the story wasn't good enough.  She was so dissatisfied with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that the then 21 year-old Chilean journalism student decided to write her own "fanfiction"...

Chris Anderson Calls for “Radical Transparency” in Media

Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail and the editor-in-chief at Wired Magazine, has written two (1, 2) though provoking posts outlining how online media might work in the future. In his second post, he outlines his vision for "radical transparency" by the media. There is some great thinking here....

Reading the Classics via Email

You might have a large collection of thick classics sitting on your bookshelf at home right now. You bought them years ago but have yet to touch them. A fine layer of dust seems to have permanently attached itself to the cover. You were waiting for that rainy Saturday where you could curl up on the sofa with Wuthering Heights or The Art of War,...

Recalling “A Million Little Pieces”

Way back when, I wrote a post about the undoing of James Frey and his memoir, "A Million Little Pieces."

We all know the memoir was a lie, a total fabrication.  I wondered at the time what might happen, whether the publisher would fess up and give readers a refund. ...

Google Book Search: The Debate

The Washington Post published an interesting article on Sunday about Google's Book Search function.  With the University of California recently adding its massive library to the book-scanning process, this idea of creating a comprehensive digitized library of all the world's books seems like a reachable goal.  This move, which opened the University of California's network of 100 libraries and some 34 million books to Google's scan-and-search framework is a landmark event in Google's quest of digitizing every book ever written....