TOP 100 BOOK SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| Google offers concessions on books deal Google Books submission after US government objections promises greater flexibility and more modest international scopeGoogle will ease its control over millions of copyright-protected books earmarked for its digital library, if a court approves a revised lawsuit settlement.The offer comes two months after the US Justice Department balked at Google's original agreement with authors and publishers, warning that it could do more harm than good in the emerging market for electronic books.In a deal announced late on Friday night in the US, Google provides more flexibility to offer discounts on electronic books and promises to make it easier for others to resell access to a digital index of books covered in the settlement.Copyright holders also would have to give more explicit permission to sell digital book copies if another version is being sold anywhere else in the world.The concessions filed late Friday in New York federal court are the latest twist in a class-action lawsuit filed against Google four years ago by groups representing the interests of US authors and publishers. The suit alleged Google's ambition to make digital copies of all the books in the world trampled on their intellectual rights.Google negotiated a $125 million truce nearly 13 months ago, only to be attacked by a brigade of critics who protested to US District Judge Denny Chin, who must approve the agreement before it takes effect. The financial terms of the settlement remain intact, including a promise to give 63% of all sales proceeds to participating authors and publishers.Among other complaints, the opposition said the plan would put Google in charge of a literary cartel that could illegally rig the prices of electronic books – a format that is expected to become increasingly popular.In echoing some of those concerns, the Justice Department advised Chin that the original settlement probably would break laws set up to preserve competition and protect copyright holders, even if they can't be located.The concessions didn't go far enough to satisfy one of the most strident opponents, Open Book Alliance, a group that includes Google's rivals Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon.The alliance's co-chairman, Peter Brantley, said: "Our initial review of the new proposal tells us that Google and its partners are performing a sleight of hand. Fundamentally, this settlement remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners."In a Friday conference call, representatives for Google, the authors and publishers expressed confidence the revisions would gain court approval, although they conceded they didn't respond to all misgivings raised by the justice department.Under the timeline laid out in the revised settlement, the department would have until 4 February to file its opinion about the changes. The revised settlement suggests that a final hearing be scheduled for 18 February.French and German officials also protested against the settlement, arguing that it could infringe on copyrights in their countries.The revised settlement would apply only to books registered with the US copyright office or published in Canada, the United Kingdom or Australia.Much of the concern about the settlement has focused on whether it would give Google a monopoly on so-called "orphan works": out-of-print books that are still protected by copyright but whose writers' whereabouts are unknown.If the writers or their heirs don't stake a claim to their works, the original settlement calls for any money made from the sales of their books to go into a pool that eventually would be shared among the authors and publishers who had stepped forward to work with Google.The revised settlement will designate an independent party to oversee the financial interests of orphan books' copyright owners. Proceeds from the sales to orphan books would be held for 10 years, up from five years in the original agreement. After that, the money would be given to charities.The revised settlement suggests that a final hearing be scheduled for 18 February.GoogleIntellectual propertyInternetEbooksguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Slang does not make literature 'relevant' Particularly when wielded by those who don't really understand it, it's an insultingly cheap bid to get down with the kidsI was talking to the journalist Lindsay Johns the other day when a look of pain came across his face. "Have you come across this street slang Julius Caesar?" he asked. I gritted my teeth. "No, but I can imagine," I replied.Lindsay mentors kids in Peckham and is sick to his back teeth of what he calls the "rush to relevance"; that is, the idea that if someone comes from "the street", the only way Shakespeare could have anything to say to them is to make the works relevant to their supposedly jive-talking, hoodie-wearing, knife-packing lives. The fact that Lindsay has enthralled kids with Latin in deepest Peckham gives lie to such nonsense. And as our conversation progressed I realised I was also sick to the back teeth of something else: the misuse, and downright misunderstanding, of slang in literature by arts policy types.Don't get me wrong. It's not slang per se that is the problem. One argument against such out-of-hand dismissal of the colloquial is Shakespeare himself, who spiced his poetry with the modern, using words and phrases that chimed with the groundlings as much as with Elizabethan courtiers. Indeed scholarly fascination with Shakespeare's slang is longstanding. In many respects, dialect and idiom are the warp and weft of English literature, whether it be Coleridge's and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads or Thomas Hardy's Wessex chronicles. It could be argued that English literature sprang from idiom, with the very first stirrings of vernacular verse in Old English. But there is a difference between idiom and modern slang in literature. Shakespeare's use of slang opened up the world of the theatre to all of the audience, displaying the mental agonies of the Prince of Denmark to the most boisterous groundling and bringing the horseplay of Dogberry and co to the attention of the most cerebral courtier. Modern slang is different, being cut through with dark knowing humour and packing a linguistic punch, as the Guardian's recent compilation of 1950s slang bears witness. Twentieth-century slang is often self-consciously a code, concocted by a clique – and the use of slang in modern literature is generally not to include but to exclude. On The Road really was about the in-crowd and whether or not you were of the generation that could "dig" the lingo. Such use of slang in literature is urban, knowing and modern, cocking a snook at some readers, while winking at others.But not every Joe from the street corner can make slang work in this way. Firstly, it has to be authentic and thoroughgoing: you can't glean slang from snatches. Secondly, it has to be handled by a literary master. Slang turns the challenge of literature on its head: it is no longer high-minded literary language holding a door open to an imaginary world but the coded vernacular of slang that teasingly slams that door in our face. The reader has to give something over to this linguistic world, immerse herself in another familiar but alien language. Something shifts in the literary hierarchy. The infusion of Holden Caulfield's off-the-cuff colloquialism through the narrative fabric of The Catcher in The Rye is not simply an aspect of Salinger's central character but the very heartbeat of the narrative world he has imagined. Irvine Welsh's virtuoso passages of Glaswegian slang in Trainspotting are at once rebarbative (deliberately repelling the cultured ear of middle class readers) and the means by which readers submerge themselves in the world of Leith. This is what drives me nuts about the "Let's do Shakespeare in slang" school of thought. Not only is it patronising to those it hopes to welcome, but it entirely misses the literary purpose and value of slang, usually utilising the lamest, least challenging has-been manifestations of "cutting-edge, fresh-from-the-street" talk. Take a line from the street slang Julius Caesar: "I come to bury Caesar, not big him up." Are you kidding me? Even to an old fogey such as myself, this sounds dated. When well-meaning literary professionals seek to get down with the kids in this way, the world really is turned upside down. On one side, those who should know better abdicate their duty to introduce the next generation – wherever they come from – to the very best of literature; on the other, you have a misplaced scramble to latch on to and leech off the knowing cool of youth. It's quite possible that the next great work of literature will emerge from that knowing cool. It's certain, however, that it won't come out of any arts project that makes the relevancy of slang its raison d'être.My advice to anyone engaged in such "relevant" activity is to please stop stalking the kids. To be old-fashioned about it, it simply is unseemly.Reference and languagesShirley Dentguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Children’s Books: Fancy Dressing A book about a girl who tries on her mother’s shoes, and another about the many uses for a hat. feeds.nytimes.com |
Paperback Nonfiction Top 5 at a Glance1. THE BLIND SIDE, by Michael Lewis2. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin3. FREAKONOMICS, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner4. ARE YOU THERE, VODKA? IT'S ME, CHELSEA, by Chelsea Handler5. BLINK, by Malcolm Gladwell feeds.nytimes.com |
'Oral sex' definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools A parent's complaint over a 'sexually graphic' definition has seen dictionaries removed from southern Californian schoolsDictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for "oral sex".Merriam Webster's 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (for children aged nine to 10) in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the "sexually graphic" entry is "just not age appropriate", according to the area's local paper.The dictionary's online definition of the term is "oral stimulation of the genitals". "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature," district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.While some parents have praised the move – "[it's] a prestigious dictionary that's used in the Riverside County spelling bee, but I also imagine there are words in there of concern," said Randy Freeman – others have raised concerns. "It is not such a bad thing for a kid to have the wherewithal to go and look up a word he may have even heard on the playground," father Jason Rogers told local press. "You have to draw the line somewhere. What are they going to do next, pull encyclopaedias because they list parts of the human anatomy like the penis and vagina?"A panel is now reviewing whether the Menifee ban will be made permanent. The Merriam Webster dictionary joins an illustrious set of books that have been banned or challenged in the US, including Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which last year was suspended from and then reinstated to the curriculum at a Michigan school after complaints from parents about its coverage of graphic sex and violence, and titles by Khaled Hosseini and Philip Pullman, included in the American Library Association's list of books that inspired most complaints last year.Reference and languagesUnited StatesAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |