TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Heavy Lifting A candid memoir from the multitalented wrestler Hulk Hogan. feeds.nytimes.com |
Crossroads: How Can We Help the World’s Poor? Humanitarians are fiercely divided about what helps poor people. It’s clear that doing good is harder than it looks. feeds.nytimes.com |
The knockers are wrong. The Olympic site is giving local people hope Our area is smarter and safer nowI was scammed by a taxi driver recently. Not financially – verbally. We were pulling off the A12 near my home in east London, through the clanking and hammering of the Olympic 2012 velopark and athletes' village that's currently rocketing up at an astonishing pace. "Exciting, innit?" the cabbie said. I paused, flummoxed by the unique sensation of Olympic positivity, "Yes!" I agreed, "It's really exciting!"Except I wasn't agreeing – he was being dry. "I mean, what a shambles, eh? They say they're building but nothing's happening, is it?" he moaned, giving way to a cement mixer and a lorry full of gravel. "And they reckon they'll sort the roads out. But I can't see it," he whinged, as workmen with drills sorted out the road. "Waste of time," he concluded, passing through newly decontaminated land down a road that, until a year ago, I'd have walked along after dark at the speed of Christine Ohuruogu. What have the Olympics done for us, eh?Nobody seems to want to acknowledge good news about "the Olympic effect" in Newham. Obviously, back in 2007, it was entertaining when Kirstie and Phil showed up to declare it the "third worst place to live in Britain", accompanied by a montage of stray staffies, discarded mattresses, yellow police incident signs and obese people staggering asthmatically to Londis. "However," Phil added helpfully, "One of the nicest places to live is . . . St Albans!" As if uprooting to somewhere with nice golf courses was an option for the majority of Newham people. Some of the noxious substances removed from contaminated ground around here dated back to the 18th century – we were, it's safe to say, living in the land that time forgot.Then the Olympics came. Suddenly there was movement. Now running, jumping, gold medals and anything else involving Lycra and chaffed nipples don't interest me remotely, but the effect a freshly painted set of railings has on a community really does. And I see a lot more fresh paint around here these days, and old buildings being sandblasted too.My neglected local library got a new home. The ramshackle hall at the end of the road found an investor, got restored, and is now used for wedding banquets. The tube stations are 100% less scary. We've got a Eurostar terminal almost ready to go, and the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre – containing actual stores full of things to purchase – will open in 2011.Clearly, nothing will rankle Olympic-haters more than a woman linking community happiness with extended opportunity to purchase, but saying revolting, unsayable things out loud is how I roll. And in the local papers, beside headlines on sex traffickers, teenage killing and illegal immigrant builders being found working on site, there are joyous stories of tiny school children getting excited about watching the Olympics. Pee on that from a great height, naysayers, if you dare.This, of course, is where some of you shout that I would say that, as the price of my house has rocketed (I haven't made a single penny), while the rest say, "Ah yes, but what will happen after the Olympics?" – before evoking a dystopian world of abandoned tracks, scorched earth and burnt-out Olympic official golf buggies reminiscent of Bartertown in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome. Obviously the government might sell the Olympic village to people who need flats, the new park will be amazing for days out in fresh air, and the sports facilities will be used to enthuse new athletes – but, hey, your version is possibly more exciting, especially if it involves rioting and Tina Turner on a tractor chariot.People who have never been to Newham say the 2012 site won't be finished in time. Yet to me, each day it feels as if an army of Jim Henson-style Doozers arrive and diligently begin hammering up more and more framework of the greatest Fraggle supper ever known. It's exciting. You'd have to have a granite heart not to find it so. I would have told the cab driver this, had I believed my breath was worth squandering, but he'd already informed me he could "see no appeal" in the whole thing.These aren't books. They're literary polyps Recent job losses in literary publishing houses are linked to the growing failure of celebrity autobiographies – and real authors can barely conceal their glee. This is wrong, obviously. Just the other day, I was enjoying the learned work Just for Kicks, by Kenny Logan (his memoir of what it was like learning to play rugby good, and stuff), and so wildly moved was I that I cried aloud: "This work is so enlightening, it should be taking up space in every minuscule supermarket book section!"It's not vast celebrity advances or literary prize nominations I've got a problem with – I'd just rather celebrities didn't use the word "book". I suggest, instead, using "literary polyp" (something ugly that has grown without the owner knowing) or "literary bum fissure" (something harmless but horrid that will go away soon). And as for celebrity fiction by people who, try as they might, cannot write like Martine McCutcheon, let's call that what it is: an enormous pile of voiceless crap with a massive publicity budget. I'll buy one when I go Christmas grocery shopping; it'll be point-of-sale grade 1, with Kenny's book and the other turkeys.Olympic games 2012LondonCelebrityGrace Dentguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Website archives to be fast-tracked Move follows warnings from British Library and National Museum of Scotland that historical record is being lostNew legal powers to allow the British Library to archive millions of websites are to be fast-tracked by ministers after the Guardian exposed long delays in introducing the measures.The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, is pressing for the faster introduction of powers to allow six major libraries to copy every free website based in the UK as part of their efforts to record Britain's cultural, scientific and political history.The Guardian reported in October that senior executives at the British Library and National Library of Scotland (NLS) were dismayed at the government's failure to implement the powers in the six years since they were established by an act of parliament in 2003.The libraries warned that they had now lost millions of pages recording events such as the MPs' expenses scandal, the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the Iraq war, and would lose millions more, because they were not legally empowered to "harvest" these sites.The powers are very similar to copyright laws which require every publisher in the UK to provide the libraries ‑ chiefly the British Library and the NLS, but also the National Library of Wales, the Bodleian in Oxford, Cambridge University library and Trinity College Dublin ‑ with copies of every printed book, magazine, journal and newspaper.The internet is fast becoming the dominant form of publication in the UK: about a third of all works currently published are only in digital form and that number is increasing dramatically. Ministers predict the UK will host 15m websites by 2016 but under existing powers the British Library would be able to archive only 1% of them.Ministers originally decided to postpone all the new powers until after the next general election, blaming their advisory panel and internal hold-ups for the delay. The libraries feared this would mean further lengthy delays as the Tories, widely thought to be favourites to win the election, have so far refused to announce any plans to enact these powers.In an attempt to head off criticism, Hodge has now launched a consultation, due to end in March, which would allow the libraries to copy and archive free sites using the .uk domain name and all other UK-based sites. There are more than 4m free websites active in the UK and proposed new domain names such as .sco for Scotland and .cym for Wales will also be included.Hodge has conceded she is unlikely to get these powers in force before the next election but officials from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: "We will make as much progress as we can in the time available."However, paid-for websites ‑ which may soon include the Times, the Sun and all other News International titles under plans for paywalls outlined by Rupert Murdoch ‑ will still be closed off to the copyright libraries.Hodge has again delayed introducing legal powers to harvest websites which charge to access them, or have restricted access, until after the election. She said there are still legal and technical issues to resolve.Martyn Wade, Scotland's national librarian said: "We welcome the consultation and look forward to taking part in it. We hope that it will lead to meaningful and rapid progress being made towards implementation of legislation which will enable us to collect the published knowledge of Scotland in electronic form; knowledge which is currently being lost."Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, said: "By 2020 more material will be published in digital format than in print; the British Library must collect, preserve and provide access to that material. I very much welcome this consultation which extends the principle of legal deposit to cover material published digitally and online."LibrariesInternetBritish LibraryDigital BritainScotlandNews InternationalSeverin Carrellguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Realms of Gold A charmed couple, a hedge fund, insider trading, vast wealth. . . . It’s all in this intelligent novel, a contemporary morality tale about a rich and dysfunctional family. feeds.nytimes.com |