Illinois Press Book Blog

Mammoth had a piece last week about the intersection between book design and architecture in the form of the Large Higgs Field Galactic Archive. Less a library than a holographic depiction of everything in the galaxy ever, the LHFGA is the speculative architectural plan of Robert Charles Wilson from his book Darwinia. The structure would gradually come into being as a cosmic response to heat death and would be made of consciousness (or “noospheres,” to use the sci-fi parlance).

Wilson regards the LHFGA as the ultimate history book, but that might be underselling the idea, given that it would contain the concept of history itself and every thought about it, plus every imaginable alternative to “history,” “book,” and “archive.” It would include this blog post and you reading it. Presumably the only sentience that could read such a book would be the LHFGA of a different galaxy, and once one read the other, perhaps all the information would divide, cell-like, to become part of the other LHFGA. (Still with me?) Thus would the hundreds of billions of LHFGAs begin to grow a new informational universe from the remnants of the old.

This poses a number of interesting questions about the future of book publishing. No, I’m kidding; it doesn’t — but it reminds me of a recent article from the Times Online about the Total Recall e-memory project. In this version of book making, an individual collects as much of the informational content of the life as possible — everything from email messages and grocery receipts to cell phone photos and biotelemetry data — and adds it daily to a lifelog. Data builds at a rate of about 1GB per month.

While the project as it exists now seems a bit incomplete, at least as far as the demands of autobiography are concerned, it’s not hard to imagine a next-generation cell connection that would transmit one’s interior thoughts to a server account somewhere, each day an enormous soliloquy of interior and exterior monologue rendered as text. A lifetime of this might result in a new sort of hyper-completist book media: a book that is millions of pages in length but only useful as a searchable, browsable text. The book as solipsistic virtual reality program.

Cue the WikiReader: a little Kit Kat Bar-sized device that includes the Wikipedia database in its entirety minus the graphical stuff. That’s a thousand volumes worth of searchable information encoded on a chip for $99. Two AAA batteries are included.

Link to the Mammoth article.
Link the Times Online article.
Link to the WikiReader.

Carbondale’s PBS affiliate WSIU featured Joe McFarland, co-author of the recent book Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States:  A Field-to-Kitchen Guide, in a segment on hunting oyster mushrooms in southern Illinois.

Oyster mushrooms can sometimes be found in local produce stores selling for over $5 a pound. Yet, why buy them when you can hunt your own for free! Chances are high that you can find plenty of these tasty fungi in a nearby forest as they grow in abundance in Southern Illinois. Mushroom hunter Joe McFarland says hunting for oyster mushrooms is good for beginners because they are easy to find and identify.

Peorians, visit Joe at Presley’s Outdoors in Bartonville, Illinois, on March 20 for a seminar on hunting morel mushrooms.

The January 22, 2010, edition of the Times Literary Supplement includes a review of Robert E. Norton’s new English translation of Ernst Bertram’s classic Nietzsche: Attempt at a Mythology.

Ernst Bertram’s seminal work … not only highlighted Nietzsche’s own revival of the mythical dimension as essential to creative human activity but also sought, in the heroizing of spirit of the Stephan George circle (with which Bertram was associated) to render Nietzsche himself into a latter-day prophet—a dynamic, living national myth.

Ethan Watters at The Rumpus on 10 Things You Should Know Before going on The Daily Show.

3. You will only see the set 30 seconds before you walk on. When they need you, a production assistant will lead you down a series of grim hallways past groups of hipsters (writers perhaps?) hanging out in the break room. You’ll be thinking, “this is not very glamorous.” Your eyes will be drawn to all “Exit” signs.

Watch Patrick Roberts, co-author of the new book Give ‘Em Soul, Richard!  Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago, on WGN-TV’s Midday News.

Listen to Patrick Roberts on WBEZ’s 848.

The Millions website has an interesting piece about book piracy plus an interview with someone who makes ebook files illegally and shares them across BitTorrent. According to the piece, book piracy now carves out $3 billion a year in potential revenue via file sharing, and this figure is bound to go up with the release of more pop readers like the iPad.

My favorite part is where the pirate spends up to 40 hours proofreading the OCR files. Fastidious.

Link to the article/interview.

Funny comments about the iPad.

Stefan Bradley, author of the recent book Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s, is scheduled to appear on C-Span’s Book-TV on Saturday, January 30, at 2:00 PM (ET). The program will repeat on Sunday, January 31, at 4:00 AM (ET).

On February 1, Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research will host a private event to celebrate the publication of Give ‘Em Soul, Richard!  Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago and the donation to the CBMR Library and Archives of the personal collection of Richard E. Stamz.

Give ‘Em Soul, Richard! is a chronicle of the life of radio deejay and political activist Richard E. Stamz—the self-proclaimed ”Crown Prince of Soul”—who witnessed every significant period in the history of blues and jazz in the last century.

The multimedia event will feature images and video of Stamz’s life and career; the sounds of Chicago R&B and soul (including some recordings from Stamz’s own collection); and select items from the collection on display.
 
Co-author Patrick Roberts, Richard Stamz’s daughter Phyllis Stamz, and other special guests will be in attendance.

On the morning of February 1, Patrick Roberts will be a guest on Chicago Public Radio’s 848 program and WGN-TV’s Midday News.

I just read a White Paper distributed by our media guide provider, which includes, “Journalists’ top pet peeves about PR professionals.”  The White Paper doesn’t provide the pet peeves in list form but I think that the key peeve is publicists that send untargeted press releases.

In that spirit, I offer a publicist pet peeve:

1. I receive a review copy request message that closes, “Thanks and if you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to ask.”

2. I immediately reply affirming shipment of the review copy, and close with a question that I didn’t hesitate to ask.

3. Two days, no reply.

Update January 29: Four days, no reply.