Illinois Press Book Blog

Hi,

This may go down in the “dog ate my homework” annals but the following is true:

-The first package that I shipped to you 2nd day air was returned to us because our UPS coordinator that day accidentally mis-keyed your address
-The second package that I shipped to you was accidentally destroyed by UPS

Because each of these things typically happen MAYBE once every six months, and they both happened in successive weeks with the same book, I fear that you are not meant to receive (insert book title here).  That said, we’re giving it another try, though it won’t arrive in time for your next issue.

My apologies.

Inside Higher Ed has a piece this morning on CiteULike. I’m trying to figure out if this has any impact on book publicity. It will probably most affect our Journals department and the History Cooperative.

Three new books just landed on my desk:

Outsider Within: Reworking Anthropology in the Global Age by Faye V. Harrison (March 3, 2008)

Religion and Spirituality in Korean America edited by David K. Yoo and Ruth H. Chung (March 3, 2008)

PCBs: Human and Environmental Disposition and Toxicology edited by Larry G. Hansen and Larry W. Robertson (February 25, 2008)

The future publication dates are noted above but all will be available to order in the next few weeks.

People often ask me, “Alan, why did you get involved in animation?”
 
And, I’d add here, “Why did you stay involved?”
 
Well, it wasn’t just my child’s delight at so many wonderful cartoons at so many Saturday matinees at the Center and Royal movie theatres in Bloomfield, New Jersey, as a kid. Though that is a factor.
 
It wasn’t just my taking for granted as a student and teacher of film that animation is a form of film. Though that is a factor.
 
It wasn’t just the request of Madame Barbara Gré, who gave us the Mari Kuttna Bequest in Film in the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Sydney, that I bring the Hungarian animator Sandor Reisenbüchler to Sydney because her daughter Mari loved animation most of all film forms and his work in animation most of all animators. Though that is a factor.
 
It was what I wrote in my 1991 introduction to The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation, my realisation that not only is animation a form of film, film—all film, film “as such”—is a form of animation (a claim I made 10 years before Lev Manovich, I might add, but which, I must add in turn, others made before me, including Sergei Eisenstein). (more…)

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Brainstorn blog links to a recent report on book publishing trends.  The sky seems to be holding its own in East Central Illinois.

I’ve been working on the press release for our Printers Row exhibit this June.  As in past years we will be sharing a space with the University of Illinois Library, but this year the Illini Union Bookstore and Dalkey Archive Press will join our tent for one big University of Illinois family affair.  As I was wrapping up the latest draft to include information on Dalkey’s proposed literary translations panel featuring participants from Dalkey, University of Illinois Press, and Northwestern University, I came across this post that considers language and translation, and mentions Dalkey. Coincidence?

One of the residual benefits of scanning the trades—Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist—for reviews of University of Illinois Press books is tripping over the title of a book I might like to read. Special Topics in Calamity Physics caught my attention in Publishers Weekly a while back and became one of my favorite books of 2006. I recently saw a review for Dan Kennedy’s Rock On: An Office Power Ballad (Algonquin Books), which is “equal parts This is Spinal Tap and The Office” according to the text on the back of the book. No disagreement here. Most of the book chronicles Kennedy’s days on the job for Atlantic Records in New York as the major record labels are trying to forestall the end-game of the digital revolution. My favorite chapter is Kennedy’s account of attending an Iggy Pop concert, an experience that was the antithesis of his daily interaction in the business of music.

“You suddenly realize every punk band you thought was blowing your mind back when you were sixteen was simply a cute little messenger delivering a wadded note to you from this man, wherever he might have been that night.”

If I ever write a book, and happen to do an author reading, I think for one of my segments I’ll want to “cover” Kennedy’s Iggy chapter. An evangelist for these seven-and-a-half pages titled “The Salvation of Stooges,” I read aloud to my wife last night.

“Iggy is screaming for everybody to come up on stage! Um, unfortunately, Mr. Pop, I am paralyzed and almost crying like a . . . housewife in the front row of Tom Jones at Caesar’s Palace, so I’m not gonna be able to get up there with the others.”

I don’t think it quite worked coming out of my mouth but I’ll keep practicing. Oh, and that original sealed copy of The Stooges Funhouse LP that I had planned to sell on Ebay? I’m holding onto it for at least another week.

An article about women for president that doesn’t mention Women for President.

Two new books just landed on my desk:

-Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun: Tracing Change in African Art by Edna G. Bay

-Holy Dogs & Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition by Laura Hobgood-Oster (currently running neck-and-neck with Tom Goyens’s Beer and Revolution for the unofficial University of Illinois Press book title of the year!)

The publication date for both books is February 25, 2008, but they will be available to order by the end of next week.

The January 14, 2008, issue of Publishers Weekly features a cover story on this season’s political books.  Asked to comment on Erika Falk’s book Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns, University of Illinois Press Director Willis Regier offered, “This book could hardly be more timely. Already we’re seeing more attention to Senator Clinton’s hair and wardrobe than to her health plan.”