paper trail

Dec 2, 2010 @ 9:00:00 am

Thomas Frank

Google’s long-delayed e-book venture, Google Editions, is reportedly gearing up to launch in the next month. “Google Editions hopes to upend the existing e-book market by offering an open, ‘read anywhere’ model that is different from many competitors.” Most notably Amazon.

Michel Houellebecq borrows freely from Wikipedia in his new Prix Goncourt-winning La carte et le territoire. Is it copyright violation? And if it isn’t, is it OK to put Houellebecq’s entire novel online for free? One blogger thinks so...

Critic and poet Stephen Burt’s answer to the question “What can a book review do for a book?” is so spirited and smart that after reading it you’ll applaud too.

The Times Literary Supplement has posted year-end favorites by John Ashbery, A.S. Byatt, Julian Barnes, and others. And the New York Times Book Review has listed its top ten books of 2010.

Can you name a single work of fiction that takes place on the banks of the Potomac? Christopher Hitchens goes in search of the Washington novel.

If you’re looking for us tonight, we’ll be at Le Poisson Rouge from 7 until 9 to celebrate the publication of Bookforum editor Chris Lehmann’s Rich People Things, which, among other things, analyzes a diverse array of cultural artifacts (Wired magazine, iPads, Malcolm Gladwell) that are like catnip to the wealthy. Before the evening becomes too bacchanalian, Lehmann will talk with fellow writers Thomas Frank and Maureen "Moe" Tkacik.