Middle East must-reads

About a month ago, Q&Q‘s B.C. correspondent, Cheri Hanson, reported on the elaborate plans of The Tyee, an online B.C. newspaper, to expand its book coverage. So far, it’s been pretty good stuff. Lots of B.C.-oriented pieces, like Crawford Kilian’s “BC Books No One Has Written” piece, which included a fair number of solid suggestions. And more recently, just in time for, er, war, Deborah Campbell has compiled a list of Middle East must-reads. They range from Marjan Satrapi’s Persepolis to My Name Is Rachel Corrie, the controversial play based on the writings of the American activist who was killed in Gaza.

Related links:
Click here for the Q&Q article on The Tyee
Click here for The Tyee piece on unwritten B.C. books
Click here for the Middle East must-reads piece

Londonstani syndrome

A tipster pointed us to an item on Spacing Wire, a Toronto blog (and spinoff of Spacing magazine) concerned with public space issues, that took issue with Chevrolet’s use of sidewalk stenciling in a current marketing campaign, similar to HarperCollins’ current Londonstani campaign. As you may have read in Q&Q intern Briony Smith’s story last Friday, the multinational publisher has adopted guerilla marketing tactics, stenciling the tiger image that adorns the book jacket on sidewalks in front of media companies and bookstores.

Referring to the goals of this aspect of Chevy’s campaign, Shawn Micallef of Spacing Wire wrote: “[M]aybe they looked forward to a blog like Spacing or Aquatic Existence picking up on it, and getting Johnny’s word out even more. If you turn your speakers up right now, you may be able to hear Bob Seger’s Like A Rock in the background.” HarperCollins certainly seems to be taking that approach. They issued a news release about the Londonstani campaign earlier this week that seemed a touch defensive, but mainly pleased that someone noticed. “Booksellers had mixed reactions to their sidewalks being painted,” the news release reads, “but there’s no doubt they are much more aware of this book than they would otherwise be.”

Related links:
Click here for the Spacing Wire item
Click here for the original Q&Q story

Screwed Sisters

A Winnipeg band called the Wyrd Sisters is licking its wounds after the legal beating it took recently. According to a story on Pitchforkmedia.com, the band sued “pretty much everyone involved” in a scene in the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie that featured Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and Radiohead members Phil Selway and Johnny Greenwood performing for Harry and friends at a school dance as an obviously fictional band called the Weird Sisters. (The scene also appears in J.K. Rowling’s novel.) At one point leading up to the legal proceedings, Warner Brothers apparently offered the real band’s co-founder a $50,000 settlement. She declined and will likely regret that decision for the rest of her life. “The Wyrd Sisters not only lost the court battle,” writes Kati Llewellyn (presumably no relation to People’s Court announcer and reporter Doug Llewellyn), “but have been ordered to pay $140,000 of Warner Brothers’ legal fees due to the ‘highly intrusive’ lawsuit and criticism of the judiciary involved in the legal battle.”

Related links:
Click here for the Pitchfork article

Inside Jacobs’ house

The Globe and Mail‘s Jeff Gray had a piece in Wednesday’s paper about whether or not the city should buy Jane Jacobs’ house in The Annex. It’s on the market with an asking price of $850,000. Some folks at Toronto City Hall think it would be nice if they could buy it and turn it into a museum or something. Others, like Mayor David Miller, who relied on Jacobs’ guidance, thinks a plaque out front would be a nice, subtle way to pay tribute. Either way, this debate bores Quillblog silly.

But you know what’s more fun? Looking at pictures of other people’s houses. And thankfully, intrepid Quillblog reader Rebecca found the MLS.ca listing for Jacobs’ house, complete with photos. Interestingly, the listing promotes the fact that this was Jacobs’ home. And the Globe article says the real estate agent suggested keeping her office intact.

Related links:
Click here for the MLS listing
Click here for the Globe piece

Free at last

Our long national nightmare is over: Indigo will stock the latest issue of Free Inquiry, a humanist magazine that no one has ever heard of, according to a story by James Adams in Saturday’s Globe and Mail. It turns out the whole thing was just one big misunderstanding. Mercifully, it was all ironed out when the mag’s editor was the lucky recipient of a phone call from Indigo executive Joel Silver. “According to Mr. Flynn,” Adams writes, “the Indigo executive ‘gave me a sort of a stammering apology, said that the June-July issue was blocked by accident, and that they have contacted [Ajax, Ont.-based Disticor Magazine Distribution Services] to send it through again.’”

All of this still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For example, did the editor of that magazine just make of fun of Silver for having a speech impediment?

Related links:
Click here for the Globe and Mail article

Gormless

Quillblog doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but there is an Ann Coulter plagiarism scandal brewing. Last Sunday, shortly after the release of her new book, Godless, the New York Post, a newspaper that has carried Coulter’s columns, published an article that quoted John Barrie, who created a “plagiarism-recognition system,” as saying that her new bestseller featured at least three instances of plagiarism and there were many more in her syndicated column. Two of the passages from the book were allegedly lifted from other newspapers and the third was taken directly from — wait for it — a Planned Parenthood brochure. That Planned Parenthood passage was actually used in a chapter on Bill Clinton.

But, seriously … the so-called liberal media that has provided Coulter with so much fodder over her seemingly interminable career in punditry is all over this story. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann (whom Quillblog has admired since his days anchoring ESPN’s Sportscenter) has had Barrie on Countdown. (Check out the video on Raw Story.) And the Muckraker spinoff of Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo blog has been following this very closely, providing updates a few times a day.

For her part, Coulter has responded by ripping the Post in her latest column, reports Editor & Publisher. “How crappy a newspaper is the Post?” asks Coulter. “Let me put it this way: It’s New York’s second-crappiest paper.”

Related links:
Click here for the original New York Post article
Click here for the Raw Story item, with the Olbermann video
Click here for TPM Muckraker
Click here for the Editor & Publisher story

Midnight express

The Turks were right. The film Midnight Express wasn’t an accurate or fair portrayal of Turkey. If it were, the hash smuggler wouldn’t get thrown into a hellish prison, a novelist would. A few months back, it was Orhan Pamuk who avoided trial for charges that were brought about because he talked openly about the Armenian genocide in an interview. Now it’s Elif Shafak, a Turkish-born novelist now teaching at the University of Arizona. Her latest novel, published in Turkey as Father and Bastard, has raised the ire of lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, described by BIAnet, a Turkish website that specializes in human rights coverage, as “a leading member of the right-wing organisation of lawyers who call themselves ‘The Unity of Jurists.’” The local prosecutor in Turkey had decided not to pursue charges of “publicly insulting Turkishness” against Shafak, her publisher, and her translator. But a court overturned that decision after Kerincsiz’s appeal. A trial date hasn’t been set yet.

Related links:
Click here for the story
Click here for Shafak’s website

Not-so-free inquiry

Indigo is at it again. After making headlines for pulling the recent issue of Harper’s that featured Art Spiegelman’s cartoons and article in response to the Danish Muhammad Cartoons situation, the chain has dropped Free Inquiry, a humanist magazine, reports the Toronto Star‘s Antonia Zerbisias on her blog.

It’s an intriguing decision, especially considering that Quillblog was able to buy a copy of the April/May Free Inquiry that featured the actual Danish Muhammad Cartoons at The World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, just a couple days after Harper’s was pulled. In a letter that Zerbisias excerpts, the mag’s editors don’t seem to know why Indigo has done this. “Presumably the controversial item was not Edward O. Wilson and Arthur C. Clarke, among others, congratulating one of us on attaining his eightieth year. Was it scholar Eileen McDonagh’s presentation of a novel defense of abortion rights? Or perhaps the article by controversial ethicist Peter Singer defending the cartoons and condeming the jailing of David Irving for Holocaust denial?” Zerbisias thinks it’s the last one — she sets that line in bold on her blog.

Related links:
Click here for Zerbisias’s entry
Click here for Peter Singer’s piece from Free Inquiry

BEC task force named

Reed Exhibitions has officially announced the names of the industry players on the task force looking into the future of BookExpo Canada. According to a news release issued on June 28, the members are: “Paul McNally, McNally Robinson Booksellers; Steve Budnarchuk, Audreys Books Ltd.; Carolyn Reid, Indigo Books & Music, Inc.; Susan Dayus, Canadian Booksellers Association; Claudio Pascucci, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited; Linda Scott, Random House of Canada Ltd.; Colleen O’Neill, Canadian Publishers’ Council; Jackie Hushion, Canadian Publishers’ Council; Judy Brunsek, Kids Can Press Ltd.; Kim McArthur, McArthur & Company; Krys Ross, Association of Canadian Publishers; Elaine Smith, Reed Exhibitions; and Dahlia de Rushe, Reed Exhibitions.” McNally will chair the task force.

The news release also laid out some of the task force’s goals, inlcuding increasing overall attendance, improved “cost-benefit balance” for publishers and booksellers, and increased media coverage. All of this has come about because some publishers have been unhappy with the return on their investment in the annual trade show. Some of the rumoured ideas for changing the fair range from moving the event to the fall to opening the show to the public.

We should have a better idea of what might happen after July 12. According to the release, the task force will issue “an industry-wide survey on June 30 and review survey findings and develop recommendations during the Task Force’s next meeting scheduled for July 12.” As always, Q&Q is deeply interested in any and all information our loyal readers may have on this story, especially the survey due out on Friday. Drop us a line at drowe@quillandquire.com or call 416-364-3333 x.3113.

Related links:
Click here for the first story about the potential BookExpo changes from June 2
Click here for our June 6 story on the pre-BookExpo debate
Click here for our June 14 story on the creation of the task force

Shuffle up and read

Motoko Rich of The New York Times has a nifty piece in today’s paper about author appearances in casinos. Most of the authors that have been participating in this so far are mass market stars like Janet Evanovich and Mary Higgins Clark, but at least one casino has plans for appearances by Augusten Burroughs and Erica Jong.

Rich attended an Evanovich event at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and describes the scene like this: “Just outside the theater where Ms. Evanovich addressed more than 1,200 ardent, hooting fans, were the vast halls filled with more than 7,000 slot machines, clanging and flashing 24 hours a day. The nearby Fuddruckers was advertising ‘a 25 lb. party burger.’”

But author Jacquelyn Mitchard, who has appeared at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, told Rich that she sold a lot of books. “They were all saying, ‘Oh, this is just the perfect thing to bring back from Las Vegas for my sister.’ It was sort of the alternative to a shot glass.”

Related links:
Click here for The New York Times article