Bookmarks: Going Rogue mistakes, aliens and werewolves, Xbox Bibles, and more

A few bookish links from around the Web:

• Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir hits shelves today. Palin tells Oprah in an unused clip from yesterday’s interview that “logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a real difficult exercise to write the book” (via GalleyCat) 
• The Associated Press has compiled a list of the errors found in Going Rogue
• Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight empire series, also sat on Oprah’s couch in a rare public appearance last Friday. In an unused clip (via Entertainment Weekly), Meyer admits to being “a little burned out by vampires” and says that she “may go spend some time with … aliens.” 
• For those of you sick of everything vampire, Bookgasm offers a werewolf alternative in David Wellington’s Frostbite 
• The New Oxford American Dictionary‘s Word of the Year is “unfriend,” which is defined as: “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”  Runners-up for the title included “hashtag,” “sexting,” “teabagger,” and “tramp stamp”
• The future is digital: the National Post reports that students at Toronto’s Blyth Academy will all receive a Sony Reader to replace those stuffy old textbooks of yore 
• How would you like your Bible?  Handwritten or on your Xbox? 

2018: the year of total digital takeover?

The end is nigh … 

In a survey of 840 international industry experts conducted by the Frankfurt Book Fair, nearly half said that by 2018, digital sales will overtake those of conventionally published books.

According to an article in today’s Bookseller, 27% of the experts surveyed in 2008 said that digital books would never overtake the printed word; this year, only 22% still hold that belief. 

A whopping 80% said they embraced this technological future rather than seeing it as a threat to the publishing methods of old.

From the article:

“Now is the time to seek out new strategies, to scour the market, to engage in international benchmarking,” said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair. “The one true business model is still a long way off and investments are still being held in check–at the same time, however, the fear that content will only be distributed free of charge on the Web in the future seems to have been averted for the time being.”

With news this month of Disney’s digital book push, the rumoured Apple Tablet “redefining newspapers, textbooks, and magazines,” the possible arrival of the Kindle in the U.K., and e-book sites launched by The Daily Beast and Sony, 2018 suddenly seems a lot closer …

Bookmarks: Mockingbird, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and Sony Reader’s Library Finder

Sundry links from around the Web:

• “Author whose books are most likely to be found in Oxfam’s secondhand charity shops” is probably not the recognition Dan Brown was hoping for
• Crayola presents kids’ author Eric Carle with a 5-foot-tall crayon named Very Hungry Caterpillar Green
• Eoin Colfer’s sixth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy” is getting its own theme song
• The long-awaited memoir from Senator Ted Kennedy, who passed away last night, will be published in September
• Gizmodo test drives the Sony Reader’s new Library Finder service, which lets you check out e-books from your local (American) library for free, direct to your reader
• Lawrence Hill on To Kill a Mockingbird, and why we should focus more on Canadian stories of slavery, racism, and civil rights

Sony Reader rated

Charles McGrath has been “test driving” the lastest e-book device from Sony and has reviewed it for The New York Times. Although the technology has come a long way, he says, the Sony Reader still needs some work: “It’s small and lightweight — about the size and heft of a pocket notebook — and, in a quaint little nod to the antique technology, it comes housed in a leatherette cover that actually makes it look like a book. But once you flip open the cover, the controls to operate the thing are maddening.”

McGrath’s complaints and compliments often come together:

The screen is not backlighted, which also saves on juice but nevertheless seems a regrettable throwback to the Gutenberg era. When it comes to reading in bed, the Reader and the traditional book work equally poorly.

McGrath does praise the Reader’s capacity, noting that it can hold about 80 books, or more with a memory card. But even if you weren’t thinking of putting a Reader in someone’s Christmas stocking, the review itself is an entirely entertaining read.

Related links:
Click here for the full article in The New York Times