First up, it is officially Operation Teen Book Drop Day, a wonderful day celebrating young adult literature, in which authors are leaving copies of their books in public and publishers are donating 10,000 books to teens on Native and tribal lands. Check out Cynthia Leitich Smith’s and Kiersten White’s blogs for more.
Now then. There have been some great book-related videos making their way around the Internet, and rather than cram them all at the end of This Week in Publishing I thought I’d put them in one post. You know: kind of like how when you were in school and the teacher
didn’t make a lesson planhad some REALLY EDUCATIONAL videos to show you.
(e-mail subscribers, you’ll need to click through to the blog to see the videos)
First up, over the weekend I burned through Major Gap Book The Hobbit (loved!) and am now into FOTR, so I was particularly thrilled to see this new movie trailer mashup, which gives “Shining” a run for its money: Wes Anderson’s “Fellowship of the Ring” (via Andrew Sullivan):
Next up, for those of you who still don’t believe me that e-books will allow books to get better (or at least more beautiful), check out this book trailer for an Alice in Wonderland iPad app:
If you want to get a sense of what reading a non-enhanced e-book is like on the iPad, TeleRead recently reviewed the new Kobo iPad app:
And, of course, now it’s time for the obligatory cat video!! Via Mashable, cats love the iPad:
I was indeed kidding around, Marilyn. But I am concerned about the lack of interoperability in modern gadgets. Communication devices should communicate. I am much impressed with the thoroughness of your research and indeed Nathan’s.
I see that Jeffrey Katzenberg and others are predicting 3D handheld devices without glasses very soon and small 3D TVs without glasses in a few years. But I’m waiting for the I-CAT, which won’t print or have a camera but will have free fur-balls and run on sardines. Mouse operation could be a problem though…
That cat is a hoot! Loved the video.
J. T.,
Thanks. I love doing research.
Ha!Ha!Ha! I love your description of an I-CAT.
Wow – 3D handheld devices and 3D TVs without glasses? That’s fascinating. How would those work?
Nathan: Illustrations are very different from something that moves and which you can play with. As I said, this would be great for kids, but if a typo or a clunky sentence can jar me out of a story, how distracting will an illustration that keeps wiggling its ears be?
I think the multimedia stuff erodes the reading experience. It's pretty, and it's cool, but what I love about books is submerging myself in the story, not playing with the cover art.
Katzenberg also says Hollywood has about six to eight months to figure out what it's gonna do with 3-D… Point being, THE TITANS opened to good box office, but it was shot in 2-D and then run through a 3-D process… Katzenberg calls this the cheap method in contrast to AVATAR which is state of the art/ART.
Katzenberg's conclusion – if Hollywood keeps throwing out the cheap 3-D, audiences will walk, whereas, if Hollywood goes the extra mile, AVATAR style, 3-D may be the biggest cash producer since color!
So, wait a year, year 1/2, before you buy 3-D TV and glasses — you just may not have anything to watch!
Also, there now exists HD Digital hand-held cameras that produce Big Screen quality images, (movies) in ambient light that cost under 10K…
Question, how far behind is a revolution in indie film making comparable to ebook self publishing?
Relevance to this discussion… another Digital breakthrough which could change entertainment as we know it!
Haste yee back 😉
Terrific stuff, Nathan – very fun. Love the cat video – too adorable.
The possiblities shown by the Alice video – wow. A whole new art form is about to be created. I'm with Haste Ye Back – this is an amazing time.
New collaborations, too. Authors and artists and actors will come together to create this new type of book. It's exciting.
And isn't the Hobbit wonderful? I hope you love LOTR – it's not quite as loveable as the Hobbit, of course, but it's a story of true courage and sacrifice. Frodo is the real hero in the books, unlike Sam, who is the hero in the movies. It's worth reading for that perspective alone, I think.
Well, what I really think is that in the movies – Frodo was robbed.
Marilyn – have you considered academic publishing in addition to mainstream. I think alot of journals could use your intelligence.
Haste yee back,
I’m definitely waiting to buy a 3D TV. The first ones are very expensive, and they’re bound to improve. I think the different ways in which 3D movies are made is really interesting, and I’m fascinated to learn here on this blog that we might soon be able to watch 3D without glasses. AVATAR was beautiful. I saw a show with James Cameron and the AVATAR actors, and they talked about how James Cameron actually invents some of his own cameras. Apparently, Martin Scorsese will be shooting his next film in 3D. A filmmaker friend of mine has one of those HD digital handheld cameras, and it is truly awesome. The RED ONE camera – which can be rented – is even more awesome for making indie films.
Mira,
Holy camoly, you just made my day! Thank you! And here I was afraid someone might soon tell me, Just shut up already! Thank you.
Glad you loved The Hobbit. TLOR is awesome. I remember The Two Towers feeling like a long read the first time through, don't worry it's sooo worth it. Of course I've read them all about 7 times over the paste decades.
Every read gives me something new and only when you've read the books do you really appreciate the mastery that was brought to the movies.
Marilyn, AUTOSTEREOSCOPY is what they call 3D without glasses, apparently. Wikipedia has an entry about it.
Here's an IPad story for you…
Jens Stoltenberg, who was in New York for President Barack Obama's nuclear summit, is running the Norwegian government from the United States via his new iPad, his press secretary Sindre Fossum Beyer said.
https://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/15/iceland.flights/index.html?hpt=T2
Yay! Nathan read The Hobbit and is starting LOTR! I know it makes no sense, but it makes me feel I will have a slightly better shot at getting you as my agent once I am ready to query.
Since you're reading FOTR, you may want to check out the History Channel documentary Clash of the Gods: Tolkien's Monsters. It looks at how Tolkien actually put together his books and his inspirations for the mythology.
The cat/iPad video is enough to make me want to get an iPad just to torture my cat!
Good luck on your LOTR reading… I had to get through the trilogy in unabridged audiobooks–each book was between 22 & 26 hours! Yikes!
"those of you who still don't believe me that e-books will allow books to get better "
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO – not better or more beautiful. Maybe, just maybe, more interesting in certain circumstances (like if you're a ten yr old with ADD).
It reminds me of that time just before everyone started to take the Web seriously, when CD based multimedia was considered to be the future and everyone was furiously adding stuff like this to texts like that. It was awful then and it is awful now. It is in the interactivity and the creativity and the extension of the everyday that technology adds value, not really in pissing about with bells and whistles, especially when the text is already near perfect (by text I mean words and pictures as in, every text is an intertext)
A relative just showed me his Ipad with Alice in Wonderland on it – it was much more beautiful than the lovely old monocolor book I have of it, though the thrill of turning the pages would no doubt wear off. The potential for children's books is huge.
And, I would not take my nice old paper/board/cloth copy into the rain, or the bath. I can put the Kindle in a good ziplock bag. Touch-screen technology not so great with ziplocks, but I imagine they can waterproof (and dustproof) these things, in time.
Bring on the progress.
God, I hope the cat's claws stay in!
I have to question e-books making books more beautiful–perhaps the average book will be prettier than a plain paperback, but is anything more lovely than antique books with finely stamped covers and engravings? Or illuminated manuscripts? Because I don't think any format for our literature is lovelier than those.
But combine reading LOTR with that hilarious mash-up–that's what I call epic 🙂 And only possible with a multimedia device like ye olde ipad, certainly.
Thanks, J. T., for information about the name AUTOSTEREOSCOPY. I wondered if 3D without glasses would have to be made with only one camera rather than two cameras. It looks like that might be true, and that it might involve a revolutionary type of camera that captures images from multiple perspectives. I found a patent advertisement about it: here. Thanks for telling me about this. I definitely don't understand most of the technical aspects behind this, but I find it fascinating.
I think that e-readers are going to give authors and storytellers a new avenue for experimenting with storytelling. Whether it becomes the norm or not, I don't know. I think that creating multi-dimensional book experiences could be quite pricey though.
It reminds me of the possibilities that the internet and other multi-media have given rise to in storytelling, like:
253 Geoff Ryman (https://www.ryman-novel.com/)
Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson (https://www.eastgate.com/catalog/PatchworkGirl.html)
Paranoland by Patrick Boivin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGo0UWNe2nU&playnext_from=TL&videos=u53e_lxRu34)
Thanks for posting the link to the iPad cat.
The dog video was funny, too.
Best,
Tambra