Soo Jin Oh
Another Lesson on Culture from the French
While American publishers are struggling, each on their own, to deal with digital rights held hostage by the Wylie Agency, the French shows us the meaning of solidarity. 50 French publishers refused to go along with the Wylie Agency’s separation of digital rights from paper format publication. Potentially faced with losing all future business in [...]
What can Barnes & Noble do?
Yesterday, I stopped by the flagship Barnes & Noble store in New York on Union Square. Several features distinguish this store, including its spacious layout coupled with multiple floors, an authors series with some of the best known American writers, and from what I understand to be a rather unique store discretion to choose more [...]
My American Novel
At that time, I conceived such narrow constructions of my identity based on gender and ethnicity (myself being female and Asian) as an intrusion on my inner-life, and in the midst of the furor over gender questions brought to the forefront with the overgenerous acclaim of Franzen’s work, I still hold the same viewpoint. Although I don’t plan to read Franzen’s new novel, having read a novel apiece by Franzen and Jennifer Weiner, I can easily say that I’d rather read Freedom over another of Weiner’s chick-lit if only the two authors were on a bookshelf. Yet, if I had free range of any novel to represent my inner-life, it would most likely be Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady.
If you can’t sell books, sell teddy bears
Or that seems to be Borders’ solution to its constant financial problems, at least for the time being until the next quarter with lower than expected sales. Really, the problem with Borders is that it lost its identity about eight or so years ago when it decided to become a shadow of Barnes & Noble. [...]
Not a spine-tingler, in the least
An unfortunate side effect to the lengthy transition of print to digital is our long suffering endurance of stale articles in mainstream media rehashing the same points as every other article in mainstream media.
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