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But “Inferno” is jampacked with tricks. And that shaky opening turns out to be one of them. To the great relief of anyone who enjoys him, Mr. Brown winds up not only laying a breadcrumb trail of clues about Dante (this is “Inferno,” after all) but also playing games with time, gender, identity, famous tourist attractions and futuristic medicine. Then there’s the bit with the symmetrical clockwise Archimedean spiral, which will have people slowly rotating their copies of “Inferno,” trying not to look silly as they scrutinize the rounded calligraphy on Page 255.
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The Emperor's Tomb
Joseph Roth; Michael Hofmann, trans.
New Directions, 2013. 200 pp. US$25.95
 The Emperor's Tomb - the last novel Joseph Roth wrote - is a haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and a magically evocative paean to the passing of time and the loss of hope. The Emperor's Tomb runs from 1913 to 1938, from the eve of one world war to the eve of the next, from disaster to disaster. Striped with beauty and written in short propulsive chapters - full of upheavals, reversals and abrupt twists of plot - the novel powerfully sketches a time of change and loss. Prophetic and regretful, intuitive and exact, Roth tells of one man's foppish, sleepwalking, spoiled youth and then his struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna, financial ruin, and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities. |
Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic
Karen Wilson, ed.
University of California Press, 2013. 136 pp. US$24.95
 Influenced by popular notions that the West is a place of vanishing Jews and disappearing Judaism, most people draw a blank at the words "Los Angeles Jew." Yet, the region is home to the second largest number of Jews in North America, and boasts the fourth largest Jewish population in the world, behind only Tel Aviv, New York City, and Jerusalem. This book, and its companion exhibition at the Autry National Center, reveals how Los Angeles has shaped Jewish identities and how Jewish Angelenos have shaped the metropolis.
Six incisive essays look at the mutual influence of people and place as they examine Jewish engagement with frontier society, yidishe kultur and union activism, ethnic identity and Hollywood movies, Jewish women and local politics, and Jews making music in Los Angeles. The book is illustrated with a wealth of images that illustrate how Jews, operating both at the center and the margins of power, have contributed to the place and myth called Los Angeles.
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DiGiovanni: Two weeks ago I got to pick them up – and I've been using them non-stop. It takes a while to get used to them. But I've been wearing them while driving, walking, essentially all the time. It's quite similar to wearing glasses – I don't normally – but without something sitting in front of your eyeballs.
The display is just outside your normal range of vision, so that you have to roll your eyes upwards – it sits on the top right. I turned it on by nods. You can still wear them while driving and know that you are not going to be interrupted by something popping up in your view.
The software experience is primarily voice activated. You say "OK Glass" and then "take a picture", or "Google something" or "give me directions to somewhere".
You can ask it maths questions, you know like "what is two plus two" as you can in Google, as well. As you take pictures, and emails and text messages come in, they go into your timeline which is shown in the display. If you're driving or going somewhere, you get a Google Map with directions. It's much better than having a sat nav – much less distracting, because you're not really taking your attention down off the road – you still have your head up, though you do look up to the right.
You enhance the experience with apps, called Glassware – think of them as micro-web pages. There's some HTML that can be pushed in there. So I got the New York Times headlines pushed there into my timeline. But they don't take priority over other things. More
Barnes & Noble's major price cut on Nooks has apparently worked well in the U.K.: B&N's retail partners report that the Nook Simple Touch is sold out in most locations and B&N's own site lists the device as "sold out," according to Good e-Reader.com.
By on 
Borges’s Pedro Salvadores (1969) hides from the dictator
Rosas in Buenos Aires, by climbing into a secret cellar under his dining room –
and stays there for 10 long years; at first he dreams at night of violent death,
or of the open streets, but after a few years he dreams only of the cellar.
Helen Nathan came up with a brand
and marketing plan before for her series of baking books for kids before the
books were even written. Today, licensing deals yield 4x her book royalties.
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Microsoft is said to have offered
Barnes & Noble $1 billion to buyout the Nook Media business. Where would
that leave the retailer going forward?
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More News from PP:
Amid the
glut of online info and entertainment, how can publishers show consumers that
books are important, asks Erin Cox. Join our Reaching Readers Conference on
May 28 to find out.
The recent
Sharjah Children's Reading Festival offered a unique spectacle for readers
and a snapshot of children's book publishing issues in the Middle East.
Internet literature may be booming
in China, but a recent survey reports that a majority of readers have been
disappointed and unsatisfied with the quality of the books.
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From the Archives:
The challenge with digital is
discovery, so David Roth-Ey of Fourth Estate and William Collins, is now
looking at new ways to engage potential readers, including live events.
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New app helps readers decide what to read
next
Random House New Zealand is pleased to
announce the Random House New Books App for iPad and iPhone is now available
on the App Store. The new app will introduce readers to new books and
features twelve guaranteed good reads, allowing book lovers to sample the
first chapter before buying the book through the iBookstore.
Choosing which book to read can be a hard
decision for many book buyers given the challenge of a myriad of book choices
coupled with limited budgets and time constraints. Readers want to be
assured of a good read and the Random House app for iPad will help make this
decision easier. Readers can explore authors they may have heard of but
weren’t willing to commit to, try prize winning authors that may have sparked
their interest or review a book before recommending it to their book group.
In addition, they can decide if it will make a good gift for a loved one.
Each month the app will update to include
new authors and books for readers to trial. There will also be links to
author interviews and webpages so readers can find out more about their
favourite authors. The books will also be grouped by genre so they can
delve more deeply into their preferred type of book.
The Random House New Books app is
available for free from the App Store on iPad, iPhone or from iTunes.
For more information please contact:
Yvonne Thynne, Publicity Manager
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