Booksprung » funny

John Hodgman has some great ideas for repurposing bookstores

Chris Walters — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:03:38 +0000

This Daily Show segment where Jon Hodgman discusses Borders (it starts at the 7:57 mark) was aired nearly a week ago, but in my defense, Borders officially gave up the ghost nearly a month before that, so it’s not like this is breaking news. No, the reason I’m sharing it is because it’s good weekend fun—it parodies those “how bookstores can survive” articles, plus there are jokes about Internet shoppers, overly-specialized magazines, bookstore employees and book snobs, and humorless authors.

I especially like Hodgman’s second suggestion:

JON: So what — what is the alternative to this?

HODGMAN: Well, instead of hosting readings, why not host exciting live writings? Bring the author in, tie him to a desk, and make him write a novel to order. Customers can shout out their own ideas while pelting the writer with $4.00 scones. It’ll be fun! George R. R. Martin not finishing that new “Game of Thrones” book fast enough for you? Well maybe some hot chai latte down his neck will speed him up.

It reminds me of this bit from Monty Python about Thomas Hardy writing for a live audience:

But it also reminds me of Misery, which somehow is just not as funny:

In comedy, the right prop can mean everything.

If you don’t want to sit through Comedy Central’s ads or can’t stream it in your country, Jon Cog at beyond-black-friday.com has transcribed the Hodgman segment for your reading pleasure. I think he left out a joke about how Internet shoppers masturbate, but otherwise it’s pretty complete.

[Via beyond-black-friday.com]

Paper sculptures in Pottermore video are beautiful, make book hard to read

Chris Walters — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:27:05 +0000

Don’t loan J.K. Rowling any first editions! The author of Harry Potter doesn’t just love ebooks now, she hates printed books. Why, look at the lengths she’ll go to deface one in her new video announcing her HP ebook venture:

The hand-cut, stop-motion paper animations are gorgeous. You definitely can’t slice up an E Ink screen to produce such intricate and delicate shapes. On the other hand, you can’t really read the book anymore once you put your knife away. There’s always a trade off.

Here’s the full video so you can see the animations in action:

Borders employees amuse Internet with snarky sign humor

Chris Walters — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:14:06 +0000

Buzzfeed has a fun/sad page of 13 different signs recently found in Borders stores across the U.S. Some of them convey the sort of opinions you imagine bookstore employees are usually forced to keep private, which is always fun to read. A couple are brilliant, like the “No Restrooms” one that was going around last week, or the ambitiously dire architectural signage seen above.

“Bitter Borders Compilation” [Buzzfeed via Shelf Awareness]

90-second “A Wrinkle in Time” is like a Spark Notes video made by tiny, insane actors

Chris Walters — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:08:19 +0000

The problem with old age, or Internet overdoses, or vitamin B12 deficiency (that’s today’s health story), is that you forget the classics. For example, I know Charlotte was a spider, but did she save her pig-baby from a bejeweled Hobbit? Who can say? Similarly, I remember that there’s something called a tesseract, but I think that it might be the name of one of the rats of NIMH.

James Kennedy has come up with an entertaining solution to all this old person amnesia. Instead of over-explaining it, I’ll just embed the first entry in his 90-Second Newbery Video contest. It’s a retelling of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” Watch! Learn! LOVE! (Crash!)

You can submit your own highly compressed summaries to the festival until this fall, at which point some of them will appear in a “90-Second Newbery Film Festival” at the New York Public Library. Kennedy points out that anyone can enter, including classrooms, individuals, and librarians. Just make sure you follow the rules and choose a Newbery award-winning or honor-winning book.

Here are my favorite two suggestions from Kennedy to help get your creative juices flowing:

“Everyone loves the tender, heartbreaking Bridge to Terabithia (1978), but you know what might make it even better? A 90-second machinima version done with the characters in the video game Halo.

[...]

“Or even, dare I dream, Charlotte’s Web done in the nightmarish style of David Lynch’s Eraserhead?”

With clips like that, who needs enhanced ebooks?

“The 90-SECOND NEWBERY Film Festival” [James Kennedy]

Is a Kindle bullet proof? There’s one quick way to find out.

Chris Walters — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:18:04 +0000

“Can a book save your life?” That’s what Tom Shillue of the literary journal Electric Literature asks in the clip above, and you can tell he should be taken very seriously because he does that TV news journalist walk toward the camera at the beginning. (EL’s next clip should test which books are sexual predators.)

Shillue and his hired gunman put bullets into a number of the biggest–meaning heftiest in this case–books published in 2010, as well as into a second generation Kindle. If you hold any sort of strong feelings against Franzen, Lethem, Moody, or Bezos then you might enjoy the carnage.

You can watch the clip to see all the results for yourself, but I probably won’t be spoiling anything by pointing out that none of the test targets were made of Kevlar.

[found via eBookNewser]

My favorite childhood book of all time is now an iPad app

Chris Walters — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:51:44 +0000

[And now a quick interruption from Kindle posts...]

In my opinion, there is one book that surpasses all others in children’s literature, and it involves Grover insisting that you do not turn the page. In fact, that’s pretty much all it is, page after page. And although I’m being a little jokey about saying it’s the best kid’s book ever, it was my first experience with self-aware fiction, the first time I read a book that knew it was a book and that asked me to engage with it as a reader reading a book.

And now it’s an iPad app and on sale for 99 cents, and I am overjoyed. Nerd Christmas came early this year.

iPad edition on iTunes App Store: The Monster at the End of This Book (for iPad) – Sesame Street – $0.99
Print edition on Amazon: “The Monster at the End of this Book” – $8.99

[found via eBookNewser]

A reminder that not everyone likes to receive a book for a gift

Chris Walters — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:27:58 +0000

That Kindle holiday ad now running on U.S. television warms me like a cup of hot chocolate, but I suspect it’s something of a Christmas miracle. For contrast:

Once, while I was working at a mortgage company back in college (this was before the industry destroyed America–we actually verified incomes), I was forced to participate in a Secret Santa office party. I drew the name of an older man who still typed his loan applications on a manual typewriter, and since I had no idea what to give him, I donated money to the Red Cross and bought him a copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

This was a mistake. I didn’t get fired or ostracized, but as soon as he unwrapped the little paperback and looked at it like a dog hearing a far off noise, all of my older coworkers fell silent, more out of embarrassment for me than for him, and I realized that you do not give books as gifts. At least, not without first making sure the recipient is a reader.

Oh, I just remembered another one! I gave my mom a book of Carl Sandburg poems when I was a teen. I think I’d just graduated high school, and I was obsessed with Sandburg and T.S. Eliot. For her birthday, I gave her a used volume of Sandburg’s poems as if that were a perfectly sane thing to do. To her credit, she was very gracious about it, and I never saw the book again.

Update: For the record, I like books as gifts, unless the book is by C.S. Lewis.

[Found via EvilReads]

"The Onion" releases 5 exclusive Kindle books for $2.99 each

Chris Walters — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:19:23 +0000

If you enjoy the silly fake news and editorials of The Onion–my favorite thing to see is when really uptight strangers make the mistake of thinking a story is real and go bananas denouncing it–then you’ll be happy to know that the company is releasing five low-priced collections exclusively to the Kindle Store:

America’s Finest Tech News
Chronicles of the Area Man
The Finest Reporting on Literature, Media, and Other Dying Art Forms
The Best of Jim Anchower
The Best of Herbert Kornfeld

(I like how the late Herbert Kornfeld sort of looks like one of those Great American Author portraits lining the walls of a Barnes & Noble coffee shop.)

I’m not sure how I feel yet about this growing world of exclusive titles on various ebook stores (Amazon is the most aggressive at it so far), because it has the potential to really mess up availability in the future. That said, if you’re looking for a unique Kindle gift that isn’t available elsewhere, these are some good cheap options.

If your taste runs more to Jean Teasdale, The Onion‘s cringe-inducing general interest humor columnist, there’s a book of her collected columns, “A Book of Jean’s Own!”. It’s $9.99.

Update: After the jump, I’ve embedded web previews of all but the “Tech News” collection, which isn’t working as of this morning.

“The Onion Now Available Through Kindle” [eBookNewser]

Amy Sedaris mocks ereaders in funny promo clip

Chris Walters — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:01:23 +0000

After finally turning her new book, “Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People,” around so that the cover is upright and facing the camera, the always hyperactive comedian Amy Sedaris says, “For many of you young readers, this is a book.” She goes on from there to poke gentle fun at the whole burgeoning ebook scene, especially Amazon’s role in it.

Why am I posting this on an ebook blog? Because I think you’ll want to start saving up your money for her new “high-tech book reading aid” for printed books: the Perusatron. Or Peraseltron. Perusaltron? She can’t quite seem to get the name right, but it sure looks handy. And I totally got the scoop on Gizmodo and Engadget for once.

Note that her new book actually isn’t available in Kindle format, but since it’s mostly photographs, I guess I’m not surprised.

Amy Sedaris – Author Video [Amazon]

The Kindle is so easy to use, I can crash my car while reading it

Chris Walters — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:41:14 +0000

This video is making the rounds right now, and I thought some other Kindle owners might appreciate it. I sort of wish by the end of the clip he tried to play a trumpet, just to prove how hardcore he is about multitasking.

[via TechCrunch]