Carpe Libra

Twitter is a blogging format that allows you 130 characters per post. Each blog post is just a sentence. The idea is to give frequent updates as to what you are doing and thinking that are easy to read.

Sounds annoying and, as I’ve found, actually is. However, several Carp books are being Twittered. When you sign up on Twitter, you also receive the one sentence updates from all your Twitter favorites. Thus, you can get a book updated one sentence at a time as you go throughout your day.

Here are two Carp 500 Books that are currently being Twittered:

Moby Dick
Paradise Lost
Someone is also Twittering the works of William Blake, an author on Carp.

Awhile back I told you about the plan to write George Orwell’s journals online in blog format.

Well, here’s the blog. Find out the weather conditions he experienced on this day in 1936! How thrilling!

Pratibha Patil, president of India, has encouraged her people to go ahead and read books. The younger generation needs to develop an affinity for books and not waste all their time on television and the internet.

Apparently Ms Patil is a Republican supporter as she is in direct violation of Michael Moore’s dictates. Look for a new two hour documentary on the scandalous reading habits of Indian presidents and how they undermine democracy, civility and civilization in general.

To celebrate the author’s 100th birthday this Thursday, Houghton Mifflin is publishing a new edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s classic, Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America ($26, 9780618966141/0618966145), that for the first time combines the Eastern Birds and Western Birds guides in one volume, has new maps, 40 new paintings, new range maps and new text. The book also has flown across the digital divide: it includes access to three hours of video podcasts to make bird watching and identification easier.

A Field Guide to Birds has sold more than 8 million copies in five editions and spawned a Peterson franchise that includes guides to trees, plants, wildflowers, edible plants, insects, medicinal plants and herbs, butterflies and moths, rocks and minerals–you can identify the picture.

Michael Moore, who is not on the Carp 500, has issued directives for all Americans to cease reading and instead use that time to work for a candidate that will make life less expensive so then we can afford time to read.

Mr. Moore and I have completely opposite views on politics, mainly, Michael Moore cares; I don’t.

I think, just for the fun of it, I’ll go read right now.

A U.S. court was wrong to award rights to some of John Steinbeck’s best-known novels, including “The Grapes of Wrath,” to his son and granddaughter, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

Back in 2006 a court decided that Steinbeck’s son and granddaughter had rights to about 10 of his works. Now his publisher, Penguin Group, gets to keep all rights. So next time you contemplate buying “Of Mice and Men,” just remember that you are supporting evil Big Publishing.

Back in May I reported that Barnes & Noble were contemplating buying out Borders. Based on my reportage, Borders stock went way up in hopes that B&N could salvage them.

Not gonna happen now. B&N cites the poor credit market right now and the many lengthy leases Borders is in. Oh well, that’s the risk of stock investing and, perhaps, the risk of listening to me.

I did a post a few weeks back about why I read the Carp 500. One of the reasons was that reading feels better than watching TV. I have always doubted that reading is better than watching TV. But I’ve heard all the stuff that says that reading, even if it’s junk, is better for you than watching junk on TV.

Well, guess what? Although this does not exactly prove my point, a new study shows that reading junk and watching junk on TV has the same effect on people.

In other words, your emotions are toyed with in exactly the same way, regardless of whether you are reading or watching TV. Maybe that’s why social critics of the nineteenth century were always going about the way the masses were having their minds ruined by books, while today’s worry about ruination from videogames.

Although, videogames were not part of the study. . . but you see the point. Reading smut is the same as watching it.

George Orwell kept a diary between the years of 1938-1942 where he comments on lots of things like the rise of communism and how many eggs his chickens laid.

Old friends and fans of Orwell who belong to the Orwell Prize are planning on revealing these diaries online in blog format.

That seems pretty cool. It’s always interesting to see what kind of stuff famous people did day to day. He was apparently quite the gardener and observer of weather. I wonder what Orwell would think about his diaries being seen by everyone on the internet. Sounds a tad Orwellian, no?

Bowdoin College has just received a 1,900 volume pop up book collection! Harry Goralnick began collecting pop up books about 10 years ago and went way overboard. His collection includes books “from the children’s literature of Grimm and Sendak, to the pop culture of Star Wars and Warhol, and even the Boston Red Sox.”

The article has some pretty cool pictures. Not sure what a college is going to do with all these books but hey, you never know when you might need 1,900 pop up books to get smarter.