Fifty shades of Grey has been pulled from another US library:

“It’s quite simple — it doesn’t meet our selection criteria,” said Cathy Schweinsberg, library services director.

“Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.”

But…

Copies of “The Complete Kama Sutra” are available through the Cocoa Beach, Mims/Scottsmoor, Palm Bay and Titusville branches. Also up for grabs countywide: “Fanny Hill,” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Fear of Flying,” “Tropic of Cancer” and “Lolita.”

So what makes “Fifty Shades of Grey” different?

“I think because those other books were written years ago and became classics because of the quality of the writing,” Schweinsberg said. “This is not a classic.”

So it’s been pulled because it’s porn? Or because it’s considered too poorly written to one day qualify as a “classic”?

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

the rural romance genre is growing at a phenomenal rate, with publishers estimating sales have tripled in the past four years. A uniquely Australian take on romance fiction, ”chook lit”, as it’s affectionately known, routinely outsells local popular fiction and crime.

Chook lit. Is that always going to be the thing now? We have to come up with some silly little catchy phrase to tag each sub-genre with?

(via Romance and rodeos rule as rural readers turn to ‘Chook lit’.)

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

‘These Are Your Kids on Books’ Poster Goes Viral – GalleyCat.

[via @quadelle]

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

• Story about teenagers living with terminal cancer and their approach to life and death.
• As you’d expect from John Green, it is very cleverly written with some nice touches of humour.
• If you like Green’s other stuff, you’ll probably like this. See also: Jenny Downham’s Before I die.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

findings.com.

Find, organize and share highlights from your eBooks and the Web.

Just came across this via Craig Mod and plan to have a poke around in the next little while.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

Craig Mod on the value of being able to point at things.

This lack of platforminess is what makes many iPad magazine apps impotent. They end up in no better a position than a printed magazine. There are no routes by which you can directly get to their content. You can’t point in. You’re forced to go through the “front door” to get anywhere. And it’s a door usually weighing several hundred megabytes and infuriatingly difficult to unlock.

Craig Mod’s work has only recently come to my attention. I plan now to go back and read more of what he has written in the past.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

Looks like Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have been doing some reading of ancient proverbs, perhaps specifically: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Interesting development.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

Nice work..

The Miles Franklin award is arguably Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. It was won three times by David Ireland. His books are out of print in this nation. This seems absurd, a cultural shame, as does the fact that Miles Franklin’s celebrated My Brilliant Career can only be bought in Australia in an American edition; it is out of print here.

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

The Information Activist has a few things to say about The Apple Way for Libraries (a Manifesto?).

I wanted to grab a snippet to give you a taste but if you work in libraries, you really should go and read the whole thing.

He says things like this:

Library’s need to regain control. Libraries need to have end-to-end products. We need to create a positive user experience, but without the ability to make necessary changes to a database, catalog, or other information resource, we simply cannot make the necessary changes.

And this:

If we have to teach classes on how to search, then maybe we need to pause and think. Are the systems being designed for the user, or do we design users for the system?

Not to mention this:

Remember patrons don’t need us anymore. In the past, distribution models and pricing caused a real need for us. Bookstore as we know them today, or knew them yesterday, did not exist like that. It used to be damn near impossible to get some books, especially in rural areas. Thomas Jefferson would wait up to 6 months for book to arrive from Europe. It’s now so easy and relatively cheap. Easy and fast beats free any day. And the notion that some can’t afford this stuff won’t care us forever. Instead we ought to focus on creating a want in our patrons for us. We do this through creating powerful user experiences. Experiences that we need to control, and we simply cannot do this in our current model.

Seriously, go and read it. You might not agree with everything, but I suspect you will find something to make you think long and hard about what your library is doing.

(via @hughrundle)

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net

David Carr at The NYT:

The Justice Department finally took aim at the monopolistic monolith that threatened to dominate the book industry. So imagine the shock when the bullet aimed at threats to competition went whizzing by Amazon — which not long ago had a 90 percent stranglehold on e-books — and instead, struck five of the six biggest publishers and Apple, a minor player in the realm of books.

In the short term, stopping the agency model that threatened Amazon’s ability to completely own the market will result in lower ebook prices from Amazon. They can sell most of them at a loss until they do own the market. Then what?

Wherever you happen to be reading it now, Jonathan published this post at: BookBoy.net