Carpe Libra

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.

A new book examines the lives of George Orwell (”1984“) and Evelyn Waugh (”Brideshead Revisited“). Although these two authors lived much different lives (Orwell chose to live near poverty while Waugh liked to party with rich guys), they both were making the same point.

This is about as deep as I’m liable to get with ya today.

No, reading is one of the few things remaining that is not yet an official Olympic sport, but wait a few years. In fact, there are pretty good odds that reading in your underwear might get in, seeing as how beach volleyball got in.

The title of this post does not refer to reading as an Olympic sport but rather refers to the Wall Street Journal’s articleon the top five books on the Olympics, as suggested by ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap.

A library in New Zealand is offering a chance to get out of overdue fines: beat the librarian on Playstation’s Guitar Hero video game! If you can defeat him, all overdue fines are wiped off the books.

Facebook is a social networking site which contains many annoying aspects. One of the annoying things is the news feeds where people “poke” each other and give inane updates about their lives.

Well, some clever soul decided to do Hamlet in Facebook news feed lingo. Here’s part of it.

The king poked the queen.

The queen poked the king back.

Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.

Marcellus is pretty sure something’s rotten around here.

Hamlet became a fan of daggers.

Read the rest here.

Little House on the Prairie is a Carp 500 book. My memory of the book is my mother reading us these books in our living room in Michigan. They smelled good. I also remember my sister picking to watch the stupid show instead of That’s Incredible. How annoying. Mysteriously moving toilet paper in unoccupied bathrooms is way more thrilling than whether or not Pa will make it back before the big storm. Ghost bathrooms rock.

Anyway, I guess I’m in a minority there. Little House on the Prairie has now opened as a musical at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater. The show runs for 12 weeks until October 19. There is a chance the show may make Broadway.