The government’s decision to pursue major publishers on antitrust charges has put Amazon, the nation’s largest bookseller, in a powerful position to decide how much an e-book will cost.
Originally posted here:
Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals
Bolivia is to cancel the contract of a Brazilian firm that was building a controversial road through the Amazon rainforest, President Evo Morales says.
See the article here:
Bolivia ‘axes Amazon road deal’
Washington-born writer-director Whit Stillman has gained a reputation for making cult classics that seem ripped from the pages of “The Official Preppy Handbook.” His movies have the power to make edgy indie fans marvel at debutante Manhattanites ( “Metropolitan,” 1990 ), laugh along with insecure 20-somethings living abroad ( “Barcelona,” 1994 ), even tap a foot as Ivy League grads shimmy onscreen during 1998’s “Last Days of Disco.” Read full article > >
See original here:
Whit Stillman on ‘Damsels in Distress’
Washington-born writer-director Whit Stillman has gained a reputation for making cult classics that seem ripped from the pages of “The Official Preppy Handbook.” His movies have the power to make edgy indie fans marvel at debutante Manhattanites ( “Metropolitan,” 1990 ), laugh along with insecure 20-somethings living abroad ( “Barcelona,” 1994 ), even tap a foot as Ivy League grads shimmy onscreen during 1998’s “Last Days of Disco.” Read full article > >
Read more from the original source:
Whit Stillman on ‘Damsels in Distress’
5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe. Has a non-cookbook ever sent you scrambling kitchen-ward? For legendary and James Beard award-winning chef Norman Van Aken , literature often beelines straight from his brain to his stomach. He says of the delicious bond: “The strands of fate and history pull us in circles we may never fully comprehend, but they are there. And why I’m a chef is moved, most surely by all of the ‘levers’ moved by the pencils, pens and typewriters of these artists and many more.” Five Non-Cookbooks that Influenced My Cooking: Norman Van Aken 1. “ Why We Eat What We Eat ,” Raymond Sokolov “On September 26, 1991, I bought this little book and it changed the way I was looking at my food in major ways. It made me appreciate how greatly the ramifications of history change our way of eating and how my location in America (for me, South Florida in particular) was shaped by what writer Ray Sokolov was referring to as 'The Columbian Exchange.' The phrase was not his, but his way of making it so darn fascinating sure was. I might have snapped up the book on the strength of M.F.K. Fisher’s prominent endorsement on the back cover alone. She is one of my favorites of all time. The book remains extremely relevant. Here’s an example. The Spanish had also opened up a regular trade with China from their base in the Philippines. Food and food ideas flowed freely between Seville and Asia on the same ships that carried goods from China and the Americas to Europe, and on the return trip brought European necessities for the colonists. The so-called Manila galleons took five months to make the passage across the Pacific to Acapulco. Their cargoes were transported overland to Veracruz on Mexico’s Gulf coast, reloaded on shipboard, and sent on to the mother country. 2. “Oliver Twist,” Charles Dickens “Charles Dickens's classic story of duality and life’s twists (the title character is named as such) struck a major chord with me growing up. I can still remember the first time I held the book and turned the first page. It was as if I turned a door on its hinges. I felt outside the world at times (though what child doesn’t?), but when you are going through it, a book like this comes along and just saves you. You realize that you can identify with others who, though from distant places, are very much like you in the dizzying, twisting, road of life. When young Oliver loses a contest and must represent the other hungry inmates of the workhouse they live in and asks on behalf of all: 'Please, sir, I want some more.' He is another human suddenly, and defenselessly, caught up in the cross-hairs of social injustice in the hope for a better world for many, including his very young self. Reading that book again at age 20, I had no idea that becoming a cook would let me have access not only to food but a place where I could find a community and kindred spirits. And while that may not be everything it certainly is a lot.” 3. “ Culture and Cuisine ,” Jean-François Revel “I purchased this book at a shop on Fleming Street in Key West in mid-February of 1988. I was part owner of my first restaurant. It was called MIRA. I was also in the middle of a huge amount of culinary self-analysis as to what I was going to do with cuisine. I’d cooked my way around French, Italian, various regional American cuisines like many of my generation. After reading this book, I sat down and over the course of about two weeks wrote a paper I titled 'Fusion.' I wrote the paper only for my own personal understanding; I had no intention of publishing it. Iin the Fall of '88, I was asked to join other chefs on stage in Santa Fe for a symposium on American Cuisine to describe why we cooked the way each of us did. The other chefs that day on stage with me were Tom Douglas, Lydia Shire, Emeril Lagasse and Charlie Trotter. My definition of fusion refers to fusion between haute cuisine – or aristocratic-styled 'restaurant' cuisine – with the more down-to-earth, rustic home cooking. Later, by others, it also came to mean the 'fusion' between various cultures and countries. Fusion cuisine can and does take place in almost every continent. Jean-François Revel states: 'There is gastronomy when there is a permanent quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns and when there is a public both competent enough and rich enough to arbitrate this quarrel.' I think that fusion is the mother of all of the different types of hyphenated cuisines. Like me, other chefs across the globe are finding that there is a combined power in what I named 'fusion cooking.' In my cooking, I create an interplay, a fusion, between regionalism and technical know-how. My cooking is the result of coupling our native regional foodstuffs like conch, black beans, plantains, mangoes, coconuts, grouper, key limes, snapper, shrimp and the folk cooking methods intrinsic their preparation, with my self-taught classical techniques. 'New World Cuisine' is the term I came up with to describe the fusion occurring in Florida and the immediately surrounding areas.” 4. “ In the Night Kitchen ”, Maurice Sendak “Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated this controversial book about a young boy’s nighttime ‘voyages’ in 1970. Our son, Justin, was born in 1980 and by 1986, I’d probably read it to him 100 times. I’ve no doubt that we both were captivated by the wondrously surreal dreamscape that Sendak conjured up. As the young boy, Mickey fell out of his clothes and into cake batter where he was met with a city made out of a baker’s stock and trade tools. Mickey proclaims, 'I’m not the milk and the milk’s not me!' That made us both wonder what existential intent that meant – and I still don’t know. The story confounds, captivates and liberates – which essentially all art (and the art of cuisine) seeks to do. This year Justin and I wrote our first cookbook together. The bond was forged in mythical storytelling as well as in blood.” 5. “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac 'On the Road' starts with this classic first sentence, 'I first met Neal not long after my father died.' And that is when I first 'met' the work of Kerouac, just after my father died. So many characterize Kerouac as a ‘free spirit,’ when in fact, he was almost never free from the hurt of his brother Gerard’s early death when Jack was 4 or 5 years of age. Jack is a seeker and my friends and I were as well. We too hitchhiked around America with rucksacks slung to our hungry frames. Kerouac’s book 'Desolation Angels' might be my favorite of his, but it was 'On the Road' that got me started. I didn’t know until much later that he wrote the famous 120-foot scroll version in an apartment on West 20th Street in New York. I wonder how close it was to my own family’s home in two preceding generations. My maternal grandfather lived at 252 W. 20th when he was a boy. My great-grandfather lived at 312, and my grandmother and grandfather lived at 400 when my mother was born.” Do you feast on non-cookbooks as well? Share your favorite titles in the comments. Is there someone you'd like to see in the hot seat? Let us know in the comments below and if we agree, we'll do our best to chase 'em down.
Here is the original post:
5@5 – Non-cookbooks for food enthusiasts
Sony beefed up its video content Wednesday, with the announcement that it will be adding Amazon streaming video content to the PlayStation 3. In a post on the PlayStation blog, Sony Senior Director for PlayStation Digital Platforms Jack Buser said that there are more than 120,000 movies and TV shows on Amazon Prime that are now accessible from the PlayStation. Read full article > >
Go here to see the original:
Amazon Prime streaming video now available on PlayStation 3
Don’t worry about that televised exorcism at the Grammys, Nicki Minaj fans. Apparently, it didn’t take. “ Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded ,” Minaj’s second official disc and first since becoming a pop star, confronts her image problems head on: How to reconcile the fierce, foul-mouthed, probably sociopathic (it’s really for a licensed professional to decide), street-spitting Minaj of her vaunted early mix tapes, with Minaj’s current occupation as a candy-coated, pink-bewigged Super Bass Barbie? Read full article > >
Every year or so, an article appears in a high-profile publication about the evolving mores of privileged women — their penchant for tiger mothering , say, or the fact that they love their husbands more than their children — and a cultural tempest ensues. I am exactly the kind of person (female, educated, judgmental) who devours such articles, then discusses them with my similarly educated, judgmental sisters and girlfriends. And yet I’m not sure it’s a compliment to say that Deborah Copaken Kogan’s novel “ The Red Book ” is a lot like one of those journalistic provocations. Read full article > >
More here:
“The Red Book,” by Deborah Copaken Kogan
The leaders of an 11-strong gang are jailed for scamming iTunes and Amazon out of royalties of a level usually associated with acts like Madonna.
More here:
iTunes gang’s ‘Madonna-level’ pay
About the daters … Sean: “ The Notebook ” (for quiet, rainy afternoons), “ Life Is Beautiful ” (when I need to remind myself what truly matters), “ Toy Story 3 ” (to watch with my buddies). Kevin: “Seinfeld” (because I could watch it over and over and not get bored), “ Camp ” (because musical theater just makes you feel better) and “ Precious ” (to remind me life off the island is not like the first two). Read full article > >
Read more:
Date Lab: Start on a romantic note and the rest will follow
The opening line of Anne Tyler’s 19th novel is self-consciously clever: “The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.” For a few pages, “ The Beginner’s Goodbye ” sounds like the sort of droll story Jose Saramago might write if he lived in Baltimore. But Tyler drops the spectral comedy almost immediately and returns to Earth with another wry tale of mournful folks with quirky occupations. In other words, it’s like the ghost of an Anne Tyler novel — a little immaterial but with enough residual matter to remind us of what we love about her books in the flesh. Read full article > >
Excerpt from:
Anne Tyler’s ‘The Beginner’s Goodbye’: Widower keeps running into his late wife
Amazon starts pre-orders for its touch-screen e-reader in Europe, but has no update on a local launch for its Kindle Fire tablet.
Read more from the original source:
Amazon Kindle Touch Europe launch
Amazon starts pre-orders for its touch-screen e-reader in Europe, but has no update on a local launch for its Kindle Fire tablet.
Follow this link:
Amazon Kindle Touch Europe launch
Katniss Everdeen, hunter-hero, sinewy hope onto which the nation can Pinterest its hopes for modern girlhood, arrives in theaters Friday. Those who have followed the success of Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy know that the character has been subjected to mass inspection and dissection. As an impoverished region’s representative to a state-sanctioned death match, Katniss is Robin Hood meets Ellen Ripley, a literal and metaphorical straight shooter who protects the weak, outsmarts the wicked, kills when she has to. Read full article > >
Originally posted here:
There’s room for both Katniss and Bella as heroines, but who’ll be remembered?
The design of David Fincher’s “ The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ” DVD has proven confusing to some would-be move watchers, who believed they had received a pirated copy of the film. The DVD, which was officially released Tuesday, shows the film’s title written in what appears to be black marker on what looks like a blank disc. In reality, this is all part of Sony’s marketing plan. Read full article > >
View original post here:
‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ DVD design has proven confusing to some
Anne Tyler’s ‘The Beginner’s Goodbye’: Widower keeps running into his late wife
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012There’s room for both Katniss and Bella as heroines, but who’ll be remembered?
Friday, March 23rd, 2012‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ DVD design has proven confusing to some
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
