Cory Doctorow has a new novel out called Makers, which you can, as usual, download for free from his website.
I have a colossal number of pages to read as part of my Master’s thesis investigations, but I’ll read this as soon as I feel I need a break from those readings.
I’ve read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy (meh), Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (incredible), Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (meh-ish - PKD has much better), Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (probably the most incredible-while-hardest book I ever read), and of course, Hamlet. (via Kottke)
… and Penguin-style book covers for films. J. Kottke takes a look at media packaging mashups.
I always felt that the works of art we call movies consist of more than just the sound and the visuals in a stretch of film, but also of their entire promotional material - trailers, posters, etecetera - because this material too manipulates the viewer’s perspective and expectations, just the thing the art of editing is all about. It’s as if, even though you don’t judge a book by its cover, the cover does influence how you’ll read the book, just like an opening chapter.
