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Has the Cost of Books Gone Up, Adjusted for Inflation?

  • Posted on January 4, 2012 at 12:14 pm

The answer, apparently, is no. The Awl looked through the cost of different New York Times best sellers from the past seven decades and comparing the costs using a tool from Bureau of Labor Statistics to convert all the costs into 2011 money. The conclusion? Hardcover books have cost roughly $30 2011 money since 1951, with the exception of some large outliers in 1971.

The article concludes:

And it’s good that we’re doing this now, as the uncertainty looming over the publishing industry is unimaginably big. Both the competitive pricing and release patterns of e-books and the ascendance of Amazon and similar e-tailers (okay, just Amazon, really) threaten to change the business of book publishing into something that will be completely unrecognizable on an historical basis. All this at a time when even members of the Fourth Estate are railing against the horrors of bookstores, even the independent ones. (Needless to say, I disagree with him in a manner that involves the use of profanities: support your local bookstore.) I hope this is not the case, but maybe only James Patterson can save us.

The Owl: How Much More Do Books Cost Today?

(via Matt Staggs)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/4qalcsZ66GA/

How Haruki Murakami Conquered the Literary World

  • Posted on October 17, 2011 at 2:45 pm

murakami How Haruki Murakami Conquered the Literary World

Great to see a literary event with this level of excitement:

At midnight in London, and the same time next week in America, bookshops will open their doors to sell Haruki Murakami’s latest novel to eager fans. This is not Harry Potter, it’s a 1,600-page translation from Japanese. So why the excitement?

When Haruki Murakami’s new book, 1Q84, was released in Japanese two years ago, most of the print-run sold out in just one day – the country’s largest bookshop, Kinokuniya, sold more than one per minute. A million copies went in the first month.

In France, publishers printed 70,000 copies in August but had to reprint within a week. The book is already on the top 20 list of online booksellers Amazon.com – hence the plans for midnight openings in the UK and across the US from New York to Seattle.

“The last time we did this was for Harry Potter,” says Miriam Robinson of Foyles, just one of the bookshops in London opening at midnight for the launch. “It’s hard to find a book that merits that kind of an event.”

BBC: Haruki Murakami: How a Japanese writer conquered the world

(Thanks Dad!)

I’ll be at Powells at midnight on the 25th, if it’s open.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/ZfZah3dXba4/

Brainsturbator’s Best Books of 2010

  • Posted on February 28, 2011 at 7:04 pm

AfterNewEconomy Brainsturbators Best Books of 2010

Justin Boland lists his favorite reading of 2010. Here are some highlights I particularly want to read:

After the New Economy, by Doug Henwood.

The majority of my reading in the past year has been in Economics, shaped by a couple new jobs that required me to become a fake expert in the field. Perhaps in the near future I’ll do a separate Reading List focused on that, but for now, let me recommend one single volume as the best written, most thoroughly documented book on the subject: Doug Henwood’s After the New Economy. Henwood does something really remarkable here. There are dozens of sources per page, but he juggles an academic level of density with J.K. Rowling readability. He keeps all his math & policy discourse grounded in real world effects on actual working human beings. All in all, this book is fucking devastating because it uses nothing but the US economic system’s own numbers and words—there is no moralizing here. Along the way, Henwood also provides an education in deciphering market metrics and business news. He is a concise and scrupulous teacher. Henwood is often framed as a rabid Socialist, but I get the impression his political agenda is that of a disgruntled accountant…he’s just angry that the numbers don’t really add up on the American Dream.

Equally Worthy: his earlier book Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom is just as good and thorough. Most fans of Henwood suggest starting there, and it is powerful stuff. If you’re interested in a guide to Wall Street, though, the unfortunately named Eric J. Weiner has cornered the market with What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen, an “oral history” where three generations of Hidden Rulers talk candidly about criminal conspiracies they got away with. It is awesome and very inspirational.

C Street, by Jeff Sharlet.

Sharlet has been doing important work for a long time now covering Christian Dominionist movements, especially in military and political circles. His previous book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is essential reading if you’re not already familiar. (Start with “Jesus Plus Nothing.”)

Theocrats are scary people, and Sharlet tracks the most powerful among them carefully here. This is the grey zone where The Family morphs into The Fellowship, which has also been referred to as ”The Christian Mafia” and a ”Frat House for Jesus.” This is serious material,of course: the ghost network he outlines in C Street shaping foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and partisan talking points. The amount of media collusion and access to corporate money here is nothing short of spooky.

Brainsturbator: The 2010 Brainsturbator Reading List

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/UEqLSu8JtHM/

reneeruinseverything: Alexander McQueen: Savage…

  • Posted on February 27, 2011 at 12:09 am


reneeruinseverything:

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) was one of the most influential, imaginative, and inspirational designers at the turn of the millennium. His fashions both challenged and expanded the conventional parameters of clothing beyond utility to a compelling expression of culture, politics, and identity.

Buy here through Amazon. 

WANT.

From http://morbidfashion.tumblr.com/post/3539585769

Voynich Manuscript Carbon Dated to Early 1400s – About a Century Older Than Previously Though

  • Posted on February 16, 2011 at 3:33 pm

voynichmanuscript Voynich Manuscript Carbon Dated to Early 1400s About a Century Older Than Previously Though

The Voynich Manuscript has been carbon dated to somewhere between 1404 and 1438:

Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA’s department of physics has found the manuscript’s parchment pages date back to the early 15th century, making the book a century older than scholars had previously thought.

University of Arizona News: UA Experts Determine Age of Book ‘Nobody Can Read’

(Thanks Paul!)

This rules out Leonardo da Vinci as the author, which was my personal favorite theory. da Vinci was born in 1452. It also rules out John Dee and Edward Kelly, who lived in the 16th century. It also of course rules out the possibility that Voynich forged the manuscript.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/OSJvd1vw0n8/

The Top 50 Essential Non-Fiction Books for Weirdos

  • Posted on February 10, 2011 at 1:58 pm

bookshelf The Top 50 Essential Non Fiction Books for Weirdos

Inspired by the Modern Library’s top 100 list, the blogger behidn Geez Pete has created her own list of the top 50 books for weirdos. Here are a few highlights:

Columbine by Dave Cullen: There’s a lot you “know” about Columbine — the “Trench Coat Mafia,” the girl who professed her love for God and was executed — but in reality, it’s nearly all incorrect. This exhaustive look at the 1999 attack covers a lot of individual issues (gun violence, troubled adolescence, mental illness), but on a macro level, it’s about the emergence of the 24-hour news cycle, the scramble for “if it bleeds it leads” information, and what the commercialization of news has done to public awareness.

Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller: He was born at the end of the 19th century, but Buckminster Fuller was a futurist inventor of the highest order, bringing to life everything from geodesic domes to the totally dope looking Dymaxion car. In this sweeping 1981 book, Bucky covers the evolution of human civilization, his own economic ideology, and argues his conclusions about the “critical path” we should take to survive in a world of finite resources.

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century by Greil Marcus: Marcus tackles what should be an impossible task — taking anarchic artistic and social movements throughout roughly a century of history, and tying them together into a narrative thread that leads straight through punk rock and pop culture — and pulls it off. And it’s entertaining to boot.

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson: If that book cover isn’t enough to convince you to check this out, what is? Robert Anton Wilson (RAW to his fans and followers) was an icon of brain-altering philosophies, and his writing has lost zero of its power over time. The headline here is that Prometheus Rising is about meta-programming your own mind. The subheads are many. You’ll feel altered.

Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige: Considering it was published in 1979, this brief-but-dense book recognizes and defines modern subcultures and their appropriation with incredible accuracy. The subsequent never-ending process of mass market swiping of underground styles — from clothes to music to politics to, let’s face it, hair — has only gotten faster and more fierce since. Hebdige recognized a once-subtle process that today is like a snake devouring its own tail.

Geez Pete: The Top 50 Essential Non-Fiction Books for Weirdos

(via Boing Boing)

What would you add?

Update: A follow-up post with 50 fiction titles has been added.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/lDs2DCrOR6o/

True, a review for the book Battle Royale is not fashion…

  • Posted on July 30, 2010 at 7:45 pm


True, a review for the book Battle Royale is not fashion related, but it is incredibly morbid. It is also a wonderful story. I loved reading it so I highly recommend it to all of you lovely followers. Check out my review of it on Zellain.net.

From http://morbidfashion.tumblr.com/post/882165988

C.G. Jung’s The Red Book is gonna be amazing!

  • Posted on September 20, 2009 at 9:55 pm

 

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“While Jung considered The Red Book to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public. It is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par withThe Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This publication of The Red Book is a watershed that will cast new light on the making of modern psychology.
212 color illustrations.”

awesome!!!! hello!!?  He was tripping on inner visions!!  (BIGGER SIZE HERE)

Bukowski as Hierophant

  • Posted on April 20, 2009 at 2:25 am

72-5-hierophant

 

The Hierophant (Trump V. in the tarot) is about expressing deep spiritual truths and teaching them to others.  The card also carries the subtext of expressing the sexual desires of the Hierophant himself (Taurus is ruled by Venus after all.) 

 

And then we have Charles Bukowski, whose genius by now I hope needs no espousing, who fits right in there, the man of our time.

 

bukowski1 

If Crowley is the Magus of the new Aeon, then I dub Charles Bukowski its Hierophant.

 

t05hierophant

 

kisses & bites,

Izabael

Aldous Huxley Quotations

  • Posted on February 28, 2008 at 3:35 pm

Aldous Huxley
English critic & novelist
(07/26/1894 – 11/22/1963)

aldous-huxley

Here are my favorite Huxley quotes along with my own completely superfluous commentary:

 

1) Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

While facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored, I would like to point out that at least you can remove the anguish and mental agony they cause by forgetting about them.

 

2) All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

This is typical of a lot of advanced philosophies.  Everything around us is a perfect mirror of our soul.  Every action we take has repercussions that reverberate throughout the entire universe.

 

3) An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

I suppose this is why most women are intellectuals.

 

4) Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

This goes with almost anything.  If we focus too hard on the goal, we ruin it.  Focusing and deriving satisfaction from the process yields better results. 

 

5) Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Demons suffer from this too, so this is something I work on myself.  Why is it sometimes so hard to remember all the amazing things in our life and not focus on the one bad thing that went wrong that day?

 

6) The only completely consistent people are the dead.

They are also the only ones without any problems.

 

7) Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour, for their curiosity and tolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

Indeed!  The enlightened have the heart and eyes of a seven year old.

 

8) Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

How sad, but true is this?  Billons spent on bombs, bombs, bombs.

This is one is also the perfect quote to tie the similar, yet contrasting, themes of two of Stanley Kubrick’s films together, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining. 

In 2001, Kubrick shows how we use our technology to advance to the next stage of human evolution, but in The Shining, Kubrick recants, and shows that modern man is actually devolving. 

 

9) Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Yeah, that’s one reasonable hypothesis–would also account for my being here.

 

10) I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

I wanted to change myself, but found the only thing I could be sure of changing was my hair color.

 

11) That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.

America’s forefathers didn’t believe we were all equal either.  Why else have the electoral college?

 

12) The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.

This one probably hides some really deep and secret meaning, but for me it’s just a fine piece of humorous wit. 

 

For more about A. Huxley check out his Wikipedia article.

93, 93/93,
Izabael