The fine folks at Random House have created BookLounge.ca, which I thought was fantastic from the beginning. It’s a bit of a virtual book club/library/aggregation of cool book things.

Today I received an email promoting new stuff on the site: podcasts, sneak peaks at upcoming publications, author interviews. It was an ok newsletter–clean design, easy to read. It’s a great way to remind me to check out the site. But what intrigued me to click through to the site was “Let our insiders give you a window into the publishing industry.” It’s a great set of blog posts from employees. The first is from Marion Garner, publisher of Vintage Canada, who writes about one of her titles being an Oprah pick, or “Oprahtunity” as she calls it.

Fun Stuff. Check out the site.

Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed a more concerted effort by Canadians to actually celebrate Black History month. In my imagination at least, Black History month was more prominent in the US and not something Canadians reflected upon too much. Perhaps it’s a matter of where I live in Canada. Asian Heritage month in Vancouver is widely publicized, however, this is the first year I’ve seen media pointedly remarking on Black History month.

To that end, I’d like to recommend Lawrence Hill’s latest novel The Book of Negroes. I haven’t read it yet, but a friend recommended it last week and I was intrigued by a Montreal Gazette article this weekend.

Quote: Donna Bailey Nurse, Montreal Gazette, February 3, 2007:

The Book of Negroes: Author Lawrence Hill is passionate about black Canadian history and is the Canadian novelist whose work most articulately and imaginatively explains what the history of slavery has to do with us Canadians. He is a touch exasperated by how little we still seem to know about our black past, how desperately we cling to the image of Canada as a refuge for slaves. “It is a myth that Canada was simply the Promised Land and nothing else.” Hill explains. “How typically Canadian that we don’t even know the very first back-to-Africa movement is coming from Canadian shores,” muses Hill. “We Canadians had the first back-to-Africa movement in the world,” says Hill. “And that is just such a fascinating story.” —Read the article.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling will be published around the world in the English language on Saturday, July 21st, 2007.

Read the details on the Raincoast blog.

Super exciting!!!!!

Wednesday, January 31, 7:30 pm
Presentation on Made to Break by Giles Slade
Alma Van Dusen Room, VPL, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia

Giles Slade, who I’ve written about before, will speak at the Vancouver Public Library next week on tackling the problem of e-waste and the inception of our culture of consumption and waste.

Quote: From: Harvard University Press, the publisher:

Made to Break is a history of twentieth-century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. America invented everything that is now disposable, Giles Slade tells us, and he explains how disposability was in fact a necessary condition for America’s rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. His book shows us the ideas behind obsolescence at work in such American milestones as the inventions of branding, packaging, and advertising; the contest for market dominance between GM and Ford; the struggle for a national communications network, the development of electronic technologies–and with it the avalanche of electronic consumer waste that will overwhelm America’s landfills and poison its water within the coming decade.

The Tyee has an extensive article on why net neutrality needs more attention in Canada. Quick save the internet!
Digg this story.

On January 17, Bryan Zandberg wrote an article on The Tyee about net neutrality and the lack of attention this issue is getting in Canada.

Quote: Canada Sleeps Through War to ‘Save the Internet’
Pitched battle in U.S. over ‘net neutrality’
Digital democracy at risk if telecoms get their way say opponents.

What’s Net Neutrality?
It’s the internet as we know and love. A data network that does not discrimate or allow degraded service for one group of people (or companies) over another. Meaning, downloading a video from YouTube is the same as downloading a video from CNN and the same as downloading it from my website. Same costs, same amount of time for you as a user–same costs and time for me, CNN and YouTube to upload the info. It’s neutral.

The controversy is that the telcos want to create tiered service. So maybe CNN pays the telecos a bunch of money to get preferred service but YouTube doesn’t. For you as a user, you can quickly download video from CNN but try my website or YouTube and churn, churn, churn.

There’s not a good reason for hierarchical service. There’s not a shortage of bandwidth. There’s just a shortage of ideas within telcos on how they can make more money.

My explanation is less sound than those in The Tyee.

Read the article here.

Or at least read these highlights:
Quote: ‘In 2005, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) redefined “broadband,” recasting it as an information, rather than a telecommunication, service.

‘ “It sounds like an innocuous change, but it isn’t,” explains Ben Scott, a spokesperson for net neutrality for Free Press, a media democracy NGO based in Washington, D.C. With the stroke of a pen, Scott says the decision undid the entire regulatory regime attached to telecom services, thrusting them into “a category that has virtually no regulations.”

…

‘Whereas previously telcos were legally obliged to deliver packets of bits and bytes blindly, as an information service that restriction was no longer in force. This opened the door for what Scott calls a “CEOs-go-to-Wall-Street” scenario: almost immediately, the major carriers began to toy with the idea of creating a two-tier Internet, replete with a fast-track for content creators willing to pay for preferential service, and a slow lane for everyone else.

…

‘Just like in the States, net neutrality in Canada hovers in a state of legal limbo; the threadbare language of the Telecommunications Act means that two-tier Internet is more than a distant possibility; it’s already here.

…

‘[Kevin] McArthur goes further. He says companies are in effect creating a problem so they can charge to fix it. “[Even] if everyone paid for a tier-one service, it would be THE EXACT SAME service we have today,” he wrote by e-mail. “Quality of service only works while someone else is getting screwed.”

‘”It’s an attempt to extract more rent out of your server,” [Michael]Geist summarizes, “even if it comes at the expense of both their users’ interests and the broader interest of the Internet as a whole.”‘