Tea at Trianon: Amazon Kindle Fire and Out-of-Print Books Revived

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Amazon Kindle Fire and Out-of-Print Books Revived

Kindle now comes as Fire.

Amazon has unveiled a colour tablet computer called the Kindle Fire. The $199 (£130) device will run a modified version of Google's Android operating system. Until now, the company has limited itself to making black and white e-readers, designed for consuming books and magazines. As well as targeting Apple's iPad, Amazon is likely to have its sights on rival bookseller US Barnes & Noble, which already has a colour tablet. The Kindle Fire will enter a hugely competitive market, dominated by Apple's iPad. Amazon will be hoping to leverage both the strength of the Kindle brand, built up over three generations of its popular e-book reader, and its ability to serve up content such as music and video. In recent years, the company has begun offering downloadable music for sale, and also has a streaming video-on-demand service in the United States. Those, combined with its mobile application store, give it a more sophisticated content "ecosystem" than most of its rivals. (Read entire article.)

And....

A digital-only imprint from Bloomsbury.

Bloomsbury Reader has launched with an initial collection of 57 titles from authors such as crime writer HRF Keating and politician Alan Clark. Monica Dickens, great grand-daughter of novelist Charles, is among the other authors whose works are being revived. The imprint will focus on books where English language rights have reverted back to the authors or their estates.

"If people read a book by an author and they love that author, they suddenly want to read everything by that author," said Bloomsbury's Stephanie Duncan. "That's where Bloomsbury Reader comes in because we'll be delivering all those books." (Read entire post.)