The original edition of The Man Who Wrote Dirty B00ks by Hal Dresner had a brown paper wrapper for a dust jacket. It was published at a time when people actually noticed, and judged you by, the cover of the book you were reading. Had you been seen reading a dirty book you might have been banished from polite company. Thus the brown paper wrapper.

But in the 21st century anything goes and you can walk the streets freely with The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, risking only to be stared at as you chuckle at the preposterous fix that Dresner’s porn-writer protagonist  has gotten himself into, having retreated to the wilderness to focus on his next book under a looming deadline.

Instead of peace, he is harassed by his old girlfriend and her angry father who are convinced that the nymphomaniac character in his last novel was based on the man’s daughter. Soon, the author finds his quiet getaway beset by a lawsuit and an investigation by the FBI and local sheriff. How to convince these yahoos that art does not imitate life – that’s the hero’s dilemma and the delicious irony of The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, which has been delighting readers since its first publication in 1964.

“Really funny”
–The New York Times

“There is a superabundance of owlishly solemn writers in America, but very few with the comic talents of Hal Dresner”
–Chicago News

Stampeded?

Did opponents of SOPA throw the baby out with the bathwater? Cary H. Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, says yes in a recent New York Times op-ed piece.

Sherman asserts that Google, Wikipedia and other Web heavy-hitters cried “Censorship!” like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and stampeded a gullible public and its government servants into reversing legislation that would have afforded some measure of protection to the victims of copyright piracy.

“Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American property from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs,” writes Sherman. “But at the 11th hour, a flood of e-mails and phone calls to Congress stopped the legislation in its tracks. Was this the result of democracy, or demagoguery?”

“Since when is it censorship to shut down an operation that an American court, upon a thorough review of evidence, has determined to be illegal?” the editorialist asks. “When the police close down a store fencing stolen goods, it isn’t censorship, but when those stolen goods are fenced online, it is?”

Now there is no legislation in place except the joke known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, piracy is out of control, and legitimate copyright owners are being stripped of their hard-earned livings by brazen thieves operating in broad daylight (See A Bootleg E-Book Bazaar Operates in Plain Sight)

Sherman urges the Web minions who lead the charge against SOPA to do the right thing and listen to the voices of the victims. “Perhaps this is naïve, but I’d like to believe that the companies that opposed SOPA and PIPA will now feel some responsibility to help come up with constructive alternatives. Virtually every opponent acknowledged that the problem of counterfeiting and piracy is real and damaging. It is no longer acceptable just to say no.”

That’s a motion we’re ready to second.

Details in What Wikipedia Won’t Tell You by Cary H. Sherman.  And a complete archive of E-Reads postings about piracy, visit Pirate Central.

Richard Curtis

Note to readers: Digital Book World has invited me to post my blogs initially on its website before releasing them on E-Reads, and this content is re-published with DBW’s permission. Click here to view the original posting.

We’re thrilled to have a new collection from Pat Ivey, EMT: Beyond the Lights and Sirens. It takes you to the front lines of medicine, from a woman in cardiac arrest to a young man with near-fatal gunshot wounds. For these patients and countless others, treatment cannot wait until they are wheeled into a distant emergency room. If lives can be salvaged, care must begin with the life-saving skills of Emergency Medical Technicians.

”I could never work on a rescue squad,” is a statement the author has heard over and over throughout her years of squad service and readily admits it once described her own feelings. “If I can do it, so can you,” is her response to those whose fear and self-doubt hold them back. “Anything is possible.” EMT: Beyond the Lights and Sirens is more than a personal account of Pat Ivey’s rescue squad experiences. It is a story of courage and hope and letting go of past losses. Is is a book for those who have ever struggled to go beyond who they are.

The author’s EMT Rescue, with its inspiring and sometimes heartbreaking stories of the heroism of everyday men and women, is one of E-Reads’ consistently popular books. As we wrote for its E-Reads debut,

These are the trying, true stories of the mobile emergency medical technicians who often are the only thing standing between any one of us and death. Author Pat Ivey uses her extensive first-hand experiences and an unflinching eye for drama and detail to bring us the unheard tales of heroism and courage of the EMT units. She takes us into a hidden world of children in need, women seeking shelter from the storm of abuse and the realities of industrial accidents. A simple car crash turns into a Herculean effort, an epic struggle against the clock and against the odds. Tragic misfortunes that usually occur silently in everyday America and the men and women who try to heal these heart-pounding predicaments are put reverently on front stage in this heroic, honest and compassionate compilation of true action adventures.

RC

Fresh from its Oscar victory as Best Animated Short Film, here is The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore:

Happy Endings: Uplifting End of Life Stories by Lorna Bell is a collection of 40 stories about people who said goodbye in unique and uplifting ways. This is not to say their narratives—generously shared with the author by families and caregivers—are without pain and sorrow. Yet, the final stage of life holds remarkable possibilities to strengthen bonds between loved ones and confirm our faith in the hereafter.

An elderly woman prepares a magnificent deathbed of rose petals from bouquets in her sickroom…a young boy climbs aboard a pony only he and his mother can see…a delirious man hands his daughter a piece of tissue in the perfect likeness of an angel.

Dying is the natural conclusion to life, and these 40 stories invite you to re-examine your own perception of death. Most of all, they remind us that, while our time here on earth is temporary, our spiritual existence is not.

The publication of Happy Endings led to the discovery of more stories in the same vein and a second volume, More Happy Endings, containing an additional 45 stories, followed the first. E-Reads is publishing both volumes in a single package but maintaining the separate tables of contents and layout. Both volumes are divided into five chapters based on “Hospice Truths”: They Choose When They Are Ready; Final Gifts; Messages From Heaven; The Animals Are In On It and Angels Lead the Way.

About the author:
A nurse for 47 years and hospice nurse since 1995, Lorna Bell’s first book, Gentle Yoga: For People with Arthritis, M.S., Strokes and Wheelchairs (co-authored with Eudora Seyfer), was motivated by her desire to help those with mobility problems. She considers herself a storyteller rather than an author and since she’s been a hospice nurse, Lorna has wanted to help break the uncomfortable silence that often surrounds those concluding their lives. Happy Endings “exemplifies the beautiful, hopeful side of a difficult, sad subject,” she says. “Stories like these have been kept a secret long enough.”

The subtitle for George Alec Effinger’s Those Gentle Voices is “A Promethean Romance of the Spaceways,” That’s a lot of concept to pack into a single subtitle, so maybe we should elaborate.

“Because it’s there…” That was why Earth men climbed Mt. Everest and why, in 2017, they set out for the distant star, Wolf 359. In 1988, they had learned that intelligent inhabitants from a planet orbiting Wolf 359 had been signaling Earth. That fact was reason enough to dispatch a manned probe to explore and investigate. But perhaps there was another reason for the journey. A reason too incredible for Earth people ever to imagine. A reason they might never understand even when they land on the planet they call Jennings’ World.

Author George Alec Effinger was a true master of satirical Science Fiction. Before his death in 2002, he gained the highest esteem amongst his peers for his pitch-perfect stylistic mimicry and his great insight into the human condition. Despite a life filled with chronic illness, Effinger was a prolific novelist and short story writer, earning multiple Nebula and Hugo Award nominations. You can see more than a dozen of them on his author page.

Can’t get enough of john Bellairs’ Johnny Dixon novels?  Here’s another, The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost by Bellairs and Brad Strickland, that we hope will quench your hunger for a little bit longer.

On a trip to Florida with his father, Johnny visits a fortune teller, and receives an eerie premonition. Inside the crystal ball Johnny sees a ghost-white face with long white hair and black eyes like puddles of oil, which screams, “The universe shall be mine!” Back home, Johnny’s father falls unconscious, gravely ill in a way the doctors can’t understand.

Johnny and his friend Professor Childermass investigate and soon realize that the spirit of Nyarlat-Hotep wants to use Major Dixon’s body to destroy the world. To stop this fearsome demon, Johnny and the professor must join forces with Brewster, an otherworldly falcon, and fight Nyarlat-Hotep in its own, unearthly realm. Can they locate an ancient book and defeat their deepest fears in time, or is Johnny’s father lost and our world doomed forever?

Readers will shiver at the multiple worlds of suspense in this twelfth book of the Johnny Dixon series.

“Eerie, suspenseful, and true to the style of Bellairs.” —Booklist

Back in June 2010 we gave our opinion of what we called the westcoastification of YouTube: “Hollywood, there are millions of us who don’t want YouTube to mature,” we wrote. “We like it just the way it is — embarrassingly sophomoric, amateurish, LOL hilarious, pathetic, dopey, dirty, funky, and utterly counterculture. It belongs to We the People. Can’t you go co-opt some other industry? We can think of a lot of them that could use your genius, your money and your values.” (See Do We Want YouTube to Grow Up?)

We might as well have spit in the wind. YouTube is on the way to becoming as slick as television, as highly monetized as a currency printing plant, and as tightly controlled as a high-security prison. A superb analysis in the New Yorker by John Seabrook tracks the evolution of YouTube from”the home of grainy cell-phone videos and skateboarding dogs” to YouTube Original Channels, dedicated to giving viewers 24/7 online coverage of the subjects in which they are particularly interested.

Once these channels are in place, writes Seabrook, “the niches will get nichier, and the audiences smaller still. But those audiences will be even more engaged, and much more quantifiable. Advertisers have to rely on ratings and market research to get even a rough approximation of who’s watching which show. Because YouTube is delivered over the Internet, the company will know exactly who is watching—not their names but their viewing histories, their searches, their purchases, their rough location, and their online social connections.”

For anyone interested in media – and who is not? -  Streaming Dreams: YouTube turns pro  is required reading.

Richard Curtis

With Tower of Glass E-Reads launches a quartet of reissues of  Robert Silverberg’s classic science fiction novels with new introductions by the author.

Simeon Krug is a self-made man, fantastically wealthy, having built a huge fortune with his android “products,” genetically-engineered human slaves who worship him as a God. Krug epitomizes self-aggrandizement, oblivious to his own ego and the price others pay for his prominence. Currently, Krug’s latest project attempts to communicate with aliens in response to enigmatic signals from a distant and uninhabitable world – and to do so he must build a huge tower, a mile high, in the Arctic tundra.

Closer to home, trying to organize, Krug’s androids come to learn that their “god” has feet of clay, that he is merely human and as flawed as any mortal. His son and heir is uncomfortable with the reach of his father’s ego and is unwilling to take on the mantle of divinity. The implications of this discovery and the underlying conflicts threaten much more than the Tower of Glass…

“…a multi-leveled work of high adventure, considerable tension and social consciousness.”
–Harlan Ellison.

Robert Silverberg fan? Here are some more of his great books.