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BOOKS: NOW WITH GOOGLEMAPS
Remember when I told you that Alex Besher is using bar-coded t-shirts to virally distribute his new e-book? Here’s what’s next in 21st century book publishing: geotagged novels with GoogleMap links.
ITEM: German writer Christoph Benda has released an electronic version of his debut novel, Senghor on the Rocks, in which each page is geotagged and linked to GoogleMaps to illustrate the environment in which the story takes place with satellite images.
Florian Ledermann, a software engineer at the Vienna University of Technology, who worked with Benda on the project, says one motivation for this idea was that the story takes place in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, and seeing as how most people aren’t familiar with either Dakar or Senegal, this was a nifty way to help readers visualize the location.
I suppose purists will complain about writers letting GoogleMaps do the heavy lifting when describing locations. On the other hand, Elmore Leonard has made a good career out of intentionally avoiding detailed descriptions of characters and settings, so what’s the difference, really?
Either way, this opens up some fun possibilities for a richer reading experience – books embedded with maps, Wikipedia links and a streaming soundtrack hosted on Seeqpod or Blip.fm something. The latter would come in handy for my Planet Of The Bulls project, which features rockinrolls as a central plot point. Describing bands playing music is hard work, and almost impossible to get across the same way as it appears in my head. I’d love to stick in a self-loading MP3 stream so you can hear them play as you read.
Progress!
Lost in a good book,
This is dF
ITEM: German writer Christoph Benda has released an electronic version of his debut novel, Senghor on the Rocks, in which each page is geotagged and linked to GoogleMaps to illustrate the environment in which the story takes place with satellite images.
Florian Ledermann, a software engineer at the Vienna University of Technology, who worked with Benda on the project, says one motivation for this idea was that the story takes place in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, and seeing as how most people aren’t familiar with either Dakar or Senegal, this was a nifty way to help readers visualize the location.
I suppose purists will complain about writers letting GoogleMaps do the heavy lifting when describing locations. On the other hand, Elmore Leonard has made a good career out of intentionally avoiding detailed descriptions of characters and settings, so what’s the difference, really?
Either way, this opens up some fun possibilities for a richer reading experience – books embedded with maps, Wikipedia links and a streaming soundtrack hosted on Seeqpod or Blip.fm something. The latter would come in handy for my Planet Of The Bulls project, which features rockinrolls as a central plot point. Describing bands playing music is hard work, and almost impossible to get across the same way as it appears in my head. I’d love to stick in a self-loading MP3 stream so you can hear them play as you read.
Progress!
Lost in a good book,
This is dF
no subject
Elmore Leonard's Florida is much more like the version I lived in than any of the 'whacky Florida' writers whose work I've sampled.
Only problem with streaming music with yr novel is that you have to record the damn music.
There are a number of 'performances' in my own rock'n'roll novel and they're really difficult to write. The characters are better musicians, better composers than I am, so I try to furnish only a few details and hope the readers and technical notes and leave it to the imagination--no point inventing creating a mythical rock band if I could write their mythical rock music meself.
Another challenge I found was getting across the sentiment of the song--the stories the characters themselves are trying to express--without putting in the lyrics (really, the world can do without my bad poetry).
Describing music in prose is a real challenge and I'd love to see how you've gone about it, if you'd like to post some passages or something...
-- JF
no subject
The only other whacky Florida writer I've tried is Hiassen, who I like okay.
It occurred to me later that the other issue with streaming music would be the licensing, unless it was all yr own tunes.
no subject
I remember, there was definitely a point where,l when I was reading my first Leonard book, I suddenly got it. It was like a lightbulb went off and I went from "Uh... the dude's barely writing..." to "Fuck, this is brilliant."
I didn't really know who he was; I'd picked up GET SHORTY somewhere and I thought I'd give it a try because I liked the film and I knew my folks had one or two of his other books lying around.
I then went on a Leonard binge, I just had to read more. Some of the books are definitely more memorable than others, but they're all clever and unpredictable and crisp. Not bad for a man who's been putting out a book a year since the 50's.
I want to be like Elmore when I grow up.
--JF