Used Books Blog

Google has launched a set of Book Search APIs (aka tools) that allow any site to access and integrate Google Book Search functionality.

We’re launching a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers, and anyone with a web site to embed books from the Google Book Search index. We are also providing new ways for these sites to display full-text search results from Book Search, and even integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers’ book collections. By providing tools that help sites connect readers with books in new and interesting ways, we hope publishers and authors will find even wider audiences for their works.

Google is featuring partnerships like Books-A-Million that are using the Google Preview functionality.

I have mixed feelings about this initiative. The tools do help expose more people to more books. Yet, I have misgivings about Google being in the middle of so many book interactions. It feels to me like Google is trying to figure out whether it should make a larger investment into the book vertical. Trust me, they’re interested and no retailer should be running to Google with open arms in my opinion.

Google Base and Google Checkout together let nearly any seller (publisher, author, dealer) upload and sell books on the single largest distribution network on the Internet. The Google Book Search tools simply make it a more robust platform. You can cobble together Google Apps, Google Sites, Google Base, Google Checkout and Google Book Search and completely cut out middlemen like say … Amazon.com.

Perhaps this is a good thing though. If Google were to enter the market (for real) they might help increase sales and do so at slightly lower prices. However, this would likely be at the expense of aggregators like Amazon, Alibris, Abebooks and Biblio.

For now it seems like Google is satisfied to watch the game of double dutch, rocking back and forth poised to jump in at just the right time.

As an avid reader I am shocked at the prospect of banning books and truly saddened at the history of book burning. Robert Scoble recently returned from Germany with a photo of the Bebelplatz memorial.

The memorial represents the 25,000 books burnt by the Nazis in 1933. The image has been sitting in one of my Firefox tabs for nearly two weeks as a reminder of what can happen when we don’t speak up.

On the memorial is a plaque that reads “this is just the beginning. Wherever books are burnt, people are burnt too” from the poet Heinrich Heine whose books were among those incinerated.

Let’s make sure this never happens again.

You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem seems like a sad combination of sexual themes from a Nicholson Baker novel with the enigmatic Los Angeles vibe often produced by Steve Erickson. Lethem simply misses the mark completely, filling the page with dead on arrival dialog, characters with no real substance or motivation and largely unnecessary sexual scenes.

You Don’t Love Me Yet is, to put it bluntly, bad.

It’s tough for me to say this since I like so much of Lethem’s work. I believe we’re seeing the growing pains of an author working toward a new genre. Most of Lethem’s prior work was based in science fiction or surrealism. Gun with Occasional Music, Amnesia Moon, Girl In Landscape and As She Climbed Across the Table are all very good reads.

Lethem then made a successful jump to more traditional literature with Motherless Brooklyn. But even Motherless Brooklyn borrowed from his detective genre past. Then came The Fortress of Solitude, a clear attempt at straight up literary fiction, which might have been good if an editor had made it about half as long. You Don’t Love Me Yet extends Lethem’s reach for literary fiction.

Even in his short story work, Lethem seems to hit the mark when dealing with surreal or other-worldly environments. No doubt he’s a talented writer, but he’s yet to take his talent and successfully apply it in a traditional literary fiction context.

You Don’t Love Me Yet follows the travails of an aspiring rock band in Los Angeles. The main character is Lucinda Hoekke, the bassist, who is painted as a flighty, mercurial woman with little idea of her own motivations. Perhaps she’s an alcoholic since nearly every scene seems to include drinking. I don’t know and, frankly, I didn’t care.

As a sterotypical musician, Lucinda needs some money and winds up working for an ex who is running a performance art piece about cataloging complaints via telephone. It’s here she conjures up a relationship with one of the callers, The Complainer, who turns her life and that of the band upside down. I won’t go into it because it’s all rather dreary and pointless.

Did I mention the sub-plot about the lead singer (on and off again boyfriend) who also works at the zoo and kidnaps a kangaroo that he feels is being mistreated? Yeah, it’s strange. I like strange but this just doesn’t go anywhere and the plot convergence is wholly unsatisfying.

You Don’t Love Me Yet reaches for what DeLillo or Erickson accomplish, turning ordinary oddities into meaningful insight. Avoid Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet and pick up any of his early work instead.