SHAUN SMITH'S SUNDAY SUNDRIES

Submitted by ssmith on March 21, 2010 - 1:50pm
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A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Dr Peter Watts Not Found Guilty of Assault
Canadian sci-fi author Dr Peter Watts was found guilty of "obstructing/resisting" a US customs official. Watts was not found guilty of assault, as is being widely and inaccurately reported. Watts posted on his blog about the conviction last Friday, and he has now followed with a more lengthy post that covers a wide variety of topics related to his conviction, and which answers many questions (such as, what the heck were US customs agents were doing searching a car leaving the US?). His new post also contains some fascinating quotes from jury members. It's all well worth a read, especially for anyone planning a trip to the United Police States of America.

Blank books
The Toronto Public Library has launched a cute little publicity campaign for which they are leaving 99 blank journals at random locations around the city. People who find the journals are invited to write in the them about their favourite books. The library intends to eventually post those scribblings on their website (though they don't say how they plan to get the journals back). Fun idea. I wonder where they got it.

Dracula reads Jabberwocky
Courtesy of the British Film Institute? Okay, if you say so.

How do they do that?
Here's a video of a super fast book scanner being developed at a Japanese university. What's most impressive here is not actually the speed at which the camera scans pages (500 fps), but the fact that the software can flatten out an image of a curved book page that does not appear to show all the text on the page. Really, how do they do that?

e-book news

Twain balls
The Guardian has a roundup of unusual book merchandise. Mark Twain golf balls, anyone?

Beached bookseller
Bookseller Ben McNally and kin got stuck on a reef.

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The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book: Toronto.

Shaun Smith

Shaun Smith is a novelist and journalist living in Toronto. His young adult novel Snakes & Ladders was published in January 2009 by the Dundurn Group.

Go to Shaun Smith ’s Author Page