Book News, In Brief

The MOCCA is currently running an exhibition celebrating the art of Harvey Comics, home to Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, and Hot Stuff. For those of you not versed in The History of American Graphic Storytelling, these 'comics'* are noteworthy in that they eschewed literary pretensions in favor of fun. Très outré!
*Editor's note: 'Comics' was the crude term cro-magnon man used to describe graphic storytelling in the pre-Maus era.



To hell with all those haughty booksellers patting themselves on the back for carrying The Catcher In The Rye. This is the sort of bookseller we ought to be celebrating during Banned Books Week: Polyester Books owner Paul Elliott has had books “stolen” by police, his store vandalised by feminists, books hurled across the room and received threatening phone calls...“I just think people might not agree with (the) content of books, but we are supposed to be living in a democracy,” he said. “Especially drug-orientated books. You can’t eat a book and get high.” LeaderNews.com has a brief bit on the badass bookseller.
Related: Polyester Books has a webpage.



Two new problems regarding Amazon's Kindle2 were revealed on Tuesday.
1. Europeans can't buy 'em.
Via IHT.com: Mobile operators in Europe, which are eager to generate new revenue from sales of "content" like books, may be holding out for a larger share of the proceeds of book sales than Amazon wants to give them.
2. That 'friendly robot voice' that reads your e-books for you? It's probably illegal.
Via Galleycat: "They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."
Related: PC World's 5 reasons the iPhone trumps the Kindle