The Friday File, 12/10/2010

If you're as lucky as us in Chicago you've had your first snow by now. But the week is almost over, so knock the slush off your boots, get yourself a mug of something warm and tasty, and check out some of these links:

  • Jonathan Franzen has been all over the place again after his detente with Oprah, but the best thing you'll read about him this week is this profile by Chuck Klosterman in GQ.

  • Google made the biggest e-book news this week by finally launching their e-bookstore. Or is it "eBookstore," or "e-BookStore?" God, I'm so confused!

  • Paul Oliver took it for a spin and found that some of the public domain titles supplied by Google's infamous book scanning project leave a lot to be desired. And dig those late fees on that copy of A Tale of Two Cities!

  • Slate's Farhad Manjoo says don't buy into the idea that it's any more "open" than the Kindle.

  • Meanwhile Amazon caught up to Google's one big advantage by announcing their own reader for the web.

  • All these e-book options are nice, but is anyone actually making any money with them? Who knows?

  • And even if you don't have a Kindle, you could do worse than Chicago's own public library system, soon to be improved by our outgoing mayor.

Have a good weekend.

Matt Wood

Matt Wood is a book review editor for TriQuarterly, and a writer and social media specialist for the University of Chicago Medicine. He graduated from the Master of Arts in Creative Writing program at Northwestern University in 2007, where his final thesis, "Through an Unlocked Door," won the Distinguished Thesis Award.

Twitter: @woodtang

More Info:

woodtang.com

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Reg Gibbons poem in Chicago Magazine

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