When Amazon gets funny?

Ah – just got this mildly amusing invitation from Amazon. Suspect I’m a bit of a late adopter in terms of undead-themed re-writes of classic literature but still find this a bit difficult to believe, especially given its release date of 1 April:

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk,

We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Northanger Abbey (Everyman’s Library classics) by Jane Austen or other books in the A > Austen, Jane category have also purchased Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! by Jane Austen. For this reason, you might like to know that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! will be released on 1 April 2009. You can pre-order yours for just £6.99 (22% off the RRP) by following the link below.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
Jane Austen
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.99
You Save: £2.00 (22%)
Release Date: 1 April 2009

Product Description
“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action.

Of course I’m tempted, who wouldn’t be?

Graphology

This is an example

more graph humor and song chart memes

Some of the others are quite funny too.

How many TVs?!!

A delightful piece from Beeb about “affluenza”

The best bit of which is this quoted “fact”:

In the past, having a TV was seen as an indicator of wealth and class. Now, according to a study carried out by marketing and information group CACI, the average UK home has 4.7 television sets. A study by Lloyds TSB found that seven out of 10 children have a TV in their rooms and half of them have a DVD player too.

4.7!! That means that every person in every household in the UK has around 1.7 TVs each (ave of 2.7 people per household according to last census). Of course that figure is equally spurious but this is just such an absurd stat, can’t get over it. What are they doing with the things? Given lots of households only have one or possibly two, this must mean that lots of others have five, six or more? Gawd.

Power pointy

Mildly diverting skit about common powerpoint errors

Someone else who hasn’t read the book

Follow-up to Books you haven’t read

A slightly longer piece on not reading from the New York Mag.

Obviously I’d claim that this person pinched my clever idea about not reading the book but then (a) s/he wouldn’t have read my post in the first place and (b) s/he read the book after all. Sell out!

Let them sing

A wonderful site where you type in the lyrics

And it sings it back to you. Marvelous.

So, let them sing.

Books you haven’t read

How to talk about books you haven’t read by Pierre Bayard

In the spirit intended by the author, I’ve not actually read this book so have to copy the synopsis from Amazon:

Synopsis
In this disarmingly mischievous and provocative book, already a runaway bestseller in France, Pierre Bayard contends that in this age of infinite publication, the truly cultivated person is not the one who has read a book, but the one who understands the book’s place in our culture. Drawing on examples from works by Graham Greene, Umberto Eco, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne (who couldn’t remember books he himself had written), and many others, he examines the many kinds of ‘non-reading’ (forgotten books, unknown books, books discussed by others, books we’ve skimmed briefly) and the many potentially nightmarish situations in which we are called upon to discuss our reading with others (with our loved ones, with the book’s author, etc.).At heart, this is a book that will challenge everyone who’s ever felt guilty about missing some of the Great Books to consider what reading means, how we absorb books as part of ourselves, and how and why we spend so much time talking about what we have, or haven’t, read.

Which is all wonderfully reminiscent of the great parlour game ‘Humiliation’ in Changing Places by David Lodge in which players compete to admit to the most shocking unread classic.

Forgetting forgetting

Wishing for amnesia

Entertaining piece in the Boston Globe on the difficulties of forgetting in the digital age.

Personally, I don’t seem to have too many difficulties with this issue…

Another dark and stormy night (online)

Chronicle has a report on the 2007 worst sentence competition:

I particularly like the winner in the children’s category who wrote:

“Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before.”

Casey’s move

See that Casey now trading independently here.

Welcome! (Not sure about that header pic though)