Culture

Two big pieces of digital publishing news this week: first, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Kindle Fire – the 'iPad killer'. Then yesterday, the launch of Bloomsbury Reader: a new digital imprint resurrecting hundreds of out-of-print titles by HRF Keating, Storm Jameson, VS Pritchett and other writers that used to be famous. It has never been a better time to be a reader. Why then is there still an underlying suspicion of digital publishing? You can understand the wariness from some in the book trade, which was late to digital and is now terrified of getting a raw deal.

Here is the lead book review from the latest issue of the Spectator: Jonathan Sumption reviews Max Hasting's history of the second world war, All Hell Let Loose. The second world war is still generally regarded as the ‘good war’. In the moral balance, the cause of the Axis powers was so unspeakably bad that their adversaries have rarely had to justify themselves. But there is, perhaps, more to it than the moral balance. The second war has gained in public esteem by being everything that the first war was not. It was fought for recognisable and, on the whole admirable, objectives. It did not begin, as the first had, among the conspiratorial fumblings of European chanceries. It did not become an object in itself.

The Eurozone crisis leads today's news agenda (read William Hague's take), with evermore dire predictions being made about the future of the single currency and the European Union itself. Many readers may be left uncomprehending as billions turn into trillions, and apparently we can't count on the BBC for impartiality, so here is your Eurozone crisis reader. 1. Europe: The State of the Union by Anand Menon Confused by the Commission? Unsure of how a qualified majority vote works? Anand Menon's book cuts through the jargon, as its publisher puts it, sketching the parameters of an indistinct political system. Menon is not an insider and this means that the book remains simple. It's the perfect primer in the subject. 2.

The most influential authors, retailers, critics, agents, publishers, broadcasters and poets were all listed in The Guardian Book 100 this weekend. First prize went to the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos who - in addition to diversifying from books to groceries - is currently setting up Blue Origin, a company which offers space travel to the general public. Author JK Rowling; Google CEO, Larry Page; Waterstone's last chance, the Daunt/Mamut team and Chief Executive of Hachette UK, Tim Hely Hutchinson, followed close behind. Richard & Judy continue to slip down the rankings while Stieg Laarson won't let death get in the way; his ghost checked in at number 18. Charles Dickens also manages to extend his influence beyond the grave.

‘John Smith is dead.’ These four blunt syllables, as elemental and atmospheric as the first line of a classic novel, form the opening of Chris Mullin’s new collection of diaries. This is a fascinating read, crammed with gossip, jokes, insights and anecdotes, not all of them political. Mullin’s first disclosure is that the ‘decent interval’ between a leader’s death and the tussle to succeed him lasts about three seconds. The ‘Stop Blair Camp’ formed as soon as Smith was buried. They try to court Mullin and he brushes them off. ‘I’m in the Win the Next Election Camp.’ He considers backing John Prescott, but ‘I can’t bear the thought of another phoney-left leader. Give me an honest right-winger any day.

David Jones has written the Bookends column in this week's issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog: Joan Collins first came to public notice in the 1950s, as a Rank starlet and sex kitten. In the 1970s she starred in film adaptations of her younger sister Jackie’s novels The Stud and The Bitch, and in the 1980s as Alexis Carrington in the American soap opera Dynasty. More recently she has reinvented herself, in these pages and elsewhere, as a grande dame and moral arbiter, bemoaning the debased standards and general vulgarity of our times. The World According to Joan finds her in full Lady Bracknell mode.

At face value, Asti Hustvedt’s Medical Muses is rather a niche tome, a faultlessly researched history of three female hysterics living in eighteenth-century Paris.  However, it actually provides a broad and fascinating insight into the interwoven development of the arts and sciences during La Belle Époque – an age of rapid technological, medical and artistic advancement which, ironically enough, was to prove feminine in nothing but name.   While some women at this time were busy playing Calliope to Europe ’s artists and musicians, swathes of other down-and-outs were falling prey to the disease of the moment, Hysteria.

The BBC's World at One recently asked five leading figures in the literary world for their thoughts on the 'future of the book'. Here is what they had to say: 1.) Notorious literary agent, Andrew Wylie - aka 'the Jackal' - worried that the industry is at a crisis point. He argued the book industry is in danger of mirroring the fortunes of the music industry by giving too much power to distributors like Amazon. 'Publishers have been trying to reconcile themselves with the demands of the digital distributors,' he said. 'I think if they allow the digital distributors to set the music then the dance will become fatal…The music business ended up needing to go on the road to support the musicians who were part of it.

As a new series of Desert Island Discs gets underway, we investigate the least talked about but most fascinating aspect of the show: the castaway’s book choice… This March, in the most momentous archival unveiling since Glasnost, the entire back catalogue of the world’s longest-running factual radio programme, BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, went online. Searchable and sortable, it’s a dangerously addictive resource, especially if you’re the sort of weirdo who’s been carrying around a mental list of eight songs, a book and a luxury since childhood. Helpfully, the BBC has compiled a list of castaways’ top tunes: Ode to Joy, Land of Hope and Glory, and other drearily predictable fare.

One of the literary excitements of this week, The Fear Index by Robert Harris, showed that the journalist and novelist continues to mine both the ancient and modern world for inspiration.  His latest thriller revolves around a mad scientist who’s created a beast he can’t control. So far, so Shelley, but this monster is unmistakably of the moment: a computer program designed to monitor fear in money markets for a hugely profitable hedge fund. His tale tips into gothic when the soulless monster switches and starts to track fear in the mind of its master.