Distance Ed Ideas -

• • Graphic Novels Head Into the Classroom
    Graphic novels, a fancy name for fancy comic books, are moving into the classroom to help teach reading, but not all teachers are happy about it. Some see comics as a good way of engaging students with reading materials they like, while others see them as a dumbing down of the curriculum. And some, I suspect, still see comics as something with a lingering evil quality. Of course, those who cast a jaundiced eye on graphic novels may have been looking at the more adult oriented titles, such as the magnificently complex League of Extraordinary Gentleman series, or the noirish Sin City. (BTW, don't confuse the Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel with absolutely horrid movie of the same name. The very R-rated comic is a wonderful send up of Victorian culture, mores and manners that could never survive a transition to the screen.) (USA Today) BTW - Saturday is Free Comic Book Day. Look for your local participating store.
    • College Students Are Reading Comics, Too (Guardian Online)
• Google Goes Back To Scanning Books
  Google paused briefly in scanning books into its online digital library when publishers started making a fuss. But the search giant has resumed scanning and posting once again, starting with out-of-print titles that publishers will have a hard time claiming hurts their sales. But Google will get back to scanning current books eventually, and that's when things will really hit the fan. Must reading for anyone interested in the future of publishing and libraries. (The Globe & Mail)
• A Million Little Problems Dept. - Fall Out From James Frey's Fabrications
  A week or so ago I ran a guest commentary by my colleague John Temple about his outrage at the apparent fabrications in James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces. I have to admit that prior to seeing his comments, I had given little thought to the book. Drug memoirs (other than Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) hold little appeal to me. But over the last couple of weeks there has been a firestorm of criticism of Frey for either grossly exaggerating or outright fabricating what happened to him as an alcoholic and drug addict. Criticism seems to be particularly harsh because fans of the book feel betrayed by Frey and the emotions he brought out in them with what they thought was a true story.
  
  No reader has been more public in her upset than media maven Oprah Winfrey, who had featured Frey on her book club. In the days immediately following the charges against Frey, Oprah stood by the author based on assurances that the book had only a few minor exaggerations. But Thursday she had Frey back on her show and let him have it with both barrels.
  
  While Frey's major outing came from The Smoking Gun, a few critics had raised questions about the book's authenticity when it was first released in 2003. The best example comes from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which addressed the issues in an article from July of 2003. The StTrib took on the issue largely because the rehab clinic Frey was treated at is located in the Minneapolis area. Frey's story made the famous Hazelden Clinic look very bad, and the clinic has been fighting the image ever since.
  
  One of the most interesting stories I've heard on the Frey case comes from NPR's On The Media. In the interview, Brooke Gladstone talks with Andrew Goldberg of TSG, and book critic Adam Kirsch. The issue is not so much why Frey lied, but what why the book industry publishes a book that raises these kinds of questions.
  
• When Is Nonfiction Fiction and Fiction Nonfiction?
  So everyone in the literary nonfiction world is all aflutter over whether Million Little Pieces is true, and whether memoirs need to correspond to the actual facts that took place. But the latest Oprah book club selection raises the opposite question -- Can a book be labeled a novel and really be a truthful memoir? That's the question raised in this AP story from the Washington Post.
  
  Oddly enough, book critic Adam Kirsch gives an answer to this question in a completely separate story from NPR's On the Media. Kirsch says that in the past, young writers made names for themselves by writing autobiographical novels that were actually thinly disguised memoirs. But since they described their books as novels, they were free to depart from the facts as much as they pleased. But in the last decade, young writers have started selling these same style of stories as true memoirs rather than as novels. Very interesting reading.