Google is still facing many lawsuits related to its goal of digitalizing every book worldwide before 2020; however, on Monday June 11 they resolved pending cases in France.

Six years ago, the French Publishers Association and the authors’ association Société des Gens Lettres filed court cases against Google’s books project, claiming that the company was violating copyrights on out-of-print books. On Monda,y the groups dropped the claims against Google, as an agreement was made.

With the new terms, publishers get to decide which books can be digitalized. “The authors will be able to say yes or no to the indexing of their works,” said Antoine Gallimard, the president of publishers group SNE.

Google says that the chosen books will be sold in Google Play, which isn’t currently available in France.

Other details have not yet been released, but it has been said that part of the deal is that Google will donate money to a program that supports young children learning to read.

Google hopes this agreement will help advance their project in France and around the world. France is now the only country that has a book scanning accord that includes most books worldwide.

“Our hope is that these pathbreaking partnerships will help jump-start the emerging French electronic book market,” said Philippe Colombet, the CEO of Google Books France.

The New York Times reports that this isn’t the only digitalizing book proposal that France has going on. Parliament has given permission to the French National Library to digitalize “orphan works”. Orphan works are books that are out-of-print with an unknown copyright holder. Under this new law copyright holders are given six months to come forward and protest the digitalization of the book.

As progress is being made in France, US authors are still fighting Google on this subject. In Google’s opinion the authors should need to file individual law suits. However, last month the suit was given class-action status by Judge Denny Chin. The Author’s Guild is happy with this verdict.

“It is, without question, more efficient and effective than requiring thousands of authors to sue individually. Requiring this case to be litigated on an individual basis would risk disparate results in nearly identical suits and exponentially increase the cost of litigation,”  Judge Chin said.

Google hopes that an agreement similar to the one made in France can be made in the US and other countries. As of now, the company has scanned and digitalized 20 million books, and would like to continue on its ambitious goal to have all books online by the end of the decade. But for now the search engine is happy with the results they had in France.

“All conditions are now in place for Google to participate in developing digital books in France and contribute to spreading French culture,” said Colombet.

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Bestselling author Jennifer Crusie claims she was born to write novels rather than short stories, but her newly-released collection of short stories, Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories, proves that she is a versatile writer. The Ohio native has written 16 books, and over thirty of her essays have been published in magazines and anthologies. Crusie originally compiled this collection for her MFA in fiction at Ohio State University.

Anyone who has read her book Crazy for You, will recognize characters such as Quinn and her best friend Darla. Crusie first wrote about Quinn and Darla here, and they helped her develop the subsequent novel, which was one of the top ten romances of 1999 as selected by Romance Writers of America.

The collection is unique in that you get to follow Crusie’s writing process. Crusie illustrates the development of her characters through notes at the beginning and end of each story, providing readers with an insider’s look into what Crusie was thinking when she wrote them.

The voices of the different stories vary from pre-teens struggling with adolescent love and family drama to a grown woman whose husband has left her for the ‘Bank Slut.’ The characters vary in age and personality, but they feel realistic as they tell their stories.

The stories share a common theme: love. But the stories are not the typical romance stories that Crusie is famous for. Crusie covers all the different types of love, from one-sided love, to true romance, to love between family members.

The book starts out with a story entitled, “The Day My Sister Shot the Mailman and Got Away With It, Of Course.” Told by the fifteen-year-old version of Quinn, this story rambles on in an honest, funny way. Quinn notices everything about her attention-hogging older sister’s love life, and she tries to give the mailman tips on how to date her. Crusie says many of her fans do not recognize the narrator as Quinn in this story, but she reminds the reader that this story occurred seventeen years before Crazy for You.

“I Am At My Sister’s Wedding”, includes characters who got cut from the published version of Crazy for You. Written from the point of view of Caroline, the story follows her as she attends her older sister Stephanie’s multiple weddings. The story begins when Caroline is fifteen and continues over the next thirty years as Caroline attends five weddings. The two sisters seem to be polar opposites: while Caroline never settles down, Stephanie has settled down too many times to count. But in the end they have more in common than what appears—they both struggle to find that perfect guy. Caroline describes each wedding in vivid detail, from the crazy relatives in attendance to how the color of the punch had to match the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses.

Crusie tells us in the note before the story that the story was originally intended to be a way to learn more about Stephanie as a character. In the first drafts of Crazy for You, she was one of Quinn’s best friends. But Crusie realized the story was less about Stephanie and more about Caroline—who Crusie describes as having a “wacked-out view of men and relationships.” Crusie states that Stephanie was such a simple character that it was easy to cut her from the book.

“Just Wanted You to Know” takes the form of a letter written by Debbie, Darla’s sister, to her cheating husband. As the letter progresses, the reader sees Debbie go through the different phases of dealing with her cheating husband. In the beginning of the letter, Debbie is in denial that her husband has left her for a woman known locally as the ‘Bank Slut.’ Once she accepts the truth, she is still willing to forgive her husband, but throughout the story Debbie continuously changes her mind. Although written as a letter, it reads more like a diary. Debbie pours her emotion into the note, making it a form of therapy. She vents all her thoughts of the affair, the divorce, and even the problems it is causing with her nosy mother. The letter is complete with several postscripts in which Debbie’s feelings evolve, from thinking she can forgive her husband as she explains her plans to win him back, to her affair with her husband’s best friend.

The collection also contains appendices, which provide alternative versions of some of the stories. For example, “The Day My Sister Shot the Mailman and Got Away with It, Of Course” was first written for a seminar with short story and novel writer, Ron Carlson. For one assignment, he required his students to write a 26-sentence story, and the first sentence had to start with the letter A, the next with B, etc. Although a difficult and unusual assignment, Crusie was pleased with the outcome and expanded the story into the version you see published in her collection. Crusie included the original exercise in Appendix A, and it is interesting to see the transformations that took place.

Readers can also read the published first chapter of Crazy for You and the original chapter from the book proposal. Although the two chapters are similar in content, some characters were deleted and some details changed as Crusie’s ideas for Crazy for You developed.

Even though most of us cannot say that our sister shot the mailman, the stories are all very easy to relate to. Crusie’s writing is easy to follow and fun to read. Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories is available for Kindle, Nook, and iBook. A print version will be available soon.

Rating: 4/5

The article Jennifer Crusie: Crazy People Shows Versatility, Progress: Review appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Penguin Group USA announced recently the release of its Holiday eSampler featuring excerpts from over 40 frontlist, backlist, and upcoming titles. Available for free wherever eBooks are sold, this collection provides readers with the opportunity to browse sample chapters of a variety of adult and young adult books across genres: from bestselling thrillers and critically-acclaimed literary fiction to award-winning nonfiction and classic literature. Each title can be purchased or preordered directly from the eSampler via customized “Buy” links for each eReader.

Matthew Boyd, Publishing Manager at Penguin Group said: “The Penguin Holiday eSampler is a great way to discover your next favorite book and find out what your family and friends really want this holiday season. Books always make the best gifts, whether you’re buying for others or for yourself, and with the Penguin Holiday eSampler, you’re just a few clicks away from some of the best fiction, nonfiction, and young adult books we have to offer.”

Inspired by Charles Dickens, the sampler is divided into “books past, present, and future.” The Past section features both classic and recent books that have become reader favorites. The Present section includes bestselling and award-winning novels and nonfiction from 2011, and finally, the Future section showcases upcoming books that will be published just after the New Year in January that readers can preorder. The full list of titles is below.

The 2011 Holiday eSampler collection:

Past:

• City of Thieves by David Benioff
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
• Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
• Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan
• Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
• Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman
• At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
• The Reason for God by Tim Keller
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
• Drive by Daniel Pink
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Present:

• The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
• Washington by Ron Chernow
• The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
• Locked On by Tom Clancy
• Shelter by Harlan Coben
• Matched by Ally Condie
• Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell
• Prince of Ravenscar by Catherine Coulter
• Devil’s Gate by Clive Cussler
• The Ideal Man by Julie Garwood
• V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
• Theodore Boone #1 by John Grisham
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
• The New New Rules by Bill Maher
• Bloodlines by Richelle Mead
• The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
• The Next Always by Nora Roberts
• Shock Wave by John Sandford
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• The Quest by Daniel Yergin

Future:

• Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel
• More Room in a Broken Heart by Stephen Davis
• Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Down the Darkest Road by Tami Hoag
• Breakdown by Sara Paretsky

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