In the news: Deepwater Horizon oil spill

On April 20th, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig suffered a huge explosion killing 11 workers and injuring 17 others. The explosion lead to the rig's eventual sinking. Ever since then there has been a serious and ongoing oil spill leaking from the wellhead at the drilling site in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil gushed out of the sea floor at a rate of between 12 000 to 100 000 barrels per day, with many experts suggesting the rate was at the upper, worst case scenario limit. The oil spill is quickly becoming one of the world's worst environmental disasters with the effectiveness of the attempts by BP (owner of the drill site) to stem the flow still uncertain.

Below we have listed some books related to oil, oil rigs and deep sea drilling.

Deep Challenge: Our Quest for Energy Beneath the Sea
Clyde W. Burleson

Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline
Lisa Margonelli

Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse
Paul Carter

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
Peter Maass

eBooks and Publishers

Last week the major players in the US publishing industry met at the annual BookExpo America conference. Reuters has an article with interviews in relation to the industry's views and approach to eBooks.

The Ars Technica blog also has an interesting article that concludes that publishers need to unite and agree on a good universal eBook standard, which is exactly what the publishers want:

"Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic so that there isn't proprietary formats and you can read wherever you want to read," Penguin Group CEO David Shanks told Reuters. "First we have to get a standard that everybody embraces."

But as the Ars Technica author notes, publishers do not seem to be getting together and making it happen.

In the meantime consumers are being left with a few major eBook readers (The Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble NOOK), which generally leads the consumer to be tied to one eBook seller and their chosen eBook format. This does not bode well for competition or for the little book shops out there. There is no doubt that the book industry is changing, and whether the publishers can keep up and whether their wish for a popular universal format will be fulfilled, are both yet to be seen.

In the news: Thailand's 2010 political crisis

Starting from today, we will occasionally post a reading list of books related to a topic currently or recently covered in the news.

In the past few months Thailand has experienced its worst political violence and upheaval of its recent history. The two main parties involved were the Red-Shirt protestors and the government led by Abhisit Vejjajiva. The protestors, who largely support the exiled ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, were calling for the government to step down, claiming that it had come to power illegitimately. After months of negotiations and intermittent violence, the parties failed to come to an agreement and the government ordered a military crackdown on the main protest site which had been set up in the center of Bangkok.

What followed were days of street fighting between soldiers and those loyal to the Red-Shirt movement. The violence culminated in arson attacks on at least 27 buildings around Bangkok including Southeast Asia's second largest mall, CentralWorld, which was gutted by flames.

For those interested in reading more about Thailand's history and its politics we have listed some interesting books below. We also have many other books about Thailand which you can search for or browse for within the Southeast Asian Travel section.

A History of Thailand
Pasuk Phongpaichit & Chris Baker
Publication Date: 14/4/2009

Abhisit Vejjajiva
Frederic P. Miller and Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster
Publication Date:  11/10/2009

Thaksin (2nd edition)
Pasuk Phongpaichit & Chris Baker
Publication Date:  15/2/2010

Thailand Unhinged: Unraveling the Myth of a Thai-Style Democracy
Federico Ferrara
Publication Date: 27/01/2010

The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej
(Not available to customers residing in Thailand)
Paul M. Handley
Publication Date:28/6/2006

eBooks for Aussies

It's an exciting time to be a bookseller but also a worrying one both for brick and mortar bookshops and smaller online ones. The worry for those not selling online has been around for some years as large and small online shops take more of the sales. Concerns are likely to be exacerbated though as the demand for e-books grows.

Online sellers like ourselves need to monitor developments and time our move to eBooks carefully. Even with the new toys like the iPad and other readers hitting the market and owners looking for reasons for having one how great will the demand be in the short term? I have no doubt it will grow however as people adjust to the new technology and appreciate the lower prices.

What are the main advantages of using e-books, apart from price. First there are around two million free e-books that can be accessed over the internet. And you can store hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books on your portable reader. But what appeals to me is the ability to search text. Blame my poor short-term memory if you like but I am constantly flipping back through novels to track when a character first appeared or their significance. I'm sure that once digital text and reference books become widely available there will be many wanting them.

So, will Scribbly Gum Books be selling eBooks to Aussies in the near future--almost certainly but we do need to ensure that it's commercially viable taking into account demand and our setup and licensing fees.