I was told by my marketing handler at Penguin/Berkley to visit the Penguin Books Booth when I was on the trade floor at Book Expo America last month. She wanted me to introduce myself to the sales and promotional people there so they had a face with the name in case Harry Potter’s Bookshelf ever takes off. That turned out to be a fool’s errand — the sales people were there to make sales with the gazillion booksellers present, not make face time with wanna-bes — but I did catch a glimpse of what may be the future of popular literature. Or is it just a repackaging of the present?

Penguin/Dutton was promoting heavily via hard displays, advance copies, and video terminals a book titled Level 26, “the first Digi-Novel,” “from the creator of the hit show CSI.” If you go to the web site for the book, you’ll read this description of the “Digi-Novel” experience:

Read, watch, log-in, and inter-act. Level 26 breaks all boundaries of traditional publishing by combining motion picture quality film and an interactive community website with a thriller novel.

I was given a copy of the book, and, frankly, thought little of it. I read the first chapter on the bus ride home, though, and was curious enough to go to the press web site to check out the “motion picture quality film” that serves as a bridge between chapters. You can read the book straight through, it turns out, without checking out the video bridges and still follow the story — but the video segments are incredible. [Read more…]

So says The New Republic:

“Her former clerks report that because Sotomayor is divorced and has no children, her clerks become like her extended family–working late with her, visiting her apartment once a month for card games (where she remembers their favorite drinks), and taking a field trip together to the premier of a Harry Potter movie.”

That’s one breakdown of the Court’s thinking on issues I haven’t read. Anyone care to guess the opinions, majority and dissenting, of our Supreme Court Justices on Harry?

(H/T — RHT)