Heard Any Good Books Lately?

“Unlike onscreen e-books, which never quite caught on, downloadable audiobooks have taken off, driven by the explosive popularity of the iPod. According to the Audio Publishers Association, downloads have grown sharply, rising to 9 percent of audio book sales in 2005; that is a 50 percent increase over the previous year.”

China’s Big-Money Art

The booming art market has brought big attention to Chinese art. Big money too. “With auction prices soaring, hundreds of new studios, galleries and private art museums are opening in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Chinese auction houses that once specialized in traditional ink paintings are now putting contemporary experimental artworks on the block.”

Classical Not Cool Enough For Sydney Fest

“Has the Sydney Festival abandoned classical music? Or, to put it another way, has classical music become so terminally unfashionable that image-conscious publicists have run out of ways to pretend it is something it isn’t? …Those looking for what we rather clumsily call the classical concert experience are left feeling like people refused entry to a fashionable bar on the grounds of poor dress sense.”