It may be worth declaring a conflict of interest straight off: I can’t stand David Frost.
As a child, he instilled a strange kind of lonely hatred on Through the Keyhole – a formulaic game show in which the preening host would constantly insert amusing anecdotes about some famous person he had interviewed decades earlier.
And as an adult, embarrassment turned to frustration as politician after politician was given an easy ride on Breakfast with Frost – the BBC Sunday morning current affairs show that was finally booted off air in 2005 (but not before 12 years of instantly forgettable and, in some cases, depressingly bad interviews).
Kevin Murphy, a British IT journo based in the US, has done a review of my Sex.com book on his blog.
He likes it. Which is nice since he is one of roughly three journalists in the world who understand the domain name system and its history. You can read it all here.
I like the opening line: “This is easily the funnest tech industry book I’ve read in a long time.”
I’m still don’t know where things are at with the US publisher, or this bloke in New York was interested in making a screenplay out of the book, or if I’m ever going to make any money from the book. Still, what does it matter in the wider scheme of things? I managed to write a book and people seem to enjoy it.
This has to be good – I note that Amazon.com is now selling my book – Sex.com.
Unfortunately there is still a four to six-week delivery date on it, which leads me to conclude that my publishers have yet to strike a deal with a US publisher. I also note on a quick perusal of the Net that the Sydney Morning Herald and ran a whole extract in its edition today – Chapter 3, I believe. And I’m pleased to see that Techworld – where I was news ed – ran an extract last week. Alot has happened since I’ve been away.
I’ve also got a lovely review on Amazon.com. Although this doesn’t appeared to have helped my ranking much – it’s still way down at book no 186,461. Anyway, the review:
There was a review in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, so I did something I’ve only done once before in my life and bought it.
I knew it didn’t bode well when they managed to misspell my name not once but twice in the piece (in fact it’s not spelt right anywhere). Once of the first rules of journalism is to make absolutely sure you get the correct spelling of someone’s name, because it’s the one thing that most irritates people – that and their age being wrong. So despite the book having “Kieren McCarthy” in bold letters on the front of the book, it turns out that the Sunday Telegraph believes one “Kieran McCarthy” wrote it, while the reviewer is convinced someone called “Keiren McCarthy” was behind it.
What’s more, the Telegraph website is down at the moment so I can’t link to the review. Perhaps divine justice.
The Times has done a review of Sex.com. Short and sweet:
“Sex.com
By Kieren McCarthy
Reviewed by Iain Finlayson
Civil law, not unreasonably regarded as a dry subject, is often rendered relevant by colourful cases. There is no more dramatic cause of dispute than money, unless it is sex — so the battle for the domain name sex.com had [...]
I’ve just seen that a review of my Sex.com book has popped up on the New Statesman.
It’s not very long and it’s taken a tack which I was surprised by, but I didn’t think the New Statesman would cover it as it tends to prefer more weighty and political books. Nonetheless, I think I would be intrigued by the review and even consider buying it -so that has to be good. I understand as well that The Times and The Sunday Telegraph will review it this week. And The Register and Techworld should also do reviews soon. And I have a range of interviews lined up next week. Should be fun.
I have consistently failed to actually post on *my own blog* that the book I’ve spent three years on is finally done, printed and actually available to buy from all good bookstores.
But it is.
And I’ve just seen the first review of it that hasn’t come from my biased family and friends, and that’s from Gavin Brown – who is a rare breed of man who has such technical ability that you can imagine him *seeing* the Internet in the same way that Keanu Reeves sees the Matrix, but is also a friendly and chatty bloke. Gavin told me he’d written a review and I really had no idea whether he would like it or loathe it.
I’m delighted to say he liked it and has written a great review of it on Circle ID.
With my book out the way, I now have lots more time to, er, read books. And one of those near the top of the pile was Who controls the Internet? by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu. The book has frequently cropped up in conversations with various Net people since it was published in March, and so I have been itching to read it.
I finished it this morning. And my gut feeling is that this is a very important book. Not only does it cover a big hole in knowledge and understanding of the Internet, but it is also well written, easy to understand, concise, coherent and thoughtful. I strongly suspect it will be ones of those books that informs opinion and so has a lasting, global influence far beyond what you could expect from 226 pages of text.
Being a journalist and knowing a thing or two about the subject though, I also have a number of criticisms. It has a dangerous US bias despite its avowed international outlook, it completely misses a fundamental plank of Internet governance, namely ICANN, and it has missed recent changes that will come back to haunt it.
