Enhanced Editions

Tag: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

World Book Night in digital – ebooks, apps and…TV 10/03/11

You may know that last Saturday was the inaugural World Book Night, an evening celebrating reading, and doing for adults what World Book Day does for kids.

The BBC devoted a whole evening of programming to World Book Night, there were more than 400 events held across the UK, and a million books were given away. And in case you missed it, BBC2’s flagship arts programme The Culture Show interviewed one of our co-founders, Peter Collingridge, as part of their coverage.

Peter spoke to presenter John Mullan about digital publishing and showed off our Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro app on an iPad. You can watch his section on iPlayer (UK only), and the whole programme is really worth a look.

The Book Stops Here, a literary night run by our publicist Emma Young, was also featured on the show here, and both Peter and Emma were part of the World Book Night party at Royal Festival Hall headlined by Margaret Atwood, where Peter DJed and Emma hosted readings to a crowd of over 1000 people.

World Book Night 2011

Nick Cave appeared at a huge World Book Night event in Trafalgar Square, where he read from Nabokov’s Lolita (at 15.44):

We thought it would be churlish not to remind you of our award-winning Nick Cave app and remind you of the cover of the ebook we created for Lolita last year:


David Nicholl’s One Day, for which we produced an app, was selected as one of the twenty books being given away. And Philip Pullman, whose Northern Lights was also part of the giveaway, spoke to the BBC about World Book Night in Trafalgar Square. We created an app for The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ which you can read all about here.

Both Bunny Munro and The Good Man Jesus are discounted for this week only, over on iTunes.

Last year for World Book Day we created £1.79 apps for all the Quick Reads books. They include titles by Andy McNab, Peter James, Cathy Kelly, and a Dr Who story and are still available.

World Book Night discount 10/03/11

To celebrate World Book Night, we’re dropping the price of two of our most popular apps, Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro and Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. For the next week The Death of Bunny Munro will be £4.99 and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ will be £7.99.

Both authors are huge supporters of World Book Night, which was established this year to celebrate reading and do for adults what World Book Day does for kids. Nick Cave appeared at a huge World Book Night event in Trafalgar Square, where he read from Nabokov’s Lolita (at 15.44):

Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights was one of the books given away on World Book Night, and he spoke to the BBC about it in Trafalgar Square:





Buy The Death of Bunny Munro in iTunes.
Buy The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ in iTunes.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ at Christmas 21/12/10

An editorial in the Guardian this morning talked about Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, for which we created the ebook app, calling it the perfect Christmas read and arguing that open-minded Christians will relish Pullman’s take on the nativity story:

In praise of … The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

For moralising monks and parents bankrupted by materialistic children, it is a commonplace at this time of year to bemoan the divorce between the winterval that rules the high street and the real meaning of Christmas. Happily, the book of 2010 provides a gift to reconnect the two. Philip Pullman’s take on the nativity story – which starts with Mary conceiving after an evening visit by an angel who looked “just like one of the young men who spoke to her by the well” – will not appeal to believers of a rigid bent. Nor, for that matter, will his reworking of the entire gospel as a tale of two twins, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, the one a fountain of simple virtue, the other set on building a mighty church on the foundation of “improved” truth. But open-minded Christians will relish it. The Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, hailed a “searching, teasing and ambitious narrative”, which fell short only if measured against the “still more resourceful text” of the gospels he preaches. Pullman retells the great tales of the good book in the pitch-perfect idiom of modern Bible translations, assembling such a persuasive director’s cut from official texts and ancient apocrypha that he had to emblazon “This is a Story” on the back cover to prevent the exercise from getting out of hand. Amid the carols and nativity plays, the human impulse to tell and retell tales is central to the real meaning of Christmas. Regardless of whether Pullman has anything to say about the real Jesus, he has a good deal to say about that.

Here’s the trailer for The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ:



Philip Pullman lives in Oxford with his family, where we recorded readings from a number of chapters from the book. Below is Philip Pullman reading from ‘Jesus in the Garden at Gethsemane’, a pivotal chapter from The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

Although this video didn’t make it into the final version of the app, it serves to demonstrate that Pullman reserves his scorn not for individual members of a religion, or even for religions themselves, but rather for those institutions that claim to be doing God’s work. He isn’t afraid to defend his freedom to say such things either, as the closing comments of his Oxford Literary Festival event can attest:

The enhanced edition, with the full text, the unabridged audiobook synchronised to the ebook, read by the author, and exclusive video interviews, is available for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, and you can download it here.

Enhanced Editions reading experience, now optimised for your iPad by Craig Mod 01/12/10

We’ve been carefully working on re-engineering and optimising all of our apps to take advantage of the best features of the iPad, and are thrilled to announce the first new releases, now available on the app store. But, not only are these great titles now available, they look something really special as well.

Enhanced Editions are now on the iPad

Jasper Fforde’s The Last Dragonslayer

(more…)

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ Hardback / App Bundle Offer 13/04/10

To celebrate the runaway success of Philip Pullman’s new novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, we are pleased to announce a limited-time offer for our app, where you buy the app and get the book free! (more…)

Jesus in the Garden at Gethsemane, read by Philip Pullman 13/04/10

“As soon as men who believe they are doing God’s will get hold of power, whether it is in a household, or a village, or in Jerusalem or in Rome itself, the devil enters into them.”

Philip Pullman’s closing comments from the Oxford Literary Festival have received a lot of attention over the past few weeks, so we thought we’d share with you some of the video footage that didn’t quite make it into the app. (more…)

Philip Pullman at the Oxford Literary Festival 29/03/10

Update: Filmed by Mike Paterson for Canongate Books, we now have the video of Philip Pullman’s closing comments from his talk at the Oxford Literary Festival. (more…)

Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ available on the App Store 29/03/10

From one of the great modern thinkers, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ re-assesses the treatment of Jesus in the gospels, inviting readers to question how the myths and stories which have come to define our culture have themselves been formed, and to ponder the relationship between ‘gospel truth’ and history. (more…)