The next Meanland event, The evolution of the bookshop, is just on the horizon: With Amazon.com, ebooks and print-on-demand, are we seeing the end of the traditional bookstore? In the first Meanland event for 2011, a panel of retailers, e-traders and industry insiders discuss how book selling is changing and what that evolution means for readers, writers and literature. Hosted by writer, editor and publisher Chris Flynn.

When: 6:15PM – 7:15PM, Wednesday 30 March
Where: The Wheeler Centre
Cost: Free, but bookings recommended

Also, check out this week’s Meanland post on the history, aesthetics and purpose of data visualisation over at Meanjin:

Recently, David McCandless gathered together the results of fifteen or so well-known ‘Top 100 Books’ polls, analysed them, then produced this consensus cloud:

Been feeling listless and haven’t yet read To Kill a Mockingbird? The consensus is the book could change your life, as it has the lives of many before you.

In his TED talk last year, ‘The beauty of data visualization’, McCandless spoke of his devotion to visual language: ‘It’s about finding patterns and connections that matter, then designing that information so it makes more sense or tells a story or allows us to only focus on the information that’s important.’

The ‘Books Everyone Should Read’ cloud is heavily text-based, however; would it be even possible to depict these findings graphically? It’s not as though the books have distinguishing, recognisable shapes the way, say, animals do.

Read at Meanjin.

And on a final note, here’s a video we at Meanland have found most educational over the past week: