3pointD.com

The UK’s enjoyably left-leaning daily newspaper, The Guardian, flags the emerging publishing and literary scene in the virtual world of Second Life in an article on the Guardian Unlimited site this week. The piece mainly revolves around Penguin’s entry into Second Life with the virtual sampler of Snow Crash they published a while back with the help of Rivers Run Red. The article, however, notes that Penguin is “now developing a virtual bookshelf of other Penguin titles for the Second Life resident.” The piece also flags what sounds like a nice build, a replica of the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore in Paris. The books on the shelves there apparently provide links to their counterparts on Amazon.com, although there are plans to publish original works by residents. The Grid is down for an update at the moment so I can’t give you a location for it, but I’m looking forward to checking this out and seeing how it matches up with the real thing — especially whether the proprietor will be offering young literary avatars a place to bunk in a threadbare upstairs room, as George Whitman, the real store’s proprietor, has long been known to.