But for what it’s worth, I’m glad that Random House sealed the deal with Penguin. Penguin is a great resource, with those distinctive, lovely orange spined paperback volumes and their focus on classics and should be classics (not that I always agree with their choices for the latter). And it might have been nice if they’d stayed on their own, the British-based bastion. But when I heard that Rupert Murdoch might be getting his culture crushing, deceptive, and just plain nastily evil arthritic claws on Penguin, I was horrified.

Bertlesmann (Random House’ parent company) is broad-based German media company and while anyone should be nervous at the idea of 25% of publishing being controlled by one company, it’s not nearly so unnerving as the monopoly on distribution that Amazon is in the process of constructing. And the europhile in me trusts a German company to be better caretakers of the cultural ideal and symbolism that books possess. I trust Rupert Murdoch and News Corp to publish risible editorial opinions, tap my phone, and lie to my face. See the difference?

But there other, more depressing ways to view this whole thing.