Ambergris is “a solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull grey or blackish color produced in the digestive system of sperm whales.”

This August, as we prepare to unleash a truly remarkable fall catalog, MobyLives will be taking a bit of a breather. We’ll still post the occasional news item or feature, but for most of this month we’ll be posting a roundup like this every morning. We will, of course, remain active on Twitter and Facebook. We hope you have a great August, and that you’ll keep checking in with us!

• On Friday, Apple lashed out against the DOJ, calling its proposals for injunctive relief “a draconian and punitive intrusion into Apple’s business, wildly out of proportion to any adjudicated wrongdoing or potential harm.” (Publishers Weekly)
• How are books assembled in Daftaripara, the binding district of Calcutta? Check out these interviews with owners, workers, and union leaders on the Jadavpur University School of Media, Communication and Culture’s site devoted to Daftaripara.
• A big new definitive biography on the Zelig of 1960s and 70s pop, Harry Nilsson, who “sang of moonbeams and fire and coconuts and puppies.” (Grantland)
• An interview with activist Peter Tatchell, who has “has been beaten on more than 300 occasions, arrested more than 100 times, participated in over 3,000 protests and received more than 500 death threats.” (Boston Review)
• Sequential has launched a dedicated storefront app for graphic novels. While monthly comics have been available for tablets and smartphones through specific apps, this is the first one that will direct readers to full-length graphic novels. (Publishers Weekly)
• Tor’s Dangerous Women fantasy anthology will include a novella by George R.R. Martin that takes place in the Game of Thrones universe. Set 200 years before the events of the books (and TV series), “The Princess and the Queen, or The Blacks and the Greens,” depicts members of the alternately kick-ass and crazy House Targaryen struggling for the right to rule. (Christian Science Monitor)
• “A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals, because the fate of most livestock is that they are murdered by their benefactors. The creatures may live serenely but they end violently, and the odor of doom hangs about them always.” E.B. White explains how he came to write Charlotte’s Web. (Letters of Note)
• The Buenos Aires Review continues their listing of great bookstores around the world, but the most recent entry is poignant: the beloved—and now burned—Pilgrims Book House in Kathmandu.
• “If you run out of mysteries, people quit.” Do you listen to audio books? (The Wall Street Journal)
• “This is old school.” Do you buy books at street fairs (in Salt Lake City)? (Deseret News)

A song for Monday: “Yo no sé” by Los Dug Dug’s