Posts Tagged ‘Books’

Book wear

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Yeah, there are a few shirts at Out Of Print that I would totally wear… but there’s only one Immediate Must Buy.

I wish it were black, or at least something dark, but there is no denying the power of Bulgarkov and his book. And hey, good cause.

Hey, I Haven’t Done A Meme-y Thing In A While

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

And I did like this one when I found it at greybon.
What’s a book you most want to read again for the first time?:
Oh, that’s a tough one. I’d probably want to pick something that changed my head in some significant way, which biases the field in favour of things I read earlier in my [...]

Vaguely book-related

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

You know the drill: links with pithy comments.

Let’s start off this list with Jo Walton costing me a pile of money. I’ve mentioned before enjoying her Tor.com reviews, and finding significant alignment between her tastes and mine… so when she reviews a series of spy novels that I somehow have never even heard of, and [...]

“Man is a substance clad in shadows”

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Many things these days contribute to my lack of sleep–social activity, parent scheduling, social evenings in different cities, my stubborn refusal to go to sleep when I should, time spent playing with the world through this Internet thing, and–of course–things I start to read when I should go to bed that I just-can’t-put-down.
Sometimes you can [...]

February 12, 2010 12:08 pm

What does it say about me that when I followed a link to the website for the upcoming Naked Girls Reading Science Fiction show, I was frustrated that the site had lots of information about (and pictures of) the “girls” who would be reading, but no information about what science fiction they would be reading?

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Paperback Alley

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

I mentioned that I’ve started the process of unpacking my books in the new house. I began with the mass-market paperbacks, for a few reasons:

they’re the smallest bit of the collection, so they present a relatively undaunting place to start
The place where I wanted to put them was ready–unlike the room that will be [...]

Reports of my demise…

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Yeah, still alive.
I kind of fell off the Internet there for a couple of weeks. Not blogging, barely making use of any other communications tech. Still reading a lot of stuff, but all input, no output.
This was not a planned thing, I just found that my real life was taking up too much time for [...]

Bookish Links On A Friday Night

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Well, the most interesting book world story right now is surely the whole hardball face-off between Amazon and Macmillan. I expect the most interesting discussion at Making Light.
It’s been a pretty depressing week in the book world: too many stories of authors dying. I guess there will only be more and more stories about the [...]

A flurry of quick things

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Am I the only one uncomfortable with “too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release” apparently being a legit category? Doesn’t that pretty much read as “we can’t prove you did shit, but we’re going to keep you in jail anyway”? I officially call bullshit on that. Of course it should come as no [...]

January 22, 2010 11:10 pm

If you are at all interested in how the business of publishing may change in response to some current disruptive technology shifts–and particularly if you’re interested in looking at the question from an author’s point of view–you should really pop over to Charlie Stross’ blog and read his post there outlining some thoughts on the question and asking for reader comments. This is one of those cases where the “don’t read the comments” rule does not apply: there are a couple of hundred comments there now with a pretty high signal-to-noise ratio, and lots of interesting (and some very scary) ideas are being kicked around.

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January 6, 2010 9:42 am

OK, the latest round of crazy TSA rules had solidified my resolve to not fly into America again (at least not until there are substantial changes in the way border and airport security are run)–not that this is a big deal, since my basic hatred of airports has had me driving to Boston and such locales rather than flying for well over a decade now. But now I have to see my own country make even more STUPID security theatre rules than the Americans? Argh. No books or magazines on the plane? Seriously? The directive is specific to “US-bound” planes, and as I said, I wasn’t planning to get on any of those, but still this kind of stupidity actually makes my cranium ache.

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Best Of Lists

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Generally speaking I hate this time of year on the Internet–I am so tired of year-end wrapups, best of lists, etc. It’s even worst this year, since it’s also the end of a decade. Enough with the lists.
Having said that, I did see one list that actually got my attention: Paul Witcover’s list of his [...]

Bachelors, Playboy, Cartoons

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Since the girls are gone for a couple of days, I am in Unemployed-Until-January Bachelor mode today.
This means that I slept in, and that upon waking I was allowed to relish the rare opportunity to lie about in bed and read something without needing to rush off to something or other.
Since it is a mini-bachelor [...]

December 8, 2009 12:27 am

I love how the article’s author is so sanguine about this aspect of his analysis, dropping it deadpan in a single sentence at the end of the piece: “The bad news for authors is that their royalties will decrease since they are based off of retail sales price.” Surely the simplification of the production and distribution system should result in less profit for publisher/distributor/vendor–i.e. the parts of the system simplified–and not in less profit for the bit that remains just as hard as ever?

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October 27, 2009 11:43 pm

I’m doing a little better with Jeff Ford’s current recommended reading list than I did with the last one–this time I’ve actually read some of the books (four of them, to be precise). Given that the theme this time seems to be “detective fiction at the boundaries of, or crossing into, other modes” it’s perhaps no surprise–I enjoy a little genre stretching and deconstruction. Of course the net result is five more books to put on the wishlist.

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