{"id":2171,"date":"2009-01-12T01:13:07","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T05:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2009-01-12T01:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T05:17:00","slug":"closing-the-book-related-tabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/12\/closing-the-book-related-tabs\/","title":{"rendered":"Closing the book-related tabs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And here we go again&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffvandermeer.com\/tags\/read\/nonfiction\/60-in-60\/\">Jeff&#8217;s daily reviews<\/a> of the books in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguin.co.uk\/static\/cs\/uk\/0\/articles\/greatideas\/\">Penguin Great Ideas series<\/a>. While I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m interested in trying to read all sixty of them in sixty days (despite Jeff&#8217;s examples and the <a href=\"http:\/\/harvardpress.typepad.com\/hup_publicity\/2008\/12\/you-should-do-this-too.html\">exhortation of the Harvard University Press<\/a>) I am very impressed with the presentation of the volumes, and have cherry-picked a couple that I want to get around to in the near future. Maybe that&#8217;ll inspire some posts.<\/li>\n<li>My long awaited copy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.monkeybrainbooks.com\/Escape_from_Hell.html\">Escape From Hell<\/a> (here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/nethspace.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/escape-from-hell-by-hal-duncan.html\">a review<\/a>) has arrived. It jumped a few hundred books to end up about 3rd down the to-be-read queue. While I&#8217;m waiting Duncan is entertaining me with meditations on whether or not that <a href=\"http:\/\/notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/thoughts-on-narnia.html\">little Turkish Delight loving traitor deserves to die<\/a>. As is usual for him, it&#8217;s lengthy but also well worth the read.<\/li>\n<li>Given that I&#8217;ve read and enjoyed 4 of the 5 books on <a href=\"http:\/\/vectoreditors.wordpress.com\/2008\/12\/30\/top-five-books-of-2008\/\">this particular best of 2008 list<\/a>, I probably have a very good motivation to go seek out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.ca\/Gone-Away-World-Nick-Harkaway\/dp\/0307268861\">The Gone-Away World<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nickharkaway.com\/\">Nick Harkaway<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Some recent(ish) favourites at Tor.com: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=10784\">a focus on Clark Ashton Smith<\/a>, who you will <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/08\/the-eldritch-dark\/\">not be surprised<\/a> to find is my favourite of the old Weird Tales crowd. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nightshadebooks.com\/cart.php?m=product_detail&#038;p=88\">Nightshade<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nightshadebooks.com\/cart.php?m=product_detail&#038;p=89\">helping<\/a> me replace my raggedy paperbacks with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nightshadebooks.com\/cart.php?m=product_detail&#038;p=90\">nice hardcovers<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Some recent(ish) favourites at Tor.com: In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=11070\">one entry<\/a> my interest is substantially raised in both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snowbooks.com\/shop_9781905005888.html\">an existing book<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snowbooks.com\/AI9781906727031.html\">a forthcoming book<\/a>, and I get a free story in both readable and listenable form. How did I not hear about this book from any other source?<\/li>\n<li>Some recent(ish) favourites at Tor.com: Bringing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=11068\">some love to Scott Westerfeld&#8217;s Risen Empire books<\/a> (a.k.a. Scott&#8217;s last not-YA books). As much as I enjoy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottwesterfeld.com\/\">Scott<\/a>&#8216;s YA stuff (and I&#8217;ve used <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottwesterfeld.com\/books\/uglies.htm\">the Uglies books<\/a> to definitively prove to people that YA can do all the things that &#8220;adult&#8221; science fiction can do) this kind of just makes me wish that there was sense<footnote>To see what this means, go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottwesterfeld.com\/author\/faq.htm\">here<\/a>, and scroll down to the &#8220;When are you going to write more adult fiction&#8221; question.<\/footnote> in him writing for adults again. YA&#8217;s gain was a loss to adult SF for sure.<\/li>\n<li>Hey look, there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heroesofthevalley.co.uk\/the_book.html\">a new YA book<\/a> coming out from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathanstroud.com\/\">Jonathan Stroud<\/a>. As I quite enjoyed Stoud&#8217;s previous work, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bartimaeusbooks.com\/\">The Bartimaeus Trilogy<\/a>, which was both well-written and politically and socially subversive (particularly when viewed through the YA lens), I&#8217;m looking forward to this one.<\/li>\n<li>Popping over to comics, I was both happy to finally have finished <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Naoki_Urasawa\">Urasawa<\/a>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.viz.com\/products\/products.php?series_id=118\">Monster<\/a> when the final volume came out last month, and sad that it was over. There&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/comics212.net\/2008\/12\/26\/reviewish-naoki-urasawas-monster\/\">some discussion of the series<\/a> over at Christopher Butcher&#8217;s blog&#8211;and I should note that I started reading Monster in the first place on Butcher&#8217;s recommendation, and I&#8217;ve handsold the series to at least ten of my friends since.<\/li>\n<li>On the mystery front, I&#8217;ve read only 5 of the books on <a href=\"http:\/\/januarymagazine.com\/2008\/12\/best-books-of-2008-crime-fiction-part-i.html\">the January Magazine list<\/a> (with <a href=\"http:\/\/januarymagazine.com\/crfiction\/dawnpatrol.html\">Winslow<\/a>&#8216;s book probably being the best of the 5), but their writeups don&#8217;t motivate me to seek out the ones I haven&#8217;t read.<\/li>\n<li>Also from the &#8220;how did I not hear about this already file&#8221; is the NESFA project to do <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nesfa.org\/press\/Books\/Zelazny-Project.html\">a six volume Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny<\/a>. That&#8217;s pretty much the definition of a must buy, as soon as they&#8217;re ready to sell. (And I have to find this out from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/2008\/12\/29\/the-collected-stories-of-roger-zelazny\/\">an Australian<\/a>? Yay for the Internets, I guess.)<\/li>\n<li>I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/blog-static\/2008\/12\/why_are_sf_and_fantasy_novels.html\">Charlie Stross&#8217; ruminations on the reasons for genre novel length<\/a>, and the following comments, a very interesting read. It&#8217;s even more interesting when paired with <a href=\"http:\/\/walterjonwilliams.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/bloat.html\">Walter Jon Williams&#8217; stepping up to point out the elephant in the room<\/a>. (As an aside, for someone like me who has WJW on his &#8220;automatic buy&#8221; list, and has had for almost a couple of decades now, reading this bit in the comments was absolutely heart-breaking: &#8220;all I know about the sales staff is that they&#8217;re always rejecting my best ideas. The editor tells me, &#8216;The sales staff will never understand this,&#8217; and that&#8217;s that, another fine novel that will never see the light of day.&#8221; At least I&#8217;ve got <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.ca\/gp\/product\/0316003158\">This Is Not A Game<\/a> to look forward to&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/antickmusings.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/reviewing-mail-week-of-1227.html\">Wheeler says<\/a> in March&#8211;and apparently <a href=\"http:\/\/walterjonwilliams.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/once-more-into-breach.html\">another one after that<\/a> as well.)<\/li>\n<li>Back to comics for a second: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/\">Fantagraphics<\/a> is after my wallet this year. A <a href=\"http:\/\/robot6.comicbookresources.com\/2009\/01\/your-wallet-will-be-thin-and-your-bookshelf-fat-a-2009-preview-fantagraphics-books\/\">preview of their 2009 releases<\/a> sees me spending a lot more money on their line than I historically have. A <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Prince_Valiant\">Prince Valiant<\/a> collection&#8211;there&#8217;s no way <a href=\"http:\/\/www.strangeadventures.com\/\">my LCS<\/a> will let me avoid buying that, what with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hal_Foster\">Foster<\/a> being a local, a swanky <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usagiyojimbo.com\/\">Usagi Yojimbo<\/a> collection, a new collection to follow up on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/index.php?page=shop.product_details&#038;flypage=shop.flypage&#038;product_id=738&#038;option=com_virtuemart&#038;Itemid=62&#038;vmcchk=1&#038;Itemid=62\">that big Locas collection<\/a>, a followup to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fletcherhanks.com\/WELCOME.html\">that crazy Fletcher Hanks book<\/a>, &#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of being after my wallet, we should mention the king of that, Bill Schafer and his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.subterraneanpress.com\/\">Subterranean Press<\/a>&#8211;definitely the champions of producing things that I am forced to buy. Already this year he&#8217;s announced <a href=\"http:\/\/subterraneanpress.com\/index.php\/2009\/01\/03\/announcing-two-new-jack-vance-projects\/\">new Jack Vance books<\/a>, a new <a href=\"http:\/\/subterraneanpress.com\/index.php\/2009\/01\/10\/announcing-the-ebb-tide-a-langdon-st-ives-adventure-by-james-p-blaylock\/\">Blaylock story about Langdon St. Ives<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/subterraneanpress.com\/index.php\/2009\/01\/09\/announcing-metatropolis-edited-by-john-scalzi\/\">a print edition<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2008\/10\/21\/metatropolis-is-out\/\">Metatropolis<\/a>, all of which I&#8217;ve dutifully signed up for. He could well be the ruin of me.<\/li>\n<li>2009 will also be bringing me <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffvandermeer.com\/2009\/01\/09\/finch-third-book-in-the-ambergris-cycle\/\">the third Ambergris book<\/a>.  I just got my <a href=\"http:\/\/wyrmpublishing.com\/catalog\/index.php?main_page=product_info&#038;products_id=17\">fancy edition of Shriek<\/a> last week, too.<\/li>\n<li>And let&#8217;s stop for tonight with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jincywillett.com\/journal\/jincys-works\/\">Jincy Willet<\/a> bringing us <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jincywillett.com\/journal\/pick-a-lib\/\">the most challenging madlibs<\/a> on the Internets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">And here we go again&#8230; I&#8217;ve been reading Jeff&#8217;s daily reviews of the books in the Penguin Great Ideas series. While I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m interested in trying to read all sixty of them in sixty days (despite Jeff&#8217;s examples and the exhortation of the Harvard University Press) I am very impressed with the presentation of the volumes, and have&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/12\/closing-the-book-related-tabs\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[458,356,31,265,238,100,457,274,99,211],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-clark-ashton-smith","tag-comics","tag-economics","tag-philosophy","tag-poetry","tag-reviews","tag-small-press-publishers","tag-things-to-buy","tag-web-crack","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-z1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2182,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/2182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}