{"id":3441,"date":"2010-01-29T23:12:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T04:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=3441"},"modified":"2010-01-30T02:15:17","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T07:15:17","slug":"bookish-links-on-a-friday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/29\/bookish-links-on-a-friday-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Bookish Links On A Friday Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Well, the most interesting book world story right now is surely the whole <a href=\"http:\/\/bits.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/29\/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement\/\">hardball face-off between Amazon and Macmillan<\/a>. I expect the most interesting discussion at <a href=\"http:\/\/nielsenhayden.com\/makinglight\/archives\/012148.html\">Making Light<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;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 passing of authors who have meant something to me as I get older myself. Robert Parker (see <a href=\"http:\/\/therapsheet.blogspot.com\/2010\/01\/they-wont-have-parker-to-kick-around.html\">this<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/therapsheet.blogspot.com\/2010\/01\/on-passing-of-parker_19.html\">this<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/therapsheet.blogspot.com\/2010\/01\/looking-for-robert-b-parker-fond.html\">this<\/a>) was part of my life ever since I started working in Boston, and got into the Spenser series from a &#8220;local&#8221; angle. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/canada\/toronto\/story\/2010\/01\/21\/paul-quarrington-obit.html\">Paul Quarrington<\/a>&#8216;s books have been part of my life ever since (like lots of Canadians of a certain age) I first ran into Whale Music. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/world\/catcher-in-the-rye-author-jd-salinger-dies\/article1447674\/\">Salinger<\/a>&#8216;s books have been part of my life since high school. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/breaking_news\/2010\/01\/howard_zinn_his.html\">Howard Zinn<\/a> changed the way I look at history, as part of the post-Chomsky-mind-blowing that happened in my undergraduate year, and I&#8217;ve followed him since. And while she hasn&#8217;t actually died yet, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenmanreview.com\/\">the news about Kage Baker<\/a>, whose books have been with me since the SFBC did an omnibus of the first two Company books&#8211;I have all her published stuff, is pretty final. Too many holes in the future opening up all at once.<\/li>\n<li>I was also saddened, speaking of dead authors, about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/01\/19\/AR2010011901018.html?hpid%3Dmoreheadlines&#038;sub=AR\">the Poe visitor not showing up this year<\/a>. Saddened in a much more abstract the-world-is-less-interesting way.<\/li>\n<li>While I&#8217;m being morbid, there&#8217;s a kind of dark fascination in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.life.com\/image\/2644204\/in-gallery\/22953\/writer-and-musician-suicides\">Writer &#038; Musician Suicides gallery at Life<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>OK, I need something to cheer me up after all that. How about one of the classics: <a href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/000844.html\">Dan Brown getting positively skewered<\/a>. That always makes me feel better.<\/li>\n<li>What else would make me feel better? Seeing some of Da Vinci&#8217;s sketches, and a codex of his? Seeing some of Lewis&#8217; manuscripts for Alice? Blakes;s poetry notebooks? <a href=\"http:\/\/blpc.bl.uk\/onlinegallery\/virtualbooks\/index.html#\">The British Library is doing a good thing here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I read Brust&#8217;s latest the day it came out&#8211;I had forgotten just how much I like hanging out with Vlad. Great stuff. Jo Walton, who recently did a series of reviews of all Steve&#8217;s Dragaera books on Tor.com has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;view=blog&#038;id=58639\">a short interview with him<\/a>, which teases some things about Tiassa, the next one. I&#8217;d like that now please, instead of in a year.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve mentioned Matt Hughes here <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/index.php?s=hughes\">before<\/a>. I&#8217;m a fan of his stuff, and I was thus excited to receive his latest&#8211;even if the publisher did screw up the limited edition<footnote>&#8230;and present it with the lamest excuse ever, but let&#8217;s not get off on a rant.<\/footnote>. Rick Kleffel <a href=\"http:\/\/bookotron.com\/agony\/news\/2010\/01-25-10-news.htm#n012910\">reviews the new book and the series<\/a>, which will give you an idea if you don&#8217;t know Hughes. If it sounds at all up your alley, pop over to <a href=\"http:\/\/fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com\/2010\/01\/giveaway-win-set-of-matthew-hughes.html\">Fantasy Book Critic<\/a> and take a shot at wining one of two sets of the whole series, or do a bit of reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archonate.com\/\">at Hughes&#8217; site<\/a> and then take a crack at winning a ridiculously cool prize.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve mentioned before that my &#8220;most anticipated comic&#8221; of 2009 was the reissue of Eddie Campbell&#8217;s Alec in a snazzy omnibus. For my money it completely lived up to my anticipation, and I&#8217;m delighted to have it on my shelf (near <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/05\/painfully-limited\/\">my super-swankest Campbell<\/a>). NPR has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=122288773&#038;ft=1&#038;f=1032\">a review (with preview)<\/a> that covers the details for those not familiar, and I find it suitably in awe of the work.<\/li>\n<li>While we&#8217;re on comics, apparently Kean Soo&#8217;s publishers are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.secretfriendsociety.com\/?p=277\">letting the first volume of Jellaby go OOP<\/a>. There are two big fans of that book, and the second one as well, in my household, and we&#8217;re shocked and disappointed that sales apparently weren&#8217;t strong enough to suit the publisher. (Of course maybe rights will revert now that it&#8217;s OOP and Kean can own his own backlist&#8230; but I think the publisher is Disney, so maybe not).<\/li>\n<li>Sticking with comics, can I say that I&#8217;m really looking forward to actually being able to go to the <a href=\"http:\/\/torontocomics.com\/whos-coming\/\">Toronto Comic Art Festival<\/a> this year. Looks like a good program this year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">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&#8217;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 passing of authors who&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/29\/bookish-links-on-a-friday-night\/\">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":[8,12],"tags":[101,257,458,31,270,218,143,375],"class_list":["post-3441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-linkapalooza","tag-aging","tag-authors","tag-books","tag-comics","tag-corporations","tag-eddie-campbell","tag-melancholy","tag-steve-brust","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-Tv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441","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=3441"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3444,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions\/3444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}