1) Become a Jedi in 10 easy steps.
2) The Magic of a Good Manuscript Title.
3) The Great Gatsby, as an NES video game.
4) Stonehenge directions via IKEA.
5) Some of you guys like Firefly, right?
6) “Bread Goes In, Toast Comes Out” The Bill O’Reilly meme.
7) This is an important one: Is your favorite Borders closing? Check this list for a nearby indie alternative. via Genreville.
Several folks have righteously mocked the post at serial liar Andrew Breitbart’s website “Big Hollywood”. It was written by one Leo Grin and here’s the link, with a “rel=nofollow” tag added: The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists.
Omnivoracious responds sensibly and links to several other comments, (also: Nick Mamatas) so there isn’t much for me to add. Still, I want to do a little examination of the original post:
Here’s a list of the authors Grin mentions in his post:
J.R.R. Tolkien
Robert E. Howard
Robert Jordan
Joe Abercrombie
Matthew Woodring Stover
Steven Erikson
Michael Swanwick
Robert Bloch
Hmm. I wonder if something is missing from that list. Hmm. Something about the fantasy that’s been written in the last century. Hmmmmm.
Nope! Not seeing anything!
In all seriousness, someone should aim Grin at Holly (“I riff on the idiocy of the global warming theory” “… I dare you to find a white male on Sesame Street now that anyone could point to as a role model for a son.“) Lisle’s work. Of course, he’d probably have to put on a dress before he read it.
Borders has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I didn’t realize they’d been working with lawyers to restructure their debt since 2009, but that makes sense–they were already having troubles when we went into the economic downturn. I’m not sure if this story about the lawyer they hired to handle their bankruptcy should be alarming or not. Is it cronyism allowing the new CEO to enrich his friends or is Borders engaging someone well-versed in the tactics of the creditor’s side?
In any event, Borders is likely to survive and I’d be surprised if my favorite store in downtown Seattle will be closed. They’re pretty busy there and have a great location.
And it’s too bad. As I mentioned before, Borders used to be a great store. Their revolutionary inventory system kept books on the shelves in ways other stores couldn’t, and you had to take a lit test to work there. Of course, other companies have leapfrogged their inventory software and I’m not sure their recent CEOs could have passed their literature tests; they sure didn’t seem to know how to sell books.
I’m glad they won’t be going away completely, but I can’t imagine how they’ll catch up.
Update: via Matt Staggs on Twitter, a document purporting to list the stores that Borders will close.
Charles Stross asked me to guest blog on his site while he is traveling across the Atlantic to attend Boskone and accomplish various other things. (True fact: the first time I heard about it, as in: “How was your weekend? I heard Boskone was great!” I assumed it was some kind of pastry).
Anyway, my first post is live over there. It’s an expanded discussion of low and high thrillers. Check it out.
Last… spring, I guess? my wife, son, and I went to the movies and, before the film, saw a preview for Harry Potter 7, part one. My son turned to me and said “I want to see that.”
“You can’t. You haven’t read the book yet.”
He hadn’t been interested at all in Harry Potter until then, but that was all the urging he needed. Later that week we pulled book 1 down off the shelf and read them aloud in the evenings. Most evenings, anyway.
I’d forgotten how funny those early books were. Sometimes we were laughing so hard that the reader had to put the book down until we’d composed ourselves. And, somewhere in book 4, he became sick of it and we had to drag him back in.
We finished the last book today. My wife cried during several of the final chapters, especially “The Prince’s Tale,” “The Forest Again,” and “King’s Cross.” I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but whatever Rowling’s other faults, she wrote the hell out of “The Forest Again”. That chapter is one serious kick in the ass.
SPOILERS for the series.
I can’t help but wonder how much behind the scenes information the filmmakers had from Rowling. There’s a scene near the end of movie 3 in which Lupin transforms into a werewolf and Snape steps in front of the three kids. It’s clearly a brave, heroic move, and nothing at all what you’d expect from a true Death Eater.
The situation doesn’t even come up in the book; Snape is still unconscious when Lupin changes (the whole werewolf scene is quite different). They also telegraph the romantic relationship between Ron and Hermione much earlier.
Anyway, the books were terrific this second time around–very satisfying. I know a lot of people hated Harry around book 5, but I couldn’t help but see him as suffering the after-effects of Cedric Diggory’s murder. My wife, who never reads fiction (except mine), really loved the books, too.
As for the new movie, the animated story of the three brothers was the best part, but the movie wasn’t terribly by any means. The three leads have matured nicely as actors, and they managed to introduce several necessary but film-neglected characters smoothly. None of it had the thrills or the hopelessness of the books, but it worked on its own.
This whole series deserves a more in-depth post, but it’s late and I’m sleepy. Considering everything that’s been going on, I’m not seeing myself putting together an real analysis of the books, the films, or the changes that happened in adaptation.
1) Detroit, a city in decay. Apparently, the crapsack future will be unevenly distributed. Great source material for art directors planning the next post-apocalyptic novel.
2) Planetary bodies, if they orbited the Earth at the distance of the moon. Video.
3) With these skills, this actor is sure to be a star.
4) Are you ready for marriage? Advice for young women, circa 1971, in comic form.
5) Predator’s teenage son. Video.
6) This is more like Call of Duty than Call of Duty is! Video. This made me laugh and feel pathetic at the same time.
7) Better Book Titles. via James Macdonald on Absolute Write
The Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers puts the brakes on expectations for ebook growth. Not to say that ebooks aren’t a growing segment of the market–that’s obvious on its face. But the audiences are so large (even for something as supposedly marginal as books) that each percentage point of change represents a whole lot of people, all of whom seem to rush to the internet to proclaim their love/disdain for their new readers.
But the people still reading in print still make up the bulk of the book buyers and they will be for years yet. As Nelson mentions above, more than 50% of music buyers still buy their music on CD.
I’m one of those people. I don’t buy very much music, but when I do it’s not through iTunes or other download sites, and I don’t put it on an iPod or other mp3 player. My wife has an iPod, but she uses it to listen to TED Talks, Planet Money podcasts and other NPR shows, when she uses it at all. There’s no music on it at all.
But I’m a dinosaur. I admit it. I don’t even have a cell phone. I don’t have anything against Kindles, et al; in fact I love them, because they allow my sister, the person who turned me into a sf/f lover, to read my novels. Her stroke had left her unable to hold a paper book open, but that’s not a problem with her new Kindle.
Paper and electronic books will eventually reach a balance, and no one posting to the internet right now knows when we’ll reach it. They’re only able to guess (and claim prescience if they hit the target) and the final figures will be determined by factors that no one can predict.
1) Chris at the King of Elfland’s Second Cousin liked Child of Fire and Game of Cages enough to write a three-part series on his blog to examine the various characteristics of episodic novel series. Part one is on characters. Part two is on plots. Part three is on the hero’s emotional journey. Pretty cool.
2) K. Bird Lincoln at St. Helen’s Bookshop give Game of Cages four stars out of five; she liked it even though it’s not her usual favorite. “This Book’s Food Designation Rating: Chips and salsa, for the way that you start eating them, and then look up a moment later and realize you’ve eaten the whole bag and your mouth is smarting from the spicy salsa.” I love chips and salsa.
3) DJ Weaver likes Game of Cages enough to award it four “spiders”: “Ray Lilly is an unlikely protagonist in this all-out battle to control or kill the strange predator and he does it with all the finesse of a ne’er-do-well James Bond.”
4) On Twitter, @karmamule liked both books very much: “Look forward to more!
5) Vicki Brown, also on Twitter, said “Intense. I enjoy reading about that world, but wouldn’t want to live in it!”
6) Three stars from Rich Braselle, who calls Game of Cages “Pretty decent stuff.”
7) Ronronia Adramelek at Science-Fantasiction didn’t care for the books one bit: “No character development, no plot, no background, no rithm.[sic] Boring.“
1) Best Worst ad placement ever.
2) Marketing ebooks in brick-and-mortar stores. This is pretty damn cool. Too bad I don’t have any of this tech.
3) To respond to a previous Randomness: The United States of Awesome. Fucking Delaware.
4) Wall decorations that prove you’re a total grownup. “I simply haven’t met a boy yet who interests me! And until I do, I’d rather walk alone than date just anyone!”
5) “Hand monster!!!” Video.
6) Why I’ll never eat at a Chick-Fil-A.
7) Axe Cop… The Movie!
Last night was “date night”, the biweekly ritual in which my wife and I suddenly realize, at about three in the afternoon, that our regularly scheduled baby sitter will be there in an hour and a half and what the hell are we doing to do together all on our own?
My wife wasn’t keen on yet another restaurant trip and I couldn’t blame her. Instead we went to the Henry Art Museum in the U District: The PanOptos exhibit was pretty damn cool. This is one of the photos I took. I’m not sure why, except that I like the imperfections.
And James Turrell’s Skyscape sculpture, Light Reign, was wonderful (and I immediately tried to think of a way to build it in Minecraft, which only shows you what a saddo I am). I would have spent much longer in there if it hadn’t been so chilly (it’s installed in the courtyard).
Dinner came immediately after (and, since we had it in the U. District, the less said about it the better) and then we hopped over to the UW Bookstore to catch Cherie Priest’s reading of Bloodshot. I’m dubious about vampires, but her excerpt sounded pretty good, and when she talked about the book afterward she tempted me even more. Still, vampires. Hmm.
From there we took the crosstown bus to Ballard for dessert in a nice Italian place we found. My wife’s cannoli (she loves cannoli) had a chocolate coating on the shell, unfortunately, but my tiramasu was pretty dang good. Then it was home to watch the Lego animation my son had worked on.
In short, fun. And of course we spent a good deal of time talking about Important Things. For instance, we have a trip to Lisbon that we’ve been wanting to take forever, but when I bring it up it turns into a flight to Amsterdam, then a train trip to London, followed by a tour through Barcelona and Madrid and finally…
Me, I just want to go to Lisbon and check it out (we have family there). My wife thinks she’s being restrained because she’s ready to put off Paris and Rome until the next go ’round.
On top of that, I’ll be going to Readercon this summer (Hello, convention-going people. I’ll be at Readercon this July. If you’ll be there too, please introduce yourself. It’ll be my first sf convention and I’m not entirely sure how I’ll do). For my wife, this is a chance for all three of us to fly out early and check out historical sites. While I’m at the con, she and the boy would tour around the city, learning about the American Revolution and so on.
Nevermind that I’d miss out on those tours. Nevermind also that she’d like to immediately fly from Boston to Amsterdam, etc. Jeez, give that woman a transcontinental flight and she takes a month-long international jaunt.