Publishing A Blog With Blogger-- Elizabeth Castro-- Review

I decided to look at a practical book for a change. This book is part of the Visual Quick Project series published by Peachpit Press. There are not a lot of reviews of practical books. The exact title is Publishing A Blog With Blogger by Elizabeth Castro. This book was published in 2005 so it does not match the CSS code used currently. This makes its usefulness rather limited.

However, it did explain most parts of blogger and how they worked. I got a better understanding of the basic structure of a blogger blog. It also allowed me put in a footer to my blog. You can see the Mother Goose nursery rhyme at the bottom of the page.

I also figured out how the about me picture came into view. You have to add it to your profile then it appears on the main page. I thought the process was different. I added a picture by Aubrey Beardsley, Le Mort D'Arthur to my biography section.

This was a very quick book to read. It had photographs of blog pages with highlighted explanations on them to explain how to do different things in blogger. I wouldn't recommend the 2005 version. It is outdated. Hopefully they will come out with a more recent version.

This is the state of many books at the library. Technology changes so fast that they can't write a book quickly enough to keep updated. There is usually about a year between the initial manuscript and final publishing. While this is fine for fiction titles, it is not so great for technology titles.

However, I find most web tutorials to be a nightmare because they are poorly written and edited. Often simple mistakes can make the task they are supposed to help you with nearly impossible. So far, this has been the case with converting my web page from a two column blog to a three colum blog in blogger. It would have been nice to have an ebook which was tightly edited explain exactly what I needed to do. Instead I have run into a lot of web sites that have not gotten me where I want to go.

I hope I am not annoying people. I also have Startup Start Your Own Blogging Business printed in 2007 on reserve at the library. It is published by Entrepreneur Press which does a series on starting small busineses like Start Your Own Laundromat, Start Your Own Arts And Crafts Business, and Start Your Own Photography Business. This series is pretty basic.



__________________________________________________________________

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia-- Review

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia is an absolutely unique and wonderful urban fantasy which incorporates Russian fairytales.

Galina a young woman watches her sister turn into a bird and fly away. She is left with her sister's baby and mother to watch. Galina tries to get help and eventually ends up with Yakov a police inspector trying to find a slew of missing people who have also turned into jackdaws, pigeons, and owls then simply disappeared.

Thus begins a strange urban fairytale where eventually Galina ends up in an underground fairyland Moscow underneath the real city. There we readers get to meet many strange Russian small spirits, small gods, and fairies. There is Father Frost, Zhemun the Celestial Cow, and Khoschey the Deathless. These are truly wonderful and strange characters.
The city itself reminds me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or China Mieville's Un Lundun. It is a deathless land of the forgotten.

After getting help in the underground city, they must return to the surface travelling through the dark forest under the city of Moscow, crossing the black river and meeting the ferryman, and eventually making it up top. There are helpers with them. I won't list all of them. It would spoil the surprise. A few of them are a white jackdaw with the soul of a thug trapped in it, rats that can form into a bear, and a gypsy girl.

If you like urban fantasy, or fairytales this is an excellent read. There is a sardonic, melancholy, funny quality to the book unlike anything else I have ever read. The setting is truly unique. The writing uses memories and evokes feeling far better than most novels which I have read.

If I gave stars, this would be the North Star.

Books And Chicken.

There is a famous saying that librarians survive on "Books and Chicken". Because I am already in the library I can get most of my magazines, books, dvds, cds, and videos that I want to watch or use fairly easily.

But, a librarians salary does not let you spend a whole lot on things. This means many public librarians bring their entertainment home from their job. I bring several videos and books home every week from where I work. It is natural that librarians become specialists in the things which they happen to like.

My boss orders most of the videos in the collection. I end up ordering a lot of the graphic novels.

This is probably even more true for booksellers. Most booksellers don't earn huge amounts of money, they are doing their job for the love of books. In New England, it is traditional for many booksellers to have their living quarters directly above their shop. They pay down their mortgage and eventually have a piece of property.

Even with the closing of many small bookstores this can still be said to be true. Instead of selling out of a storefront many booksellers sell directly out of their garage or house on ebay or other online services. This was even true before the internet. Instead of having a web site, many specialty booksellers would have a printed catalog of their books for sale which they would send out to customers. The customer would either meet the person to pick up the book or get the book by mail order. I think of mail order having just moved to the internet.

It used to be to find the price of a book before the internet you would look in small catalogs put out by specialty mail order places, auction catalogs where lots and blocks of books were sold. Also there was something called Bookman's Price Index which is a huge reference work by year which lists the price of a book. Then there were various price guides for books, paperback books, comic books, and other books. The standard price guide to comic books in the United States which is most used is the Overstreet Comic Books Price Guide. We have a copy at our library. You would look through these, approximate the condition and rarity of the item and then price it accordingly.

You might also wander around to other bookstores and see how they were pricing books and check their inventory. Sometimes, the bookseller might even buy something which you thought was mispriced by another bookstore. Booksellers are like a giant grumpy fraternity which can't survive without other booksellers.

Now, there is the internet where you can see comparative prices for books instantly on places like abebooks.com. The prices seem to vary wildly when you are looking for books. But, the variations in prices are not just about the item. People often buy from a particular seller paying a higher price, because they are more accurate in grading their items, have better shipping and handling policies, and better customer service.

There is an ambivalent relationship between librarians and booksellers. Because of this relationship, The Friends of the Library are the ones who hold the book sales to avoid conflict of interest. I have known many librarians who have worked part-time in bookstores on the side to earn extra money or just because they are really obsessed with books. Sometimes, I think it is more likely, they are obsessed with books.

It seems there is a revolving door between publisher, librarian, and bookseller. People who publish library books, especially reference books often hire librarians. Baker & Taylor and Ingram the giant distributors all hire librarians to help libraries select which materials to buy.

Now, the bookseller and librarian are spreading into the internet. Google, Yahoo, and most of the big search engines hire librarians to index and tag their databases. With Google and Microsoft building specialty search engines for books it creates even more of an interconnection.

I am writing this as I search for the Secret History of Moscow which I am almost done reading. I wanted ro read it, but I put it down and can't find it for the moment. I'll find it later today and write a review.

Authors@Google: Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken is the coauthor of Natural Capitalism with Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins.

The Clean Tech Revolution by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder-- Review

Venture One Hybrid Three Wheel Vehicle

The book The Clean Tech Revolution The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder is about how green technology will be a tremendous future business opportunity.

The writing is very exuberant with an almost bouncy quality to it. It reminds me of Red Herring during the dotcom boom, or Wired Magazine. It can get annoying at times. However, it does bring out the quality of showing you a lot of information very fast in a fun manner.

Another unfortunate aspect of the book is that many of the companies that are investments are not publicly traded. I was hoping that I could find publicly traded stocks to investigate. There are some of these like Cree, Florida Power and Light, and GE. Also there are a lot of foreign stocks listed like Q-Cell AG and Vestas which are on foreign exchanges. I even saw some stocks from the Indian and Spanish stock exchange.


The book is initially broken down into eight sections on different kinds of technology; solar energy, wind power, biofuels and biomaterials, green buildings, personal transportation, smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration. I think the book is more an introduction to the topic than for an advanced reader. I had a number of quibbles with the content in the book.

The section on solar energy focuses on how solar will scale up with larger production. One of the major problems with solar power is that it is not profitable unless it is on the large industrial scale. Walmart for example has invested in buying bulk quantities of solar panels and using them to power a lot of their stores. They believe this will lead them to long term savings. There is a bit on solar in developing countries. Solar power is non-grid based so it can be used to make things like solar powered lanterns for developing countries like India. For investments, there were not a lot of companies I was interested in.

The next section on wind energy was much better. In November of 2005 in Colorado, Xcel energy sold wind power for cheaper than natural gas or coal to 33,000 customers. Wind power for the first time had achieved parity in pricing with other forms of energy. This has led to a boom in production of wind energy in the United States as a viable alternative form of energy. I was quite happy with this chapter. It is very hard to find out about publicly traded companies for wind energy. I know of one that wasn't listed here, Western Wind Energy, but the listing for Florida Power and Light was quite useful to me as an invester.

I thought the chapter on biofuels and biomaterials was shoddily done. I don't think they gave the concept of the biorefinery justice in this chapter. The one point which I liked is that they described the point where ethanol mixed with gasoline became cheaper than just gasoline alone. Biodiesel and ethanol are currently cheaper than gasoline at the pump. There was also an over focus on cellulosic ethanol a future technology which is in development. Cellulosic ethanol seems to be pie in the sky to me.

I think they are much closer to developing ethanol from algae than cellulosic ethanol. Two companies that are working on algae ethanol are Aquaflow Bionomics in New Zealand and Greenfuel Technologies in the United States. These companies are already in the demonstration stages for commercial production of biodiesel from algae.

The picks for stocks annoyed me as well. I understand the choice of ADM, the monster of ethanol and agribusiness giant. But, they aren't exactly an environmentalists dream. If I had a choice to put down a company instead, I would have put down MGPI http://www.mgpingredients.com/ , a company that makes multiple products from wheat, alcohol-- including ethanol, personal care products, pet products, vegetarian products, and biopolymers. MGP Ingredients is a very interesting example of a biorefinery, or a refinery which makes multiple products from a single biological source. An interesting tidbit from the chapter was that Toyota plans to produce $30 billion dollars of bioplastics per year.

The chapter on green buildings was one of the better chapters in the book. It gave good descriptions of the benefits of green buildings. Green buildings cost slightly more but in the long run save money on energy, sewage, recycling, water reclamation, and air conditioning. It is interesting to note that 46% of our energy usage comes from the built environment, and 76% of electricity use. The dichotomy of long term planning versus short term profits comes out very clearly in this chapter. A green building will pay for itself in approximately 8.1 years. From my understanding, most companies survive for approximately 20 years. This means that huge green buildings won't be viable except for larger corporations with strong finances that can plan for the long term. For example, Bank of America is working on building the greenest building in the world. http://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=4405

The book also talks about the concept of the ZEB-- Zero Energy Building. This is being done with large housing developments where houses are built green from the start and include energy efficient insulation, solar power, water conservation and enough green features to make them not need the energy grid most of the time. The features are amortized into the mortgage, ultimately saving money in the long run.

The next section is on personal transportation. I found the focus on personal transportation only to be odd. From the perspective of clean transportation, clean trains and airplanes ultimately have more environmental impact. I understand the urge to have your own car. I even think that the description of the Toyota prius becoming a mainstream vehicle is very interesting. I also think the concept of the Tesla all electric sports car is interesting. But, the Tesla is still $92,000 to buy, not exactly a mainstream item.

I am going to add in my own two cents here. I wished they had included things like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a new passenger airplane that is 20% more efficient in fuel usage than other planes. http://www.boeing.com/commercial/787family/ . Also a bit on trains like the Green Goat hybrid diesel electric train being developed by Railpower would have been nice.

The section on the smart grid fails to hold my attention. While it is interesting, they are talking about using superconductors to transmit power as well as carbon nanotube power lines. These are very interesting subjects, but they seem to be ten to twenty years from now. Their story on grid monitoring software to check peak usage seems to be the most practical thing being discussed. They also mention in passing that Google locates some of its data centers near hydroelectric power plants to guarantee a continuous supply of power. Again, they fail to mention a very important technology, net metering, meters designed to allow people to sell excess solar and wind power back to utilities.

I found the section on mobile technologies to be very future oriented. Too future oriented. They talk about things like portable fuel cells and carbon nanotube ultracapacitors. These seem to be things that are in the future not now.

The water filtration section was kind of odd. It was a step away from the talk about energy usage and efficiency. It almost didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the book. They posit that water will be the new oil. People need to make massive investments in desalinization plants along the coastlines to meet the United States water needs. It was a little bit too much hype for my tastes.

Where the book fails is that it makes no mention of updating existing hydroelectric dams so they produce more energy and are more environmentally sound, nor does it mention geothermal energy.

The final sections of the book are "cool". I especially like the chapter called "Create Your Own Silicon Valley". This sets up steps on how to encourage clean tech centers in cities which create new jobs, encourage research, and improve the economies of cities. The writers of the book do a very good job with this because it seems to be what they are focused on in real life. Their website http://www.cleanedge.com/ is basically about publicly traded clean technology stocks and clean venture capital.

I would recommend this book as an introduction to the concept of "clean technology." However, if you are beyond the introductory stage you might have some difficulties with the book.

Thoughts on Review Material

Sometimes I Feel Like the Gentleman in the Picture.

This morning, I was reading the New York Times Book Review, November 27, 2007 issue. There was nothing in it which I wanted to read. I often find bestselling books banal and formulaic. I'm finding it is often better to talk to other people about what they are reading than rely purely on review sources. Some of the patrons will mention a book before it is listed in the New York Times Book Review.

I also took time to read the Locus Bestseller List, which had a lot of books by J.K Rowling, Mike Chabon, and of course I am Legend on it by Richard Matheson. Books which have movies about them tend to hit the top of the charts. After looking at SF Site as well and seeing nothing of interest I was a bit disappointed.

I am now looking through the links of different current bestseller lists on my libraries home page. Publishers Weekly, New York Times Fiction and Nonfiction, New York Times Business. Sometimes the New York Times Business bestsellers are so ridiculous they can be funny. I have a hard time taking books like Think Big and Kick Ass by Donald Trump or The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris very seriously. These books seem to be more about wish fulfillment than anything else. But, people love to fulfill their wishes. Having big dreams leads to bigger realities if you plan right.

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill looks interesting. However, I am not sure that it is exactly a business book... Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence is the #1 book on the New York Times Business bestsellers.

I just put Blackwater on hold for myself. Anyways, we keep a copy of the New York Times Bestseller list at the front checkout desk. Most libraries make photocopies of this and keep it at hand. It is good if you are a librarian or bookseller to read the bestseller lists at the beginning of every week to get a sense of what people are reading. As you do this over the years, it will get to point where you will be able to spot a potential bestselling book before it is put on the bestseller lists.

I was looking at the Publishers Weekly Nonfiction bestseller list, they had something which looks like it should be on the New York Times Business Bestseller list, Jim Cramer's Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer) by James J. Cramer and Cliff Mason. In some ways, I am not a big fan of Cramer. But, I think occassionally he has something useful to say, even if I don't agree with him a lot of the time. There is of course a lot of overlap between the New York Times Bestseller List and the Publishers Weekly Bestseller List.

Now, I am looking at the Booksense Bestseller List, which is the bestseller list of the ABA-- American Booksellers Association. http://www.bookweb.org/booksense/bestsellers/weekly.html It is a list of independent bookstore bestsellers. This is a surprisingly useful list for librarians. It is far more literary than the New York Times Bestseller list. Once again, a book which has a movie based on it, No Country For Old Men is doing well. Also the nonfiction titles, I find much more interesting than the New York Times Bestseller List.

Sometimes, you find things which look like they should be on the New York Times Bestseller list on the Booksense Bestseller List like Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass. Please do take a look at this if you are a librarian.

Anyways, this is my thought for the day.

__________________________________________________________________

Etta Rose put in a recommendation for my site. The least I can do is thank for her it. I appreciate it. http://ettarose-edgeofsanity.blogspot.com/

Random Thoughts In No Meaningful Order

Image of A Social Network. Think of the button labeled as an individual as an individual website or blog. (Thought Experiment).

Today, I am at the library again. I had three books waiting for me this morning, Ekaterina Sedia, The Secret History of Moscow, Ron Pernick, The Clean Tech Revolution, and David Sandalow, Freedom From Oil.

I check out my books every time. This is to increase circulation of books. The more circulation or items checked out, the more likely that the library will get additional federal, state, and city funding. The government wants you to use the library. I want you to use the library. Be literate, read.

I handed over my plastic library card to the clerk and she zapped the books with the scanner. Then there was that clicking sound you hear of the printer spitting out the receipt with the due dates for the books. For me, it is a wonderful sound.

Now, I have something to read and review for your enjoyment.

___________________________________________________________________

I spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to promote this blog. I have tried entrecard, blogcatalog, and fuelmyblog. I have even asked people to exchange links. I do look at a lot of different peoples blogs to see who is doing a very good job.

It takes quite a bit of time to do this. I've found the best way to find good blog sites is not to search for them by using search engines. Search engines do not find social networks. I find a blog which I like in a particular category like books or writing, then I check the links which lead away from the blog. I do spend time looking at a lot of different peoples sites. When one person has a lot of links to their site, I consider it a hub or central point to look for other sites. These are the best places to find the good sites.

Like sites attract like quality. So a high quality hub site is what I am looking for when I am looking at blogs. A place with very good writing or recommendations of books is my ideal blog find. If it has a lot of high quality links that is a very good sign. Huge numbers of links are unimpressive, they just create clutter. In the case of friends like in blogcatalog, the ideal number of friends I'd say is about 100-200 with very high selectivity.

I am also looking for people who are part of multiple communities. People who are members of lets say three directory sites, or have membership in a couple different blog rings. These connections form webs kind of like a spider, with one hub leading to the center of the next hub. However, if you think of it, it is more like a ball with links spreading out from each separate center.

Anyways, these are my thoughts for the moment.

The Fading of the Western Novel

I was watching Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly starring Clint Eastwood. It very much reminded me of the decline of the western novel. There is a lot to say for western novels. They have fairly strong male lead characters who face tough situations.

Unfortunately, the only people who come in to check out westerns are people assigned in class to read Jack Schaeffer's Shane or Louis L'Amour Jubal Sackett. Louis L'Amour has become a regular high school assignment. Most of our other western novels are in the Large Print, mostly older gentlemen ask for Zane Grey, or Max Brank. Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage is considered a classic in western literature.

Larry McMurtry makes westerns which are more novels than stories about hard gunfighters. What is odd is that it feels like a lot of western style writers have switched to writing mysteries. Tony Hillerman writes mysteries set on Native American reservations. Joe Lansdale writes Texas mysteries with his characters Hap and Leonard. You can no longer walk into town with six guns blazing. Instead you have to be the local sheriff or detective ready to hunt down the bad man.

Kinky Friedman is president Bush's favorite author. He also writes Texas mysteries. Right now, he is running for governor of Texas. He recently wrote a book called You Can Lead A Politician to Water But You Can't Make Him Think: Ten Commandments for Texas Politics. It seems the Texas gunslinger has turned into the Texas detective.

With this decline in the western novel, it seems the image of the cowboy is being picked up in the wrong way. We hear the word cowboy diplomacy coming from a lot of people who probably have no understanding of the history of the American west. Hopefully, we will have some people who can revive the meaning of this kind of writing. It really goes to the heart of what it means to be American.

There are no more shows like Bonanza on television and very few western movies coming out. Because very few people see these things anymore and they are so loved by American politicians, like mom, god, and apple pie we see a lot of distortions. Cartoons with men in cowboy hats riding missiles or standing high noon with mullahs. This is a pretty distorted image of the wild west. Conservative and cowboy are not always the same thing.

Luckily there are still some holdouts for Western writing. Places like http://www.westernwriters.org/

A Collection of Convention Name Tags.

Like many people I have attended a number of conventions throughout my career. I have saved the name tags for many of the conventions I have attended. I have a nostalgia for these things. There is something memorable about attending professional conventions even if you are not part of the profession at the convention. Also, the name tags have little or no value in and of themselves.

Collecting name tags is like collecting free bookmarks, they are inexpensive, interesting, and bring back memories. People wax nostalgic about what they have done, even if it wasn't so great when they were doing it.

I keep them in a plastic ziplock bag. It is an old ziplock bag and does not preserve their condition. But, this is not why I am keeping the name tags. I am not thinking that my name tag collection will one day have astronomical value and be prized by collectors the world over.

I like going to conventions. I find them interesting. I will now name some of the convention name tags I have.

I attended my first library convention in 1991, I was a page working in the library as well as a college student. I know, it sounds funny, usually pages are often teenagers with acne. It was the California Library Association. I wasn't sure yet that I wanted to be a librarian. Being a page is a funny experience. You put books on shelves, pick up books off the tables and do little odd jobs for the librarians.

The next library convention I attended was in 1992 while I was volunteering at SPD-- Small Press Distributors in Berkeley, California. I wasn't in library school at the time. I went as an exhibitor with Small Press Distributors. I don't particularly remember the convention that well. All I know is that I have the name tag. I shelved the books in back at Small Press Distributors. I always have been good at shelving books. I tried to do the basic office work, but I really wasn't that good at it. I'm not the best at office work.

I didn't go to library school until 1993. At the end of library school, I attended library legislation day. I still have the name tag from Library Legislation Day in Penssylvania. I went to speak to Diane Feinstein and got to talk to her briefly about the importance of libraries. I remember being scared out of my pants and being very zealous at the same time.

In 1996, I went to the International Space Development Conference as an exhibitor, I was helping a small bookstore which has since folded. It was quite interesting. The best part was the astronomical art. You could get really beautiful photographs of space for very cheap.

I also have a button which simply says Exhibitor Mystery & Science Fiction Book Fair. I have no idea what the button is for. It is just a curiosity. I have been to lots of small book fairs. One of my favorite small book fairs was the paperback collectors association. They had a lot of old paperbacks. My favorite old paperbacks are the ACE doubles-- two science books in one printed in the 1960s.

The next convention button I have is from when I was working at an ISP during the internet boom. It was for PC Expo 2000. PC expo was very interesting. There was a ton of hardware and software, most of it didn't make much sense because it was during the internet boom. I remember wandering around the Jacob Javits Convention Center and thinking how humongous the place was. Also during 2000, I went to Internet World. This was a weird experience, there was a lot of experimental stuff for the time, micropayment systems, online photo sites, and a lot of stuff that never saw the light of day.

My next button is from 2005, it is for Book Expo America, the largest book exposition in the country. I went as a librarian. It was a lot of fun to go and look at the different publishers.

I am going to the New York Comic Con in April 2008 as a professional. They give free passes to professionals. If you are a librarian who is interested in comic books or graphic novels this is a lot of fun to attend. Like Book Expo America, you can get a lot of freebies to bring back. They also give out lots of little knick knacks, book marks, pens, and other things. You get to see a lot of the professional comic book artists. They had panels for librarians on manga, anime, and graphic novels in the library.

When I go to conventions I usually plan a little bit beforehand. I get a floor map of the exhibits and circle which exhibitors I am goint to look at and ask my colleagues if there is anybody they would like to me look at. I also plan which panels I am going to watch in advance. I try to go in early the first day so I can get an idea of what the convention will be like. I always like to check to see if there is a restaurant near the convention before I go in. Convention food prices are always too high except for the reserved areas with coffee and bagels for attendees. I also pick up a lot of stuff. The stuff I don't want, I'll leave for my colleagues to look at sometimes. I'm often asked to summarize what I learned at the panels so I take a notepad and pen with me.

I try and walk the whole convention floor so I can see all the exhibitors, even if only for a brief time. Sometimes, I'll collect business cards just to have them. I also try and get to the more popular panels about an hour early. There have been a few times where I still haven't been able to go in and see the speakers.

Where Do You Find A New Book To Read

This is a list. I thought I would create one for your enjoyment.

1) Check at your local bookstore. There is is usually a staff picks section. Powell's books
has a nice short Staff Picks section. http://www.powells.com/picks

2) Check at your local library. They usually have staff picks. This is a list of staff picks from New York Public Library. http://www.booksite.com/texis/scripts/bookletter/showlist.html?sid=5796&list=CNL3

3) If you use public transportation, watch for ads for books. I see ads for John Grisham on the New York subway as well as the Metro North.

4) Read the latest review material like Publishers Weekly or Kirkus Reviews. There are specialty review books like Horn Book for Children, Choice mostly for academic libraries, and VOYA-- Voice of Youth Advocates for teenage books.

5) Read popular magazines like Jet, People, or Newsweek. They all have book reviews.

6) Listen to the radio. Radio shows often talk about books. Jim Freund's Hour of the Wolf interviews science fiction authors. http://www.hourwolf.com/ . NPR-- National Public Radio often has authors reading.

7) Watch television. Most of the talk shows interview authors. Oprah Winfrey has a book club. It is one of those giant things. She revived a lot of classic literature. Charlie Rose invites quite a few authors. A lot of the documentaries on PBS are also in book form. Ken Burn's civil war series has an excellent corresponding book series.

8) Watch to see what other people are reading. People read everywhere, on the subway, at the park, in waiting rooms, and other places.

9) Attend readings if you can get to them. KGB Bar has a fantastic fiction reading series.
http://www.lcrw.net/kgb/

10) Watch the news. Every time something horrible happens, there is a new set of books coming out. O.J. Simpson spawned huge amount of books.

11) Check the obituaries. If an author dies, their estate often releases a lot of material for publication. Also, many people wait until after they are dead to have their biography released.

12) Go to book festivals. New York Is Book Country is the big festival of books for New York.

13) Go to conventions. Book Expo America is the giant book convention for the publishing industry in the United States.

14) Check out authors web sites. Neil Gaiman has an excellent blog. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/

15) Check out publishers web sites. Their new books will be featured prominently.
http://www.tor-forge.com/

16) Make sure to look at your favorite cover artists site. I like Donato Giancola a lot.
http://www.donatoart.com/ They will describe the books which they are creating covers for.

17) Check the various writers professional associations. Most professional associations for writers give awards for quality new fiction. The Horror Writers Association has the Bram Stoker Award. http://www.horror.org/stokers.htm The Mystery Writers of America has the Edgars http://www.mysterywriters.org/

18) Check specialty genre sites like Science Fiction Site, or Uchronia, the alternate history list, http://www.sfsite.com/ http://www.uchronia.net/


19) Most genres will also have forums or newsgroups where they discuss a specific type of book.

20) Expect that your favorite writer in comic books might also write in other formats. Alan Moore wrote his autobiography, Peter David wrote both comic books and regular science fiction books.

21) Don't expect to see an author stick to just one genre. Joe Lansdale writes mysteries, horror, and westerns. Elizabeth Lowell writes science fiction, romance, mystery, and suspense. Walter Mosley writes novels, science fiction, and mysteries. Check to see if your favorite author writes in more genres than one.

22) Check the latest movies. Many of them came from novels. Read the novel before you go see the film. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is just as good as the film.

23) You can find author readings on Youtube. This really surprised me. I put up a video of Jonathan Carroll reading from Youtube earlier on this site.

24) Philip Jose Farmer has a myspace.com page which is pretty interesting. Authors are taking advantage of the new media. http://www.myspace.com/pjfarmer

25) Authors also do podcasts. Bantam Dell has a nice list of podcasts by authors.
http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/podcast/

26) Don't forget to support your local library. Go to local library booksales put togther by the Friends of the Library.

The Writer and Comic Book Writer In Film, Link Exchange

Marjane Satrapi -- Iranian Comic Book Artist, Author of Embroideries and Persepolis.

Last night I was watching the biographical film, American Splendor about the writer Harvey Pekar who writes comic books and jazz reviews. It is an utterly fascinating film. I haven't finished watching the video yet, I'll probably do that today.

Harvey Pekar is famous for saying "Ordinary Life is Very Complex." He writes about the every day experiences of ordinary life. American Splendor is the underground comic book he started writing with R. Crumb illustrating the first editions. Harvey Pekar met R. Crumb while he was searching for jazz records at garage sales. They have a friendship based on comic books and old records.

I am up to the point in watching the film where Harvey Pekar gets cancer. He has a graphic novel called Our Cancer Year which is really excellent to read. It is about his recovery from cancer. His wife, Joyce helped him write it. One of the things about husband and wife writing together, is that it is often hard to tell who is writing what.

All of the people in the film are fascinating because they are all a little odd. His wife Joyce married him after visiting him for a week in Cleveland. There is quite a bit on what it is like to appear in your own comic book. American Splendor was also made into a play before it was made into a film.

The interviews on David Letterman and Harvey Pekar are peppered throughout the film.

Harvey Pekar has his own blog http://www.harveypekar.com/ . It includes him, his wife Joyce, and his adopted daughter, Danielle. Harvey Pekar chose to get a vasectomy because he didn't want to have a family originally.

While I am talking about this, I will give a brief aside. If you want to watch something deeply disturbing with lots of very black humor, Robert Crumb has a biographical film, Crumb. Watching Robert Crumb's brother Max is a truly disturbing experience. Max is seen laying on a bed of nails. Just about everything about Robert Crumb in the movie is likely to cause some revulsion or amazement. This film is not for children under any circumstances, and many adults will have a hard time stomaching it.

Writers on film are usually far different than you imagined them when you are reading their books. Getting to see a biographical picture of a writer often reveals how far off most literary criticism is on writers. You get to hear why they are writing in the film.

Most of the films about writers I have seen are very dark. Another film, The Whole Wide World about Robert E. Howard's relationship with Novalyne Price Ellis is really beautiful to watch. It is an art film set in the 1930's. The sunsets, and the scenery are really beautifully done. Robert E. Howard is very much a tragic figure in real life, his mother died of terminal illness and he committed suicide before he could see the popularity of his works.

Renee Zellwegger stars as Novalyne Price Ellis, a school teacher who Robert E. Howard has a brief romance with. Vincent D'Onofrio stars as Robert E. Howard. The actors make a handsome couple on screen. Robert E. Howard's immature predilection with fantasy, boxing, and swordfighting, as well as writing pulp stories dooms the relationship.

Another film about writers which is also very dark is "Born Into This", a biographical picture of Charles Bukowski which is basically one long documentary interview with him. He talks about the different places he lived in Los Angeles, his excessive drinking, his working at the post office to make ends meet, and the various women in his life.

There is always a little respite in films like these. Bukowski also loved to listen to classical music. The classic image of him which comes to mind is him banging away on the typewriter with a bottle of wine listening to Brahms while his cat is sitting in the background. He is in a little room with a bare light bulb and a few oil paintings which he has painted on the walls.

Bukowski is also a writer who succeeded. He talks about what it means to have ones own house and have to stop worrying about the world crushing him. He seems almost contented in the film. When you look at him during the interviews he is smoking a brown cigarillo and has a clear glass with some red wine in it while he is talking.

I finished watching American Splendor about half an hour ago. The ending is kind of uplifting. Harvey and Joyce adopt another comic book artists little girl Danielle and he retires from his job as a filing clerk in a medical office.

Harvey Pekar has written numerous graphic novels. I rather liked The Quitter about Harvey Pekar's tendency to quit things like school and college, and his redemption as a writer. Another graphic novel is American Splendor: Unsung Hero about the story of Robert McNeill, one of Harvey Pekar's coworkers at the hospital. It tells the story of Robert McNeill joining the marines during the Vietnam war. A very revealing story about what it was like to be a teenage black soldier during that time period.

Another comic book artists film I want to see is Persepolis. The graphic novel, Persepolis is really excellent and well worth reading. It is a story of growing up in Iran. This is a link to the films website http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/persepolis/ . There is also a Persepolis II and another graphic novel Embroideries by her.

Another film which I am looking forward to is Miss Potter starring Rene Zellwegger. This is the story of the sale of Beatrix Potter's first book. I've always loved The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddle Duck. There is something wonderfully eccentric about these books.

__________________________________________________________________

Literary Jewels asked me to do a link exchange. I put up a link to her site under the heading Literary And Reading Link Exchange. She is the first person to ask me about doing this.

I replaced my adsense button with this.

In the long run, I think, this will be better for the site than Adsense. I noticed that when I looked at Blogger's sites of note, none of them had advertisements on them which is kind of interesting.

I have started inviting people to join in sharing links.

The Down Home Zombie Blues-- Linnea Sinclair-- Review

Illustration by Howard Pyle; Pirate Romance

This is a science fiction romance. It is what you might get if you read star trek or stargate and added a decent amount of sex and romance to it. The book is campy and fun. It is full of cliches about science fiction.

Guardian Force Commander Jorie Mikkalah is hunting biomechanical zombies in the earth system. She must slip in with her crew and destroy the zombies without the earth people knowing about it.

Things don't go quite right and suddenly Jorie is hot and heavy with a greek cop from Miami named Theo. Theo saves Jorie from one of the monsters by using Jorie's laser pistol to burn out a zombies eyes. He understands how to use the pistol because it looked like something from Deep Space 1.

What will Jorie do? She has become involved in forbidden contact with an earth man. And eventually forbidden sex. Jorie really likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Theo. Earth food is wonderful and earth men must be even more wonderful.

Theo is taken aboard Jories ship where he is told that he will be sent to Paroo, a tropical island planet like Hawaii, because he has seen a guardian force ship. Then, Jorie convinces her crew that Theo should help them out. He knows about earth and can help them kill the zombies. The crew is kind of amusing. There is "something like a miniature Wookie".

Theo brings the alien Guardians to his house where they set up a base of operations with an invisible forcefield and get ready to hunt zombies. Theo wonders what the neighbors will think, he needs a cover story for Jorie which he can explain to his aunt Tootie. This is pretty silly. He has a hot woman in his house.

Things go wrong and Jorie's ship disappears. There is a secret group of evil aliens on the planet controlling the zombies. Things get scary for Jorie (and really steamy between Jorie and Theo).

The Tresh, a group of aliens that look like absolutely perfect humans with a love of giving others pain are on the planet. The Tresh remind me of Khan Noonien Singh played by Ricardo Montalban in the Star Trek episode "Space Seed."

There is the dichotomy of pain and pleasure going on in the background. One of Jorie's crew must be rescued from the Tresh who have taken over Theo's house. Jorie and Theo retake the house. They must take a rescued crew member to a veterinarian to have the pain implant removed. Jorie is very pleased, veterinarians are the highest form of doctor on her world. If you pay close attention to the novel there are a lot of ridiculous things like this in the novel.

Eventually, alone and isolated on the planet, Jorie and Theo seek out help to destroy the remaining zombies. Theo manages to convince a few of his friends to help him kill zombies by showing off some of Jorie's super alien toys. Look we have a forcefield, a holoprojector, and a laser rifle, wow aliens.

There is a final showdown with the alien zombies. The showdown kind of reminds of a video game. The zombies are much larger than before. They must get past the big zombies to shoot the super big boss ending the zombies. It is a boss fight.

For the final cliche, Jorie's ship reappears and she is promoted to Captain. Of course, there is a happy, sexy ending. Jorie gets assigned to earth to watch it for future "alien zombie infestations" and Tresh. She can be with her alien lover whenever she wants.

A trashy, campy, sexy, sometimes ridiculous, and funny science fiction romance. Apparently Linnea Sinclair has won quite a few romance book awards for her speculative fiction romances, like the 2006 RITA award for Paranormal Romances, 2003 Prism Award,2nd Place for Best Futuristic Romance, 2002 Affaire de Coeure Award for best Futuristic Romance, and many other romance awards. I am used to things like the Philip K. Dick, Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Nebula, and Hugo awards.

There are two songs before the book opens, they are The Down Home Zombie Blues Lyrics by Linnea Sinclair & Ed Teja, Music by Ed Teja (ASCAP), and the Downhome Divorced Guy Blues words by Ed Teja and Uncle Steve, music by Ed Teja.

I found this paperback listed in Locus magazine in their new books for December section. They don't usually list science fiction romance books. This is better than most. Despite some of the ridiculous qualities in the book, I couldn't put it down until I finished it.

Cradle to Cradle Print On Demand Kiosk Book System-- A Syncretic Idea

Occassionally, I get syncretic ideas, ideas which combine two or more things into something new. The idea is that you would take a print on demand book kiosk system and design the books coming out of the system so they can be recycled completely back into the system. A person would buy the book from the kiosk, then get a deposit when they returned the book.

You would go to the kiosk look at a selection of materials then key in the material you were interested in and the book would be printed once you made your selection and paid for it.

The books would be designed as a cradle to cradle product. The pages would use ink that could be reclaimed, instead of paper you would use a thin plastic which could be printed on multiple times, the glue could be removed as well, the cover could be stripped off and reused.

Initially the book would cost a little more, but costs would be reduced because the books would be recycled. I was thinking you would have a few standard size formats and would initially focus on plain text books without illustrations. Maybe the classics or things which people would read a lot over and over again.

Please comment on the idea.

A Few Duds.

I took some books home to read over the weekend, but I can't really get myself to read them. They are not as good as I thought they would be. I had to put one of the books down after reading the first chapter of the book. I try to read at least the first chaper before I put down a book.

The second one might be alright. I am not enthused with it. Sometimes there just isn't that much interesting to read. Or maybe, I want to look at something else.

$100 Laptop Prototype-- Design Continuum.

Quite honestly, I am not enthused with the idea of having masses of books around. I really do think there is such a thing as having too many books. When you read as many books as I do, you get to realize that a lot of books probably shouldn't have been published.

A lot of people will hate me for this. I am not impressed with a house full of books, unless there is something exceptional about them. If you have a house full of books on horses I might be impressed, or if you have a house full of beautiful art books, or mystery books I might be impressed.

Part of this is the way people use the book as a sign of intellectuality. You can buy books by the foot with certain types of binding, or request a certain type of book as a backdrop for a film or television show. This is more a sign of having a hoard of jewels than intellectual prominence. Lawyers and CEOs buy books to fill their offices often to show they are smart.

Most books do not survive. I think the average shelf life of a book in a bookstore is about two weeks to a month. Imagine a giant room full of paper where in a month or two, the majority of it will be recycled.

I don't think everything in print should be saved. A lot of people think of a book as a sacred object. The content inside the book is what is sacred. It would be incredible if we could preserve everything that was written for all time. I look forward to the day when I can go into a bookstore and in five minutes have a choice of having a bound book, or an electronic download of everything ever printed. The same goes for libraries. It would also be interesting if we could also do the same thing with movies, music, and other forms of expression.

Packaging does not fascinate me. I wouldn't mind if I could see what the book looked like when it was finished before I bought it, but I don't need to see piles of 25 copies of it arranged in different patterns.

I am not a luddite. The main value of having printed books is if they are illustrated-- The resolution of paper is still much higher than digital books. But, if they are not illustrated, it is a waste of resources to have a building stuffed with paper.

I am saying this in the sense, that if we could put all of the books inside a print on demand machine or download on demand machine, it might be better than having a house of paper. Also we would need to have the machine easily searchable and readily available for people to use.

I understand the comfortableness of the used bookstore. It has an air of coffee and old things. The propietor might be your grumpy neighbor. There might even be a nice cat, or even a dog.

I also understand the need to hoard things in piles. Messy piles of paper on desks, bookmarks, old books, videos in piles, drawers full of forms, and fliers. It happens to me like many librarians.

I too am afraid of the mad path of "creative destruction" running through American capitalist society tearing apart my profession. I have watched the positions for librarians shrink as well as the number of booksellers. There are less and less of us in the world.


I would be less concerned with this if more books were designed with the cradle to cradle philosophy. Cradle to Cradle Rethinking The Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Baungart is a fairly radical idea. It says you should design things so they can be completely reused. The book Cradle to Cradle is designed this way. You can remove the ink with natural solvents and reuse the ink to print an entirely different book.

There is a certain ambivalence in all this. I am not sure if I am lying to myself on this one, people are so good at self delusion...

Clean Technology (Green Technology) and Natural Capitalism Books,

I am very interested in industrial ecology and clean technology. It is very hard to get good reading material on this subject. I tried to get A Safe and Sustainable World by Nancy Jack Todd: The Promise of Ecological Design. John Todd is the inventor of Living Machines and Artificial Wetlands. His site Ocean Arks International is very interesting http://www.oceanarks.org/

Currently, The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder is on reserve at the library for me. I also have Freedom From Oil: How The Next President Can End The United States Oil Addiction by David Sandalow on reserve.

Two books which talk about natural capitalism, or green business practices which I can recommend are Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Amory R. Lovins and Paul Hawken, and Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. The article which the book Natural Capitalism came from is here,
http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/~ewb-ucsb/documents/articles/natcap.pdf



There is not a whole lot written on this material. I am taking home Green Gold Japan, Germany, and the United States Race For Environmental Technologies by Curtis Moore and Alan Miller. I read this but it was not that good. The information was very dated. It was written in 1994 and much of what was being talked about has changed considerably. I would suggest reading something more recent.

Getting back on topic. Recently, I had mentioned a failure by Finavera to commercialize their wave energy buoy. They wrote the technology down to zero value. Something unusual has happened. After they wrote the value of their wave energy buoy technology down to zero, they are opening a wave energy project with PG&E http://www.energy-businessreview.com/article_news.asp?guid=135144DB-4CD2-4116-9987-1425D809CAF7

It is an utterly odd experience going from thinking a company is worthless and will never do any wave energy projects to the first commercializer in the United States of wave energy.

Walking The Stacks or Why a Librarian Appears to Wander

Occassionally, I walk the whole area which I am in charge of. This is to make sure the books are neat, nothing is out of place and everything looks right. Sometimes I get the question why are you wandering through the stacks.

Mainly I pick up books which are left on top of other books, scraps of paper, hidden soda cans, and other minor garbage. Occassionally, I will find a few books tucked in the corners on forbidden subjects like sex or abortion. These get put back in the sorting room.

I take notes in my mind spot checking for which places need to be rearranged, shelf read or neatened by the library aides (it is impolitic to call them "pages" like they did in the old days). Occassionally, I'll find something odd. Maybe, one of the patrons (library customers) has decided the books look better if they are tilted sideways or pushed in four inches, or has decided to stack large amounts of books on the floor. This really is not predictable.

There is a recurring fantasy which I have heard from many people that they would like to run through the library and knock over all the bookshelves so all the books fell on the floor and the shelves tipped over like dominos. I heard that the gangs when they were really bad where I worked used to run through the library throwing books on the floor.

The teenagers sometimes like to hide in the stacks and talk to each other about forbidden things, or chase after each other when we are not looking.

Sometimes little kids like to run their hands along the shelves like they are running their hands along a metal fence pushing the books in. Books have a nice feel to them. But, this has to be discouraged.

Mostly things are in order where I work. I check to make sure all the stuff is put away behind the desk.

Then if time permits, I scan through the new books both fiction and nonfiction to see what has just come in. This often works better than searching on the computer when people come up to ask for new books. Customers are confused and often don't remember the exact title of a book which they are looking for. They remember the title was in Ebony, The New York Times, Military Times, or some magazine or other. Having a vague idea of the new stock is a good idea.

A lot of people think checking to see the order of books, or shelf reading should only be done by the library pages or shelvers. This works only if you check their work on occassion. It is very easy to transpose letters and make slight mistakes in order.

Also occassionally reading sections of books which are not in your assigned areas gives you a better idea of what is inside a large collection of books. I can picture the location of many of the books in my mind because I have seen and read the shelves closeup over the years.

We have two floors below us where I work. These are actually fairly well organized. It is a huge last copy repository for the system. There are a lot of very strange old books some of them dating from the 19th century. Just looking through the old books is very entertaining.

You get to learn about what books people value because we keep books by circulation. There are a lot of really weird things which keep their relevance, old circus books, tattoo books, books on the maritime trade, old railroad books, human freaks, woodcuts and a lot of really odd things.

Many people want to go downstairs to look at the items, but we only allow people to look at things in the stacks if they are accompanied by a librarian. We have a couple people who come in and ask to see the World War II books, many of the books we have were written close to that that time period. We usually go downstairs to get them for people.

If I have time, I will occassionally go look at the old science fiction and fantasy books in the stacks, there are a lot of the less popular titles by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as well as some of the classic science fiction or fantasy writers like Andre Norton, L. Sprage De Camp, and A.E. Van Vogt. It is interesting looking at these in their library bindings.

I couldn't think of what to write about exactly today, so I chose something a little more free form.

Gentlemen of the Road-- Michael Chabon-- Review

Map which includes Khazaria.



Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road concerns the adventures of Zelikman, a travelling Frankish Jewish physician and his compatriot, Amram, a giant black ex-soldier from Constantinople.

This is a classic story of the adventuring pair in the tradition of the Lone Ranger and Tonto or Gray Mouser and Fafhrd. The book is very much an ode to swashbuckling fantasy. What separatesthis book from most of these books is the use of an accurate historical backdrop. Thereis no magic or fantastic creatures. The closest thing to magic is Zelikman's arab spy glass, his hempen pipe, and the medicine which he carries. There are some runes on Amrams axe but, they don't have any discernable effect. The most magical creatures in the novel are the elephants in the bek's palace.

The setting is rather interesting. The original title was supposed to be Jews with Swords which conjures up some rather interesting images. The story occurs in the Eastern Europeankingdom of Khazaria, a real Jewish kingdom that existed from 850 A.D. to 1136 A.D.. The actualyear of the story is 950 A.D. Khazaria is known for its candleabrum flag, and its wild redhaired jews. The turkic people of the area converted to judaism.

The novel itself is a light and fast read. I read it in a single night. The characters arevery entertaining. I rather like Hanukkah, a bit character who has turned to becoming a mercenary so he can buy his lover from a brothel.

There is plenty of action with the marauding Rus, the soldiers of the Bek, and the arabic Arsiya. The two main characters in the opening scene Zelikman and Amram stage a fight where Zelikman appears to die so they can make money.

Gary Gianni illustrates the story with very detailed black and white illustrations. Gary Gianni is currently drawing the syndicated strip of Prince Valiant. The illustrations in the book have a very similar tone to Prince Valiant.

It seems that Michael Chabon is hitting his stride with this novel. His last novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union was on the Locus Bestseller List. Read the story to find out what happens.

Tobias Buckell-- Ragamuffin-- Review

The Chupacabra

Tobias Buckell-- Ragamuffin is a science fiction novel. It is his second novel. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the first book in the setting, Crystal Rain from the library. I had reserved it at the library, but it never came.

In a way, this novel is quite hard to review because of its non-traditional structure. It is a novel in three parts. The first part is the opening sectin of the novel, Nashara, the main heroine of the novel is on a human reservation, she assassinates an alien Gahe breeder for the Human League so she can earn passage off world. The opening is a bit confusing because it immediately jumps into action sequences without explanation.

The second part of the novel is set on Angade, a human world which has been cut off from the wormhole network which links the different worlds in the story. The world is very interesting, it contains two cultures, a kind of Caribbean island culture led by the original settlers, and a proto-Aztec culture controlled by the alien Teotl. The action starts in the second part when the alien Teotl reopen the wormhole leading to Angade. The Teotl are the last remnants of their species fleeing genocide by the Satrapy, the masters of the wormholes. The Teotl have a message, the Satrapy wants to wipe out the human race.

The third part brings together the first two parts in a climactic battle between the human agents of the Satrapy, the Hongguo who are charged with suppressing human technology and the Ragamuffins, a group of human pirates of caribbean island descent. The setting is around the world of Angade.

This is a difficult complex books in many ways. There is use of dialect, and presentation of cultures not normally seen in most science fiction settings. The different factions, the Human League, the Ragamuffins, the Angade, the Hongguo represent different human cultures. The Hongguo appear to be Asian, the Angade a mix of Aztec and Caribbean, and the Human League might be Russian. Add to the mix the alien Teotl and the alien Satrapy and you have a very complex world.

The best part of this book is the world and culture building. The setting is quite unique. Humans are not on top. They live at the edges of the Satrapy on reservations, on backwards worlds, as second class citizens on space stations. Earth has been cut off from the wormhole network so they develop their own civilization. Technology is suppressed by the Hongguo so there is not a lot of super technology.

The alien Teotl are convincingly done. They are well described as aliens. The Satraps are in the background acting as puppet masters, so their presence is felt as a kind of hidden force.

There is a lot of action in the novel. This could have been done better. Some of the fights are quite confusing. I thought the fight sequences should have been edited better. Sometimes what is happening is lost in the action.

I will read the first novel, Crystal Rain because I like the setting. I don't know of any other authors with a Caribbean viewpoint in science fiction. It really is a unique book. He also is unique in writing science fiction with multiple human racial backgrounds in his stories. Most people do not do this. They tend to make the aliens the other races.

I found the novel on the web while reading an interview of Tobias Buckell. Tobias Buckell has his own blog. http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/ . There is a lot of material on what it is like to write a novel and how you sell your first novel.

Wonders of the Library Card, Book Gizmos

Woodrow Wilson's Bookplate.

Library cards are very interesting objects. Where I work, many patrons, we call them patrons not customers in library land often come to my desk and ask for books then tell me they don't have a library card.

This is a rather odd experience for me. I've noticed quite a few people who use the library don't have a library card. Some patrons just come in and read the books in the library only. They'll come in the library and sit down for a couple hours in their favorite spot and read. This is especially true for the newspaper and magazine readers. They will get the daily paper and read their paper then leave.

It has gotten to the point where I can recognize a few of them. There is one gentleman who reads music books and kung fu magazines. Another person reads books on hip hop and cartooning and draws cartoons.

They apparently don't want library cards.

Other people will come in and ask for books for their school assignments then tell me they don't have a library card. I ask them how they are going to check out their books and they say it doesn't matter. But, they keep coming back to get more assignment books. This happens with all kinds of books.

We can't come out and say hey you are you taking the books out without a card. This seems to happen sometimes, a book will go missing for a couple weeks then you find it again. A person will complain, why can't we find this book you should mark it missing. Because of the disappearing and reappearing book phenomena we can't really do it until it has been gone for a couple months. Things reappear in the most unlikely fashion.

Patrons put books back in the wrong places. They think, they are helping us by putting away the material for us. Please leave the books in the book drop or give the books back to the librarian at the desk when you are done with them. Or, if they are especially enterprising, they will hide a book on sex, drugs, or some other subject so they can get it later when they come back. They don't want their mother, their wife, or their friends to know they are reading something so they don't take it out.

Often patrons will come in and ask us what have they read in the last month. We wipe our records after a book is returned. We don't store peoples reading habits. Library records can be subpoenaed by the police or even Homeland Security in the United States. They are a record of a persons character. Lawyers can and do use lists of what people have read as part of their testimony in court. They also comment on whether people have fines and have lost items. They also have lists of what people plan on reading, because of the holds list on peoples cards.

We also wipe record of computer use after a certain period to insure privacy as well. With the new computer logging systems, it requires that you use your card barcode number to logon to computers. While this has caused some drop in usage, it has deterred a lot of problems. There are a lot less fights and arguments around the public computers because a persons identity is known. Also people use a lot less pornography in public.

If a person collects enough fines on a library card, it can effect their credit rating. Some libraries report fines to a credit collection agency. Not returning books in some cases will effect a persons credit history.

Also report your library card stolen or missing immediately and don't lend your card to other people. A lot of little kids will lend their library cards to their friends and then find out their friends have checked out a lot of books and not returned them. This happens a lot. We have to pardon this a lot of the time. The children often don't know not to do this.

Library cards are one of the first cards which a child receives. Usually a child will come with their class and get a library card. The teachers call in first and sends the information in to be processed. Then the class comes to visit, is given a tour, then the library cards are distributed alphabetically to the students.

Sometimes, a person will come in and say they forgot their library card can't they just give their name or show some identification. Because library cards are private records which can be subpoenaed we can't do this. I know it sounds kind of strange and extreme, but we have to be very careful. Some people claim librarians worry more about privacy than most government and police agencies.

The library card can be used to place holds. We have a few people who fill their holds to capacity on movies, then use their childrens or mothers card to get more holds. Movies are becoming more popular than books in many cases to check out. There is one disabled gentleman who calls every day and places two to three holds over the phone using the barcode on his library card for movies. There is another lady who calls and places three or four holds every single day for old television shows like Gilligan's Island and The Honeymooners.

There doesn't seem to be much discernment in what people check out in movies. Most people in my experience seem to check out more two star reviewed movies than well rated movies. It is really incredible. Bride of Chucky, Halloween III, and National Lampoons Vacation are far more popular than Masterpiece Theatre. There seems to be more of a focus on mindless escape than thinking.

The library card is also a primary piece of identification. It is one of the pieces of identification which can be used to acquire a social security number, a drivers license, or a passport. If you read about how people create false identities, one of the steps which people often take is to get a library card.

It is standard to ask for a piece of mail and a piece of identification with a signature or picture to get a library card in most places that I have worked. Usually we only give a card to local residents, but if a person works in the area, we will also issue a card to a person as well.

These are thoughts on library cards.

________________________________________________________________

Here are some general thoughts. I decided to add some book gizmos to the items I am selling. I haven't sold anything yet, but hey it is still an experiment. I put the Kindle ebook reader and some playaways on my site. Playaways are a plug and play audiobook. You turn the audiobook on, put on the earphones and listen. They are very convenient for libraries.

Kindle is Amazon's new ebook reader. It uses something called electronic ink, a new form of screen display technology. http://www.e-ink.com/

Magnetic bookmarks have a few advantages over regular bookmarks. They don't slip from place, or fall out of books because they are held in place magnetically. They are also slightly heavier than regular bookmarks. I think they are a nice little invention.

Alan Greenspan The Age of Turbulence Adventures In A New World-- Book Review

Alan Greenspan The Age of Turbulence Adventures in A New World is currently on the New York Times Bestseller list. It is 529 pages long with two sets of black and white pictures. The pictures are some of the best political photographs I have ever seen. My favorite picture is of Alan Greenspan lying on the floor of the white house.

This book is both a biographical account, a book on economics, and a story about the federal reserve. The book embodies history in the making. Because Alan Greenspan was directly involved he can talk with authority about the fall of the Berlin Wall, the World Trade Organization protests, Nixon's presidency, and his experiences with leaders around the world from China, Russia, Latin America, and other countries.

The book gives a nice sense of Alan Greenspan as a person. There are anecdotes about him like he takes a bath every morning. In the bath, he takes notes for his morning meetings. It also gives his political viewpoint. He is both an objectivist, a Libertarian Republican, an admirer of President Ford, and a free market capitalist.

Alan Greenspan demonstrates original thinking and a willingness to hold viewpoints which are not popular. He makes some interesting statements like global warming is real, the Iraq war is about oil, and the free market is useless without property rights and the rule of law. At the same time, he claims that carbon caps are futile and we should build nuclear power plants and electric cars so we can cut global warming.

The book is quite readable. There is not a lot of jargon or complex business terms. He addresses the reader directly in plain language. Despite this, the book has a tremendous amount of ideas and opinions in it.

On a personal level, there is some useful information. If you read carefully, you may learn a bit more on how to prepare to live in a complex world. For example, he claims that managers earn 57% more than line workers. The main determiner of this is reliance on highly complex technical education. It makes me rethink what I am going to do with my time.

There is also quite a bit on how the federal reserve monitors the economy. While he does not talk about how to pick stocks, he does talk about how the federal reserve effects the stock markets and banks with its decisions. There is enough on the process of business cycles, irrational exuberance, the internet, and the effects of globalization to make it worth reading if you are an investor.

There is an amazing amount of material covered in this book. It took me about a week to read this book. It is impossible to summarize everything that was written in this book. If you want to learn how economics effect the real world, this book is for you.

Random Thoughts on Blogging

Well here are some random thoughts on blogging.

Today I was accepted into the Bookaholics Blogring. I really enjoyed looking at the blogs in this ring. They are all literary in nature. It is a break from Entrecard which is almost all business exchange links. There are so many blogs in the ring that it will take me a while to look at all of them.

My favorite site in the ring is Stephanie's Confessions of A Bookaholic. It is a quite excellent site on books. She reviews some books on Neil Gaiman and has a number of book challenges. Book Challenges are challenges that get you to read a set of books on a particular subject. There is even a "graphic novels challenge" on her site with a list to read. The site is quite excellent.
http://stephaniesbooks.blogspot.com/

If you like poetry, there is a rather odd phenomenon happening called spam poetry, poems derived from spam.

Tea Reads on the Bookaholic Blogring has two spamkus on it worth reading. Something new for all the spammers in all of us.
http://teareads.blogspot.com/

The best of the spam poetry sites I have found so far is The Spam Poetry Anthology. It has a lot of depth and surprisingly good poems in it.
http://poemsmadefromspam.blogspot.com/

I have some further thoughts on my site. I had over 100 hits on my site yesterday-- 110 hits. I know, I am being a click monkey, but so what. It is nice to know people are at least looking at my site. I'll probably have to erase my hit counter again. It only covers the first 500 sites before it asks for payment. What is it with good free hit counters.

No Barriers for Entry In Small Scale Bookselling.

Secondhand Bookseller on the Quai Voltaire in Paris, France, 1821. In a way, it hasn't changed much.

Someone told me about http://www.bookwise.com/ a network marketing company for books. It was quite interesting. It looks like tupperware for books. There are two ways this would work, you would sell the books as an affiliate, or you would buy the books at a discount and resell them to customers. What is interesting about this scheme is that you are an independent contractor, a contract employee of the company. The contract looks very complicated. There is no storefront involved. I can imagine someone having book parties much like tupperware parties where they invite groups of people over to look at their small selection of books.

I can imagine a small group of ladies getting together to look at the latest Danielle Steel, or Debbie Macomber books. Maybe, they would pick up a small glossy catalog with a few of the latest titles. I wonder if the top seller would get a minivan instead of a pink cadillac like they give for their top sales people at Avon.

Another thing which is coming up is the electronic book kiosk. Apparently http://www.ondemandbooks.com/ is planning on setting up kiosks to print some titles on demand at a variety of libraries. All it requires is a PDF file which is fed into a book production setup. It produces a trade paperback style book at a cost of approximately a penny a page.

Of course, book vending machines are not new. Although, I don't have a picture of it, the Japanese have book vending machines in their subways in many places. Maxi Livres in France just started selling books in vending machines for approximately $2.45 in American dollars. They are supposed to have a wide variety of books available.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9005718/

It doesn't take that much to sell books from a vending machine. The University of Iowa has sold both zines and handmade books directly from standard vending machines, The Aramark 111-112 snack machine will do it. This is an article on it.
http://www.futureofthebook.com/stories/storyReader$356

I was looking through the google images on book vending machines. Apparently, they aren't as uncommon as I thought. I saw images of them from Scotland, Sao Paolo, Barcelona, France, and Japan. It must only be a unique phenomena here in the United States.

After digging a little more, I found an example of a company with specifications for a book vending maching in Ireland. I wonder why it has not come here to America. It would be a very nice import. I can imagine it in subways and at the airport. The company is called Novel Idea.
http://www.novel-idea-vending.com/spec.html

If you really think about it, it does not take much to sell books in the real world as well. A table at a flea market isn't that expensive, and if you sell from a table in the street, it costs very little. Vendors on Manhattan's sidewalks are the bane of the local bookstores. They just need a tax id and a vendors license which is much cheaper than rent.

The Manhattan book street vendors also have a reputation for theft. A person can ask some Manhattan street vendors for a new book in a day which if you think about it, is not possible if they are using a regular distributor like Baker and Taylor or Ingram. Please buy from your bookstore, not the street vendors. It saves the bookstore money on broken windows and keeps them in business.

After a while, if the person is good enough at selling, they move from the street to the flea markets and eventually their own store. This usually doesn't happen. Selling books on the streets in Manhattan is a great way to end up nowhere.

Although, I've heard that selling hot dogs or morning coffee and bagels in Manhattan is not a bad way to make money if you are tough enough for it.

Of course, it is even easier on the internet. There are numerous affiliate programs for selling books. You can sell using Amazon.com or Powells.com which I am doing, or any of a number of other affiliate programs.

There are also various places where you can put together a back list of books to sell. For $25.00 a month you can set up an account on ABEbooks for up to 500 books. It is very easy to sell through their site. http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Sell/ . Alibris another service costs about the same amount and also sells music and films.

There are effectively no barriers to entry to start a small book storefront on the internet. If you only have a few books, you can simply put them up on ebay or another auction site to sell.

The Aliens by Charles Bukowski

A very cool animated piece with Charles Bukowskis poem.

Nursery Rhymes, Poetry, and Fairytales

I really enjoy reading nursery rhymes. I have memorized quite a few of them from Mother Goose. Mother Goose is the source for many of todays childrens picture books. I have fond memories of it from when I was a child. I also love Beatrix Potter, especially the Tales of Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddleduck.

I took some time to write some poems that are variations of nursery rhymes and odes to fairytales.

Hey fiddle, fiddle, the cat's in the middle,
The dog jumped over the moon,
The little cow laughed to see such sport,
As the dish rapped a tune with the spoon.

Jill be thimbled
Jill be quickened
Jill jumped onto the candlestick

Puss
Hat and feather
Collars and lace
Boots of velvet
What a fine cat you are

Reinard
Quick Smiling
Quick Thinking
Sleight of Hand
Fleet of Foot
A master trickster

These, I wrote on the train coming to work this morning.

Earlier, I had written another poem at the Poetry In The Branches Workshop

Puss's Boots

If I had boots like these,
I'd dance across the oceans,
And climb the highest mountains,

I'd jump and hang from the moon,
Then walk across the starry sky,

The sun would be a single step,
The moon a soft shuffle,
And the farthest stars a mile.

I think nursery rhymes for todays children are too sanitized. Removing the scary or naughty parts makes them less real. It also changes the effect on children. Disney often to me is more scary with its sanitized fairytales than the original versions.

There are two major collectors of fairytales which we think of the west, Charles Perrault who was French, and The Brothers Grimm who was German. Luckily, these are no longer under copywrite and can be used for almost any purpose. I think of them as a repository and excellent source for fantasy writing.

The other place we often draw our stories from is Aesop who is attributed with Aesop's fables. The original unexpurgated version is far better than the clean children's version. Aesop himself is very interesting. He was a slave who was supposed to be very ugly.

I am not sure what else to say at this point. Oh yes, I also wrote two approximation of koans in the Poetry At The Branches workshop. Here they are:

Is the glove on the hand, or the hand in the glove?

Does the scarf blow in the wind, or the wind blow the scarf?

I am often ambivalent about poetry. I know I can write it, but I am not sure that I want to be known in any way as being a poet. There are interesting connotations that go with being a poet.

I have a few favorite poets. I have always liked Shel Silverstein's childrens poetry-- Where the Sidewalk Ends is a truly excellent book.

I also like Charles Bukowski who is a story unto himself with his raunchy, drunken, often whimsical self reflecting poetry. It is not for children.

When I was younger, I used to collect poetry books when I was in college renting a room. Then I had something traumatic happen. The old lady who was the landlady downstairs passed out on her bed with a bottle of gin and some cigarettes. The apartment burned down. With it went the poetry collection. I still read poetry books sometimes.

The net is a truly excellent medium for poetry. There are a lot of blogs with poetry in them. Because it is easy to screen blogs, you can quickly find blogs with quite a few good poems in them.

My favorite blog with poems so far is this one:
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/the-musings-of-madness.html

__________________________________________________________________

I decided to change my heading picture for Book Calendar. I found a picture from a public domain photo archive. I think it is a little better looking than the original lectern image.

Also, I updated my fuelmyblog.com image, so it would include my "friends" log.

Every day, I try to improve my blog a bit. It is slow improvement that makes things better.

Advanced Reading Copies.

An Advanced Reading Copy is a stage between the manuscript which the author wrote, and the final publication. It is used to check the quality of the final work before it is published.

Usually an advanced reading copy will be trade paperback in size and have a glossy finished paper cover. In bookstores and libraries they are usually sent with a letter asking about any suggestions for final revision of the book. In big libraries with central branches, they usually have several bookshelves of advanced readers copies. Most of the time they say Advanced Readers Copy not for resale on them. Libraries cannot add them to their collections because of the notice.

Librarians will look over the Advanced Readers Copies to see how many of the book they will buy for a whole library system. Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library, and New York Public Library all have central collection development departments as do most very large city library systems.

Independent booksellers often ignore advanced readers copies, they are busy selling books and often don't have time to read for pleasure. They often have an unread pile of them behind the counter. Sometime, they give them to their assistant to read. Or if the ARC is by a really famous author, they will stick it in a closet somewhere, because it might be worth something to someone some day.

ARCs of famous authors like Steven King are valuable. They are not supposed to sell it because of the notice. This is sometimes ignored. Usually to be considerate, most booksellers wait several years after the book is released until the item is collectible, have the item signed then sell it.

Often after meetings, the librarians will take a few minutes and pick up some of the advanced reading copies to read. They are meant to be distributed to get a first impression of a book before it is published. The more professionals in the book trade who read it and give an impression back to them the happier the publisher is.

If the librarian or bookseller is considerate and the review sheet is still in the ARC, they will send back a review of the Advanced Readers Copy to the publisher with comments like, the sword fight on page 53 read like a fight with a fencing blade not a broadsword, or I didn't like the poem on page 56 it didn't match the tone of the story, or you spelled cope verde wrong three times, it is cape verde. These will most likely be some of the final revisions before publication.

If the author liked the review, they may even send a signed copy of the book to you. This is rare, but it has happened to me once with a short review. They will also ask the bookseller to tell them how many copies of the book he or she might want to buy in the future.

Advanced Readers Copies are also handed out at the big book conventions. If you go to Book Expo America, each booth will have copies of their latest forthcoming to be published book in Advanced Readers Edition format. They hand out hundreds of them to generate buzz from the attendees. There are stacks piled up on the floor, on tables, in book racks, and on display stands for people to look at and handle. There are more than most people can even look at in passing. You could take home a hundred pounds of them and still barely scratch the surface.

If you go to author events or readings at a convention like Book Expo America, they will often have the latest ARC of their book at a reading or presentation. You are supposed to take one so you can read the book and tell your friends how great it was.

____________________________________________________________________

The logo in this blog is my new logo for Entrecard which I designed. I hope it looks decent. I had to replace my hit counter last night because it broke.

Here are some more thoughts about entrecard has a very large number of users. However, they don't have a very wide readership. For example, currently in the category of books, there are only 3 members, in the category of writing there are about 14 members, and the category of art there are 12 members, and in the category of education there are 8 members. This is not a whole lot of membership for the arts. While I get a lot of traffic from there, I don't get enough repeat traffic. It would be nice if more artistic people "like you maybe" joined the network.

Sometimes widgets and counters stop working because the code on blogspot gets changed, or the producer of the widget has problems with their server. This is the first time this has happened to me. I am thinking of redesigning the banner at the top of the page. I think it needs to have a little more lightness to it.

Sometimes I sound like a pitch man, but that is what I am doing selling myself and my blog to you.

Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turblence, Thoughts on review material.

I started reading Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence. The first part focuses so far on his early life. His love of music and mathematics. A lot of it is about his rise to prominence in the economic profession. He talks about his relationship with Ayn Rand and his objectivist ideals. It is rather interesting reading about someone with very different ideals than my own. He seems to be an odd mix of personal conservativeness and economic free market radicalism.

The writing is crisp. There is very little excess wordiness in the text. This is despite the huge size of the book. If you want a lesson in how to cut out unnecessary material, this book does a good job.

I also was reading the New York Time Book Review, the November 18, 2007 edition. I found an interesting title which I wanted to reserve, Amy Hua, Day of Empire How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance And Why They Fall. I can almost sigh sometimes; the library system where I work has not gotten it yet. Quite often bookstores get books before libraries. At least, this is what I think.

There seems to be a distribution pattern where the first copies are sent out to the bookstore, then they are sent to libraries. Many publishers will deny this. But, it makes sense to first make money selling the book to individuals, then try to sell it to institutions like universities and libraries later.

Getting back to the concept of review material. The most unbiased source for reviews of everyday items is supposed to be http://www.consumerreports.org/ They do not take advertising and have a strict policy of neutrality in their reviews. They produce a magazine to review products, as well as specialized books like The Best Baby Products and The Used Car Buying Guide. They also have an annual buying guide which compiles their reviews for the year.

Just as a thought exercise, if you compared the reviews on items in consumer reports and the reviews on books lets say in the New York Review of Books, you could say some interesting things.

The first thing you might notice is that The New York Review of Books has numerous advertisements for selling books and is academic in nature. The reviews are selectively biased towards literature and non- practical nonfiction. When I say non-practical, I mean things like history, philosophy, and other academic subjects. If you think about it even more, the reviewers are supposed to show their biases so they can prove that they are intellectuals and academics.

The problem I have with intellectual and academic reviewers is that they don't review the every day books which a library or bookstore needs to buy. It is very hard to find decent reviews on career books, books on plumbing, computer books. You have to go to trade magazines or web sites to find what you are looking for. Barron's or Forbes for example might have reviews on business books. Or you have to go to the recognized series like the Dummies series, or The Complete Idiot series, or the Teach Yourself Visually series. Sometimes, I think there are better ways to learn things than being a "Dummie" or an "Idiot".

The other thing which you have to do is buy the practical books from a practical manufacturer, Black and Decker publishes books on plumbing or home repair, Sunset Magazine publishes books on home design. Sometimes, it would be nice again if we could find more unique reviews of this kind of material.

Often the only way to find out about the everyday material is to go to other libraries and bookstores and see what they have on the shelf, there simply is no review material. This is why you often see librarians wandering around libraries where they don't work. The other option is to request sample items from publishers so you can figure out which practical books you might want to buy. Also publishers show up at library conventions or bookselling conventions. When I went to BookExpo America, I took the time to visit Sphinx Legal Publishing and Nolo Press to see what practical self-help books they had for law.

I think it would help reviewers sometimes if they stopped worrying so much about their intellectual credentials and reviewed more practical books.

Review-- The Elements of Style Illustrated, Entrecard

The Elements of Style Illustrated by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, Illustrated by Maira Kalman, Penguin, New York c2005. This is a truly wonderful book which makes an old classic even better.

I have seen a lot of blogs with heavy marketing and advertising prose. This book is about how to write, clear, concise, stylish prose. It was originally written in 1911 by William Strunk, Jr. an english professor who wanted to create a to the point book on how to write clearly. The book is considered a classic. Most writers claim to have read it. It is one of those books you are supposed to have read at least once.

His student, E.B. White took up the revision of the book in the second edition. This is the third edition. E.B. White is best known for writing the American children's classic Charlotte's web. He was also an essayist for the New Yorker. E.B. White further expanded the original book to include information on style. He wrote on how to design prose, form it into paragraphs, make the speaker identifiable in dialogue, and included sections on words to avoid like like, thrust, thus and other overused english.

The different between this book and other style books is that it is enjoyable to read. The examples used are entertaining. For example, the author writes "Be obscure clearly! Be wild in tongue in a way we can understand." He also exhorts people to first develop clarity, before deciding to use more flowery words. He uses many recognized people as part of his examples, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, William Faulkner, and others. It is a truly literary work.

The Maira Kalman illustrations add to the quality of the work. They are mostly light and airy watercolors. The watercolors are of captions from the text. An example is, "Well Susan this is a fine mess you are in." Above this caption is a watercolor of a basset hound.

This book has helped many people improve the quality of their writing, making it more clear, precise and understandable. I am glad I had the chance to read the latest edition.

____________________________________________________________________

I have been trying various methods to increase traffic to my website. So far Entrecard, a form of business logo exchange has gotten me the most results. I have doubled daily my traffic since trying this network. It is also fairly entertaining to use. You get to look at a lot of different blogs in many categories. It is kind of interesting seeing your logo on someone elses blog site.

The othe service that is working is Blogcatalog. It has essentially helped build a network of daily readers for my blog which I wouldn't have had if I didn't try their service out. I have joined several blog groups inside their network relevant to what I am writing about, science fiction, the environment, reading, and writing.

_________________________________________________________________

I got rid of the Widgetbucks graphic novel and book items and replaced them with a Powell's Bookstore affiliate search button. I thought this would make the site more consistent and look better. Widgetbucks was also not working very well. I also got rid of the fish tank and shrank down the blog catalog banner from 10 viewers to 5. I think it looks better.

A Few Books And Comments On Money

US Silver Certificate Dollar

Money is one of those things which bloggers seem to talk about a lot. These are a few book recommendations on investing. The first four books are currently part of the Wiley Investment Classics series. The first book is one which most stock brokers claim they have read at one point or other, Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd. Benjaimin Graham is considered to be one of the fathers of value investing. The next book is called Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher. Philip Fisher is considered to be the person who came up with idea on how to invest in growth stocks.

The other two books are about the condition of wall street. They show how little has changed in the way people act around stocks and money. The first book is Where Are All The Customers Yachts: A Good Hard Look At Wall Street by Fred Schwed. This book is quite fun to read. Confessions of A Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre is equally entertaining.

The best book which I have ever read on the concept of value is an art book, surprisingly. The book is called Boggs: A Comedy of Values by Lawrence Weschler. J.S.G. Boggs is an artist who draws money. He draws single sided bills. These are variations of different types of money with fantastical elements, like flowers and pictures of children, or odd colors. He then tries to use the bills to buy things from stores. He tells the people he is attempting to buy the things from that it is not real money but art, and if they want the art, they should give him some change and a receipt for the thing he has bought. Watching the process is fascinating. This link has an interview and a video of him. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/217/boggs

Please don't ask me about stock tips. I'm not great at this.. Two of my recent investments were near total disasters. I invested in HOKU Scientific, a fuel cell company which recently was forced to switch from being a fuel cell manufacturer to a solar cell manufacturer. HOKU lost its contracts for fuel cells which are basically pie in the sky in most cases and was forced to invest in a form of more realistic energy, solar energy.

I also am invested in Finavera, a company that recently had another total disaster. At the beginning of November, the wave energy generation buoy which they were working on failed its commercialization test. The buoy went from a commercial value of over $4 million dollars to being written down to $1. The wave energy generator proved to be commercially unviable. Luckily, the company didn't go out of business completely because they were heavily invested in wind energy, a more traditional form of alternative energy. They received financing to stay in business.

Now is not the best time for alternative energy in the United States. Also investing in the stock market is risky. I used etrade to make my trades. One day, because Citigroup investment analysts downgraded it, the stock fell 58% in value. I pulled all of my trading money out of there quickly. In the beginning, it looked to be an online stock trading company failure. Luckily, someone bailed them out. If Etrade had gone under, it would have had incredible impact on the market. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/11/13/etrade_stock_falls_58_after_forecast/

Things in the stock market are very scary right now.

Perception And Format In Media

The Globe Theatre

One of the things I notice a lot is that people are being assigned to read plays in high school and college. Shakespeare is one of the most assigned authors. The thing which bothers me about this is that in the class room Shakespeare is read not shown. I enjoy watching Shakespeare far more than I enjoy reading his work. In fact, there is very little effort to get people to critique the live play in the classroom setting. In effect the experience is being changed from its original intention. The context changes. Individual words on the written page are analyzed for their meaning.

Many students come in confused about Shakespeare because they have no way to place the words with the actions. They set aside the script of the book unable to understand and ask for the movie. The problem with this is which movie. Are they going to take the Laurence Olivier stage dramatization, or are they going to take the action film Romeo Must Die with Jet Li in it. This actually happens. Quite often they take the wrong movie. Those who take the video get a context for what they are reading and can understand it far better. I think generally if a first person first sees a play, then reads it, there is a better context for understanding.

However, the Jet Li problem with Romeo Must Die is not a joke. Imagine a person in high school or college in the future coming into the library and asking for the Neil Gaiman version of the dvd of Beowulf. It is not out yet, I am looking forward to the dvd. They come in and get a fantasy version of Beowulf then use it to write their class assignment. Angela Jolie as Grendel's wife is very different than original. Because, they don't want to be bothered they don't read Beowulf because it is "too hard" and they hand their assignment based on the movie. I can imagine the confusion on the teachers part. Beowulf is a lot harder than Shakespeare for many students to understand. The language is older.

Another thing which quite often happens is that people come in to get the unabridged audiobook of an assigned book like Catcher In The Rye. I think this may have an opposite effect on understanding. Although, they are not reading the book in question, they are hearing every world in the book being pronounced. If they have difficulty reading, they are still going to get the full experience of the book. In many cases, this leads to better ability to write about the book than reading the title.

I think this is one of the reasons why audiobooks are so popular. People have different learning styles. Some people understand more when they see the movie, other people understand more when they hear the story, and others need to look up close and hold the book. People learn differently.

Getting back to Shakespeare. I notice that very few people read Shakespeare's sonnets. They are meant to be read. I can understand people analyzing individual sonnets much more than analyzing a play.

The other thing which happens is that people read Blooms notes or Cliff notes. These are canned summaries of a book. They guarantee a canned answer which will give a student a passing grade. Many people just want to pass the class and only read the notes. These will most of the time guarantee a passing grade. How do you guarantee a person read the book with these kind of things? I don't think you can. These, however, are better than watching a movie about a book because they at least attempt at accuracy. Many people have lost that sense of value tied in with the concept of a "liberal education." Education in literature is supposed to expand your horizons...

Teachers are finally noticing the multiple formats in the classroom. Quite often people are being assigned to watch movies. Freedom Writers is a popular assignment. I haven't seen it, it is just an example. Maybe, they are asked to watch the Color Purple and comment on the film.

It is also becoming acceptable to use multiple formats for assigned topics. Many people don't even bother with reading books, they just go to the internet. This brings up the idea of authority. How do you know the information being presented to you is accurate. Let us take up the issue of Wikipedia, we say when people want to use Wikipedia, "We cannot guarantee the accuracy of this material." Apparently, Wikipedia is about as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. http://www.news.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html In away, this is both disturbing and hilarious.

Sometimes authority is more about control of access to information than accuracy. I think people are more disturbed about the loss of the authority of information than accuracy. However, with certain subjects like math, history, or science the wrong information can be presented. There is a real attraction by some students to use radical versions of history that more closely align with their ethnicity or background. These are readily available on the internet. Schools want the standard version so everyone can be on the same page. This must make it very hard for teachers on occassion.

Using multiple formats is often the best thing to do for many assigned topics. Let us take the example of Martin Luther King Jr. A college student is assigned to write about Martin Luther King Jr. Generally, watching video clips of him, listening to his speeches on audio, and reading about him at the same time will give a much better understanding than just reading alone. This is becoming expected because it gives a more comprehensive understanding of the subject.

I wish there were more forward looking teachers who both showed the video in the classroom of Shakespeare, the right one, and asked the student to read the book at the same time. Literacy in both the printed word and media literacy are becoming equally important. It is very easy to make bad decisions about media.

Speculative Fiction; The Many Names for Science Ficton and Fantasy

There is a wonderful name for fantastic fiction: Speculative Fiction. Supposedly this means any kind of fiction that speculates about the nature of reality. A big bite to chew off if I may say so.

I've always thought that this was a way to sneak in the literary minded fantastic. This is because speculative fiction is supposed to cover magical realism, science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, and alternative history fiction.

I enjoy reading and I find the urge to say something has literary merit is pretentious. I think it is a way to preserve fiction that is only read by academics. Literary merit should be focused on the truly great books. It is often applied too widely.

Magical realism is a subset of speculative fiction. It was originally started in Latin America. The most famous proponent of magical realism is Gabriel Garcia Marquez who has written numerous books including One Hundred Years of Solitude. He stated that he always liked to blur the line between fantasy and reality. His books are great reading. Also Borges, Isabel Allende, Jorge Amado, and Yann Martel are considered magical realism. Yann Martel's Life of Pi, is very interesting it is about a young boy who spends seven months at sea with a tiger in a lifeboat trying to survive. The tiger is never found in the end. Pi also manages to practice Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism at the same time, a rather fantastic feat.

With this, I will switch to the idea of Alternative History. This genre is about where something different occurred in the past, and the present world is somehow different. Quite often it is things like the Ottoman empire never fell, or the nazis succeeded. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick presents an America where the nazis have concurred it. Another famous series that is more recent and definitely science fiction is Harry Turtledove's World War Series. Alien reptiles invade during world war II and attempt to take over the world. It changes the course of history. A very entertaining series. A classic book in this genre is A Connectict Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, a satire where a man from Mark Twain's time travels back to the time of Camelot. For something very contemporary, you might try The Plot Against America about a place where Franklin Roosevelt didn't get elected for a third term, but Lindbergh did. It is about a slow slip into American fascism.

We are moving into the concept of science fiction or as it was originally called by Hugo Gernsback, scientifiction-- scientific fiction. Science fiction was not the original term for the genre. Now there are abbreviations for the genre sci-fi and sf. I think of abbreviations sometimes as being lazy. Science fiction, is most often fiction that speculates about future events usually focused on science and technology. It has been with us for a very long time.

Most people dismiss science fiction as about B.E.M.s, or Bug Eyed Monsters. I happen to really like bug eyed monsters. Aliens are fun to read about in their wide variety. There is nothing like reading about pip the minidragon in the Pip and Flinx series by Alan Dean Foster, or being terrorized by the Coeurla in The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. Van Vogt.

There are many subgenres of science fiction. Hard Science Fiction is fiction which focuses on using real science to predict the future. Jack McDevitt is a wonderful example of a contemporary hard science fiction writer. Also Kim Stanley Robinson when he wrote about the terraforming of mars is writing hard science fiction.

The opposite is soft science fiction. Science fiction about social issues. Ursula Leguin is the quintessential soft science fiction writer. One of the books I have read, The Margarets by Sherri S. Tepper is a good example of soft science fiction. Sherri S. Tepper also wrote The Gate To A Womans Country, a good example of both soft science fiction and feminist fiction. For something more accessible to the every day reader, there is The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. This was made into a wonderful film that is quite scary.

On this note we have utopian or dystopian science fiction. This focuses on popular fear. 1984 by George Orwell is the ultimate dystopian novel. It is required reading in high school. Remember "Big Brother Is Watching You." Another subgenre of utopian fiction is Ecotopian fiction. The most famous of this type of fiction is Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach. More recently there is the Ecolitan series by L.E. Modesitt.

Then there is the concept of cyberpunk, or combining computers with a punk reality. The most famous of these books and some say the first novel in this genre is John Brunner's Shockwave Rider. Cyberpunk has almost become real today. Bruce Sterling who writes science fiction, wrote a book about Kevin Mitnick, The Hacker Crackdown, which reads very much like a cyberpunk novel.

On a side note some of the modern science fiction writers are introducing something that rides the boundaries of science fiction and contemporary thrillers. I call it the near future thriller. William Gibson recently wrote Spook Country which has elements of cyberpunk in it, even though it is considered a mainstream bestselling novel. Also Charles Stross recently wrote a novel called Halting State where police are called in to solve a crime inside an online roleplaying game.

A digression from cyberpunk is steam punk, or victorian era science fiction written by present authors. Alan Moore in his graphic novel sequence, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen revives all of the characters of 19th century science fiction and turns them into superheroes in an odd alternate Victorian england. This is an example of both Superhero fiction and steampunk. Another example of steampunk is The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling. In this world, a secret society controls a babbage machine which they use as a supercomputer and have been using since Victorian times.

David Drake is one of my favorite writers. A series that is loved by many military people is Hammer's Slammers a story about future tank warfare. This is military science fiction. Another example of military science fiction that deals with tanks is Bolo by Keith Laumer. Baen books is the leading publisher of military science fiction today. I rather like their books. They are very entertaining. Jerry Pournelle who wrote the nonfiction book The Strategy of Technology, also created the Codominium universe where Russia and the United States ally to create a bleak future history. The codominium setting is mostly military science fiction.

Of course if you are thinking of military science fiction, you also are thinking of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction as well. Quite honestly, I don't read much apocalyptic fiction. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard is about as far as I get with this kind of thing. I like to think I have a positive vision of the future. However, if you want a really good well written accessible book about the death and rebirth of civilization, read A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

There are two major acknowledged ages in Science Fiction, The Golden Age, and The New Wave. The golden age of science fiction is mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is the age of John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding magazine. This is when the major writers and artists of the genre began to be established. Virgil Finlay and FrankR. Paul are the two major artists that came from this time period. Isaac Asimov and others helped turned science fiction more mainstream at this time. The New Wave happened in the 1960's. It is a turn towards soft science fiction or social commentary. During the new wave, Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, and Michael Moorcock expanded the boundaries of science fition.

What most people see as science fiction is really Space Opera, romantic future adventure stories. The real foundation of space opera started with Flash Gordon who was always fighting Ming the Merciless. Today we see two main space operas, Star Trek, and Star Wars. Star Trek is far more romantic than many people realize. The theme song shows this. Captain Kirk is always getting a new woman.
Star Trek Lyrics:

Beyond the rim of the starlight,
my love is wandering in star flight.
I know he'll find
In star clustered reaches
Love, strange love
A star woman teaches.
I know his journey ends never.
His Star Trek will go on forever.
But tell him while
He wanders his starry sea,
Remember,
Remember me.

Star Wars was originally meant to be a comedy when it was first released. It turned into a movie empire. It is what people think of when someone mentions science fiction. There are very strong elements of fantasy with the jedi knights in Star Wars. I think of it as more science fantasy than science fiction.

Space Western is not a category which I know much about. I haven't seen too many of this kind of thing. I am guessing it is high noon in space, or the lone ranger in space. The movie Outland starring Sean Connery is about a lawman coming to clean up a space station. It is definitely a space western.

When I think of science fantasy, I think of Darkover written by Marion Zimmer Bradley with its psychic leroni, or Witch World by Andre Norton with its psionic witches. Both of these books posit a kind of psychic super science in a medieval setting. They set this "science" against modern day explorers who are trying to take the planet for themselves. Both Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley are writing in the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy.

You can also categorize the Darkover novels as Romantic Fantasy, because there is a strong element of love and intrigue in the novels.

Sword and Sorcery is a very commen theme in fantasy literature. It is a form of low fantasy. Conan the Barbarian is the most famous of low fantasy characters. Robert E. Howard didn't write most of the Conan novels. L. Sprague De Camp basically expanded the series into what we know as Conan. Now there are innumerable spinoffs from Conan. Faffhrd and Grey Mouser are two excellent fantasy characters created by Fritz Leiber. I think of sword and sorcery as have sword will travel.

The first thing which people think of when they think of fantasy is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien this is high fantasy at its best. The Hobbit regularly gets assigned as standard reading for junior high and high school in American schools. It is very well written writing.

The best fantasy has strong mythic overtones. The Queen of Elflands Daughter by Lord Dunsany is an example of well written myth fantasy drawn from myths and legends surrounding Ireland and England. Some more modern examples of myth fantasy are American Gods and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. These are both set in the modern day.

You could almost call them urban fantasy. Urban fantasy is putting mythic elements into a modern setting. Charles De Lint does this wonderfully. I'll probably pick up his new book Little Grrrl Lost about a six inch tall girl and her friendship with a big person in a modern urban setting. There is something always interesting in fairytales or fantasies about little people. I always liked to watch the Lilliputians in the movie of Gulliver's Travels.

There is still the regular fantastic literature to consider. I still read things like Erik Stevenson's Malazan Book of Fallen, or George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire.

Something which I don't often read is Horror which is considered part of speculative fiction. I am not big on being scared. I have read Cujo by Stephen King about a rabid dog, that is about as scary as I want to get. There is some relation between science fiction and fantasy. Dean R. Koontz, the bestselling author started out writing science fiction then later switched to writing horror. Dan Simmons writes both science fiction and horror. His Endymion series is quite interesting.

In horror, vampires, werewolves, and zombies seem to define the genre. Anne Rice's vampire novels are more slightly erotic adventure stories than terrifying novels. Also, World War Z by Max Brooks is more of an adventure and survival story about surviving zombie attacks than a true horror novel. Max Brooks other book, The Zombie Survival Guide is more humor than horror. I prefer my monsters to be more humorous than terrifying. You Suck: A Vampire Love Story by Christopher Moore is an excellent example of a humorous vampire novel. Again, I prefer my lycanthropes to be more adventurous than scary. The Werewolves of London by Brian Stableford is more of an adventure story than anything else.

I also actually like H.P. Lovecraft and people who write adventure pastiches on the Cthulhu mythos. Once again, stories like At The Mountain of Madness are not particularly scary, they are more strange than anything else. I don't have a Cthulhu doll like many people, but am thinking of getting one. I might get a shoggoth doll instead.

I don't read many superhero novels. Somehow superheros belong in comic books more than they belong in novels. Nevertheless, now you can buy novelizations of Vampire Hunter D, Batman, Superman, the X-Men and many other characters. I actually enjoyed the Dark Horse comics novelization of Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi. It is no longer in print. The manga of course are much better. There is a certain woodenness in many superhero characters. Of couse, sometimes, if the person creates an original hero for a superhero novel, it can be entertaining. Count Geiger's Blues by Michael Bishop parodies and at the same time tells the story of superhero Count Geiger.

The other type of fantasy not yet mentioned is the pulp heroes, The Spider Master of Men, Doc Savage, and The Shadow. As they say, "The Shadow Knows." Baen has reprinted the Spider Master of Men and is distributing it as a paperback. The original pulp heroes crossed the detective with the superman. Doc Savage is a self made superman, stronger, faster, and more intelligent than the peopel surrounding him. An interesting take off of Doc Savage is a fantasy novel called Doc Sidhe by Aaron Alston. Doc Sidhe is a kind of an alternative Doc Savage sent in an elfen art deco 1930s. There is magic, intrigue, and a very pulpy setting.

Some mystery novels have a fantastic twist to them. There are mysteries set in ancient rome, cat detectives, fantasy detectives, and others. One of the most hated mystery novels by science fiction fans is Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb. It successfully lampoons science fiction writers and fans. There is even a followup, Zombies of the Gene Pool. Isaac Asimov wrote numerous mystery novels.

If you are following the mysterious, somehow supernatural fiction also got mixed in with speculative fiction. I honestly don't know that much about supernatural fiction. Reading about hauntings and ghosts unless they are in The Weekly World News doesn't fascinate me that much. I cannot get myself to read The Amityville Horror, or the Haunting of Hell House by Richard Matheson. The one short story which I can recommend is "Pigeons From Hell" by Robert E. Howard.

By the way, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is being reproduced for theaters soon. I wish they had done the Incredible Shrinking Man first. It is a much better story.

Thoughts On Selling Bookish Items Using Widgets...

Hello,
I have been following the dream of making money selling items using widgets. People make all sorts of wild claims. Make a $1000 a day online selling hair cream, make $10,000 a month with megabucks words. I checked my adsense for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised, I had earned 96 cents. I was expecting nothing. So, it is remotely possible after a year or two you could make a hundred dollars to two hundred a month with very high traffic from adsense. At least it is something.

At least adsense guarantees you make something when people look at your site. I have earned nothing from my widgets which attempt to sell things. However, I cannot give up hope. People have actually looked at the widgets. 17 people looked at my widget bucks site for comic books, and 17 people looked at my widgetbucks widget for bestsellers. Maybe, they even went back and supported their local bookstore. That is it. Please support your local bookstore.

They told the local bookstore worker, lets name him Bob.

Customer: "Hi Bob, I saw this wonderful graphic novel on this blog called V for Vendetta could you get it for me."

Bob, "Sure thing, we have it right here, that will be $17 dollars, cash, debit or credit."

Customer, "I have a twenty right here. One second." Customer fishes in his pocket and releases some lint, then pulls out a twenty dollar bill. "Oh and can I have that Harry Potter bookmark."

Bob, "Yes, that will be two dollars more for a total of $19. Here is your change." Bob hands the customer $1.

Customer, "Thankyou."

Bob, "No, thank you for coming by, have a wonderful day."

Customer leaves.


I think five people looked at my audiobooks widget. Also, a number of people looked at the Powells store site, but nobody bought anything. Maybe, they came back later to purchase it, or maybe they went to Amazon to purchase it. Once again, if you can go to Bob, your local hypothetical bookstore owner if you can. Support independent bookstores. They are part of your community and many of them are struggling to survive. I take the time to read the American Booksellers Association website. It is the site for independent booksellers.

I tried to add an ebooks widget today, Ebooks.com, maybe someone will buy an ebook. I am really not sure about this though. Ebooks are the hardest bookstore type item to sell.

The next widget which I added was something called Cafe Press, a free store, which allows you to sell things with a logo you put on them. I put a logo on some items "Book Calender, A Blog About Books" in a hideous yellow on some mugs, a datebook, a few stickers, and other kitschy things.

I now have my widget bookstore, many items you would see in a bookstore in a little corner of a blog. I really don't expect you to buy anything. It is more an experiment than anything else at this point. I will be looking around and listening to the wonderful promises and glitter of monetizing your blog. Maybe, I will even reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and earn $20 in commissions by the end of next month. If I do, I'll buy myself a cup of coffee in celebration.

Graphic Novels and Opera, Random Thoughts

Brunnhilde The Valkyrie by Arthur Rackham

There is a relation between comic books and opera. This is not discussed that much. I hear it in passing at many comic book shops. The superhero dresses in a cape and tights, so does the opera hero. Opera heros and villains are larger than life and exaggerated. Batman and Superman couldn't be more exaggerated in presentation. Batman's parents die after a night watching Faust. The opera is as full of dramatic flourishes as the comic book.

P. Craig Russell is the comic artist who is best known for translating operas into comic books. His best known translation is the Ring of the Nibelungen. It is very beautiful full color work. He has also translated Bluebeard, Salome, the Magic Flute, Parsifal, and many other operas into comic book form. The illustrations are very beautiful to look at. He has a series of books called the P. Craig Russell Library of Opera Adapatations which is a multivolume set.

Another recent graphic novel which draws heavily from the opera is V for Vendetta by Alan Moore. There are many parallels between this graphic novel and The Phantom of the Opera. The costume of the hero includes a Guy Fawkes mask, cape, and hat. The hero is also prone to dramatic presentation.

This is just a thought for the moment to discuss. I am trying to find academic references to these parallels but they are not there. It should be looked at more closely. Please comment on this.

Superman - 1941 - Max Fleischer's First Superman Cartoon

The Fleischer Studio superman cartoons are in the public domain which is quite interesting. They are a lot of fun to watch.

Supermen In Science Fiction

One of my favorite topics in science fiction is super men. This must have been caused at one point with my father reading me the Odyssey. Odysseuss according to Homer was the greatest liar in the world. He was also a superhuman figure in many ways. I think my fathers reading me the Odyssey is what got me interested ultimately in science fiction and fantasy.

One of the first characters that is superhuman is Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs written in 1914. He is the primal englishman capable of overcoming the deep jungle. Although it is very entertaining reading, it is one of those books with an incredibly strong undercurrent of racism in it. Tarzan is physically capable, but not super smart. I enjoyed reading this book because it successfully transported me to a world like no other, the deep jungle.

The next book which focuses on a superhuman character is Gladiator by Philip Wylie written in 1931. This is truly fantastic story. It tells the story of a man injecting his wife with a super serum so their baby is super strong, super fast, and impervious to damage. It is a tragedy in every sense of the word. The boy when he grows up accidentally kills a man on the the football field gives up college and wanders the world. He does various daring things, rescuing ships, stopping robbers, and saving people all anonymously. In the end, unhappy, he asks god "Why me?" and is struck down by lightning. Gladiator is acknowledged as the book which created the idea for superman, the comic book character. It is a really excellent and tragic story.

As the genre develops in science fiction, the focus begins to change from superhuman physical powers to extreme mental powers. While Slan by A.E. Van Vogt acknowledges physical superiority for his mutant human "Slan" named Jommy Cross, his real powers lie in his telepathic abilities, and super keen scientific mind. It is here that the persecuted Slan differentiates himself from other humans. Slan is a classic of science fiction.

Following Slan in 1953 is one of my favorite science fiction stories, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. This is a novel about six freaks who don't fit in with other people who have psychic powers. It tells how the group forms into a gestalt or group mind which transcends normal humanity and becomes more connected with a kind of universal mind. At this point, they are supermen because of their superior mental powers. Theodore Sturgeon writes a kind of strange science fiction focused on oddness and love. Two of his other stories which are quite interesting are Venus Plus X and The Dreaming Jewels.

Another classic novel about a superman, this time a man out of place, is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a man raised by martians. This is the classic novel Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein written in 1961. Valentine Michael Smith is a messiah figure who teaches people how to "grok" or become deeply in tune with things. He also seems to preach free love, mysticism, and meditation. This book was almost a bible of the counterculture movement in the 1960s.

You could call it the spiritual predecessor of the novel Dune by Frank Herbert written in 1965. The central character in the book, Paul Atreides is first trained as a mentat, a kind of human computer and powerful mind. He partakes of spice which both extends his life and expands his ability to predict the future. He is at both times a messiah and a superhuman mind. There are strong religious and ecological themes throughout this book. I have read this book many times. I can almost quote the book, "fear is the mind killer." I insist that you read the first book in the series. Don't watch the movie, though. I thought the movie was awful.

Now, I am skipping ahead for quite a while. Octavia Butler wrote a book called Parable of the Sower in 1994. The main character is a hyperempath, she feels what other people feel. This is both a curse and a blessing. When she loses her parents in a dystopian future she moves to the mountains where she establishes a religious community called earthseed. The second book, Parable of the Talents tells the trials and tribulations of her now found religion. Octavia Butler died before she could finish writing the third book. She claimed writers block for the third novel in the series. The religion which the hyperempath is founding is called "Earthseed", the ultimate goal being to colonize the stars. The difference with this type of superman is that the superman is crippled by their own abilities.

This is not a new theme, Olaf Stapledon wrote a book earlier called Odd John about a person with superhuman intelligence who ultimately gives up his own life by disappearing into a fiery chamber. There is always a niggling feeling that Odd John never died at the end, but we can never confirm it.

All of these books are really good science fiction well worth reading.

Flash Gordon (1936) Ch. 7 Serial Clip

Flash Gordon movie clip.

Serial Novels and Packaged Books

More and more books are being sold as a complete package. This means that many books are designed so they can be written as an endless series and have dozens of different products spun off of them. The people who do this are called "packagers." I am not particularly fond of this. It seems to stunt creativity.

First you have a book or movie, then it books a comic books, an action figure, a television show, then many other products. I sometimes wonder why they continued with Star Trek Deep Space Nine, after creating a very nice original series.

When I go to my local library, there are more packaged fantasy and science fiction novels than original novels in the fantasy and science fiction section. You can get Warhammer 40K, Dragonlance, Star Wars, Star Trek, Deathlands, and other series, but not as many original stories.

The majority of these are atrociously written. Serials are written from guidelines, the characters, setting, and actions must fit, or the next author can't continue the series with consistency. The fans want complete consistency and very little originality. This is the place for new authors to cut their teeth. Because the books fit a very narrow focus they are much easier to write. Romance novels follow the same pattern, a very specific outline for each specific series.

There are a few good authors who started this way. Peter David started by writing Star Trek, David Gerrold wrote quite a few Star Trek novels, and Marion Zimmer Bradley started her career as a gothic romance novelist.

I think this has gotten out of hand. It is the urge to monetize everything and milk a novel or book for every bit of money it can make. If a book doesn't start out as a serial, it is often turned into a very long series. There were three books in the Lord of the Rings, a good and proper number. Now we see things like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series being turned into an endless story. Some people find comfort in bestselling serial fantasy novelists like R.A. Salvatore, I find it stultifying.

Some authors write well enough that they can pull this off. The Sherlock Holmes pastiches and Lovecraft pastiches are often quite enjoyable. When I say pastiche, I am referring to novels written about a character after an author dies.

Some serials have even become pulp classics like the Shadow, or Flash Gordon, but for the most part these are long forgotten. They represent the stereotypes and angst of their time and often strike a deep chord in the collective psyche. Occassionally, they are hauled out of the closet and made into a movie like Dick Tracy or the Shadow. Batman never seems to go out of style in the movies.

I congratulate J.K. Rowling on her decision to end the Harry Potter series. It shows a level of maturity in writing. The series will maintain its integrity and originality.

There is money to be made in packaging, collectible action figures, plastic rings, and other things which bring back childhood and extend adolsecence. Now the serials have become collectibles, you have to have the complete run of a million products or you aren't a true Star Wars fan, Star Trek Fan, or comic geek. The cost bankrupts many people and occassionally destroys some lives.

I wish there was less of this. I like a good original novel. Sometimes I would like a novel to end. It seems that if you don't kill the main character, the publisher will ask writers to write another novel based on the same character. I am glad the Walter Mosley killed off Easy Rawlins in his latest novel Blonde Faith, it was a good and appropriate ending for an excellent detective. Now, Walter Mosley can concentrate on writing other things.

The Atomic Bazaar by William Langewieschke

14 Kiloton Nuclear Explosion

The Atomic Bazaar the Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche is a book about poor countries acquiring nuclear weapons. It starts out by describing what happens when a nuclear bomb blows up whether it be fission, fusion, or dirty bomb. The inital start is rather slow and a bit dense, but once you get past the first two chapters it becomes very readable. There is an interview with Paul Tibbetts, the man who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Paul has no regrets he did it, and thinks after 9/11 the United States should have dropped the atomic bomb on Mecca or Cairo. The book at times can be quite frightening.

The second part of the book is about how a terrorist or non-state organization might get the bomb. There is a large section on how someone might attempt to get nuclear material from Russia and the former soviet republics. There is quite a bit on the bomb making facilities and security in Russua as well as the dismantling programs funded by the United States. An interesting fact, is that the hardest part to hide is the construction of a nuclear bomb, because of all the specialists and materials needed to make it.

The third and most intresting part of the book is the story of A.Q. Khan the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb. It is a rather amazing story, a combination espionage, international greed, failure to stop the shipping of dual use products in making atomic bombs, nationalist anger, and conflict with India. The story shows the real limits on stopping proliferation the way things are being done now.

The fourth part is about how A.Q. Khan proliferated nuclear secrets to many other countries like Libya, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. For $100 million dollars a country could buy the facilities to make a nuclear bomb from Khan's laboratories. It ends with Musharraf placing A.Q. Khan under house arrest as Musharraf's personal advisor and scientist.

William Langiewiesche writing is very concise, easy to understand, and crisp. He manages to cover all of these topics in 171 pages.

This is a really fascinating book. It gives a lot of insights into how and why poor countries are trying to get nuclear weapons.

____________________________________________________________________

Wandering Through Blog Land, Virnor Vinge Ebook

I've been wandering through blogland looking at lots of different blogs. I find most library blogs to be pretty boring. They usually have a big picture of the library building on the outside. It would be much more interesting if they took a picture of the inside with the staff next to the bookshelves.

Most of the blogs I've looked at have been pretty incoherent. One of my pet peeves so far is the icon which people use to show their blog. If they put a little symbol of what they are writing about, it would help a lot better than a picture of themselves, or in the case of many book sites, their cat. There are so many blogs out there, that if you don't immediately give an idea of what your site is about, you lose people. This is especially true when you are looking at blog directories. Often there is no caption, just a picture in places like blogcatalog and bumpzee.

Looking at book blog sites has been very interesting. Mostly the book sites provide reviews of books and thoughts on writing. There is very little else. It is interesting when people put in videos of authors talking, news about books, and bits on new technology. Even a little bit on their experience in a bookstore or library might break up the endless reviews.

Some of the sites also include movie reviews and television show reviews in addition to book reviews. This is actually a good thing. Most libraries are media centers. Where I work more people check out dvds of movies and television shows than books. We even have a section for the greatest films, and a section on African films.

Of course there is often the ubiquitous picture of the cat curled up on the book in book blogs. Cats must read a lot.

I usually see a short biography as well. Quite often this is very cozy and sweet in nature. I haven't seen anything truly wicked yet. It would be nice to see something wicked. The Bookslut Blog is the one exception which is mildly risque. It is also kind of sexy. The site gets a lot of visitors and is very well done. http://www.bookslut.com/blog/

These are just some thoughts on visiting different blogs. I will write more as I think of more to write about. I am also seeing endless attempts to support a million different products everything from bookmarks to computers to advertising. If you are going to sell something, stay focused on selling what you are talking about.

People get turned off by advertising. Some people suggest that you should not have Adsense ads because people will leave your site if they see them. Almost every site has pictures of them. I am thinking of replacing one of my adsense ads with a cafepress button for a store. I know this sounds kind of silly. I just did, it contains a really basic logo and a few gift items. I found out about Cafe Press when I was looking at bookslut.

Every site I visit has social bookmarking tags. I am not even sure that these are particularly helpful. I think it is more important to go visit other peoples sites and make comments about what they are writing about. I've visited quite a few different peoples sites and done this. Everything from David Brin, Jeff Vandermeer, SpamPoetry, and others. I make it a point to visit your site if you post a comment on my site. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. This seems to be the best thing that works. Also posting in newsgroups discusing blogs seems to help as well.

Keywords, search engines, and little buttons which are spread across most of the sites which I visit don't seem to do a whole lot. Joining sites which discuss blogs like blog catalog, and fuelmyblog seems to help as well. Communities of people discussing different subjects tend to be interested in what you are writing about. My favorite site for discussing blogs and the site which seems to do the best job for blog promotion, blog searching, discussions, and exchanges is http://www.blogcatalog.com . My experience with them has been very good. I just put in a widget for blog catalog.

I've also spent a bit of time looking at various library blogs. It is not pretty, there is a lot of secret disgruntlement, or not so secret disgruntlement. People talk about things like unacceptable behavior in the library. Monitoring bathrooms and internet access in public buildings is an interesting experience...

An interesting topic which I see coming up repeatedly is the concept of Library 2.0 . Nobody really defines it, but every article I've seen seems to be talking about social networking tools and web gadgets in the library setting. Meebo is one of the gadgets I saw talked about. Also some librarians are talking about using http://www.librarything.com/ for certain very popular parts of their collections to improve circulation which is a very ineteresting idea. From my experience most librarians have no idea what to do with social data in the library setting.

The other topic that is coming up a lot is digitalization. The Google books project where they are scanning thousands of books every day into the internet is quite controversial among librarians. Also, there is a new project being spearheaded at MIT, the million books project for scanning huge amounts of free material into a giant library. It is called the Universal Digital Library. Supposedly when they are done with the initial batch there will be 1.5 million books in the library. This is a joint project of China, India, and the United States. Here is the link, http://www.ulib.org/ .

I think both social search and digitalization change the purpose of what a library is. Librarians are not keeping up with the changes. It shows in the slow decline of the number of librarians and the general unfocusedness throughout the profession.

___________________________________________________________________

I found another free science fiction ebook, Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.
http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html . I haven't started reading it yet. I think I'll review it for a change of pace.

___________________________________________________________________

The "blog" image at the top of the post is something which I did with paint because I couldn't find a public domain image on wikipedia for blog.

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll, Short Stories

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll is a collection of his short stories. All are set in a kind of magically realistic universe infused with an odd mysticism. Some of the stories in the collection I liked are Mr. Fiddlehead about an imaginary friend that grows up with its creator and changes her life. Another story is about a man who adopts an exceptional dog who causes some bizarre changes in the persons life, Friend's Best Man. The Jane Fonda Room is about a trip to hell where the person gets to watch all of Jane Fonda's movies for eternity. A Wheel In The Desert, The Moon On Some Swings is about a man trying to capture his last important images through photography as he goes blind. The writing in these short stories deals with issues like death, sorrow, mysticism, and the every day moments that seem to stretch into forever. There is a real sense of magic and wonder in the writing. Even with the magic and wonder it touches on ordinary every day life things and the present. This makes for some exceptional fantasy writing. His writing is both different than most other writers and touches close to the heart.

I don't often read short stories. Most of the time when I read short stories, it is to find new writers which I hven't read. I will pick up a recent anthology of science fiction or fantasy writers and look for short stories by people I haven't read before. After I read a few of the stories, I will look in the back of the anthology to read the brief biography of the writer that is usually included. If both the short story and the biography are interesting, I will often go look for books by the author so I can read them.

Anthologies also help when I have to find out about a style of literature which I have never read before like Brazilian Literature, or Scandinavian literature. These often give me a jumping off point to find other authors. Also because the stories are short, I can skip over the ones I don't like and be selective about which ones I am going to read.

Short stories are a very good point for looking for new authors. The general publishing pattern for many writers is to write several short stories to establish an audience before they attempt to write novels. Many publishing houses will not as readily accept manuscripts from novelists who have not written short stories first.

___________________________________________________________________

After looking through Bloggers, Blogs of Note; I found three major science fiction and fantasy authors, David Brin, Robert J. Sawyer, and Neil Gaiman who used blogger as their blog platform. It is one of the little things which happens when you look through lists obsessively.

___________________________________________________________________

I found another directory of blog literature sites this time with over 700 blogs listed. I am applying for membership to this list. It is really, really big.

http://metaxucafe.com/cafe/find_members/index/

___________________________________________________________________

I also pinged my site today using http://www.pingoat.com/ to announce that I had updated my site. This is supposed to increase traffic to this site by letting search engines and directories know that you are keeping your site up to to date.

Writing, Poetry, And Thoughts On Writing

Good morning,
I am trying to think about what I am going to write about today. I'm almost at a loss for words. Alright, I'm going to write something about writing and a few of my experiences.

I've always had problems with grammar and structure. I've tried various books like Grammar the Easy Way, Basic English Grammar. You know the big books put out by Arco's and Barrons that supposedly can remediate anything, but really are only halfway there.

I once took a class from John Ordover who is a rather interesting person, he once was an editor for the Star Trek books, and arranges nude dinners at restaurants in Manhattan. He suggested that I should work on my grammar and structure. I even sent in a copy of my story to a magazine and got a rejection letter. I threw it away. I never got back to writing science fiction stories.

Now, I am writing a blog which really requires no qualifications other than willingness. I never will get rejection letters, just people choosing not to use my site because they don't like my grammar. There are always people like this. People want perfect grammar, spelling, and diction. I always mix up the present and past tenses.

If I sent the posts from this blog into an editor, they would throw it in the trash. I was taking another class, Introduction to Publishing at New York University, and I learned a little bit about publishing.

One of the things which is required when sending in manuscripts is near perfect grammar, it costs money for editors and proofreaders to correct your work. This is money the publishing houses aren't willing to pay for if you have too many grammatical mistakes.

The publishing houses have big slush piles where they put most of the books and manuscripts which come in unsolicited. I haven't ever seen any of these piles. But, if they say it, it must be true.

Of course, there is an exception to this rule. books by famous people. William Shatner uses Ron Goulart to help him write his Tek series of science fiction books. William Shatner's name is on the books, but not Ron Goulart's. If you are famous, the publishing houses will find a writer to write your books for you.

Anyways, lets get back to our subject writing. My understanding is that for most writers, it takes about a year to write a book, a steady one to two pages a day of writing. Maybe, a poem a day if you are a poet.

Poets usually don't make their money from writing, they make their money from doing writing workshops and teaching for the most part. They are often teachers for creative writing at various colleges. Poetry books tend to have very small runs and not cost very much.

Some people say I am a decent poet, but there is something unsavory about writing poetry which I can't put my fingers on. I do like a variety of poets. Some of my favorite poets are Bob Kaufman, Thoedore Roethke, Charles Bukowski, Diane Wakoski, and Baudelaire. Most of the poetry published by Black Sparrow Books originally started by Charles Bukowski is quite good http://www.blacksparrowbooks.com/index.asp. Jack Kerouac is also a very good poet, however, if you learn more about him personally, he wasn't exactly pleasant. It takes a certain emotional strength and depth to write very good poetry. I think of poetry as an older persons art.

If you are ever in San Francisco and you are interested in poetry and bookstores, City Lights books http://citylights.com/ is a really fantastic place to get poetry books. Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped found the store in 1953. They have quite a bit of Allen Ginsberg's work there and were involved in the infamous Howl trial. City Lights is both a radical bookstore and a poetry bookstore.

An awful lot of poetry books in the United States are distributed by SPD-- Small Press Distribution Books http://www.spdbooks.org/ . This is a nonprofit book distributor focused on distributing new literature. It is often very high quality books which would never have been distributed otherwise. For example, Dalkey Archive Press is distributed by SPD Books, a highly literary press. http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/ Nicholas Mosley, one of my favorite writers, a somewhat controversial writer as well is distributed by Dalkey Archive Press.

I am wondering how I got into this subject, usually I write about science fiction. I am writing about something different today. Real literary works are very hard to get published. The major publishers are in the business of making money, not art designed to last forever. Bestsellers are what most of the major presses are looking for. There are almost never poetry books or literary novels on the bestseller lists.
___________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Carroll Reading (4)

His writing includes elements of magical realism, mythology, and fantasy.

Jonathan Carroll Reading (3)

Some of the books which he wrote are Sleeping In Flame, Outside the Dog Museum, and Sleeping In Flame.

Jonathan Carroll Reading (2)

Jonathan Carroll has a wonderful web site at http://www.jonathancarroll.com. The order is a bit mixed up.

Jonathan Carroll Reading (1)

I am starting to read his short story collection, The Panic Hand. There is some strong language in this.

Thoughts On Looking For Who Reads My Blog, Jack McDevitt Odyssey

I have a variety of thoughts on who might read my blog. I think first of all we have people who are interested in fantasy books, especially roleplaying games and books which might tie into them. I am thinking of authors like Glen Cook, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, David Drake and other popular mainstream fantasy authors. Not so much serial fantasy writers like R.A. Salvatore or Margaret Weis who write the Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms paperbacks. I don't much care for these things.
This comes from posting about my blog on several threads about books on game sites.

The next obvious group of people are book gadget people, people interested in creating search engines or playing with widgets and ebooks. I had posted a number of ebooks earlier.

The next group would be readers of myth fantasy, people who like Neil Gaiman, Charles De Lint, or Jane Yolen. People who want their fantasy mixed with mythology and fairytales. People who probably have a copy of the complete tales of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault's fairytales lying around the house or maybe the Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, and other strange Dover editions.

The next group might be people who are interested in science fiction, especially literary science fiction, things like Jeff Vandermeer, Cory Doctorow, or Charles Stross. This is all of course conjecture.

I am hoping it is not the people who read all the Star Trek novels. Star Trek is kind of fun in a way, it is "The Lone Ranger In Space", or World War II u-boats in space. Captain fire the photon torpedos.

I have been looking at my hit counters and seeing a pretty varied crowd, so people look at this site from the Scandinavian countries, Eastern Europe, The United Kingdom, Australia, and other english speaking countries.

Their might be a few bibliophiles thrown in the mix, people who just like books, bookselling, places where you can get book reviews or hear odd things about books. Right now, I am writing from a pure expository, unedited style with no grammar or spell checker. It is just me and only me.

I have been looking at a lot of booksites. Most of these are very clean, they have a neat little picture of a book, then five or six paragraphs about the book in question. Then there is a little star next to the review with a one to five rating. Not exactly my style.

Of course, most sites are by women, mostly women read novels. This is a given fact. I am a man in a womans world in some ways. The thing which most women read are romances and classics. I see the classics, Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, and other stuffy European authors being reviewed. I also see a lot of popular romantic comfort writing, Candace Camp, Eugenia Price, Barabara Taylor Bradford, Victoria Holt and other writers with sweet tales and beautiful flowery covers on their books.
I also think people might come here because I give my exact feeling of the moment on what I am reading. I try not to be too dry.

Another group which comes up is older men who are near retirement or retired who want to have a hobby, and that hobby usually involves books. They choose to write about more obscure literary works like Jack London's Iron Heel, or poets like Lillian Moore or Robert Frost. It seems that an awful lot of older people read poetry.

Some things which I have noticed when looking through book web sites is a real affection for knitting. Knitting is somehow a sign you read. We have a knitting group at our library, in fact two of our librarians teach knitting as part of the group. The other is the presence of cats. A lot of book people have pictures of their cats on their book blogs. Jeff Vandermeer even posted a picture of himself with his cat in the comments section. There aren't as many pictures of people with their dogs. A few are out there.

Many of the blogs have book challenges. The major challenge which people undertake is to read 52 books, a book week and review it by the end of the year. There are also things like graphic novel challenges. Read five or six different graphic novels. This can be almost anything-- books about Albert Einstein, the classics. This is an example of a book challenge sites. Lisers A-Z Challenge http://tint0rera.blogspot.com/ . Read books with titles that run the full gamut of the alphabet. I find this fascinating. Here is another site with a Candadian Book Challenge, read books from Canade. http://bookmineset.blogspot.com/2007/12/canadian-book-challenge-2nd-update.html



I am not a big reader of the classics. I find them to be a bit stuffy at times. Dickens turns me off with Oliver Twist. I liked a Tale of Two Cities however. I can stand the russian novelists like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but they are long, complex and heavy to read. This is the stuff I was forced to read in high school and college and it just got to me.

I much prefer classical literature if I must read old literature in the sense of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages and Ancient China. Li Po's poetry is wonderful. The Song of Roland formed the base for Steven King's Dark Tower Trilogy as well as Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle in science fiction. Gawain and The Green Night and the Pearl are fine examples of the chivalric age. I of course love the Odyssey which my father read to me when I was a small child. The Golden Ass of Apuleius is a great piece of fantasy, sometimes considered the first true fantasy novel.

I am hoping that there are at least a few people who love classical literature, in the sense of ancient literature.

The other group of people I hope are reading this blog are people who are interested in the issues facing libraries in the United States. Things like literacy, digital rights management, internet reference services, and other odds and ends around libraries.

I am hoping that a few people also have an appreciation for bookstores as well. Things like how to display books, proper lighting, bookstore cafes, book kiosks and other details.

This is a pure rant and I am writing it quickly. I write most of my posts in about a half an hour to an hour.

I will try to find interesting authors on video, add widgets which make an almost complete bookstore, build a list of very nice book review sites, set up a list of books I have read recently, write some reviews and generally try and keep this site as entertaining as possible.

Maybe, I am spending too much time trying to drag traffic from places like fuel my blog, newsgroup sites, or bumpzee and I should be trying to get people to visit from other book sites.

The whole SEO, search engine optimization thing is completely new to me and is a real eye opening learning experience.

Anyways good night. I will fill in some more things in the morning and edit this post a bit.

__________________________________________________________________________________

I started on Jack McDevitt's Odyssey. I like Jack McDevitt's writing style. He is such a good writer that he doesn't have to use violence to create tension. He is very good at describing political intrigue, natural disasters, and accidents. His novels have been nominated for the nebula awards. I would call him a hard science fiction adventure story writer.

He describes things like alien archeology. Also the aliens which humans run into aren't smarter than we are. One alien group is stuck with technology that is from around 1918. Another alien group has to be rescued because their civilization has fallen apart. There are a few planets where civilizations have risen then collapsed completely.

We also aren't super successful colonizers of space. The earth has two marginal colognies. One is run by religious fanatics, the other is run by political wackos. Our lagrange point colonies have not worked out. The earth is in bad shape from global warming and global flooding.

At the beginning of each chapter in Odyssey, he uses the classic mechanism of the fake quote from someone in the future. Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov used to do this. It is a rather entertaining little detail. He also includes short newscasts inside his writing. This takes some skill to make them believable, but he manages to do it convincgly.

This is a novel of first contact with an alien race. Humans have spotted the aliens in space. So far, people are arguing whether they are a natural phenomena or a real alien presence. The Academy, a space exploration group sends out a group to follow the "moonriders" round ships that fly in formation and are sited at various locations.

The ship travels on an odyssey to a variety of worlds trying to track down the "moonriders." Then a young girl on the ship receives a telepathic message that the "moonriders" are going to destroy a supercollider that is being built in deep space.

The ending is marvelous. The Academy tries to rescue the scientists at the supercollider while it is being destroyed by the aliens. There is a subtheme about the supercollider that there is a possibility if it is fully developed it will tear a hole in space time and wipe out humanity. The "moonriders" although they are destroying the object are possibly saving the human race. We never get to actually meet any of the moonriders, they are an enigma to the end.

___________________________________________________________________

I have been looking at a few different blogs in the blog review section of a newsgroup. I found one that surprised me. I usually don't see much good poetry. This is really really good, it has a very smooth and well written feel to it.

http://themusingsofmadness.blogspot.com/

How to: Be an uber blogger, by Cory

An interesting talk about how to promote your blog by Cory Doctorow, Editor of Boing Boing and Science Fiction writer.

Authors@Google: Cory Doctorow

Neil Gaiman reads short story

An interesting short story, "Babycakes."

Readings In General, A Free Life

I wanted to try putting an author reading into my blog. This is my first time doing this. Neil Gaiman is a fantastic author. You should enjoy this quite a bit. At least one person who has visited has expressed an interest in Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is a prolific author. He has written for Comics-- The Sandman and Swamp Thing, Movies: Beowulf and Stardust, the english language script for Princess Mononoke, numerous adult novels: American Gods, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, and many others, young adult novels: Coraline, The Wolves in the Walls, as well as many short story collections.

I see a lot of people using youtube in their blogs. This is my first attempt at this.

Author readings are a really fantastic experience. I used to go to quite a lot of them. One of the things which I would do is go to the Strand bookstore and buy a few reviewer copies to get them signed. Or, I would try and find copies at a discount. A rule of thumb is that a book usually retains at least the value of its cover price if it is signed by an author or editor.

When you get a book signed, it is also a good idea to keep the ephemera that went with the book signing. Try and keep the flyer, or calendar that went with the signing. This shows that you saw the author and makes the signed book appear more authentic. Very few booksellers do this. If you are selling a book on one of the online services, scanning the flyer can make a lot of difference.

Hearing and seeing an author speak is very different from reading their book. You get a better feeling of how the characters are with their different voices. Plus, quite often the authors will surprise you by reading from a forthcoming piece not yet printed.

If you are a bookstore or library and doing regular signings, get an autograph book so you can have all the authors that visited sign the book as a permanent record of who visited. This can be both very valuable and very entertaining. It is fun to look at the different signatures. Sometimes authors will doodle in the book if it is large enough.

Quite often readings are not at bookstores, cultural centers often have readings. I used to go to Dixon Place in Manhattan where they had a regular science fiction series. Also, the 92nd Street Y hosts readings. I saw Octavia Butler speak there.

Libraries quite often host readings as well. It takes a decent amount of preparation to do them. You generally have to call at least three months in advance. Then you have to prepare flyers and press releases for the local papers. Most authors require an honorarium and travel expenses to get to the library. Because, we are in New York, we don't usually have to pay for hotels. Generally, it is not that hard to do a reading event. You just need a microphone, a large well lighted space to read, plenty of seating, and some light refreshments. Most of the time the author requests a bottle or glass of water. Reading is thirsty work.

It is often quite interesting to host an editor and author talk combined. This allows one person to talk about the process of writing, while the other talks about the process of correcting, selecting, and providing the finished product in writing. Usually multi-author and editor talks happen at conventions. Baen Books had a talk about science fiction in libraries at the last Book Expo America in New York City. Toni Weisskopf, the chief editor of Baen, and David Weber a major science fiction writer were both on the panel which made it quite interesting.

____________________________________________________________________________________

The ending of A Free Life by Ha Jin is truly wonderful. The epilogue consists of several poems by Nan the main character, as well as a few poetry journal entries. I especially like the poems, The Drake, and Groundhog Hour. The book continues in an interesting manner. Nan runs his restaurant with his wife PingPing and his sun TaoTao until his wife collapses and they have to sell the restaurant. Oddly enough getting rid of the restaurant makes the families life much more fulfilling, going back to work at a motel allows Nan to focus on his poetry. It is a wonderful statement about how chasing the American Dream can submerge your personal dreams. During the novel, Nan spends time with his American Friend Dick focusing on poetry and art when he is not at the restaurant. There is a lot of insight about the meaning of art and writing in this book.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I put in three videos from Youtube to see how they would work. One is of Neil Gaimn, the other two are of Cory Doctorow. Both of these people are excellent writers. People seem to appreciate the videos. I think it is interesting to watch writers read or talk about their material on the internet.

Value of the Library, A Free Life, Book Blogs

New York Public Library, Postcard Circa 1920

People sometimes wonder what the value of a library is in terms of a community. After some calculations, it costs about $30 per person in tax dollars our community to have our library. If a person checked out two hardcover books which originally cost $24.95 each, they would have saved money going to the library. For people who read many books a year or check out many videos a year, the library more than pays for itself in terms of personal savings.

If a politician wanted to justify the existence of the library, where would the librarian go first. The first place which they would go is the Job Information Center which exists in most American public libraries. It contains career books, resume books, starting a business books, test books for preparing for civil service positions or getting certified for a professional position like an EMT, nurse, real estate exam books, and usually several books on college. In other words it helps people get jobs and creates jobs by helping people start new businesses.

The newspaper section also helps people find jobs. In our library we have the Chief which lists all of the civil service positions in New York City and the Journal News which lists many local job openings. People come every day to look at the job listings.

The next obvious place they would go would be the literacy center, where there are books about learning to read for adults. Included in this are books about getting a GED-- General Equivalence Degree for high school. Many public libraries also offer some kind of remedial preparation for the GED as well.

Another purpose of the public library is to support the local schools curriculum. Both the childrens room and the young adult room specifically buy books to support the local school curriculum. The two sections that immediately stand out in the public library setting are the science experiment books and the classics. Every American public library has a section on the classics where the major works of literature are like Huckleberry Finn, Things Fall Apart, To Kill A Mockingbird and many other classics.

A major purpose of the library is self education, this means buying lots of practical every day life skills books like sewing, plumbing, personal hygiene, coaching little league, and other skills. In addition, there are large amounts of books on finance and personal finance.

Many of these books you will not find in a local bookstore. Bookstores carry titles which sell immediately. Libraries have many older books which are used regularly, but do not go out all the time. The average shelf life of a book in a bookstore is two weeks to a month. The average shelf life of a book in a library is several years.

The library creates a repository for older novels and material which are often not available in the regular bookstore. Many are out of print and cannot be ordered. This has a lot of value. You can quite often get all of the books written by a particular author, many of them which are no longer available in the bookstore. In other words, it creates a record of what people have been reading.

Also libraries keep the classics, many of which won't sell in the bookstore. Things like The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Das Kapital, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The Prince, The Republic, The Wealth of Nations, are expected to be kept at the public library. This is an expected function of the library.

Also public libraries keep many books which bookstores have a hard time with because of censorship. The American Library Association supports the "Freedom to Read Foundation". This means that there are more protections in the library setting for books in many cases than in bookstores.

Another function which a library is supposed to help with is bridging the "digital divide". Libraries provide free computer access to many people who cannot afford to buy their own computer. This allows them to communicate using email, write resumes, write letters to their representatives and use computers which they most likely cannot afford. It provides some children their first access to computers if they don't have them at home.

There is a lot of value in the public library. It tends to more than pay for itself in terms of tax dollars because of job creation, literacy, and self eduction.

_________________________________________________________________

I have read some more of Ha Jin's A Free Life. The main character has moved to New York where he first starts as a busboy then moves up to being a cook in a Chinese restaurant. He also edits a literary journal. Eventually, he leaves New York to go back to his family. The rich person decides that they should leave.

Nan, the main character then buys a restaurant in Atlanta from an older Chinese couple and the whole family moves there. This seems to reflect the real life of many Chinese people who come to the United States. They are following in the footsteps of the American dream. Eventually Nan buys a small house with his wife and child. He is working fourteen hours a day and barely has

time to focus on his interest in poetry and writing. It seems he has lost his dream to become a writer to become the "American Dream." The novel is very realistic so far.

___________________________________________________________________

I finished playing Eschalon Book 1 from Basilisk Games. It was a thoroughly enjoyable independent single player roleplaying game. I am happy that they let me drop a link in their forums.

___________________________________________________________________

I also spent quite a bit of time looking at two sets of links to book blogs:

Bookish Blogs
http://kimbooktu.wordpress.com/bookish-blog-links-a-z/

Bookaholics Blogring
http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles/2007/07/bookaholics-blo.html