I’ve just come across some interesting research on reading habits by the Pew Research Center. It shows what many readers already knew, that e-books continue to grow in prevalence for readers. But there are also less readers. Although, I will state that comparing 2012 to 2011 and drawing conclusions about people who have read at least one book is always troubling. Might as well be comparing New Year’s weight loss programs prior to February first.
Also: One book? In a year? That isn’t a reader, that’s someone who got an unwanted Xmas present.
Anyway, in 2012 75% of US adults (+16) had read at least one book, down 3% on last year. Print books were generally less popular in 2012 across all age groups not still in school (I guess students get to count class assigned books in a survey), and were read by 67% of US adults, down 5%. E-books were 7% more popular, with 23% of adults having read one in 2012, with all age groups embracing them, especially in the 30-49 age bracket. Audio books were slightly more popular (2%) at 13% in 2012, which would be interesting to relate to the rise of Audible and similar online audio book businesses.
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I guess now the question is, how do these data compare to avid readers? I’m betting avid readers have a closer split of ebooks to paper books in their reading.
By now everyone has had a chance to watch Day of the Doctor half-a-dozen times and to tire themselves out exclaiming how brilliant it was to see David Tennant as The Doctor again. Which means that we can now rationally discuss how awesome Dr Who is.
I grew up watching Tom Baker hand out jelly babies and foil monsters that looked surprisingly like someone wrestling their way out of a sleeping bag. The Cybermen scared me so much that I had to watch those episodes from behind the couch. As a pre-teen Sylvester McCoy and Ace showed me that all alien planets were filled with evil that only the Doctor could remove. Then David Tennant came along and managed to chew dialogue, scenery and spit out gold without you noticing the Daleks had really dropped the ball on their ‘exterminate’ threats.
So it is hard for me to pick a favourite Doctor, probably harder than picking the most ridiculous monster costume on the show. (Seriously, Cybermen were guys wearing earmuffs and cricket gloves painted silver! The Dalek weapons are an egg beater and plunger!) Thus, it is easier for me to just go through all the Doctors and make a few comments.
Eleventh – Matt Smith: not a fan.
Tenth – David Tennant: my favourite Doctor.
Ninth – Christopher Eccelston: short run that paved the way for David.
War Doctor – John Hurt: a legend bringing the legendary to a legend.
Comic Relief Doctor – Rowen Atkinson (and Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Joanna Lumley): Brilliant!
Eighth – Paul McGann: didn’t get a proper shot at the character. Good to see him do this introduction to the 50th anniversary though.
Seventh – Sylvester McCoy: one of my favourites.
Sixth – Colin Baker: I’ve never seen any of his incarnation.
Fourth – Tom Baker: The man, the white-man fro, the insanely long scarf. Jelly baby? Also, Douglas Adams wrote three serials for this incarnation of The Doctor and a few other episodes besides.
Third – Jon Pertwee: What’s Worzel Gummidge doing in the Tardis? Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!
Second – Patrick Troughton: Meh.
First – William Hartnell: Watching these early episodes you really can’t figure out how this became a long running show.
I look forward to the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and the eloquent language skills he will bring to the role.
Update: an A-Ha tribute to The Doctor.
Update: an interesting take on the recent 50th anniversary episodes, just ignore the silly comment about Sherlock. http://tealeavesdogears.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/steven-moffat-doesnt-understand-grief-and-its-killing-doctor-who/
Okay, so today I was going to dedicate a post to The Doctor and the 50 year thing, but I got side tracked with watching old episodes and this wonderful video. So instead I’m posting this interesting take on Writer’s Block by Amanda Patterson from Writers Write (original here). As per usual, my comments are in blue.
If you write one page a day you will complete a 365-page novel in a year. TA: Or 500 words a day is 182,500 words or two novels (one if you are writing fantasy, or got carried away).
You are crippling yourself by not starting to write. If it seems an overwhelming task to write a whole book, start with an opening paragraph, then a page, then a chapter. Your first sentence is the first step to being published. TA: Remember, you don’t have to start at the beginning, you can just write down the ideas you’ve had, then link them, or turn the ideas into proper sentences and paragraphs.
Most people who want to write have the belief in their creative success systematically driven out of them – by the business world, by their family, their ‘friends’ and their life experiences. TA: But don’t worry, they’ll be the first ones queuing up for a free copy of your book when it’s published. Tell them you’re busy!
If you were told you were going to die tomorrow, would you regret not having written? TA: Always good to write down the list of people trying to kill you, helps the cops no end.
These are the five most common excuses we hear at Writers Write.
Family: I have children. I’m the family taxi. I have to be there for my husband/wife. TA: Kids are there to steal your dreams and youth.
Work: I work long hours. I’m too tired after a day at the office. I have to work overtime so that we can afford a new car / bigger house. TA: Working on someone else’s dream, not yours.
Time: I’m too busy. I’ll do it tomorrow / next month / next year. I can’t write late at night / early in the morning. TA: Everyone gets 24 hours – well in a solar day at least, 23hrs 56mins in a stellar day – use them wisely!
General: I’m not inspired. I’m too old/young. I’m too tired/depressed/sick. TA: Seriously? Then just read the books others write.
Our Favourite: It’s not what you know but who you know in publishing. TA: Publishing isn’t writing, nor is it reading, nor is it the reason you write. Besides, Snookie “wrote” a book; publishers will publish all sorts of trash.
You can have your book or you can have your excuses. You can’t have both. !!!
Writing is lonely. Writing is hard work. Writing is discipline. There is no quick fix and there is no one to applaud or to criticize you. You will be your own boss and you will have to motivate and reward yourself. And after all of this you will face the possibility of rejection – the dedicated writer will not stop here.
Remember: You have permission to write badly. (In your first drafts, of course TA: or if your name is Stephanie Meyer or EL James, all your drafts and finished work are written badly)
Currently I’m doing a writing course, a real one, one that assigns homework! For my homework I was doing some research when I accidentally came across a webpage and general philosophy that I found interesting. By interesting I mean ‘rabidly sexist garbage that demeans both men and women.’
Now I have heard this stuff before, a lot of it stems from a lack of modern male identity in the post-feminism world. Whenever you have social change there will inevitably be a push-back and level of disenfranchisement of sectors who have no clear ‘voice’. They talk about being “alpha males” and swallowing the red pill, taking control of their lives and their women. This is, of course, just the excuse that bigots and morons need to write garbage like:
Paternity fraud is worse than rape
5 Reasons To Date A Girl With An Eating Disorder
Apple Should Have Never Hired A Female Handbag Executive
5 Reasons Women Should Come With HoFax Reports
This sort of shit really is pathetic. Take the first article as an example: in what world is child support worse than the second most heinous physical act? (NB: the worst is still murder, although combine the two and you have a new crime novel) Now if we were actually talking about misandry then there would be valid concerns and points to be made and opinions to be listened to. If we were talking about the role of men in society and how it has changed, again, legitimate concerns and points to be made. But how does the lot of men (and women) improve with this:
It should be noted that 30 something American women are not becoming traditionally minded or anything, but rather they are simply in a desperate rush to find the useful idiot who will put a roof over her head. Once an American man goes foreign, American females both in their age 20′s and 30′s are sloppy seconds and cannot compete with non-Western women…… It takes time but your chances of finding a quality girlfriend elsewhere are better, as opposed to in the States where men have to contend with the overweight, screwed up, tattooed, walking STD incubators that are pass for women today. TS: I kid you not, this is an actual quote from one of the articles.
You see, this is not a realistic view of the world. It isn’t even a snapshot of a small segment of society. These are the views of the next generation of sexists and bigots, the kind of people that will dish out emotional and physical abuse because they are ‘real men’. These are the views of the weak and insecure. These are the articles written by frauds of men.
I leave you with Steve Shives’ wonderful take on this topic.
I bought this novel after watching the fantastic Pan’s Labyrinth. If you haven’t watched that movie, do so now. In fairness though, this novel has more in common with Del Toro’s contribution to the Blade series of movies than it does to Pan’s Labyrinth.
This is another take on the viral outbreak thriller, thankfully it doesn’t take it down the path of zombies, as most recent novels in this genre have done. Non-sparkly vampires are back!
The only disappointment for me was that this was definitely the first instalment in a trilogy and felt a little more unfinished than I’d have liked. The writing is very reminiscent of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Prendergast series. Worth a read for horror and thriller fans.
My short story, Running the Cross, appears on Thrills, Kills ‘n’ Chaos. Have a read and then check out some of the other brilliant short stories there. They’ve just had a special Halloween week for all the horror fans.
Running the Cross is also available in a longer format from Amazon if your bookmark button is playing up.
It’s called “Running the Cross”, or simply “The Cross”. It is dangerous.
I’ve been here before. It’s a small town in South Australia where twelve rail lines merge, an east-west alignment of freight trains travelling from various states. Once every few months, the timetables align and twelve trains converge in a slightly staggered pattern. For the few that are fast enough, strong enough, determined enough, or just plain crazy enough, this is the place to test your mettle. No-one will stop you, except the trains.
The Cross had gained a level of notoriety in running circles, even attracting some big-name Olympic athletes to the dusty town. I’m not an Olympian, but I share a place with those who have completed The Cross.
One Olympic aspirant had made the town, and Running the Cross, infamous on a sunny afternoon one July. There are two paths you can choose: the first is…
I know it is only early into November, but I think I’ve read the best book of the year. But don’t just take my word for it, Angela Savage thinks so too. That isn’t to say you can’t take my word for it. I’m trust-worthy. Honest.
David has set himself a huge task: setting a crime novel in the sleepy city of Perth Western Australia and making the hard-boiled-thriller work. Let’s just say that I’m glad I was too young to experience the Perth David has crafted in Zero at the Bone.
If you read Angela’s review, she has summed up the story and highlighted David’s skilled writing. I’ve previously discussed David’s previous novel, Line of Sight, as being a great novel; this one is even better.
I was going to write a scathing diatribe on horse racing and my thoughts regarding The Melbourne Cup. I know some people love horses and horse racing, and I’m sure they are up-to-date with their therapy bills, but I’m just not a fan of this once a year dog food and midget hype.
Fortunately for me, Ross has written a great blog about The Melbourne Cup.
Ok, I know that many of you will consider the whole Melbourne Cup scene an example of the worst excesses of Western decadence, but to show you that I don’t have to always attack the rich and famous, here are my Cup predictions:
The Commentary Team will talk about how lucky they’ve been with the weather.
Someone off a Channel 7 show will be asked to give you a tip, which will be one of the favourites. It will lose badly.
Race 1 will be won by a very young horse. They will tell you that it was a very cheap buy. Most people won’t realise that they could have bought a very expensive car for the same amount of money.
At some point in the day, they will interview the groundsman about how he gets the roses looking so lovely. He will resist the temptation to tell them by…
It’s quite interesting to see how the premise for any book, movie or TV show is endemic. The above example of Breaking Bad is a classic, and especially funny given the current furore over affordable health care in the USA. But there are plenty of others.
Sherlock Holmes is a classic example. Imagine a drug addicted, genius, arsehole detective in the modern age where drugs are illegal. Yep: Sherlock and the Hounds of B-Block. Also, before anyone says House, think about how long House would have spent in malpractice suits.
Robinson Crusoe would be pretty difficult to see happening in this day and age. Sure, Tom Hanks tried to convince us that modern people could be lost on an island and survive by their wits and a bunch of FedEx packages. But with modern tracking methods, mapping and the fact that no-one travels by boat now-a-days, Robinson Crusoe would be Bear Grylls or Survivor.
Huckleberry Finn is the tale of a young boy running away with his adult slave. That just wouldn’t happen these days. Now it isn’t that slaves don’t exist anymore (they do), nor the idea of run-aways. A young boy going missing in the USA with a grown man, sounds like an episode of Without a Trace.
The test of a premise really is to see if it would work anywhere else, any-time else. If it doesn’t work anywhere or any-when else, then it is interesting. If it can be transposed, how interesting was the premise to begin with?
At one of the places I worked there used to be motivational posters on the wall. I know that most of the quotes and pictures are meant to inspire but I’d really question who gets inspired by a pretty picture with a cheap phrase underneath. If that is the sort of stuff that inspires you then you really have to question how long your job will be around before a robot takes your place. Inspiration can come from many places and I’m sure that somewhere, someone, might have been inspired by a pithy quote or cool picture. They may have even created an ad campaign to sell toilet paper so that people can wipe their backsides with the glee of the pithy quote.
I think that inspiration is actually more like a playful kitten stalking a fly. The fly is just sitting around, minding its own fly-y business, taking a break between eating garbage and flying up people’s noses. The kitten is creeping up on the fly, thinking it is a lion about to pounce on an unsuspecting prey, that the kitten can’t be seen, despite the vigorous tail twitching in the air. As the kitten pounces, the fly, calmly, buzzes off to see if it can annoy someone, the kitten comes crashing down, bringing the urn with your dad’s ashes in it, smashing onto the floor. On the rare occasion that the kitten catches the fly and doesn’t destroy valuable items around the house, that is inspiration. The one off moment when your brain comes up with the most amazing idea that has ever occurred. An idea that will reshape humanity. An idea that will see you showered in champagne, chocolate and high priced hookers.
An idea that will have to wait until morning, because you were just about to fall asleep.
A while back I wrote a post on how sharks aren’t the deadly monsters attacking people all the time that we think they are. Now I’m not suggesting that we all go and hug sharks, they only like to be touched by cleaning fish, nor that we jump in to swim with them, they play tag far too roughly for delicate humans. What I’m suggesting is that we really need to start worrying about stuff that is actually a concern rather than stuff that is just wild gesticulations in front of a camera for ratings.
So here is a list of things that kill more people than sharks annually:
I was having a conversation last night with someone who was questioning why science? Doesn’t it get in the way of creativity? I’ve never seen it that way, I think Heinlein, Assimov and the like would agree with me. Zen Pencils did the comic below which encapsulates why science very nicely.
1) Mentioning the word ‘wedding’ in a store, restaurant or venue immediately adds 30% to the price.
Don’t believe me? Go into a coffee shop and say you’re getting married when you order a drink – doesn’t even have to be for your wedding – and watch the price rise.
2) Getting married is an excuse for your friends and family to change their topic of conversation.
Before you had a partner the topic of conversation was about who you were dating. Once you have a partner the conversation becomes about when you are getting married. Once you’re married the conversation can finally change to when are you having kids. Once you have a kid the conversation is all about when you are having the next one. I’m assuming that some time after this the conversation switches to what heart medication you’re taking now.
3) Everyone wants to make a big deal about you getting married.
Anyone would think that you only do this two or three times in your life or something.
4) The bride is expected to be bride-zilla, destroyer of kittens and venue staff. The groom is expected to show up. Preferably in a suit.
I’m not sure how this works at LGBT weddings (oh wait, we’re still backward hicks), but having the subjugation of half of the partnership by everyone around you is not exactly the best way to encourage a balanced relationship. Although, I hear that the 1950s were cool in other ways.
5) You will be expected to invite everyone you’ve ever met.
This is despite the fact that you can’t remember half of their names, let alone addresses. Nor the fact that you didn’t particularly want to invite your creepy uncle who will no doubt get drunk and try to feel up your new wife.
6) You will pay for a lot of alcohol you don’t get to drink.
Being the centre of attention means that you will barely have a chance to take a sip of your drink all night, whilst everyone else will be queuing up to throw-up as to make room for more free booze. This doesn’t apply to the bride, who has a shiny white dress that says, “Give me a drink.”
7) Your hens and bucks nights have to involve strippers.
Something to do with the stabilisation of the economy. Remember to tip well.
Tyson Adams 