They don’t want anything to do with Sarah Palin, even when her book has been put in the right category. I was just surprised that there were any Sarah Palin supporters who could read.
Tag: Books
Yeah, it has done the rounds, but this picture really does sum up a few of the conversations I’ve had lately.
Let’s face it, there are certain things that all houses should have: bedroom, kitchen, lounge, secret room concealed behind a bookcase. Now obviously not everyone has enough space for a hidden room in their house, others are lucky that their house has a roof. Clearly the secret room hidden behind a bookcase is the domain of the rich. But it has recently come to my attention that some rich people have failed in their duties as rich people.
If you are wealthy and you don’t have a bookcase that conceals a hidden passage or room, then you are going about being wealthy the wrong way. In the interests of society, please donate your wealth to someone who will spend it more wisely.
During a discussion the other day my favourite authors and books came up as a topic of conversation. Needless to say I listed off writers like Lee Child, Matthew Reilly, Robert Crais, Matt Hilton, etc. Now these people weren’t exactly literary snobs, but they did respond as if I was supposed to list the authors of classic literature and contemporary literature.
Seriously?
Can we all stop pretending that there is something superior about literary fiction. I’ve seen discussions of social problems in crime fiction, fantastic use of literary techniques in horror, exploration of character and humanity in science fiction; all performed with more skill and insight than I have seen in the literary genre.
How about we go back to judging a book by its cover.
Temple by Matthew Reilly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’m a little sad. Not because of this book, this book was great. I’m sad because I’ve now read all of Matthew Reilly’s books at least once. I have to wait for his next book to be published. Wait!!
If anything, Temple is probably one of Matt’s best books. In typical Reilly style it redefines fast paced and action packed, but this also feels more complete than the Jack West Jnr series. It is also one of his longer books, so plenty of entertainment in this novel to keep you going.
In short, read it.
For those Matthew Reilly fans like me who are awaiting Matt’s next release, it seems he is back writing again after the tragedy last year. Hopefully he is on the mend emotionally as well and can continue to entertain us. Apparently his fans have been out in force to see him at the Supanova events, including the Doc.
The speech Neil Gaiman made to graduates has been inspiring many. This cartoon is just one of many, click on it to see more work by Gavin at http://zenpencils.com
Okay, that’s not fair. The Diary of Anne Frank isn’t fiction.
Interesting article that I found a while ago. The study highlights how important it is to have people talking about your book. This is why my book reviews are basically a plug for books I’ve enjoyed reading. Sell it forward.
Also, comment if you don’t like the embedded pdf file. This is a little experiment to see if it is worth doing with other things I find.
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was having a chat with a friend at a party when Peter Temple came up as a must read author recommendation. I’m rather naive when it comes to new and established authors, I don’t seem to have the inside scoop on Aussie writers the way I do with overseas talent. It wasn’t long afterwards that Peter Temple was mentioned again at the Perth Writers’ Festival. So I bought two of his books, Truth (ebook version) and The Broken Shore.
Now the recommendations for Peter Temple came from literary people, people whose recommendations I try to avoid like trips to Canberra and prison showers. But these recommendations carried weight, as one of them was a Lee Child and Michael Connelly fan. I can see why Peter is an award winning novelist, but I can also see why he is highly regarded amongst authors – like I said, naive. This is a crime novel, but not quite like most crime novels. I’d put Peter in the same category as James Lee Burke, Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly, except his work is more literary.
Also, it is sad that Peter isn’t as internationally recognised as those authors I have likened him to. This book was equal to any of those authors. So read Peter and make sure his work hits the international market, where it belongs.
Raylan by Elmore Leonard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Raylan: “What did he want to know?”
Art: “Whether you’d shot anybody this week.”
I remember reading Elmore’s rules of writing and fixing upon his rule “leave out the stuff people skip”. This novel is a testament to that rule; there is nothing you want to skip in it. This is one of those books that feels like you are immersed in a world, something that Elmore has been widely praised for.
This novel, Raylan, is not really a novel. Think of this work as three novellas held together with some overlap, like, say, a TV series. I think it is fair to say that you can see entire plot and character arcs from seasons two and three of Justified in this book. Clearly this isn’t a coincidence, with Elmore joining the writing team for Justified in the second season.
Far from being a criticism, the similarities between Raylan and Justified actually makes this book a cool compendium companion to the series. Just be warned, Boyd is not quite the devious and intelligent character you want to see succeed, as you do in Justified.
For fans of Justified, you will no doubt have your Morgan Freeman and Sean Connery moment, as you read all of the book with the character’s voices.
It is a busy day today. I have been booking my itinerary for the Perth Writers’ Festival for 2012.
I really enjoyed myself at the festival last year and am looking forward to this year’s event. For anyone who wants to go or just wants to see what is happening, check out the links for the program. Jo Nesbo will be there, so crime writing is well represented.
Online itinerary.
Download the brochure.
Clearly this is a bookstore or library catering to a couple of Dutch customers. All the Dutch people I know are scientists, so they need a reference section there as well.
It is the season to be jolly, apparently. The jolliest people are, of course, retailers, who are doing their impersonations of Scrooge McDuck swimming. The rest of us are just happy to have some time off work and an excuse to eat until our arteries congeal and drink until the tile floor looks comfy.
Don’t get me wrong, Xmas is a lovely time of year, but I have some issues with it.
1) It’s Xmas not Christmas.
This celebration stopped being about Christ’s birthday when shops started advertising how many shopping days there were left before Xmas. I’m glad we have the holiday but lets stop pretending it is a religious holiday. To the 16% of Australian’s (check your country stats here) who actually attend church, feel free to ignore this point. And yes I’m aware of the irony here.
2) Xmas cards.
I understand the idea of sending correspondence to family and friends and given the “holiday season” it only seems logical to catch up with people. But I’m under 40, so I have Facebook, Twitter, Email, Linkedin, mobile phones, and know how to use them. Sending cards feels like people the world over are taking a vow of technophobia in order to contract hand cramps and level a rain forest.
3) Xmas lights.
I think the goal of Xmas lights, if I am understanding them correctly, is blind people in the space station orbiting Earth. In the day and age of climate change, when we really should be cutting down on energy usage, we decide to set up a whole lot of lights to blind people. It has become a competition between neighbours and streets to see who can have the most gaudy display of flashing eyesores. The winner is usually the person or street who wake up to the electricity bill in January realising they need a second job and to sell a kidney.
4) Caroling.
Why is it that people only remember for the other eleven months of the year that they can’t sing?
Which also brings me to:
5) Xmas songs.
I’m not talking about the traditional carols here, I’m talking about the saccharine odes to love and presents that bombard the airwaves from every pop singer/group the world has to offer. These “artists” were barely tolerable in small doses as it was, but the competition to have the highest selling drink coaster means you can’t even go near a TV or radio for fear of diabetes and the desire to hug a puppy.
6) The celebrity biography.
Speaking of stocking stuffers, every Xmas there must be more celebrity biographies bought for Dads the world over than any other time of year. In fact, it is safe to say that the book reading statistics are built on this Xmas tradition of buying a book no-one wants to read for people who don’t read in the first place. Is it really a surprise that so few people read when the only book they start each year is about the mundane life of somebody with decent hand-eye coordination or a backstabbing politician proposing to tell all, but really just relating the party political line of events. I’d prefer the socks.
With that said, Merry Xmas everyone!
Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket.
I posted a few days ago about how publishing houses had had a fairly good year. All the publishers who had embraced e-books had seen an increase in profits and were probably uncorking some champagne and planning a big Xmas party to celebrate. Jill in accounting was probably going to receive a bonus as well.
The sales figures were released a week or so ago for the third quarter of this year, or is that first quarter of the financial year, and why is that different from a normal year; just to be different or annoying? E-books appear to be continuing to replace the mass market paperback, which makes sense. Given the publisher’s bottom lines and these market indicators, we could see a speed up in the push for e-books by the major players in the industry. It might also be whining time for bookstores, well, more-so.
By Jason Boog on December 1, 2011 3:47 PM
According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP) net sales revenue report for September 2011, the adult mass paperback category declined 54 percent (to $31 million) in September compared to the same period last year.
At the same time, adult hardcover sales dropped 18 percent (to $148.3) while eBook sales doubled to $80.3 million. Above, we’ve embedded the AAP’s sales chart.
Here’s more: “With September also being the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, Higher Education showed a nearly 9% gain in net revenue vs September 2010. Additionally, there was significant growth in the category of Professional Books (in the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division) in September, increasing nearly 13% … The September report represents data provided by 80 US publishers and is produced by the Association of American Publishers.”
Barry Eisler is an interesting fellow, but this blog post is mainly for my writer friends.
I can’t claim to have read any of Barry’s books yet – although I have bought two which are waiting on my Kindle to-be-read list – but he does have some interesting things to say about publishing and writing. These videos are from a Q&A session he did in Boston. Enjoy.
Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Lecture Part 1 from Grub Street on Vimeo.
Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Part 2 (Q&A) from Grub Street on Vimeo.
Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Part 3 (Q&A) from Grub Street on Vimeo.
Yes, bookstores may be generally declining, or doing their impersonation of climate change deniers, but apparently it can be solved by playing dominoes.
I reckon it is worth visiting this store for two reasons.
1) They made this pretty cool ad.
2) This looks like a store that would have just about any book you are looking for.
3) Someone needs to beat up the hippie playing guitar cross-legged.
We had a knock on the door this morning. A lady was inquiring if we “followed the bible”. My immediate reaction was to say something like, “Inanimate objects don’t really take me places these days.” Of course I was very polite and told her that my dog was hungry. She persisted with, “Do you follow God?” to whit I retorted, “Which one?”
I should point out at this juncture that I’m not against religion or religious people. Religion has done some good things and it has done some bad things. If we were to express their good versus bad as a baseball batting average, then I’d have to learn something about baseball.
Anyway, this got me thinking, which has been known to happen occasionally. Religious people are often very keen to sell their religion door-to-door. They often have pamphlets, invites to their church (or whatever), or even their indoctrination material for sale. I am yet to have a scientist knock on my door of a Sunday morning, “Have you heard the word of Newton?” At least with scientists door knocking they could fix the zero-point anomaly in our laundry; it’s starting to cause a gravity sink.
See, this would be brilliant marketing for any author. Imagine an entire squad of people devoted to spreading the word about your book/s. Unpaid labourers whose goal it was to sell your writing to everyone. Of course this wouldn’t be easy to arrange. I’m not sure I can afford the price of souls these days – what with the economy and all – so getting boots on the ground might either take a lot of enigmatic persuasion or be the realm of wealthy authors.
There are plenty of examples of this happening. If you do a little digging you can find how L Ron Hubbard got his book Battlefield Earth on the bestseller lists. Every Scientologist was sent out to buy a copy, which they then sent back to the “church” (I use that term loosely) and the books were sent to the stores again to be resold. Brilliant!
Obviously not every author can create their own religion to sell books, but maybe there is something to be made use of here. Maybe your local Jehovah’s Witness may need some extra redemption and would like to sell your book door-to-door if you promise to not set the bear traps on the doorstep. Think about it!
Tyson Adams 