The world of publishing

Just gets more interesting every day. E-books are completely revolutionizing the publishing industry, and not just in the way books are produced. I'm not surprised at all that Wylie Agency wants to handle the e-book side of their titles exclusively; e-books are only becoming more popular (although I still don't believe Amazon's figures) and the market is huge. I am slightly surprised by Random House's reaction though. Refusing to do any future business with the Wylie Agency seems slightly drastic.

Reading in verse

Recently, a few coworkers and I have started sharing books that we find interesting. It's worked out surprisingly well so far; we each have a chance to read something new and it doesn't cost us anything. While I've been loaning out the ARCs I picked up at BEA, my coworker loaned me Dante's The Divine Comedy, part 1: Hell. I'd never read it, despite always saying that I would, so when I saw that she was nearly done with it, I asked to borrow it.

I'd forgotten what a chore it can be to read verse. It's so much work! The best way, I found, was to read it like I was going to be reading it aloud, pausing only where there was a punctuation mark. That helped, and I found it much easier reading. (Note: that still doesn't mean it was easy reading. I think I understood maybe half of that whole story, even with the notes and illustrations at the end of each canto.) I'm hoping Part 2: Purgatory will be slightly easier reading. I know it'll be less depressing.

Externships

I've never before heard of an externship, although I think it's a great idea, especially for nontraditional jobs that don't end at 5 p.m. every day. Via The New York Times.

Side note: Carleton College is the college that Pamela Dean based her fictional college, Blackstock College, on in Tam Lin.

More e-books sold than hardcovers?

Yeah, I don't know that I really believe that. I usually see one ereader device in the morning, but I see ten books to that one device.

via The New York Times

Sweet!

I write like
Arthur C. Clarke

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Adding to the TBR list...

The rest of the Fairy Tale Series, edited by Terri Windling. I've read Pamela Dean's Tam Lin numerous times, including again this summer, so maybe it's time I branched out and read the other books in this series.

Damnit!

I would love to go to Sebastian Junger's talk tomorrow about his book War at the Bryant Park Reading Room. Except it's at 12:30 and there's no way I can duck out of work for two plus hours without my boss noticing.

Book Trailers

So, am I the only person who doesn't like book trailers, much less watch them? I honestly don't see the point of them.

The Author Takes a Star Turn, via NYT

Monthly Update x 2

So I never got around to actually posting my May or June reads. Clearly, I'm failing as a blogger this year. It could be worse though, I could be failing as a reader. Oh wait..

In May, I read six books.Of the six books, only one was nonfiction, and it was something of a travel memoir.
In June, I read nine books. Of the nine books, five were books I picked up at BEA, one was a military nonfiction, and the other three were fiction.

Books read in 2010: 59
Books that should have been read in 2010: 84
Time I have to catch up: less than six months

Top 100 Science Fiction Novels according to Sci-Fi Lists

Well, according to this list, I am not a well-read science fiction fan as I've only read fourteen of the hundred listed titles. And even if I crossed off the two books I started and hated (The Handmaiden's Tale and A Canticle for Leibowitz), my stats aren't much better.

Guess I know what I'm doing for the rest of the summer. You know, when I'm not rereading the Harry Potter series (WHICH ENDS JULY 31ST, SELF!), the military nonfiction titles I have stacked on the floor, or the YA books I keep requesting from the library.

So yeah, I'm sure I'll make it to fifteen out of ninety-eight in no time at all.

/sarcasm

Revamping Wonder Woman

Oh, Wonder Woman. I dressed up as her one year for Halloween when I was six? seven? My parents made me wear clothes underneath, though; I was furious. If only her costume then had looked like it does now.

This 69-year-old superheroine, published by DC Comics, will don a new — and less revealing — costume and enjoy the publication of Issue No. 600 of her monthly series.

Via The New York Times.

Translations, aka, my reading list just grew

I still haven't read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I was iffy about the series and a friend of mine--we have similar tastes when it comes to fiction--told me not to bother with it. But several of my coworkers have read the whole thing and keep raving about it...so I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm thrilled we're going to see more Scandinavian writers translated into English. I love it when my reading horizon spreads just a bit more.

José Saramago, Nobel Prize-Winning Writer, Dies

I read Blindness years ago for an online book club I joined. I had a hard time with it, because I wasn't quite sure how to describe how I felt about the book. I liked it, but it was something completely different from what I normally read. I always meant to read his backlist, but never found the time. Maybe this summer I'll pick up Seeing. Or, reread Blindness.

Article about his life, works, and death here at The New York Times.

Over at the NYT

"Just as a single book offers something new to your different selves over time, my library catered to the different identities I have cultivated over the years."

So very, very true.

Justin Cronin, interviewed at the NYT

While being interviewed about his upcoming new novel, The Passage, Justin Cronin had this to say about the difference between literary fiction (what he's known for) and commercial fiction:

"I think literary is shorthand for appreciated, and commercial is shorthand for sells."

Hee. That's the best description of the two that I've seen in a long time.

Summer reading

I love reading the summer reading lists; so many new books to get excited over. Like:

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert Wittman (Crown)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (Doubleday)

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross (Knopf)

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (Hyperion)

The Outlander by Gil Adamson (Harper Perennial)

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)

Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac (Penguin) (OK, so this one isn't exactly new, but whatever.)

In addition to keeping track of what genre I read and whether the book is one I purchased or borrowed, I'm also going to try and keep track of what publishers I'm reading. I don't think I have any favorites, but I am curious.

*Note to self: Hey, remember how you were going to reread the Harry Potter series this year? How's that going?

The haul

I'm going on record as saying this was my best BEA yet.*

I walked away with five tote bags, one umbrella, and fifteen books. Yup, fifteen books. One of the senior editors at work chastised me a bit, saying that "books are for the buyers," but I ignored her. The way I see it, the books at BEA are for buyers and poor peons like me, the ones who get paid pennies, work long hours, and grab the perks where we can get them. And a free book is always a perk to me.

Out of the fifteen books I picked up, I've very excited about reading By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan. I had read a review about it earlier this week and thought it sounded very interesting. By a fluke chance, I found myself at the Other Press booth on Wednesday, where they were not only giving away the book, but had the author signing copies. Totally fate. I queued up and got a signed copy. I've only read the first twenty pages or so, but I'm already hooked.

Other books from BEA that I'm (especially) looking forward to reading are The Holy Thief by William Ryan (Minotaur), Satori by Don Winslow (Grand Central Publishing), The Last Speakers by K. David Harrison (National Geographic), and The Wolves of Andover by Kathleen Kent (Reagan Arthur Books). Oh, and Poisonville by Massimo Carlotto (Europa Editions); it sounds like a modern version of Dante's Inferno and the cover art is just amazing.

*It was also my first BEA, but that's just a minor detail.

So it seems that I did in fact burn out in April. I've read, hmm, six books this month. And I clearly haven't posted about any of them. Yet.

Coming up, reviews of Black Magic Sanction, Magic Burns, the Sebastian St. Cyr novels I devoured, and my haul from BEA. I've got some really great books this year and I can't wait to start all of them.

Monthly Update

So April is the first month that I actually met (mostly) my monthly reading challenge. I read 14 books this month, but now feel the slightest bit burned out. I haven't wanted to read anything since finishing Silver Borne on Tuesday. (That will pass, right?)

As for the rest of my goals, well, I haven't touched any of the stack of military nonfiction I have piled up since, hmm, February, haven't started the Harry Potter reading challenge (although I have until the end of July to read the books), and I haven't finished Mere Christianity or Bleak House. I did pick up 2666 and read about four pages before putting it down. I just can't get into that book.

Books read in 2010: 39

Books that should have been read in 2010: 59

Time I have to catch up: limited

Realizing a truth can be interesting.

It's slowly dawned on me that the novels I'm choosing to read have all been mysteries. It wasn't a conscious decision, but looking over the list of books I've read this year, there are only a handful that aren't mysteries.

I suppose I lulled myself into thinking I wasn't reading mysteries because they weren't the type of mysteries I had been reading, with police officers and private detectives. So much for branching out.

Still, I can't really complain about this, because if I didn't subconsciously sabotage myself into reading nothing but mysteries, I wouldn't have read the Julian Kestrel series by Kate Ross, or the Sebastian St. Cyr series by C.S. Harris. I wouldn't have read The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault, which gave me words like editrix. And sentences like this, on page 320:

I tried not to despair too much in the notion that this holding pattern of identical days might eat up life while I waited for weekends.*

I would have read the Marilyn Todd titles, but I wouldn't have remembered her if I hadn't read the collection of short mystery stories, which I only read because it featured a story by Kate Ross. (And let's not forget that the Marilyn Todd titles are mysteries.)

So maybe I should just accept that I like to read mysteries and move on. To reading another mystery.

What? It's not like I don't have a stack of them waiting for me.

*Sadly, I find this sentence to be closer to my life sometimes than I'd like.