on Libraries & Books
Thoughts on Reading, Literature, and Book Culture
Dalmilling Cards.. For those people annoyed, like me, by people thinking that someone reading would rather just talk, instead. This helps you to be get rid of them, or at least be rude back. (Dalmilling is trying to talk to someone while they are trying to keep reading, more information here.
On Reading Journals. I don't use them, but what the hell? Maybe you want to and are looking for a few quick and easy suggestions...or just general irreverant advice.
And, because I do get asked about this from time to time, let me give you another great essay from the desk of me: "You're Damn Right I Read It More Than Once!.
Animals and the Looming Apocalypse, A Brief Essay on How Non-Human Life Features in the Novels of Children of Men and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Four Horror Endings. Four general ways that a horror novel (or movie) can end.
Joe Hill's Which of these three Brits had the biggest cultural export impact and my answer (22 Jul 2009). Here's a hint, I said Dickens.
Informal survey: The rereading of books, stories, and so forth (30 Jul 2009). Only a couple of people responded when I first posted this, so I figured I would leave it up to see if anyone else wanted to take a crack.
Ways that Books just might be better than Movies... (14 Sep 2009). (1) They are books. Booyah! Mixing serious and tongue-in-cheek (when do I not mix those two?) I describe ways I find books to be better than movies.
Brians as a unit of measurement, reading HGttG book 6, website updates, and compiling my poetry (13 Oct 2009). Part one introduces "The Brian", something I plan to take back up in future times. Basically, how big a pile of crap is this book compared to the previous parts?
Sporadic tokens or a plethora of white? (5 Dec 2009). Should we keep using token (as in token black, token hispanic, token gay) characters, or should we move away? Is the alternative of not using minority characters at all better? [cross-posted to ...on Media].
"A Well Read Book" (poem) (13 Mar 2010). A poem about the stains that books have, and a challenge to those who think that books should always be pristine if you love them. That is not so, and this poem explains why.
Literary Heroes: That Sticky Road (19 Apr 2010). On the subject of literary heroes, and the inherent dangers of colluding the man for his works; on going whole hog in fandom; and on the way writers tend to dial everything, as it were, to eleven.
Libraries
Library Sued Over Book (19 Jun 2009). A library is sued because a book is on the shelves. It's more complicated than that, sure, but that's the general gist.
Privacy Rights and Circulation (21 Jun 2009). Looking at the ALA's code of ethics and how that factors into privacy and circulation.
Videogames the public library system (8 Jul 2009). For better or worse, libraries are getting more and more shots at luring kids in with videogames. Here's some of my (initial, anyhow) thoughts on the matter.
Doug and the Librarian Profession (my final for LS501) (15 Dec 2009). This sums up a lot of my ideas about why I want to be a librarian and where I think the profession is going and what I can do for it. It starts out with how I avoided the choice for a while, considering books as just a hobby, and ends with how I think I can contribute best to it.
Lazy Days, Policies and Procedures, Months without Facebook, Inception, etc (29 Jul 2010). Briefly discuss the importance of P&P for new technologies in the library.
Librarians and Being a Librarian
Tattooed Librarian calender. Hmmm (3 Aug 2009). A calendar featuring tattoed librarians is published and some react poorly. To me, the real problem might be this idea that librarians are so particularly easy to stereotype that anything outside of this stereotype is treated as heroic.
My So-Called "Rough" Night, the "I Promise It's Y" Exchange Type (02 Oct 2009). Talking about people refusing to believe your suggestion at first, and a little about library anxiety.
One honest problem facing new librarians: the part-time job (7 Dec 2009). Of all the problems facing us young'un librarians, it seems to me that the potentially worst one is being forced to take a part-time job that requires graduate school work and years of experience.
Unfortunately, not exactly an atypical virtual reference exchange, or: Why e-ref needs reference interviews, too. (15 Aug 2010).
Ebooks and Digital Downloads
There are numerous pros and cons for using e-books (the article also includes a brief description of an easy to use e-book store, discussion of copyright issues, and possible formats) , which I try to list out in the aforelinked article.
Also, I want to bring your attention to Cory Doctorow's article E-books: Neither E nor Books, which I have a plain text edition hosted here on my site. Doctorow is a big promoter of the new potentials of e-books, and my hat goes off to him.
Does the Kindle 2 Hurt Audiobooks? Revisted. (on Feb 25, 2009). Older post, in the older DoaB format (so it will load a larger page with the post as a portion), but still somewhat viable.
The Flirtatious Reader, by Odwar Dergey (3 Jun 2009). How are us readers supposed to get our reader-loving flirt on now that we use Kindles, netbooks, iPhones, and laptops? It's a problem, it really is.
Bag o' Links: Books, eBooks, and Libraries edition (11 Sep 2009). While my random collections of links and such aren't always the most repostable (who knows when the links are going to be broken), I kept this one because of the bit at the end, where I address a school library who shunted all of their material in favor of ebooks.
E-book's biggest thorns: ownership and the concept of what loans a book (09 Nov 2009). I look at various EULAs and such to talk about what companies think they are selling you (namely: the right to glance at some text but nothing else).
The two biggest problems I see facing e-book acceptance (outside of legal issues)? (11 Dec 2009). I describe some issues with the sameness of ebook experience (and how it can be annoying) and the much stickier question of who gets to decide the cost of ebooks (hint: it's not customers!)
Eight reasons why the iPad isn't a Kindle killer (and four reasons it might be, after all) (30 Jan 2010). The death knell is once again being rung for the Kindle. I think it's premature, and I give some reasons why.
Who Loves Books More: pReaders or eReaders? (aka, Doug gets Tongue in Cheek) (7 Feb 2010). After being told a few times that people who read ebooks like me are why books are in the gutter (more or less), I figured I would respond. Mostly, though, a humorous look at the differences between those who love ebooks, and those who hate ebooks.
Some more pbook-love turned ebook hate, but at least Random House seems reasonable (14 Feb 2010). As long as there is more than one way to make a book, there are going to be those who swear there is only way to read a book. This post briefly looks at one guy who bemoans the loss of book covers as an art-form, and how Random House shows maturity and wins my dollars by not demonizing ebooks.
Overshadowed by the jail-breaking of the iPhone: a good thing about eBooks in the copyright ruling, too (27 Jul 2010).
Book Publication and Industry
Some ISBN Facts
The "Like New" Lie, or, One Man's Misadventures with Amazon Marketplace (16 May 2009). AKA, why is it that all of my "like new" books from Amazon look like they have been fed to a large animal and vomited back out?
Cracked.com's Kickass Lessons Books Can Learn from Movies (11 Jun 2009). Can books be more profitable if they took a page from the movie handbook?
Failure to meteor watch, a quick musing about the book industry (13 Aug 2009). I muse about whether it really is a bad thing for books to be culled back a little in popularity. As our society becomes increasingly aliterate, is aiming for the least common denominator actually good for books?
The one about textbooks and the "free textbook seekers" (26 Aug 2009). This is partially about people trying to check textbooks out of the library. It is mostly about the cost of textbooks and what I think it means and how come it and all that.
The end of hardcovers? Maybe. Bargain books, price wars, loss leaders, and epublishing (11 Nov 2009). How the book industry is changing and whether or not it is changing for the better. I look specifically at questions about the relative value of hardcovers versus other formats.
Eraserhead Press is ten years old (woot!), the worst part of being sick, and goofy freaking browser issues (16 Dec 2009). I celebrate Eraserhead Press, the indie press that has been bringing us Bizarro lit for over 10 years. I also mention a few other meandering things, which seems fitting.
One Annoying Thing About Loving Books: The Impossibility of Getting Good Consistent Numbers of Sales (30 Dec 2009). While this article is mostly about ebook sales, I have to ask: why is that book sales are so hard to get in general?
Macmillan books gone from Amazon? (30 Jan 2009). A day or so ago, Macmillan's books disappeared from Amazon (excepting the Marketplace and some twin sites). It might be due to Macmillan demanding a certain minimum price point for their ebooks. If that's the case, who is the bad guy? The person who wants to charge us readers more? Or the bookseller who doesn't listen to the book publisher?
Bookish Links
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database has lots of user submitted information on your favorite SF stuff.
The Online Books Page Presents Banned Books Online. Includes many links to books you can read for free, as well as discussions about why these books were banned. Could be an excellent resource for teachers.
While not the most scientific thing in the world, Books that Make You Dumb is a fun website that plots SAT/ACT style scores against favorite books on Facebook.
Bookstores I Shop Online
The king of all online bookstores is undoubtedbly Amazon.com. If you are one of those who hasn't used it (a surprising number, at least when I managed the bookstore and would occasionally bring it up), I do recommend it. It has an unprecedented selection, good discounts, connections to lots of other buyers, and so on. Now, some smaller bookstores claim it is the death of the book business, but that is not precisely true. I worked for a small bookstore chain that was doing just fine. The feeling of picking up the book, thumbing through it, and putting it back on the shelf is a strong one for a booklover. At the same time, though, no brick-and-mortar is going to have this level of selection in this number of languages and editions.
My second most used online bookstore is Science Fiction Book Club. They are a "book of the month club" and all that implies (annoying letters in the mail, cheaper edition books passed off as "hardcover quality", weird and kind of variable selection). At the same time, they often reprint hard to find SF/Fantasy classics and are an intriguing way to see books you might not normally hone in on. Also, they have very regular sales at good prices.
The Library of America is an excellent way to preserve America's writing, and comes highly praised from me.
Baen's Webscriptions is one of the best places to get e-Books, assuming you like, generally, military science fiction. While their titles are sort of limited as to genre, their model is astounding. A simple, DRM-free, HTML-based ebook delivery for a reasonable price. Includes a "memory" of which books you have already bought so you can redownload if you have to. Complete with free books (of good quality, too) and sample chapters to help make up your mind. Hopefully others will pay attention to them.
My other two frequented bookstores are eReader.com, which focuses on PDB files for their own reader software, but has a good selection and I like the reader; and RPGNow which publishes lots of indie-RPGs in a ton of formats.
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