Blogorrhea Junior

Amazon Censorship

In case you were under a rock or celebrating Easter or something today, and haven't heard about the AmazonFail brouhaha, here's what they're up to: Amazon has, ostensibly for the sake of their readers delicate constitutions, decided to strip the rankings from pretty much any book that has to do with anything related to the LGBT community, everything from textbooks to literature to scientific studies, whether those books include explicit descriptions of homosexual acts or not. This prevents those books from showing up in general searches and will ultimately hurt their sales figures. You know, the harder stuff is to find, the less likely people are to buy it? That kind of logic.

According to Mark Probst, who first noticed this a couple of days ago, and wrote to Amazon about it, a spokesperson from Amazon explained it this way:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Among the books being stripped of their sales ranks and obscured in the search function are notable classics like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle, E.M. Forester's Maurice, Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, all of which I've read in English classes at some point. Oddly enough, both Lady Chatterley's Lover and Lolita have retained their sales ranks (Lolita is up around 2,000). Also stripped of their rankings are Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Even Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity has had its ranking stripped.

If you're unclear about what this means, go to Amazon and search books for "homosexuality." You'll notice that what comes up are largely Christian screeds against it, written by straight people, even when you click on "Gay and Lesbian" in the side search tabs. This made me feel physically sick. How awful to have decades of writing just erased from public viewing. I can only image how my LGBT friends feel watching their literature, history, and scientific studies disappear virtually overnight. This is censorship of the worst kind, and a really vile form of bigotry.

Horror aside, one of the interesting things about this event was how quickly it exploded onto the net. I saw a note about it from Charlie Anders of io9 over on Facebook this afternoon, toddled over to sign the petition after doing a little confirming research, and by 9:00 pm, it was racing across Twitter, LJ, and the blogs like wildfire. The Google search results went from two pages to 13.

So I'm urging you to boycott Amazon until they stop with censorship crap. Over at Publishing Talk, there's an excellent, excoriating open letter to Jeff Bezos, written with the kind of gentle viciousness the British do so well. There are Google bombs on the words "Amazon ranks" spreading (look! here's one now!), and numerous petitions. You can call Amazon's customer service: 1-866-216-1072 or if you're feeling particularly frisky, their board of directors. In the meantime, fuck 'em. Get your books from Powell's instead.

UPDATE: This is hitting the mainstream press now, with "Publisher's Weekly" and Salon reporting Amazon claims it's "just a glitch," which still does not explain Probst's and others reply from customer service, or the fact that this started several days ago. There's an interesting theory at the LJ of former SixApart employee who was around for the Great Strikethrough on LJ. He thinks is a trolling campaign. I'm reserving judgment. My natural suspicion makes me think that Amazon is just covering their ass with the "glitch" statement. I'd be pleasantly surprised to be wrong.

UPDATE 2: More information and sleuthing at Dear Author, which definitely makes it appear far more deliberate than glitchy. The evidence deals with the metadata entered by both publishers and Amazon and a filter applied to that data: "It appears that all the content that was filtered out had either “gay”,  ”lesbian”,  ”transgender”, “erotic”  or “sex” metadata categories.  Playboy Centerfold books were categorized as “nude” and “erotic photography”, both categories that apparently weren’t included in the filter." *rolls eyes*

FINAL UPDATE:So the word is out it was some Amazon employee in France who "broke" the system by flipping a database flag from false to true. Even if this was not a policy change, Amazon's PR needed to make that clear a lot sooner than they have (there's still no official statement, more than 4 days after this started happening). When the literature of an oppressed minority group starts to disappear without explanation, it makes people testy. And isn't spin control what PR people get paid for? Where are they? Where, for that matter, is Amazon's official explanation?

So did we all over-react? I don't think so. I think it's obvious that, thanks to the vocal activists in various movements, none of us have a real sense of trust in corporate America, or, after the last eight years, in the stability of our rights. I think it was heartening to see how fast the response moved, how vocal it was, and how much it seems to have freaked out a large corporate entity. I feel a little like the girl at the end of "V for Vendetta," taking off my Guy Fawkes mask.

If this were a real emergency . . .

Shakespeare's Likeness

I'm always psyched to see something about Shakespeare and this is really cool: we might finally know what he looked like. I don't know why that matters, but it does. I always want to see pics of the people who write the literature I love because it makes them seem human. Writing sometimes seems like such a superhuman effort that it's good to know real people do it, even if they are geniuses.

Prior to this portrait, all we've had was an engraving from the First Folio, apparently based on another portrait, and a portrait (right, click to enlarge) now owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library, based on another unknown portrait, and a ghastly bust, both done after Shakespeare's death in 1616. But this new portrait, in the family of an Anglo-Irish clan for more than 300 years, looks like it might be the one everything else is based on. And it's a far more skillful portrait than the others as well, which are all a little stiff and clumsy.

If you freeze the frame where the two portraits are side by side (that's the new Cobbe portrait at left; click to enlarge), you'll see that the biggest difference in the two of them is the mouth. In the new portrait, Will's a rather handsome looking guy, at 46 or so, not at all the prissy, pinched-mouthed guy you see in the other portraits, balding and with a goofy pageboy haircut. I like the new glam image, though it may not be much more of a true likeness even if it is him, because portraits in the Renaissance were more about making your guy look good than capturing his likeness. Anyway, take a look at the news report.

Figuring out what Will looked liked is just a small part of the literary detective work surrounding his plays though. There's a fairly large contingent of people who maintain that Shakespeare didn't even write the plays and poems he's famous for, that he was, instead, a front for an aristocrat (possibly Francis Bacon) who would have been pilloried for writing something considered as vulgar, common, and often politically controversial as plays like "MacBeth" or what's known as the Hollow Crown cycle ("Richard II," the two "Henry IV"s, and "Henry V") had he done so openly. I'm not buying it; it's always smacked of class snobbery to me and I don't find the evidence compelling.

And on the heels of this news about Will's likeness is a great piece of news about the original theater where he first trod the boards as an actor. While digging a foundation for a new theater in Shoreditch, London, along the Thames, the construction team found remnants of a theater they think was the one which eventually became the original Globe.There is, of course, the new recreation of the orginal Globe in London, and a push for another on Governor's Island here in NYC, which I think would be a great use for that land.

Shakespeare is such an important part of the heritage of the English language that the more we know about him, the better. There's so much an author's life can tell you about their work (up to a point) that it can only give us more insight on his works to know more about him. Of course, the portraits don't tell us much about his life, except that he did well for himself. But it's nice to know he looked a bit more like Brad Pitt than Woody Allen. <sarcasm>Cuz, you know, looks matter. </sarcasm>

Illuminated Books and Medieval Iconography

The Morgan Library is one of my favorite museums in the city, though I don't get there nearly often enough. Right now, it's got a couple of cool things going on, one virtual, one a realspace exhibit. The virtual exhibit is of a prayer book once belonging to Queen Claude of France in the early 1500s. Curator Roger Wieck flips through the book and explains the iconography of several of the scenes depicted in the prayer book. It's a tiny little thing, palm-sized, and the paintings and illumination and calligraphy are really exquisite. It's books like this that got me interested in Medieval history and in bookmaking. This one appears to be covered in red velvet, and has gorgeous little fleur-de-lis clasps on it, in addition to the lovely decorations of the text.

You'll notice that even though the scenes depicted are Biblical, the characters' dress is Renaissance-style. That's typical for the time when this book was created, and theater "costumes" would have been the same: no attempt at historical authenticity. It's fun to hear the little tidbits of completely useless but amusing knowledge that Wieck drops along the way, too, such as the fact that executioners, assassins and such are generally the best-dressed people in pictures like this. The well-dressed are depicted as evil because of their concern with appearances (vanity) and wealth (greed). I wonder, too, if it wasn't a snarky comment against the hypocrisy of sumptuary laws that forbade lower classes of people from wearing certain types of fabric, decorative accessories, and jewelry. The artist, like most illuminated manuscript artists, is anonymous, but was probably a cleric of some sort, who might have made just this sort of snarky comment.

It's an 8-part lecture, but make sure you stick with it to the end, where Wieck describes the background to depiction of a little miracle of St. Nicholas, in which an innkeeper who's run out of bacon chops up three little boys to use instead. *boggles* And you thought Jeffrey Dahmer was bad.

The other exhibit is only on until March 29th, so get there soon, if you're interested. It's "Protecting the Word: Bindings at the Morgan," an exhibit of fine bookbindings from the Morgan. "Highlights include a bejeweled eighth-century binding used on the famous Lindau Gospels, a magnificent seventh-to-eighth–century Coptic work, and a seventeenth-century English Bible and prayer book in stump work embroidery." So if you're interested in beautiful historic bindings, this is the show for you.

Genre Books Meme

Apologies for the long gap in posting. I haven't been writing much lately because I've been up to my arse in projects of various kinds, and trying to find some steady clients to support my book addiction and the lifestyle (such as it is) to which I've become accustomed. My house is filthy and many books unread and unmade because I've been teaching and grading. So here's a little filler to tide you over. I'll be back soon, I promise. I owe everyone and their dog a blog entry.

You already know my weakness for book memes, and this one is particularly fun for me because it's about my two favorite genres: SF and mystery. I've been reading both since I was a kid, and though my first love is SF, I read a lot more mysteries now. What I like best is when the two genres elide into each other, like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. It's unfair to lump the best of these into the genre slot because when they're good, they're as good as literary fiction. They are, in fact, literary fiction. I'd put Tolkien, LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, later William Gibson and Iain Banks in that category, along with Elizabeth George, Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. Some of the thriller writers on this list I can't say the same for, good as they are, though I suspect Le Carre might be that good. I haven't read his books, so I can't say. It's really more about the quality of the writing than about the setting or plot. Good plots are universal, though, and the best SF and mystery/thriller make use of those, while tricking them out with genre conventions.

Okay, enough with the lecture. Here we go:

the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) Mark those you have read however you want.
3) Feel free to tell your friends what you thought of them.

Bold is for anything I've read in entirety or a substantial proportion (of a series), italic for anything I sampled and then put down, and underlined those things I've never heard of.   Italic and underlined for those I've heard of but never read

1.  The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
I used to read this trilogy once a year, in the spring. It still makes me happy

2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
I read this when it first came out in the States and fell arse over teakettle for it, as I'd just discovered fantasy lit then too. I was about 11.

3. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Read it in high school on the bus, still hungry for more Tolkien genius. Only for the hardcore, but a fascinating pseudo-history. Tolkien's scholarly background is really in evidence here.

4. Foundation series, Isaac Asimov
This has been on my list for years, and now that it's an ebook, I'll finally get to it. Asimov is not my favorite author of this period, but I've read a lot of his other books.

5. Robot series, Isaac Asimov
As is often true of Asimov, the ideas are great, the execution, not so much. His characters are always very flat, even more so than Arthur C. Clarke's.

6. Dune, Frank Herbert
Read 'em all. Only the first three are worth bothering with though. And the first one is genius.

7. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
Love, love, love this one. I love even more that his characters show up again in The Number of the Beast.

8. Earthsea series, Ursula le Guin
These are absolutely timeless, at least for me. They're among the keepers on my limited shelf space. I'm glad she continued the series, too, but the first three books are marvelous.

9. Neuromancer, William Gibson
I like his later works better, but this is really ground-breaking and worth the read.

10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Do I get bonus points for having taught this? Bradbury has a knack for writing social criticism that's also a good read.

11. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
Another series like the Earthsea ones that I remember very fondly. Great coming-of-age story.

12. A Book of the New Sun series, Gene Wolfe
Anything Gene Wolfe writes is genius. He has one of the most peculiar and imaginative minds I've run across in a wildly imaginative genre.

13. Discworld series, Terry Pratchett
How did I miss these when they first came out over here. Oh, man. And I'm deeply saddened that Pratchett's career is coming to an end the way it is.

14. Sandman series, Neil Gaiman
I could never get into these though I don't know why. Especially since I love comics.

15. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I love these. I've never seen an author take so many disparate and apparently unconnected elements and tie them all together at the end and have it work so well.

16. Dragonriders of Pern series, Anne McCaffery
I read three or four of these and liked them, then lost interest.

17. Interview with the Vampire series, Anne Rice
Yawn. I've tried several times. It's boring.

18. The Shining, Stephen King
My friends keep telling me to read this, but I find Stephen King impossibly creepy.

19. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula le Guin
I've taught this too. She's one of my favorite writers. I don't think I've read anything by here that wasn't at least good, if not brilliant, and I've read almost everything she's written. Like Bradbury, she writes great social criticism wrapped in a good story.

20. The Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny

21. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
I lost interest in this after 2010, but the first one, and the movie, were great. Clarke's characters are always a little wooden, but his ideas are fascinating.

22. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke.
The Fountains of Paradise is better, and this series went on far longer than it should have.

23. Ringworld, Larry Niven
I read these over and over too. They're so much fun. And the engineering is really cool.

24. Elric of Melnibone series, Michael Moorcock
Read these ages ago, but they didn't stick with me. I'm not a big Moorcock fan.

25. The Dying Earth series, Jack Vance

26. Lyonesse series, Jack Vance

27. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
These were great when I read them but I'm not sure I'd like them now. Covenant is a complex character and really more an anti-hero than a hero. They seemed very sophisticated when I was in high school.

28. A Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin

29. The Worm Ourobouros, E.R. Eddison

30. Conan series, Robert E. Howard
I still have a lot of affection for these, awful as they are. They introduced me to the Sword & Sorcery subgenre, which I loved for a long time, but can't read now because it's so juvenile. And not in a good way.

31. Lankhmar series, Fritz Leiber
These too, but they don't hold up well. Howard was a better writer, though his prose is pretty purple. Leiber's is just stilted.

32. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
I'm going to pronounce blasphemy; cover your ears: Philip K. Dick could not write his way out of a paper bag. He's terrible. His ideas, though, are brilliant, and make excellent movies. Read this at your own peril if you love "Blade Runner," which was based on this book. Ridley Scott took dross and spun it into gold.

33. The Time machine H. G. Wells

34. The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells

35. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
Wells is a must-read for anyone serious about SF.

36. Eon, Greg Bear
Not a huge fan of Greg Bear, either.

37. Book of the First Law series, Joe Abercrombie

38. Miss Marple stories, Agatha Christie.
Beach reading.

39. Hercule Poirot stories, Agatha Christie
Beach reading.

40. Lord Peter Wimsey stories, Dorothy L. Sayers
Some of the best stories in the genre. Brilliantly written, literate, great plots, excellent characters. I've wanted to marry Peter Wimsey for years. If you're any kind of academic, you must read Gaudy Night.

41. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
Hammet is great, but not as good as Chandler.

42. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
Started it, found it dull as ditchwater.

43. Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"I've read all of them, some of them more than once but I have no idea why, they are not great literature, they are not even great mystery stories but there is something about them that I find captivating," said linda_joyce . I concur.

44. Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft

45. Inspector Wexford stories, Ruth Rendell

46. Adam Dalgliesh stories, P.D. James
Dalgliesh is a great character and James' is a great stylist.

47. Philip Marlowe stories, Raymond Chandler.
The ur noir mystery writer. Nobody does it better.

48. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Read it in high school. Yawn. Beach book, like Jaws.

49. The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
Beach book.

50. The Fourth Protocol, Frederick Forsyth
Beach book.

51. Smiley series, John le Carre

52. Gentleman Bastard series, Scott Lynch

53. The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson

54. Watchmen series, Alan Moore

55. Maus, Art Spiegelman
Genius. Read it if you never read another graphic novel.

56. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
This is the Batman, as far as I'm concerned. And the satire of the Reagan era is really juicy and spot-on.

57. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Truthfully, this, Maus and Fun Home should not be missed, by anyone. They're autobiography at its most imaginative and poignant.

58. Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
These very quickly joined the "comfort books" that I read again and again when I don't want a challenge. They're well plotted for the most part, but somebody needed to rein her in a bit. Even so, it's nice to have 700 pages to curl up with when you read quickly.

59. Chrestomanci series, Diana Wynne-Jones

60 Ryhope Wood series, Robert Holdstock

61. Wilt series, Tom Sharpe

62. Riftwar Cycle, Raymond E. Feist

63. Temeraire series, Naomi Novik
Both alternate history and dragon fantasy, they work equally well in both genres. Very good books.

64. Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
These are great if you're a kid and not aware of the preachy Christianity. They're very heavy handed in that way, and annoying if you come to them as an adult.

65. His Dark Materials series, Phillip Pullman
If Pullman had just written the story and not been having a vicious conversation with Lewis, these would have been brilliant. Great world-building, great characters, great plot, too didactic. Just write a good story and leave off the message.

66. Dragonlance series, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

67. Twilight saga, Stephanie Meyer

68. The Night's Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton

69. Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer

70. Honor Harrington series, David Weber

71. Hannibal Lecter series, Thomas Harris

72. The Dark Tower series, Stephen King.
These are the only books of his that I've liked, or been able to finish since It.

73. It, Stephen King
And this is what turned me off of King. Too damn creepy.

74. The Rats series, James Herbert

75. Dirk Gently series, Douglas Adams
Okay, but not great. Certainly not as good as the Hitchhiker series.

76. Jeeves and Wooster stories, P.G. Wodehouse
I think my sense of humor is not British enough to like these.

77. The da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
Possible the biggest waste of paper ever. A senseless massacre of trees and several hours of my life I'll never get back. Not bitter.

78. The Culture Series, Iain M. Banks
Some of these are brilliant, some are just incomprehensible. Worth poking around in though.

79. The Duncton series, William Horwood

80. The Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
Never been able to get into these.

81. The Aberystwyth series, Malcom Pryce

82. Morse stories, Colin Dexter
I've never read the books, but I love the TV series.

83. Navajo Tribal Police stories, Tony Hillerman
These are really wonderful and I've read 'em all.

84. The Ipcress File, Len Deighton
Gosh, I know I've read this, but I can't remember a thing about it.

85. Enigma, Robert Harris
This too. Must mean it's airport reading.

86. Fatherland, Robert Harris

87. The Constant Gardener, John le Carre

88. The House of Cards trilogy, Michael Dobbs

89. The Dark is Rising saga, Susan Cooper
These are great! Wish I'd read them as a kid, when they would have been even better. If you're a fan of Arthurian lit, pick these up.

90. Psychotechnic League and Polesotechnic League series, Poul Anderson
I know of these only by way of reference in Heinlein's Number of the Beast. They were a bit before my time, I think.

91. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
Couldn't put it down.

92. Star Wars: Thrawn trilogy, Timothy Zahn
Better than most of these are. Zahn's a good writer.

93. Ender's Game series, Orson Scott Card
I've gone completely off Card though I used to love his books.

94. Gormenghast series, Meryvn Peake
Dreadful. Even more purple than Howard.

95. Miles Vorkosigan saga, Lois McMaster Bujold

96. The Once and Future King, T.H. White
One of the books that turned me on to Arthurian Lit. The other was the Merlin Series by Mary Stewart.

97. Fighting Fantasy books, Ian Livingston & Steve Jackson

98. The Stainless Steel Rat series, Harry Harrison
They were fun when I read them but haven't held up. Very much a teenage boy series.

99. The Lensman series, E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Another series I know of only through Heilein's Number of the Beast.

100. The Cadfael stories, Ellis Peters
Liked the TV series, but not the books. I don't consider Peters much of a writer.

A Good Book, A Poem, A Wee Dram & the Haggis

Two important writers' birthdays this weekend and I forgot both of 'em until just now: Yesterday was the 127th anniversary of the birth of my favorite woman writer, Virginia Woolf. I've always loved the way she captures thought processes and interior life, and the metaphors she uses to describe it. Here's a little excerpt from my favorite of her books, The Waves to illustrate what I mean. This is Bernard:

". . . I am at liberty now to sink down, deep, into what passes, this omnipresent, general life. . . . I have no ambition. I will let myself be carried on by the general impulse. The surface of my mind slips along like a pale-grey stream reflecting what passes. . . . We insist, it seems on living. Then again, indifference descends. . . . And, what is this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found my self caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar --- forest trees or the roar of wild beasts. . . . beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence."

This is such a beautifully poetic book, full of breathtaking images like the last one. Now I want to read this again.

And today is the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns' birth, generally celebrated by the consumption of haggis and scotch, playing of bagpipes and the recitation of poetry. And though Burns is best known for his Scottish patriotic sentiments as well as for his poems and songs, and for his drinking and swiving, I think he must have had a bit of a gentle heart, if my my favorite poem of his is any indication (this is from the "official" Burns site, so the links to odd Scottish terms go back to their glossary):

To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

*Whimper* Hurting Your Books

I have a confession to make: I once ripped the last chapter out of a book. It was self defense, sorta. One of my cousins used to read the end of the book when she started so she'd know how it turned out. This used to drive me nuts; writers work hard to craft a good story and you shouldn't spoil the experience by reading the ending first. That was my self defense. Okay, that was my justification. A little different, I know.

This Broom Hilda cartoon (click for full-size image) got me thinking about mutilating books, not necessarily in a good way, just that we do it. I try not to break the spines, which my dad was infamous for doing (he'd bend a hardcover right in half to read it).  I've also been known to dog-ear my paperbacks (not my hardcovers). Once, in lieu of studying for a midterm, I indexed my hardcover Chaucer text with little glue-on tabs. I think that qualifies as mutilation. I'm sorry now that I did it, but it was handy at the time. And because I eat while I read, I've managed to get all kinds of things on the pages of my books. My cookbooks show the most damage (I really should get one of those splatter shield cookbook stands), but if I'm in the middle of a good novel, eating spaghetti is not going to stop me from reading it at the table.

But fly guts? I think I draw the line there. That's what newspapers are for.

More Abcedarian Pop-Up Madness

Finally got hold of my own copy of Marion Bataille's ABC3D, which I totally adore and thumbed through over and over again, chortling with delight. Then, being the addict I am, I went hunting for other pop-ups and other abcedarian fare, and stumbled across this gem. It took me once through to actually see what it was, but just as semi-random shapes, it's a a beautiful book, and a whole lotta work, too. On top of that, the soundtrack is an absolute hoot. Enjoy!

Truth Hurts . . .

While there are some flaws in the argument of the following cartoon, I find it both trenchant and reductive, as well as iterative of a previous post and the inherent prejudices of science vs. humanities, vis-à-vis C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures. Good grief, I can't even do critspeak anymore, Thank God. But this does not speak well of my chosen field of interest. I'm glad I'm not doing it for a living anymore.

This comes via the inimitable xkcd.

The Deliciousness of Books

One of my cousins used to drive me crazy by reading the last pages of her book before she'd gotten to the end. Why would I care? Even as a kid, I had a sense of how much work went into constructing a story, how carefully the author had worked to set everything up, build the suspense, and then write an ending that tied everything up. It was just plain cheating to read the end first. Not to mention disrespectful. This, however, is more like it (from the marvelous site Post Secret):

I don't generally approve of mutilating books; it's one of the problems I have with altered books. But I understand the impulse to eat the last page. When we get really involved in a good story, don't we say we "devoured" the book? The metaphors for reading are often similar because reading a good book is as much a sensual experience as eating a good meal. A good book is a feast for the senses.And artist's books, which are so often multimedia phantasmagorias, are especially delectable.

Bon appetit! Go eat, er, read, a good book!

Conspiracy Theory: The NYT Book Review Version

I don't know why I keep reading the NYTimes Book Review with its crappy record of ignoring women's writing (when it's not outright belittling it). I guess I keep hoping that, magically, one day that will change. Then I remind myself that one of the definitions of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels this way about the male literary world though. One of my favorite book blogs, Fade Theory, has a link to an interview with Spanish author Lucia Etxebarria in cafebabel. (I haven't read any of her books as they're currently only available in her native Spanish and in French translations), Etxebarria has been a "journalist, translator, script-writer and has worked in advertising" in addition to writing novels and non-fiction books about pop culture. About male writers, she says,

‘Male artists are artists, female artists are women. That’s the way things work, and they have always been this way. Literature is an even more macho art than others. There’s a border between sentimental literature and virile literature, which should be kept in mind. Male writers are very embedded into their virility, and it’s a threat if we women sell more books than them.’ The former professor at the University of Aberdeen is jokingly blunt. ‘My books sell well and the best part is that I’m blunt, so people categorise me as a lesbian, or in the best case, as an emasculator.’

If it's a given that women writers ≠ artists, and I think it's safe to say that's true, then in that light, you can see the Times's exclusion of women as part of a conspiracy to erase our words. This is especially true with their high toned and highbrow attitude, though they've now condescended to review (gasp!) mass market fiction (and funny how much of that is written by women!), because in trade fiction, women dominate and on the non-fiction best seller list, the proportion of women to men is almost even, too. And yet, this week's perfidy reviews in the Book Review (Sunday, May 25, 2008): books by men: 11/13. 12/13 if you count the one that's co-authored with a woman, even though her name comes first.

Some things never change. But it's good to have somebody say it out loud.