New work from an old friend: Stephenson’s Anathem
By jim | October 2, 2008
I like big tales. A fat book allows an author more chances to fail, I think, than to excel. But a big story well told transports you to a new world, at least for a while. Still, I must admit I approached Neal Stephenson’s new book, Anathem (just over 900 pages) with a little trepidation.
I love Stephenson: I’ve been a fan since Snow Crash, and dedged up Zodiac and The Big U, and have read pretty much everything since. He’s a sharp writer, but (like many of the sharp folks I know) has some flaws. In the beginning, Neal Stephenson could not write an ending. The books had a tendency to end quite abruptly, in my humble opinion. It was like sitting down to a favorite meal, and having your plate taken away after three bites. “But, but, what happened to…?” Even in Cryptonomicon, which I regard highly, the ending fell flat.
Like most writers I admire, Mr. Stephenson has changed and grown. The last few books have shown increasing sophistication (and length!). After 2600 pages, I thought the Baroque Cycle had a quite satisfactory ending. It also had some of the most entertaining prose I’ve ever read (mixed in with several passages that nearly drove me off) and some great characters. I know he’s a smart guy, and he works hard researching his novels. But really, it’s a stretch to give me too many details about mercury mining in the Harz mountains in the seventeenth century. “More than I wanted to know” kicks in after the second page. A good friend told me I was whining, it really wasn’t that bad, but I think the point remains: Neal’s writing can be very uneven, and with an average page count of 900 over the last four volumes, I’m starting to think he needs a meaner editor.
On the other hand, the interesting life of the Vagabond King is one terrific tale. The elephant battle made me actually guffaw out loud, and the IQ test is priceless. His intelligent worldview, geek humor, and fun yarn spinning are a rare combination. So, with these bona fides out of the way…
Anathem is set on another world, similar to our own in many ways, but with a much different history. The main characters are what we would consider monks, living lives of scholarship is cloisters removed from the secular world. The cloisters are categorized by how often the open their doors to the public: once a year, once a decade, once a century, or once a millenium. Obviously, these monks (or avout, as they refer to themselves) take a longer view of history. Their culture has been technological for much longer than ours, and the monasteries (or concents) exist through the ebb and fall of governments and nations with explicit exemption from secular laws and concerns.
Developing this setting takes around 150 pages. The prose is good, not brilliant, and it runs to the expository, which is to say, a trifle dull. My initial reaction was, “My good, in learning how to write an ending, Neal has forgotten how to write a beginning!” Once the story took off, I came to the opinion that the story really needed this complex setting. The book as a whole is a fine tale well told, but it does tend to wander off into philosophical tangents on a regular basis. This is good and bad: the history of philosophy is mapped onto an entirely different culture, including new names for the same idea. I can’t think of a single writer besides Neal Stephenson who would have a prayer of pulling this off. “Occam’s Razor” becomes “Gardan’s Steelyard.” Some of the mapping is immediately recognizable, but significant chunks of it are above my pay grade.
I’m not a spoiler kind of guy, so I won’t go into the plot. The avout become involved in secular affairs, and our protagonist is in the center of it. Frau Erasmus is a likeable, believable character, and we follow him through a very eventful period in his life. He changes, learns, and grows straight out of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’ Journey. Many of the rest of the characters in the book come off a bit flat in contrast.
Surprisingly, a quick rehash of western philosophy up to quantum theory doesn’t kill the book, though at least for me, it leaves a few bruises. If you like metaphysics with your action, or action with your metaphysics, this book is for you. It is thoughtful, intelligent, and well crafted. Most folks will leave it with a deeper appreciation of quantum theory, scholarship, and a long view of human affairs. They will also leave it entertained. I give it four and a half spheres (out of five) with an asterisk.
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Fall Movie Line-up: A Literary Feast
By catherine | September 30, 2008
I absolutely love the entire experience of going to movie theatres: the smell of fake butter on popcorn, the plush but squeaky seats, the adorable little lights to guide your way down the aisles, the previews, and even the ridiculously high ticket prices. Nothing can keep me away from the silver screen, especially with some of the literary gems that have been adapted for movie releases this fall. Here are just a few titles you might want to check out yourself:
The Duchess (opened in theaters September 19)
Starring Keira Knightley, Ralph Feinnes, Charlotte Rampling, Dominic Cooper, Hayley Atwell, Simon McBurney, this film is oozing talent, gorgeous sets and costumes and of course, a dramatic story. Based on Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, Knightley stars as the title character who was one of the founding leaders of the Whig Party, as well as a social sensation.
Blindness (September 26)
Jose Saramago’s masterpiece Blindness is now a Brazilian film starring Julianne Moore as the only woman who can see in a city devastated by blindness. After the “white sickness” spreads throughout the city, people who are blind are rounded up and hauled off to an asylum to “quarantine” the victims. One woman pretends to be blind in order to remain close to her husband who is in the asylum, and she helps seven people escape–but how will they survive, and is there a cure? From Nobel Prize-winning author Saramago and director Fernando Meirelles comes the story of humanity in the grip of an epidemic. Also starring Mark Ruffalo, Alice Braga and Gael Garcia Bernal.
Choke (September 26)
If you liked Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, you’ll love Choke, which looks to be a promising movie adaptation, too. Victor Mancini is a sex-addicted med-school dropout who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private medical hospital by playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Danny, and his mother’s beautiful physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.
Miracle at St. Anna (September 26)
A cast of virtual unknowns (Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller and Matteo Sciabordi), this adaptation from the book of the same name by James McBride is directed by Spike Lee. It chronicles the story of four black American soldiers who are members of the U.S. Army as part of the all-black 92nd “Buffalo Soldier” Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II. Hints of “Saving Private Ryan” appear as the group of soldiers are separated from their division when one of them goes on a mission to protect a young Italian boy.
Nights in Rodanthe (September 26)
In the romantic drama Nights in Rodanthe, Adrienne (Diane Lane), a woman with her life in chaos, retreats to the tiny coastal town of Rodanthe, in the outer banks of North Carolina, to tend to a friend’s inn for the weekend. A storm blows in, as well as a handsome doctor (Richard Gere). It’s a romance that only author Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) can conjure on the silver screen.
The Road (November 26)
Last year, Cormac McCarthy saw his novel The Road stamped by Oprah’s Book Club, and get optioned for a feature film. In the meantime, his other book No Country for Old Men was released on theatre screens across the country, and became widely popular. The movie adaptation of The Road is here with John HIllcoat (The Proposition) directing. The movie definitely has a great cast (Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron) and a provocative (if depressing) subject: the end of the world.
Revolutionary Road (December 26)
Based on the classic 1960s novel by Richard Yates and directed by “American Beauty” genius Sam Mendes , Revolutionary Road is about a young married couple who are unhappy despite living seemingly picture-perfect lives in the suburbs. The book was nominated for the 1962 National Book Award) and stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, partnering together for a second time since their roles in “Titanic” eleven years ago.
Topics: Fun, Reading | 3 Comments »
Have you ever been ’sheeped’?
By allen | September 12, 2008
OK–advance discalimer–this is not a post about fraternity hazing.
I read Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase a few months ago and the striking images and unsettling moods evoked by this novel have continued coming to mind ever since. Like one of the characters from the novel who develops a strange obsession with sheep, I can’t seem to shake this book. I learned a new word: ’sheeped’. Seems to have the original meaning of a stupefying affliction developed by some shepherds after a long season with their sheep, the effect of which is to make one both sheep-like in affect and strangely drawn to to he herd. Murakami stretches this notion to a metaphysical level and slowly, page by page, tears down the ontological barrier between human and sheep.
That unexpected foray into the world of the deeply sheeped and the protagonist’s strange obsession with ears made the book a bit difficult for me to get into at first, but it slowly took hold of me. The ending left me utterly perplexed in a way that no book has done in years. Now months after putting it down, it is still whispering in my ear. What more could one ask of a novel?
I think I have to read it again.
Topics: Book Collecting, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Open Source Textbooks: Menace AND Blessing?
By jim | September 11, 2008
I came across an interesting intersection of the worlds of Book and Geek yesterday. Previous rants in this space have discussed in detail the cost of textbooks, and how that impacts the poor and worthy demographic of students. On the other end of the spectrum, the state of Virginia has released a Request for Collaboration to assist in developing an open source physics textbook. You can find more about this here.
Virginia is aiming to compile materials for teaching 21st century physics. They use the word “supplemental,” implying that the initial target may not be as a primary source. Their partner, the CK-12 Foundation, is a non-profit with the mission to create a collaborative authoring environment to enable the creation of customizable, open educational content.
This is interesting: exciting and vaguely scary at the same time. My roots in open source are pretty deep. I’m a believer in Linux, and dozens of other open source projects and tools. Wikipedia comes to mind as an awesome resource. Making education freely available to more people is A Good Thing.
But if you imagine the trend taken to the extreme, the kids all get their free books from KindleLand, and bookselling as we know it disappears from the face of the earth.
As a longtime techwatcher, I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, change doesn’t usually occur as fast as we anticipate. Second, our initial ideas about replacement technologies are usually wrong. New tech doesn’t simply erase old tech. Instead, it carves out a new niche, that partly consumes and partly complements the existing base. Eight track tapes aside, co-existence, whether uneasy or not, is more the norm that simple replacement.
Another point is that textbooks are inherently different that reading or collecting books for pleasure. I suspect that students view most textbooks more as a tool than as something desired. If an online textbook gets the job done, especially for less time, money and hassle, more power to it. But an online book will never grace your bookshelves nearly the same way as weill a coveted first edition.
So, online texts, whether open or not, may well one day replace “book as repository of information.” But I think it will be a long time before online books encroach on the market for “book as object of desire.” Viva Libre!
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ReCAPTCHA’s so cool…
By hemphill | September 10, 2008
My afternoon has been spent trying to stop spam in Biblio.com’s forums. Stopping spam is usually a thankless job. Today it was fun.
ReCAPTCHA is an interesting take on proving you are human. It displays two words from pages that could not be OCR’d. One word is known and the other is not. Each user enters both words, if the known word is correct the user is approved. Additionally the unknown word has a good chance of being correct. Once several people have agreed on the unknown word you can have confidence that it is correct.
The reCAPTCHA system makes proving you are human of benefit, currently they are using pages from the Internet Archive and old editions of the New York times. For me, it made my day a little more interesting. I hope that use of the reCAPTCHA system catches on, it could make a large number of old documents accessible.
Topics: Biblio.com, Fun, libraries | No Comments »
What’s in a book?
By brendan | August 29, 2008
Anyone who’s ever worked in a bookstore has stories to tell of the bizarre stuff they find in books. Sometimes you’ll find funny pictures of people in outdated clothing (usually stuck inside of yesterday’s bestseller thriller), receipts for the purchase of the book (boring), dollar bills (now we’re talking), love notes, unsent postcards or bad poety. Mostly, one gets used to seeing copies of the Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein with adoring inscriptions: “I’ll love you forever/I’ll be your giving tree” hawked off by semi-guilty-feeling ex’s who didn’t quite reciprocate the sentiment.
For the curious and bold, Brookline Booksmith has put together an interesting archive of stuff found in books. Highly recommended.
Topics: Bookselling, Fun | No Comments »
Laying siege to your local library
By brendan | August 26, 2008
Make no mistake, in the world of books, there is no idyllic indian summer. No lazy dog days’ afternoons. No sweet corn harvest. No last minute dash to the coast. For this is the beginning of the Library Sale Wars. This is the time that tries the souls of booklovers. The violent forge of destiny. The separation of the wheat from the… ahem. Hyperbole aside, those who’ve attended library sales – and lived to tell the tale – know exactly what I mean.
So, in preparation for your meeting with destiny, I have prepared for you 5 tried and true battle tactics to help guarantee yourself the lion’s share of the spoils, all distilled from observing real life heroes on the fields of glory:
- Enlist a very large person to help. Ideally this person should (arms and legs expanded) span the majority of a four foot shelf, and be the classic “immoveable object.” In a pinch, you can substitute two medium sized lovers with a propensity to keep one hand in the back pocket of the other at all times. The important thing is to secure the territory as quickly and effectively as possible, preventing anyone else from seeing the books. Since you’ll arm them with a barcode scanner, they don’t need to know anything about books, just need to be big, dumb and willing - like Lennie from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Block, scan, pick. Next shelf. Block, scan, pick.
- Have many kids, or hire a kindergarten class for the day. They’re light, quick, good at knocking people off balance, causing headaches, and occasionally charming a would-be formidable foe’s attention away from the stacks. If you can get some younger ones who aren’t quite potty-trained, all’s the better. Read Oliver Twist, and study the great Master Fagin for inspiration.
- Go for the scatter shot approach. Indiscriminately grab all you can as fast as you can so that you can squat on your can for the rest of the sale in the corner with your cellphone scanner and mountain of books . Don’t forget you must cast alternatively furtive, hostile, and baleful looks at people who come near your pile. Hissing helps. To achieve the proper affectation, I suggest studying literary characters such as Gollum, Ebeneezer Scrooge, and the Thénardiers from Les Miserables.
- Volunteer to help in advance of the sale. This is the classic Trojan Horse tactic. They’ll love you, adore you for the help you provide. And, when they’re least suspecting, you can comb through before the sale and stick all of the best “scores” on the business books shelf. When the doors open, everyone will laugh at you as you scurry off to explore old copies of Dale Carnegie and Napolean Hill, but you’ll be the one laughing as you surreptitiously box up your signed first edition of Blood Meridian. I can’t think of a literary character to inspire you off-hand, but I can imagine that Dante has a few spares floating around somewhere in his Inferno.
- Using your boxes, construct battlements at either end of the aisle. Naturally, the hordes will immediately begin to lay siege to your fortress, but you can often forestall the waves by hurling book club editions in their general direction, under the pretense of “tossing them into your boxes.” Another, more clever way of holding your outer walls is this: amass a small collection of boring modern first editions like How to Make an American Quilt or The Bridges of Madison County and place them in the top boxes (which are left seductively half-open). The scanner people are particularly taken by these; they’re shiny, and the barcode scanner says the average price is high (by their standards), but you happen to know that nobody ever actually buys that stuff. Should buy you enough time to go for the real booty. Be warned, though, you’ll actually have to know something about books to pull this one off….
Seriously though, these things are a bloodbath, and libraries are hemorrhaging potential revenue (and patron good will) unless they start reforming. So, here are some ideas for friends of the library organizations to reform and run a more efficient, profitable, and fair sale for everyone. Some libraries take advantage of some of these, but not all:
- Ban the use of cellphones, scanners and price lookup devices on the premises. Or, perhaps ban them at least until the final day of the sale.
- Institute a pay by the box as you go policy. No more piles of boxes with blankets wrapped around them and wary people standing guard. You take one box, fill it up, and pay. Then you get another box and do the same. Meanwhile, all boxes left unattended (blankets or no) are subject to being immediately reshelved.
- Open the sale for a preview night, charge an admission fee, and let people select no more than 25 books. For these books, they put in a sealed envelope bid. No one can simply purchase on preview night. This helps the library get a better price for potentially valuable books that have been overlooked. Winning bidder gets the book.
- Enlist a local bookseller to assist with pricing on higher end books. To make it worth their while, and avoid conflicts of interest, offer to pay them a small commission on sales of all those books at the conclusion of the sale.
- Don’t make all the stock immediately available when the sale opens. Too many libraries do this, and must resort to $1 bag pricing on subsequent days. Make your inventory as good for the people coming on the third day as on the first. This lets the sale maintain price integrity.
As I say, just a couple of ideas for friends of the library groups to consider. I’d love to hear any others people may have, or if you know of a library that’s doing a good job with balancing revenues and patron goodwill. Its been years since I’ve been able to endure a library booksale, but would love to return some day when they look a little less like the Gaza strip.
Topics: Bookselling, Uncategorized, libraries | No Comments »
Seven words you can’t upload
By jim | August 22, 2008
Many of us older than compact discs (they turned 26 yesterday, hooray) remember George Carlin’s classic comedy routine, Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV. The routine was controversial, memorable, and (at least to me) quite hilarious. Carlin’s routine has recently come to mind here at Biblio World Headquarters, as we’ve realized that certain large search and shopping sites have begun to censor file uploads. Files with records deemed inappropriate are dropped.
So we thought it might be of interest to folks to hear what kind of words are being dropped from searches. Introducing, The Partial and Incomplete List of Banned Words:
- casino
- balisong
- vibrator
- salvia divinorum
- faux passeports
- designer knockoff
- anabolic steroid
And announcing the Special Bonus Auxiliary Word:
- anal
This one has caused more than it’s share of troubles, because the words Analysis and Analytic are often abbreviated to Anal. I would make the effort not to use this as an abbreviation. It frequently shows up in foreign titles as well.
We’ve identified a few more, but I think that gets the point across. Our products are books, and books with these words in the title will become harder to find using the general purpose search engines. There is an appeal process, but the sheer volume of titles we deal with makes it difficult to tackle this on any kind of case by case basis. Books that we’ve seen dropped include mysteries, medical texts, and texts of significant historical value. Along with a slew of books providing advice on gambling.
I have mixed feelings on censorship. The founding fathers rightly feared it. As a parent, I think there should be areas that are more kid-friendly than a pop-culture that has become increasingly gutter-mouthed. Commercial sites have the right and probably the responsibility to maintain minimum standards of decency, and to adhere to statutes regarding commerce. But when decisions about what is morally acceptable are made in secret, with no discussion, that also becomes worrisome.
One last thing: it might just be bad luck to be an author with the last name of “Gambling.”
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Books, Thieves, Churches and Stupidity
By catherine | August 22, 2008
Yes, they’re all connected in this breaking news story from the Asheville Citizen-Times.
Haywood County Sheriff’s chief detectives continue investigating a series of burglaries Tuesday night (August 19) near the intersection of N.C. 209 and Old Clyde Road in Waynesville, NC. They believe the five break-ins are connected. Thieves targeted three churches and two businesses.
Items stolen from churches included computers, sound equipment, and even a wheelchair to help the thieves transport bulkier items. In one of the churches, Long’s Chapel United Methodist Church, the thieves found a book in a safe. They carried the book out along with other items, but later tossed it into a nearby creek. After all, it was just a book. Right?
What they didn’t know was that the book was a first edition, signed copy of Gone With The Wind.
Rare book specialist Chan Gordon, owner of the Captain’s Bookshelf in Asheville, said the book was probably worth between $2,000 to $15,000 — depending on its condition — before it was tossed into the water.
The Sheriff’s Office has two teenagers in custody in connection with the burglaries, and expects more arrests to follow. Deputies on Thursday also charged the teens with breaking into Lake Junaluska Golf Course earlier this month, Bryson said.
Topics: Book Collecting, Reading | No Comments »
By frieda | August 18, 2008
When you spend a lot of time looking at books like commodities, as I do in our business, sometimes you sort of forget that the books have things in them. Things like information, sometimes true and sometimes false, heartrending, well-told stories and trite, really badly told stories. When I go home and pass my bookshelf I don’t think of those books the same way I do looking at order details. If I’m looking at order details all I want to know is when did it ship, is it late, how was it paid for. I’m starting to ignore titles and authors and no longer respect the passion the customer was in when she got out her credit card and ordered the book. Maybe it was a book from childhood that she was finally able to find after long years of searching. Maybe it’s a gift, or it was written by the customer’s grandfather who passed a very long time ago. Of course we invest ourselves in our book choices, and often the book itself evokes so much emotion that the price doesn’t even matter.
I know you hate it when your orders are late and the USPS doesn’t care if you are waiting on tenterhooks for the package to arrive in the mail. Maybe you paid the seller a lot of extra money to get there fast but your UPS driver took a wrong turn that day and ended up lost two neighborhoods away from you. Maybe you got home from work and saw the attempted delivery slip on the door and broke into tears of purest frustration. That darn book just won’t get where it’s supposed to go and you can’t believe that the bookseller, the post office or the web-site you ordered it on (even God) cannot be of any help you.
Of course I get asked about these things pretty often, working as I do for Biblio.com; I seem to know quite a few book-lovers and college students who have suffered all the aforementioned frustrations. Once they find out I work for a used book marketplace, I’m the natural sounding board and source of information. “How can I make sure these things don’t happen?”, they ask me, eyes void of optimism.
Because I am also armed with the knowledge that thousands of book orders arrived safely and in a timely manner everyday, I do know a thing or two, or more, about successful orders. Here are some of the best things you can do for yourself if you really really want that book on time, or at least to be sure that you are promptly refunded if it doesn’t work out:
1. Order WAY in advance, especially if you need it for school, a birthday, anniversary, or anything time-sensitive. Many booksellers dealing in large volume with textbook orders find themselves a bit overwhelmed at this time of year, causing orders to be shipped out later than usual. Delivery estimates are in general quite realistic, but are still only estimates; there’s no way for the seller to know for sure if it’s going to get to you within the time frame specified. Your order may run late, despite the seller’s best efforts. So place your time-sensitive orders four to six weeks before the day you need them, sooner if the book is coming from overseas and you do not want to pay for expedited shipping. Incidentally, you’ll run into fewer problems with books running out of stock this way too.
2. Ask the seller to insure it. If the book is an expensive purchase for you, if it is very rare, if you have been looking for a copy for ten years, let the bookseller know that you want it insured and that you are willing to pay for the insurance.
3. Make sure you can’t actually get that book from a local bookstore instead, even if it is not exactly the edition you are looking for. You might pay more for book price, but you won’t pay for shipping, and you won’t have to wait. You can find booksellers in your area by clicking on the “Booksellers” tab on the Biblio.com home page. We don’t mind if you walk to your local store to buy it, even if we are an online marketplace. We truly do wish to encourage and be supportive of locally owned businesses. We really mean it, and we love actually being in a real bookstore.
4. Check to see if the bookseller automatically purchases delivery confirmation when shipping orders. Many sellers do not when shipping via standard mail because there is an additional fee involved. E-mail the bookseller and let them know that you are willing to compensate for the cost of adding delivery confirmation and/or tracking information. Incidentally, domestic expedited shipments generally include tracking as a matter of course.
5. Get to know your bookseller. If you have found a book or two in that seller’s inventory already, or if you have already had a positive experience ordering from that seller, check out their inventory first when you are looking for your next book. There’s nothing like being a regular. I’m not promising anything, but often you will receive more thoughtful service.
I’d be happy to have feed-back on this post, especially from booksellers. Let us know what you would do to make sure you got your orders on time and in good shape. You probably know much more about shipping books than I do, no matter how smart I am.
Topics: Biblio.com, Uncategorized | No Comments »
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