Literature

Thoughts on BookCamp Toronto 2010

August 3 Comments

This past Saturday a bunch of local and not-so-local book folks got together for BookCamp Toronto 2010, an “unconference,” which I think is a buzzword for conferences that have seminars rather than lectures or presentations. Most of the sessions were like that: lots of conversation around a particular topic with a moderator (or moderators) keeping things moving. I was a little rusty, but felt at home in almost no time at all. Most of my university courses followed that format, and I was very, very good at university (much better than at this whole grown-up, working-for-a-living thing—that’s why I was so gung-ho about becoming a professor—some people can work a party, some people can work a phone line or a sales floor: I can work a classroom). But in all seriousness, I hope that I was able to add something to the discussion for others. I attended the following sessions:… Continue Reading →

Do Books Need to be “Social”?

August Leave a Comment

Social media isn’t going away. Anyone arguing that isn’t paying attention or is just straight up not very bright. Everything is “going social”. Services like Facebook and Twitter, when coupled with the rise in popularity and greater affordability of mobile computing are making it easier for folks to stay connected to one another over long distances, and to feel like they have a relationship with their favourite brands, celebrities, media outlets, whatever. In some ways it’s a marketer’s wet dream. There’s this idea that social media, or the social web, or whatever you want to call it, is about making direct connections between people rather than, say, connections between dumb web pages and PDF documents and what have you. This dichotomy is true if you think of the Internet as being largely made up of automated, corporate-controlled, business-centred websites and tools. Accurate statistics have always been hard to come by,… Continue Reading →

Called It

August Leave a Comment

Do you remember last year when I complained about the absolutely dismal coverage of Richard Flanagan’s speech (among other things), because I thought the Australian and Canadian markets had some things in common and maybe, just maybe, the things Flanagan was worried about might have implications for us here in Canada, and that maybe we should talk about what setting that kind of a precedent meant? You know, before it became so urgent that we might panic and do something stupid. Do you remember that? I remember that. Well, I fucking told you so. It’s still not too late to have the (public, reasoned, analytical) conversation we should have had a year ago, but it’s coming down to the wire. Any of you boys and girls in the press want to actually step the fuck up this time?

Bam! Pow! Thung!

August Leave a Comment

So Ken Auletta wrote this thing in the New Yorker about ebooks. I’m feeling kind of schizophrenic about it: I want to talk about it, and I want very badly to not talk about it at all. I don’t know much about him, but in the Washington Post, Jack Shafer said, “I dare you to name a more plugged-in media and communications technology reporter than New Yorker staff writer Ken Auletta,” and I can’t decide if he’s being serious or not. A quick look at Auletta’s books tells us that, in long form at least, he’s not a media/tech writer at all, but rather a business writer who happens to write about the the business of media and technology, which is whole other fucking box of frogs, and is a nuance Shafer, as a reporter who specializes in calling out other reporters for lack of rigor (coughmonkeyfishingcough) probably should understand.… Continue Reading →

Doctorow’s Syndrome

August 1 Comment

The behaviour of those suffering from Doctorow’s Syndrome is characterized by the obsessive need to share information—regardless of the value of that information or the utility of sharing it—for the purpose of asserting their moral superiority. Though rarely contagious, frequent exposure to patients suffering from Doctorow’s Syndrome may result in a reaction known as The Hobbes Effect. Treatment consists of regular aural or written applications of the phrase, “shut the fuck up already, Cory.”

What’s Wrong With Iron Council

August Leave a Comment

This is not a post about the Bechdel test, nor The Frank Miller test (dramatised here), aka the How To Tell If A Male Science Fiction Writer Is Obsessed With Whores Test. This post is not actually about gender representations at all. It does, weirdly, come from my having just read a post that is kind of, sort of, about those things. You see, a while back I wrote about China Miéville’s novel, Iron Council, and I had some trouble explaining exactly what was wrong with it, stylistically speaking. What I wrote was: Events that would later be referenced with specificity were described with a dream-like vagueness that often made it difficult to figure out just what the hell was going on. It felt like he was in such a hurry to move the plot forward that he ignored the mechanics of his prose. In addition, he once again made… Continue Reading →

Goings On

August Leave a Comment

My eyelids are heavy and my hands are cold for no apparent reason because I left the window open and this is a basement apartment wherein the heating is controlled by someone in an apartment the heat rises to rather than from, so what we have here is just a “hey, I’m alive” post for those of you that don’t follow my ramblings on Twitter. There will be no e-books post this weekend, because apparently there’s some holiday called “Easter” coming up, and I’m going to be out of town visiting family, which is the sort of thing I do on holidays. Not having a laptop or other portable computing solution makes posting while out of town a touch difficult. On a related note, there won’t be any post on the Jeff Rubin book for a while either; I’m taking extra care reading it because I think it will help… Continue Reading →

It’s Not Just A Good Idea, It’s the Law

August 4 Comments

If there’s anything folks love to do on the Internet, it’s talk and argue, argue and talk. Anyone who spends enough time online will, whether they know it or not, eventually run into Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. There are numerous variations and corollaries, and after eleven years of talking about books and with Book People, both in person and online (including an absolutely epic party last night, thrown by the one and only Julie Wilson), I’ve come up with a corollary of my own*. I hereby present you with August’s Corollary to Godwin’s Law: As an English-language literary discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving William Shakespeare, James Joyce, or Ulysses approaches 1. *What finally tipped the scales for formulating the Corollary was Perdita Felicien’s appearance on Canada Reads.

God Bless You, Charlie Stross

August Leave a Comment

Last June I followed all of the BookCampToronto posts on Twitter, and read as many of the follow-ups and round-ups and blog posts dissecting it afterward as I could. Most of them focused on e-books and social media and various technologies (though I’m sure there were other things discussed at the “uncoference”—is it okay that I don’t like terms like “unconference?” ’cause I really don’t), which are still the hot topics in the publishing industry. Ever since then I’ve wanted to collect all my thoughts and opinions about e-books into a single coherent post. The problem is that even after almost ten months of turning them over in my head, I’m still not sure I really know what all my thoughts and opinions are. Clearly it’s time to start writing. I’m going to try to have something for you by the end of next week, but there’s been so much… Continue Reading →

#13 – Fear of Fighting, by Stacey May Fowles

August 1 Comment

I bought Fear of Fighting in early 2009 after reading Be Good, a pretty good debut novel that wasn’t perfect, but took some risks and showed that Fowles is an author with a lot of promise. I want to say that I put off reading it until now because I was really busy, or because it was lost on my ridiculous fucking coffee table (which is partly true), but what actually happened is that I got stuck living Marnie’s life. I never bothered to read the synopsis on the back cover when I bought it—I generally don’t when buying a book by an author whose other work I’ve enjoyed—but when Zoe Whittall described it for The Post as “a good non-cliché-ridden mental illness narrative,” I almost wanted to put it off forever. I do not enjoy mental illness narratives largely because I have yet to encounter one that isn’t chock-a-block… Continue Reading →