Archive for the “Books” category
Again with the e-books
by Pete on June 1, 2010
Reading a Wired.com article about last week’s BookExpo America, I was pretty excited to see this: Ultimately, consumers want freedom, said David Shanks, chief executive of leading publisher Penguin Group USA. “Our fondest wish is that all the devices become (…)
The great big library in the sky
by Pete on June 1, 2010
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo posted on Saturday about the apparent death of his Kindle. Although I have been thinking on and off about getting a Kindle myself, my knee-jerk response was “See, that would never be a problem (…)
Enough with the stupid “Story arcs are bad” stuff, already
by Pete on September 5, 2009
Io9 published a story a week or so ago entitled “What’s the Matter With Story Arcs on Television?” It starts out: Used to be, your television heroes explored the edges of the universe and confronted unimaginable nightmares. And then they’d (…)
Yes, but the Scarlet Letter still sucks
by Pete on September 4, 2009
This past Sunday, the New York Times published a story about a number of teachers who are trying the novel idea of letting students pick what they want to read, rather than forcing them to read a predetermined list of (…)
Yes, please make it difficult for readers to get to you content
by Pete on July 26, 2008
Grr. There is a pretty interesting video story on the front page of the New York Times website right now. The title is “A Family of Readers”, and the gist of it is that while the two parents read a (…)
American Gods and free books
by Pete on April 6, 2008
I purchased Neil Gaiman’s American Gods last week. I’m currently about 150 pages in, and am finding it to be pretty good so far. So what, you’re asking. Well, the reason I now own the book (which is about seven (…)
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
by Pete on January 2, 2007
Having little interest in cowboy fiction or anything that even vaguely resembles cowboy fiction, I had never read any of Cormac McCarthy’s books. They always seem to be purchased by late-little-aged men, alongside Patrick O’Brian and Wallace Stegner novels, and (…)
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
by Pete on December 28, 2006
I just finished reading Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. Originally published in 1998, Cloudsplitter is a historical novel narrated by Owen Brown, one of the few sons of radical abolitionist John Brown to survive the latter’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. (…)
Brilliance Through Obfuscation, or, Another Example of Why Most Contemporary Fiction Sucks
by Pete on September 18, 2006
While perusing the new hardcover table at the local bookstore yesterday, I was disappointed to discover that Mark Z. Danielewski has a new book out, Only Revolutions. Mr. Danielewski is the author of House of Leaves, a virtually unreadable post-modern (…)
So long, Pol Pot.
by Pete on August 30, 2006
I finally finished Phillip Short’s bio of Pol Pot. The end was somewhat unsatisfying, in that it seemed to rush through the last fifteen years of Pol’s life and then trail off. However, since Pol’s life (and that of his (…)