Feb 2, 2011 by

Book Meme

I rarely do memes (lack the attention span) but this one seemed kinda relevant 🙂

1. Favorite childhood book?
Whichever was nearest. I don’t think I developed a concept of ‘favourite book’ until I was in my teens. I think The Dark is Rising Sequence caught me was I was about 12, and The Knowledge of Angels at 13. My favourite’s list on LibraryThing has about 7 books in it, and has had for several years.

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Jan 31, 2011 by

Motivation Monday

Publishing: Harper Collins introduce a morality clause to their contract. These aren’t entirely uncommon in contracts for children’s authors (after one author turned out to be a paedophile…) but it’s still unusual for writers of adult fiction. Ursula K LeGuin writes a wonderfully sarcastic riff on it.

Ole A Imsen picks apart the bad journalism surrounding Amazon’s latest press release.

Interest-Piquing: Body Impolitic, the blog on Laurie Toby Edison’s site, was linked to me recently due to this post on hairstyles, but pretty much all the posts are interesting and thought-provoking (such as Nothing About Us Without Us and Don’t Touch).

InsPiring: Matt Roeser is a graphic design artist, who in his spare time designs covers for books he loves. And they’re gorgeous.

Procrastination: Brad Goodspeed gives things a sense of Scale by showing what the planets would look like if they were the same distance from us as the moon.

In Monday Motivation
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Jan 29, 2011 by

Holiday

So I got back from Amsterdam yesterday, despite a couple of last minute sources of stress. I stuck fairly close to the itinerary in the end 🙂

My hotel room was tiny, and on the fourth floor, but very neat and compact. They were actually doing building work on the floor below, which no one mentioned and made taking the stairs (rather than the very old fashioned lift!) a bit strange: normal flor, normal floor, horror movie set, normal floor…

My first day, Tuesday, I did the Amsterdam Historisch Museum, The Royal Palace, and the Anne Frank Huis, then got lost* in the nightlife district and ended up buying more chips than any one person could eat to keep me going until I found the hotel again.

Wednesday I did the Rijksmuseum and the Diamond Museum, went out for dinner and then ended up chatting with some Oxford Brookes students in the hotel bar and went out drinking with them. We got separated around 2AM, and I got lost** on the way back to the hotel.

Hungover on Thursday, I went to the Van Gogh museum, and went for a walk in Vondelpaark, where I spent a lot of the walk wondering if I was lost or not. I bought a cheese and tomato croissant and an apple pie to eat in my room (along with an apple and an orange I’d smuggled out of the Van Gogh cafe!), which didn’t even have tea&coffee facilities, and definitely wasn’t designed for spending an evening in. I found I had BBC1 and 2, MTV, National Geographic and Comedy Central hidden amongst the Dutch channels, so I kept myself fairly well entertained anyway.

Friday I went on a canal cruise and ended up surrounded by Indian men, who were very nic (and very interested in my marital status) but did prevent me from hearing all of the commentary. Had a quick nose around Coster Diamonds and went to the House of Bols, which was brilliant. They had some little experiements to show you how importnat your eyes and nose are to your sense of taste, the history of the company, and a free cocktail and two shots included in the ticket price. That’s my kind of museum! Went out for dinner again; I was aiming for the Albert Cuyp market, since there’s apparently a lot of good cafes around there, but guess what? I got lost. Ended up having tapas somewhere I haven’t found on a map yet.

I got pretty much no writing done whatsoever, but I did read three books, and I saw some brilliant paintings. As usual, by the last day i was just getting into it properly, and could think of at least two more days’ worth of things to do, but I admit, it was getting a bit wearing being unable to read Dutch (speaking was less of an issue, since absolutely everyone spoke English, though it was faintly embarrassing) and not knowing any of the ‘rules’. Dutch pedestrian crossings are terrifying, cyclists are maniacs, and even after four days I still couldn’t remember which way to look before I crossed!

*This will be something of a theme…

**See? It only gets worse.

In Holidays and Courses
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Jan 24, 2011 by

Motivation Monday, alstublieft

As this posts, I will (hopefully) be on my way to sunny wintery Amsterdam. I plan to see many museums and do a lot of writing. No, honestly. I’ve writetn myself an itinary and everything:

Tuesday
Amsterdam Historisch – 10.00 euros (open 10:00-17:00)
Spui, Dam Square, etc
Anne Frank Huis – 8.50 (9:00-19:00)

Wednesday
Rijksmuseum – 12.50 (9:00-18:00)

Thursday
Diamant museum – 7.50 (9:00-17:00)
Van Gogh – 14.00 (10:00-18:00)

And some kind of canal trip too. I’ve left the final day free in case I think of anything else. Or summon up the dutch courage to try one of the ‘coffeeshops’ 🙂

Anyway, before my motivation disappears entirely, have some Monday still-on-English-soil links!

Publishing: Tesco’s threaten an Irish publisher over a book that came a bestseller without their help. If books appear on ‘traditional’ bookshop shelves before they do on Tesco’s, they say, they’ll stop stocking any of that publisher’s books.

Interest-Piquing: Journalist phones guy who insulted him on twitter. On one level, the idea of it makes me uncomfortable, but on the other hand I’m interested in the reaction he gets. There’s a strong emphasis on anonymity on the internet, not just in terms of commenting but in terms of digging up people’s real life information. It’s not hard to do, especially these days, but it breaches an element of netiquette that’s usually only ignored by trolls. But if it gets a positive response, and gets people to rethink their actions… I still don’t think it’s entirely justified, but it’s definitely interesting.

InsPiring: Alien Hand Syndrome, its causes, and living with it.

Procrastination: The 8 most awkward sexual moments in comics. They’re just… Well, disturbing, mostly. But it’s funny that anyone, ever, thought they were good ideas to put into print.

In Holidays and Courses, Monday Motivation
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Jan 21, 2011 by

Should authors review other authors books?

[poll id=”8″]

This is one of the issues that came up with the whole Decadent debacle. A lot of authors blog, or use LibraryThing or GoodReads, and a lot of that nifty Web 2.0 content* they’re generating happens to be in review form.

So at what point does doing so become a professional concern? I’ve tried to list the obvious points on a potential scale above. I think most people would agree that personal relationships should at least be disclosed, but I’ve seen several arguments for not reviewing at all over the past few weeks. These range from variations on ‘The Cult of Nice’** to the idea reviews take time away from ‘real’ writing. One of the more common arguments is that writing negative reviews of contemporary authors’ books (especially in the same genre) could be construed as jealousy or an attempt to sabotage their sales. Another line taken is that it may harm your chances with the publisher or editor of the reviewed book.

A lot of these arguments had never even occured to me. I’d probably avoid an explicit review of an author from the same publishing company, though I’d still click those little stars. Though I don’t know all of Loose Id’s authors personally, I do chat to some of them on the author loop, and I’m not sure I’d be comfortable giving an honest review (I tend to believe no review is better than a dishonest review).

Peer review is massively important in other forms of publishing, but in fiction, it seems, people get a bit squeamish. Do reviews carry more weight for you if they’re by an author, or less? If you are/were published, where do you draw the line, and why?

*Sorry, was talking about 2.0 the other day. Mainly as in ‘why would people providing the content your site relies on be willing to pay you for the privilege of doing so?’ It’s got to be worth the user’s while. Anyway, digression for another time.

** “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” It seems common in most tight-knit genres, but Romance does appear to be particularly bad for it.

In Polls
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