Weird books

Oedipus in Disneyland? Really? I found these gems at Abe Books's Weird Book Room. Checkit.

Found

There is a book which my dad and I have Arguments over. (This isn't too surprising, since my dad and I have arguments over a lot of things. Arguing with each other is one of our Favourite Pastimes. This particular arument, however, is a Recurring Argument.) The Argument is entirely my fault, but don't tell my dad I said that.

Here's the thing: my dad owns a book entitled The Complete Evaporated History of the World Since the Dawn of Time. It was published in 1984, and I adore it. I use it for reference, you see, because unlike every other book of history I have ever read, I have Excellent Recall of Everything in This Book. I can quote it verbatim. It helps me keep history in order inside my head.

My dad rarely looks at said book, and so a couple of years ago the Natural Order of Things caused the book to become appropriated to my own collection. It has lived on my bookshelf ever since.

My dad doesn't like this, since the book is His and he suspects that I intend to take it with me when I move out (he's not wrong there). This is how the Arguments came about.

BUT NOW! Praise be, I have discovered the wonder of online shopping. In particular, YOU CAN BUY OUT OF PRINT BOOKS ONLINE! I've ordered myself a copy of The Book for the Princely Sum of $12. So now, all that's left is for me to share some quotes with you, my dear readers, so you too can agonise over the fact that you do not own this gem:


"We know all about the Egyptians because they wrote their history on the wall in a secret language. Unforunately, they then forgot the language, so it was all a bit of a waste."

"Julius Ceasar invented a new sort of calendar, which was exatly the same length as a year. This may not sound very clever, by there has to be a first time for everything."

"A small problem arose over a loosely-worded commandment which said THOU SHALT NOT KILL."

"The Inquisition came down heavily against materialism. ... Thus proper civilisation came to America, while crass materialism was shipped back to Spain."

"When the French heard about the American revolution, they said 'Ah-ha' in French, and decided that they would like to revolve too."



P.S. Please disregard the Inappropriate Capital Letters in this post. I'm just in That Sort of Mood.

Some random thoughts

Why do most fiction authors fall into the first half of the alphabet? Or, to be precise, in A-M?

I've worked in books for eight years and as long as I can remember, three quarters of the fiction shelves in each workplace have been taken up by A-M, with N-Z squashed into the final quarter and dominated by Jodi Picoult and Wilbur Smith.

Is there some natural law which makes people with surnames beginning with A-M more talented? Do authors choose pseudonyms in the first half of the alphabet so that they will appear earlier in catalogues? Are there simply more surnames overall which begin with A-M? Or do book buyers scroll through lists of possible purchases starting at A and run out of money at N?

The biography section is evenly divided between A-L and M-Z. Every fiction section (general fiction, classics, speculative fiction) is skewed. I'd like to know why.


In other thoughts, now that I've decided to get myself a e-reader for study purposes I'm a bit frustrated to find that many of the text books I need are more expensive in e-book form than they are in paperback. It would be handy to carry all my text books around with me, but am I really willing to shell out an extra $20 per book?

I understand that the cost of producting e-books is nowhere near as low as most consumers estimate. Scott Westerfeld in his blog about Macmillan vs. Amazon explains:

"All discussions of this event will draw commenters who think they magically know how books should be priced, and who say there is no reason for electronic editions to be more than $9.99. A quick note to them: You don’t know what you’re talking about. Seriously, your back-of-the-envelope calculations are crap. The printing costs of a book are generally between 3% and 10% of list price. So in most cases, 10% should be your “first-printing” e-book discount, not 50%. That may seem weird to you, but that’s because all the cheap stuff on the internet is backlist (like Baen Books), subsidized/coerced (like Amazon), self-published (no editing or marketing costs), or promotional (like when I gave Uglies away for free). Yes, the “long tail” of backlist books may become very cheap, or free, but not the new stuff, which is what this discussion is all about."

But still. I don't want to pay more for an e-book. I'm a reluctant convert. I'm still getting used to the idea of having e-books.

Here's a bright idea: why don't publishers of text books offer hard-copy/e-book bundles? At, say, $10 more than the paperback price? Now that I'd be willing to pay for. I could highlight to my heart's content and carry around a light, easy reference tool.

Instructions Book Trailer

Have you heard of book trailers?

I hadn't, either, until I stumbled across a reference to them on another blog recently. Which makes you wonder: what's the point?

Anhyhow, here's the trailer from HarperKids for the latest Gaiman / Vess collaboration, a picture book entitled Instructions. (The Australian release is next month. I can't wait. Have I mentioned that I collect picture books?)



View on fishpond: Instructions

Best. Gift. Ever.

I've been looking back at some old Disney favourites. Beauty and the Beast has always held my heart, perhaps because Belle receives this as a gift:

Swoon.

One star reviews

I decided to try out a little experiment suggested by Jeanette Demain in this Salon article. The method: search your favourite books on Amazon, read the 'one star' reviews. See if you can't avoid coming away "profoundly disheartened and pessimistic about the continued existence of humankind."

Here's what I found:

The Princess Bride by William Goldman
"I went to amazon to find a unabriged copy of the princess bride. The copy I recieved is not unabriged. I found out that amazon dose not have aunabriged fore  sale,but if you request it it comes up that they do.So now I am stuck with a book that I do not want and still nedd the book that I do not have." [sic]
(If you haven't read The Princess Bride, it might help to understand that the book is not actually abridged. There are several authorial interruptions throughout the book, but these are part of the fiction.)

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb (Book 1 of the Liveship Traders)
" This is 809 pages of adolescent drivel. The conflicts established provided ample opportunity for a satisfying resolution that never occurred. Far too much elaboration on the shallow reflections of flat characters. As a reader, I felt cheated."
(I want to scream: Flat? FLAT!? Hobb's characters come in so many shades of grey they put E Ink to shame. They're more complex than... than... ['What's something complex?' I ask, and my dad and brothers suggest several possibilities: integrals; rocket science; the female mind? Any of those works. Insert your own.] FLAT!!??)

Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery (Book 2 of the Emily series)
"Emily Climbs is a book for people of no imagination or life. Ittook me forever to read because of the lack of action and adventure.I don't reccomend this book to anyone with an imagination. END" [sic]

Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
" 'Stardust' was just about the worst book i have ever read. It's extremely boring, and some parts are very inappropriate for little kids.The first chapter was pointless and too long (30-something pages) and had bits of fluff that were not important. Every chapter is 20 pages or more. I stopped reading it by chapter 4." [sic]
(Perhaps this would be a suitable criticism of a children's book, but I fail to see how it applies here.)

Eric

If I haven’t convinced you to read Shaun Tan yet, try dipping your toes in the water with this cute new edition of Eric, one of the stories published in Tales From Outer Suburbia. It’s cheap and it’s beautiful.

Usually, I'd link you to fishpond, but this time it's actually cheaper at Angus & Robertson.

Book porn

I don't really have spare dollars lying around in the thousands, but if I did I'd be ordering myself a Ptolomeo bookcase:

...or a Kartell Bookworm, the flexible bookcase:

In the meantime, I have to content myself with browsing blogs, such as this one, for beautiful book images.

Hair and influence

You've got to love these t-shirt designs from Hirsute History. I'm considering getting the Neil Gaiman one...

Literary crushes

The first crush I ever had was on a fictional character. Nuuskamuikkunen. Or, in the English translation of the Moomins, Snuffkin. The reason was simple. He was a thinker, and I liked that. I wanted to marry him. I must have been four or five years old.

Since then, I think the fictional characters I’ve ‘had a thing’ for have outnumbered the ‘real people’. I don’t think I’m alone in this, and I think the reason is simple. We get to know fictional characters, really know them, in a way we rarely know people we come across in day to day life. Isn’t that what happens when you fall in love? You get to know someone so well that their faults and their mistakes make sense to you, because you know their motivations and their history. Sometimes you know them better than they know themselves. That’s what love is. Is it any wonder that we sometimes feel a shadow of it for the characters we know intimately?

Here are a few of my literary loves:

Peter Pevensie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
Teddy Kent, the Emily series by L. M. Montgomery
Matthew, the Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Wintrow Vestrit, The Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb

I actually began typing out a brief description of each of the characters, and then realized I was saying the same things about each of them: unflinchingly loyal, considerate, immovable on matters of integrity and conscience, confident in his own judgment. (Mind you, a lot of these characters are quite different. They just happen to share all of these qualities.)

I guess the fact that Peter Pevensie makes it onto the list shows that even at age seven I knew that standing for something is hot.