LOL! Boooooooks

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Interesting thread and comments by fantasy fans about Ursula le Guin and J K Rowling

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I just winced reading that.

And it occurs to me that UKL's rebuke has the stylistic feel of an English writer talking down about an American. Given who is the American and who is the Brit there, my irony meter's moved quite far over, along with a hint of giggling delight.

ETA: lol the thread.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

My reaction to the first (and only) Harry Potter book I read was that it was an entertaining take on the traditional English school story like Angela Brazil's oeuvre or Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series (or, indeed, some of the stories I vaguely remember from English girls' comic books when I was a kid), too, but I really couldn't see what the fuss was about, and that it certainly didn't stand comparison with the Earthsea trilogy or Philip Pullman, who I read at about the same time. Or Neil Gaiman.

More lit crit about JKR -- if it's true (which I have no reason to doubt) it's astonishingly sloppy of her

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

It's gonna be a wild ride for Rowling when the authoritarian reactionaries no longer need her driving wedges between marginalized groups. It's like she doesn't realize Burn The Witch is foundational here. What were her books about again? Oh.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Essence Lumin]

These are the first two poems in this author's book. The author's identity is in the spoiler.

TENACITY: THE PENETRATER
With the tenacity of a sperm cell,
I am coming at you.
So close your legs
And guard your eggs,
Because you know what we do.

BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED
They thought he was doomed
But he bloomed in the tomb
And outgrew his container,
He was exhumed

Spoiler

You probably guessed these aren't undiscovered works of Robert Frost. Eww. The poems are from the Amazon preview of the book.

They are from Christopher Scarver. He was put in prison for murder, then killed Jeffrey Dahmer and some other guy.

 

[bubblesort]

Chuck Tingle moves fast!

The crazy part is the publication date is listed as 10/7/2020. That can mean only one thing... Chuck Tingle sent that fly to the VP debates last night!

Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Interesting replies.

 

[Sovereignty]

Interesting replies.

I think it's a common personal myth that things have been changing rapidly only recently.

My father grew up in a house where he could walk outside and shoot a .22 rifle in any direction and not worry about hitting anybody. It had a chimney in the kitchen for the wood stove. That house now has been in the middle of a city for eighty years. My mother grew up in the Dust Bowl. Her grandmother, who told stories about pulling arrows out of horses when she was young, told my mother that the difference between their family and others was that when a board fell off their house, they put it back on. So much changed in their parents' lives and their own. My mother told me she thought my father first noticed her during a party he had at his apartment. She looked at the cheap prints he had put on the walls and said, "Matisse!"

 

[Free]

MY ENTIRE CHILDHOOD WAS A FUCKING LIE.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Entry form here

Competition2020 - Heywood Hill

The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street, Mayfair, London.

www.heywoodhill.com

(It's a random prize draw, so you don't have to explain why you so admire the person you nominate (if, in fact, you do admire them).

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Free]

Looks more like she's fleeing a gothic castle. Which doesn't seem very modern.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Looks more like she's fleeing a gothic castle. Which doesn't seem very modern.

There's plenty of Gothic castles around all over Europe, and even more Victorian Gothic mansions and castles in the UK and (I would imagine) elsewhere that are still in use as private residences.

I once had a secretary who grew up in one, in Somerset -- her mother was the owner's private secretary and she and her daughter had their own apartment in the east wing.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Gladstone's Library is One of the World's Most Beautiful—and You Can Spend the Night

The best library for writing a book might also be a model for presidential libraries.

www.thedailybeast.com

I wasn't aware of this place, but when it's safe again, I may well try to spend a short vacation there

 

[Free]

The Radical Origins of Self-Help Literature

How did the genre of self-help go from one focused on collective empowerment to one serving the class hierarchy as it stands?

www.thenation.com

From the 1940s to the ’60s, the Onitsha Market in southeastern Nigeria was the center of a burgeoning movement in self-help literature. Known as Onitsha Market literature, these cheap, locally published booklets were at once moralistic and titillating. With titles like Why Harlots Hate Married Men and Love Bachelors, How to Avoid Corner Love and Win Good Love From Girls, Money Hard to Get but Easy to Spend, and Drunkards Believe Bar as Heaven, they were sold at market stalls and were intended to appeal to a class of newly literate Nigerians interested in advancing themselves professionally and culturally.

Reading for self-improvement was something the British had encouraged in their mission schools, but the advice and moral guidance of the Onitsha Market pamphlets had much in common with the tenets of local folklore traditions. As Chinua Achebe noted, the pamphlets were in many ways extensions of Hausa folktales and could not be written off, as some critics argued, merely as vestiges of Western influence. “I am convinced,” he wrote, “that such a literature could only have begun in Onitsha…the original site of evangelical dialogue between proselytizing Christianity and Igbo religion.”

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

How fucking greedy can Disney be? This greedy.

#DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster - SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association

Alan Dean Foster and SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal discuss the non-payment by Disney of several contracts for works including multiple Star Wars and Aliens novelizations.

www.sfwa.org

Last year, a member came to SFWA’s Grievance Committee with a problem, which on the surface sounds simple and resolvable. He had written novels and was not being paid the royalties that were specified in his contract. The Grievance Committee is designed to resolve contract disputes like this. As part of our negotiating toolbox, we guarantee anonymity for both the writer and the publisher if the grievance is resolved.

[...]

In this case, the member is Alan Dean Foster. The publisher is Disney.

In short, it appears that Disney is claiming they purchased the publishing rights to Foster's works, but not the obligation to pay his royalties. Garbage like this makes me want to see copyright get pushed to just the lifetime of the creator of a work. And no shitty nonsense like "Disney Corp. is the creative entity behind..."