Wednesday, December 15, 2010

So Many Books, So Little Free Time

I hereby notify my vast (ha) readership that for the next two weeks, I will be managing the Mercer Island Patch site along with my husband, and I will not have any time to post to any of my blogs.
I have a stack of great fiction that I got for my 50th birthday this past Sunday, but I will doubtless have scant few moments to pick them up and read them. I got Paul Darrow's (Avon on the 70s British SF series Blakes 7) autobiography, called "You're Him, Aren't You?" and I got a copy of Patricia McKillips "The Bards of Bone Plain" and Alan Dean Fosters "The Human Blend" as well as Sharon Lee and Steve Millers "Mouse and Dragon" and Jennifer Cruisie and Bob Mayer's "Don't Look Down."
Anyway, here's a few items that I thought would be of interest from Shelf Awareness:
"I am not a Luddite (she said, somewhat defensively), and I do not
oppose all change simply because it is change.... Here's my bottom line:
There's no way to avoid using energy either to print books or
manufacture e-readers, to transport books or to transport e-readers, and
disposal issues crop up in both cases, as well, so why would I elect to
read in a format that requires additional inputs of energy? Why not just
take my book out under a tree or to the beach or read it on the front
porch or under the lamp that's turned on in the winter evening, anyway,
so I won't be tripping over my dog when I get up from my chair to go to
bed?

"It will be a while before all the dust from the new e-reader revolution
settles, and the final settling may not come in my lifetime. Meanwhile,
I'm watching the dust storm with interest and sticking with my
old-fashioned books. As the Water Rat said of his old riverbank: 'It's
my world, and I don't want any other.' "

--Pamela Grath, owner of Dog Ears Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10363465,
Northport, Mich., on her Books in Northport blog
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10363466

This is so true, I love the smell of books!
Number 16 among New York magazine's Reasons to Love New York
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10353388: "Because
We're Home to Not Only the Publishing Industry But Also to a Woman Who
Spends Her Days Smelling Books"

Six months ago, artist Rachael Morrison, who works at the Museum of
Modern Art's library, began wondering about the unscented future of
e-books and "decided to spend her lunch breaks chronicling the unique
scent of each book in the MoMA stacks." Morrison said that "smelling
books is really nostalgic for me--I am often reminded of my
grandparents' homes, or libraries where I used to go when I was a
child."

I loved Douglas Adam's books, so I would really like to see these series:
BBC Four released a trailer
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10353394 for
the upcoming series Dirk Gently, based on two novels by the late Douglas
Adams--Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark
Tea-Time of the Soul. Blastr
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10353395 observed that
BBC Four "bills the show as a 'drama,' but if it uses any of its source
material, it should contain plenty of light British wit, ghosts and the
poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It may even involve the creation of
all life on Earth."

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