March 2008 Bookstore Pilgrimage

I've pretty much been on a reading spree in the past three months (I've apparently read over 40 books in the past three months, a big accomplishment considering I read 55 books last year) and so I've renewed my monthly bookstore pilgrimages.


Something photo-worthy is Fully Booked's new practice of lining water bottles (occasionally filled with some strange red liquid) to cover their windows. I honestly have no idea why they have done so, or what the red liquid means (are they re-enacting the passover and afraid that somebody will claim their first born child?).

Another development is that I've started to use the book-ordering services of various bookstores. I've been using the opportunity to spy on the services they're using. Powerbooks uses Ingram for example. Fully Booked on the other hand uses a combination of Amazon and some non-browser based program. We'll see how it all pans out in the weeks to come.

Oh, and here are some books that I've read recently and highly recommend (interestingly enough, one for each genre: fantasy, science fiction, and horror):

The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford
Where to Buy: Powerbooks

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Vol. 2 edited by George Mann
Where to Buy: Fully Booked, National Bookstore

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Where to Buy: Fully Booked, National Bookstore, Powerbooks

Bookstore Pilgrimate Photos

Yesterday's bookstore pilgrimage turned up some mid-list authors (save perhaps for Jeffrey Ford--is he still considered a mid-list author?) I thought I'd never see in local bookstores:

Jim C. Hine's Goblin War (near the center of the photo, beside Robin Hobb)

Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress (who I mainly know from the blog of J.M. McDermott)

Jeffrey Ford's The Shadow Year

Other interesting observations includes spotting Ellen Datlow's (along with Terri Windling in two cases out of three) books in three different sections of the same bookstore: horror (Inferno), science-fiction/fantasy (Black Thorn, White Rose), and young adult (The Coyote Road). A noteworthy title found in National Bookstore but not in Powerbooks is Jeff Vandermeer's Shriek. Also spotted more copies of J.M. McDermott's Last Dragon. And I ended up purchasing Sarah Monette's The Bone Key.

News Tidbits

Gary Gygax, the creator of D&D, just passed away. Nick Mamatas has a haiku dedicated to him. Here's some tributes from various people:

• Jay Lake
• Richard Dansky
• Aaron Williams
• Erik Mona
• Keith Baker
• Chris Pramas
• Michael Erb
• Mike Mearls (1, 2)
• SF Signal
• Slice of Sci-Fi (podcast with Dave Arneson here)
• Ken Hite
• Matt Forebeck
• Ari Marmell
• Robert Schwalb
• Paul S. Kemp
• Monte Cook
• Rob Rogers
• The Game Master Show
• The Gamer Traveler/The Digital Front (Podcast)
• This is Shadowrun
• Way of the Geek
• Stephen Chenault via NPR (Podcast)
• Jeff Rients
• Merric Blackman
• Dragonlance Canticle
• Crazy Monkey
• Jennifer Clarke Wilkes
• Elaine Cunningham
• Rich Burlew (comic here)
• James Jacobs
• Elizabeth Bear
• Penny Arcade
• Dean Alfar
• R.K. Millholland
• The Tome
• Geekerati
• Grimm Studios (podcast)
• Have Games Will Travel (podcast)
• The Basics of the Game (podcast)
• Wapcaplets (podcast)
• Steve Jackson
• Adamant Entertainment
• Jeff Lasala
• Robin D. Laws
• Jim C. Hines
• Mortality.Net
• Folks from Wizards of the Coast
• Scott Rouse
• Scott Gray
• John August
• Paul Gadzikowski
• Wil Wheaton
• World of Warcraft
• John Kovalic
• John Klima
• World of Greyhawk
• Comedy Central
• Jason Bulmahn
• Keith Strohm
• Colbert Report
• 40 Years of Gen Con
• John C. Wright
• Sword's Edge Publishing (podcast here)
• Questionable Content
• The Cimmerian
• Alina Pete
• Dave Noonan
• XKCD
• Laurell K. Hamilton
• Gary Gygax Tribute Video from Wizards of the Coast
• Kiro Radio (audio segment with Dave Noonan)
• All Games Considered (podcast)
• Canon Puncture (podcast)
• The Rolemonkeys (podcast)
• Fantasy Flight Games
• White Wolf
• Woody Hearn
• Full Frontal Nerdity
• 20 Weeks of Hell (podcast)
• Owen Stephens
  

The top five books which are stolen from independent bookshops. (From Scott Dellman) Of course certain reading advocates don't regret stealing books so it's not that hard to imagine.

Game designer/author Richard Dansky has Writers Roundtable Notes from the GDC.

Night Shade and Prime Books in the Philippines

In the past few years, my tastes as an SF&F fan has slowly been shifting from mainstream titles to some of the more critical releases (but I still very much enjoy both). Unfortunately, situated out here in the Philippines, well, finding more of the latter in the shelves of local bookstores is highly unlikely.

There has always been two options for die-hard bibliophiles. One is to order the books online but I don't have a credit card and shipping costs can be quite expensive. I usually limit such purchases such as when I can leech off a friend going to the US or a relative. The other alternative is to special order them from bookstores. Now ordering from bookstores has worked out quite well for me except lately it's been turning out to be more expensive, especially since the devaluation of the dollar (the costs for ordering books is the same as it was last year despite the strengthening of the peso).

But last year, I was spoiled. Powerbooks started stocking titles from non-mainstream publishers like Night Shade Books and Prime Books. I was devouring titles like The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume One; Black Thorn, White Rose; Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007; Science Fiction: Best of the Year 2007; Hart & Boot & Other Stories. Because the bookstore stocked them and weren't special orders, their price remained competitive.

Now my dilemma is because I have no control over what the local bookstore stocks or will stock, I have no idea whether they'll continue the trend. Publishers like Tor and Del Rey, I'm 75% sure that the local bookstores will acquire their titles. But Night Shade and Prime Books? Recently paid a visit to the bookstore and I haven't seen sightings of the new Rich Horton anthologies.

Now I was listening to Rick Kleffel's interview with Jeremy Lassen, publisher of Night Shade Books, on bookselling and distribution. One thing Lassen mentioned was that their current distributor is Diamond Books. Now Diamond Books is under the Diamond Comics imprint, which is the same distributor most comic book shops in the Philippines use. I checked their list of clients and aside from Night Shade Books, Wild Side Press (the parent company of Prime Books) is also under Diamond Books.

I checked with Vin, and apparently, you can order those books from Comic Quest. Yes, it's strange, ordering books from comic shops (which I think is a nice juxtaposition considering I get some of my comics from bookstores). The fact that they're currently operating on a $1.00 = P50.00 exchange rate ain't bad either (it's certainly a better rate than what I'm getting at A Different Bookstore). And while you might think I'm biased opting for Comic Quest (because I'm the guy who updates their blog), well, theoretically you can get the same stuff from other comic shops. But when was the last time you saw non-comic related books on the shelves of comic stores? Filbar's has a secondhand book market true but as far as SF&F books, not really. The other comic shops simply concentrate on their comics and manga, and to some extent, their gaming materials (CCGs, random miniatures, etc.) but that's it. Comic Quest has been the only comic shop that aside from the offerings of other comic shops, sells RPGs, board games, and yes, books.

Finding The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007!

I ended up at Serendra three times last week, two of those due to work (and one of them on a holiday) to the point that I'm sick and tired of visiting A Different Bookstore and Fully Booked (this'll clear up come next week).

Anyway, I managed to find a copy of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007 edited by Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, and Ellen Datlow at the former bookstore. Now to my reading circle, this is the definitive anthology when it comes to fantasy and horror. I promised Dean I'd find him a copy but Vin and Andrew beat me to it. Unfortunately, Vinnie didn't have a copy yet at the time so the lone copy at Serendra went to him. After a few calls to the other branches, apparently there was only one other copy in Metro Manila and so it was off to Eastwood the following day, just before the stroke of midnight, securing the last copy.

I Feel Violated

So I woke up early today to get to the post office before work starts because I received a notice last Thursday afternoon. Everything proceeded as planned except there's a certain awkwardness when I saw the post office staff open up your package in front of you to check them for whatever reasons (security, tax evasion, etc.). And it's not like it's kept private: there were two people in front of me and I certainly saw the contents of the package of the first guy which was a wide variety of materials (thankfully no bras or pantyhose). The second remained unopened simply because it was an envelope and not a box. In my case, I thought at that time "I reek of geek" as the post office staff opened a package full of books, books, and more books (thanks Ellen!), and then gave me a quizzical look.

And then I'll be doing this again soon as Wizards of the Coast (thanks Blue!) will be sending me a copy of The Orc King for the not-quite-a-contest I won (it was more of a consolation prize of sorts). Fringe benefits I guess for participating in their forums.

Friday Bibliophile News

In case you're bored, here's some interesting tidbits I found to be interesting:

• It's not news to me but Seth Godin talks about the New York Best-Seller List (no, it's not really based on the best-selling books). I first got wind of this a few years ago while randomly channel surfing (back when I was still watching TV) and CNBC was interviewing this author and he cited that the New York Best-Seller List isn't really a best-seller list (he then recommends USA Today, which is what I use, but I honestly don't know how accurate it is).
• Self Publishing on the other hand talks about bookstore revenue from advertising books. Certainly book placement in a bookstore matters: you'll most likely see a book in front as opposed to whether the book is placed in the back. I've suspected that some bookstores might charge publishers (or publishers offer the bookstore to "pay" to be in front) but the actual numbers is beyond me.
• Technaeum has a video on Why Libraries Should Game. Too slow for my tastes but the idea is innovative, especially if you're stuck in the conservative librarian mindset. Still, I'm sure there will be proponents of keeping video games away from the library.
• The Vertical Weblog talks about the Japanese best-sellers. You know the Japanese are crazy, read up on what they're reading (and why we think they're crazy).
  

Monday Links

Here's the various news tidbits I've managed to find in my spare time:

• Bokardo talks about book reviews and the value we attach to them (and in this case, the phenomenon of Harriet Klausner who averages seven book reviews a day for Amazon). You also might want to read Self Publishing's take on the impact of book reviews.
  
• Publishing 2.0 talks about faking the numbers on RSS feeds (last I checked I have 14 RSS subscribers, and 4 of those just appeared over the past two weeks; I suspect most of my RSS subscribers aren't really interested in my writing but more for my podcast round-up every Thursday--which isn't a bad thing by the way).
• The National Library of Australia admits that most of their cultural expression is in the form of digital media. (From Librarian.net)
• Guardian Unlimited has a column on print-on-demand. (And to echo Jay Lake, print-on-demand is not necessarily vanity publishing. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter.)
• Pat's Fantasy Hotlist has an interview with Katherine Kurtz.
• Top 10 Tips for Plagiarists. (From Pat's Fantasy Hotlist)
• Another column from Guardian Unlimited that while it's pleasant that you like an author's work, they appreciate it more if you buy the actual book.
• Ever heard the statement Who Watches the Watchmen? Well, its modernized version is Who Wikis Wikipedia (okay, that didn't sound right...). You know, like Apple editing the Microsoft entry and vice versa. It's Amazon taking down its anonymous screening all over again. (From Vertical Weblog)
• Top 10 Bizarre Mental Disorders. It's no bangungot but I'll take what I can get. (From Vertical Weblog)
• The Library of Congress has some interesting videos to promote literacy (scroll down), at least better than the norm. (From SF Signal)
  

Various Bibliophile Tidbits

In an attempt to cut down on blog posts, here's some news in bullet points:

• Book industry professionals predict that booksellers will be gone in 50 years. Director of Frankfurt Book Fair claims that they're really a "Frankfurt Contents Fair".
• There's a new service that reads to the blind but is this really the ideal solution? (From Library Stuff)
• A survey shows there's a lot more older librarians than young ones. (From Library Stuff)
• Canadian librarians might go on strike.
• Here's a librarian's guide to creating 2.0 subject guides. (From Tame the Web)
• Here's a compilation of links to the The Future of Libraries Conference.
• Bokardo theorizes that in order to design good interface, one needs editors.
  

Banned Books and Computer Writers

Here's two Guardian Unlimited columns that caught my eye this week.

The first I spotted at SF Signal in which Alastair Harper ponders what the future may hold for writers as computer software is now capable of editing prose, it isn't a big leap of the imagination that they'll be able to write them in the future:

It would also seem that science fiction writers have again got it wrong. In the great future-science documentary that was the film of Isaac Asimov's short story collection I, Robot, Will Smith's character smugly argues that machine can never best man since they could never be poets. As it turns out, they have that market covered before they even got to laser death rays. The next Deep Blue contest of man versus machine will presumably be over the Booker prize. Ladbrokes may well be accepting bets already.

The second is by John Freeman as he talks about Banned Book Day and compares banned books to gateway drugs:

It's all part of what ought to be called the War on Gateway Drugs. That's what books really are to children and young people - gateways to new experiences, greater complexities. And what better way to protect them from these things - otherwise known as 'the world' - than by staunching the problem at its source?

20 Books That Changed Men's Lives

From Amazon Bookstore Blog

Gentlemen's Quarterly's latest issue covers the 50 Most Stylish Men of the Past 50 Years and part of the feature includes a list of 20 Books that Changed Men's Lives:

• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
• Moneyball by Michael Lewis
• Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs
• The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
• The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort
• Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Universal Baseball Association Inc. by Robert Coover
• Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
• Roots by Alex Haley
• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• Rabbit, Run by John Updike
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
• The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
• Into Thin Air by Jon Kraka

Book Packagers

I was reading an interview with Seth Godin --not exactly the reading material of a would-be fictionist--and unexpectedly comes along a book concept I'm unfamiliar with: the concept of book packaging (hint: it's related to ghost writing).

Book packagers do what movie producers do, except instead of making movies we make books. I would find teams of people who could put together a book worth reading that was too difficult to be written by one person. I came out with about a book a month, on everything from gardening to business to computers. I did a book called The Internet White Pages, some books about words, and books about stain removal.

There's no question that if the Internet had existed then, I would have been the kind of person who was building websites. But instead of building websites, I built books. The advantage was that you got paid up front, and you got a royalty if it worked.

I did that for five years. I started in the same office as the company that became Yoyodyne, which is where I met Mark Hurst. He came to work for me.

I ran Yoyodyne and the book business for about six years. Then the book business got too big and I got too tired, so I sold it to my employees. Then the Yoyodyne Internet business got too big and the timing was good so I sold it to Yahoo!.

Recommended Reading in Hotels

I was reading Shirley Dent's column in The Guardian about the deplorable state of their libraries when I chanced upon an earlier column of hers that talk about French hotels:

But a difference that surprised me was finding two slim paperbacks of short stories at my bedside, the French original accompanied by its English translation. A book wrapper informed us that these stories were specially selected by the hotel management "for your enjoyment". Even if I am entirely honest and say that Le Dieu d'Alain et autres nouvelles (The God of Alain and other short stories) by Marianne Margo was a bit too full of bourgeois existentialism and angst for my taste, this was a step up from the Gideon bible secreted in a drawer. I mean, what a terrific idea. Books of short stories, poems, classic literature to set you dreaming as night falls in strange climes, and wake you to the clatter and clamour of a foreign city.

Obscure Favorites by 50 Authors

From Bookshelves of Doom

Guardian Unlimited Books has a feature How Did We Miss These? (Part 1 and Part 2) as they ask various authors to nominate their favorite, underrated novel. Here's the recommendation of some authors included in the list:

Philip Pullman

The Balloonist (1977)

MacDonald Harris

My candidate for revival is a book by the American writer MacDonald Harris, who died in 1993, and none of whose 16 novels remain in print. Why he isn't better known I simply don't understand, because he's outstandingly good.

If I have to restrict myself to one novel (and it is difficult) I'll nominate The Balloonist - an adventure story, told in the first person, about an expedition by balloon to the North Pole in 1897. It's leisurely, it's subtle and reflective, it's funny, it's accurate and fascinating about the technical business of flying balloons and meteorology and the mysteries of early radio; there's a love story that is tender, sexy and ridiculous all at once, there are characters who are firmly conceived and rounded and surprising, there's an immaculate and jazz-like sense of rhythm and timing; but best of all there's that sensation that comes so rarely, but is as welcome as a cool breeze on a hot day when it does - the sensation that here is a subtle, witty and intelligent mind that really knows how to tell a story.

Actually, it's almost impossible to read any of Harris's first pages without helplessly turning to the next, and the next. I'm astonished that he's not far better known.

Michael Chabon

The Long Ships (1941-45)

Frans Gunnar Bengtsson

I personally guarantee that, however infinitesimally, the world would be a happier place if this wonderful novel, in its excellent English translation by Michael Meyer, were restored to print. A tale of Viking adventure set in the 10th century, what makes The Long Ships such a delicious book is not its thrilling escapes, battles and rescues, nor its lifelike, morally ambiguous heroes and villains, but the droll, astringent, sly tone taken by the narrator toward the characters, particularly with regard to their relations to God, gold and sex. It's a world classic of the literature of adventure, on a par with The Three Musketeers and The Odyssey, its avowed models.

Japanese Best-Sellers

The Vertical Weblog just put up the top ten best-selling books in Japan calculated from book distributor Nippan. More detailed descriptions of the books at the source.

1. Josei no hinkaku (”Feminine Grace”) by Mariko Bando.
2. “Ichinichi sanjuupun” wo tsuzukenasai! Jinsei shouri no benkyouhou 55 (”Keep It Up for 30 Minutes a Day! 55 Study Methods for Success in Life”) by Yukio Furuichi.
3. Rakuen (”Paradise”) by Miyuki Miyabe.
4. Haro baibai-Seki Akio no toshi densetsu (”Hello, Goodbye: Akio Seki’s Urban Legends”) by Akio Seki.
5. Inu to watashi no juu no yakusoku (”Ten Promises To My Dog”) by Hare Kawaguchi.
6. Nihonjin no shikitari (”Customs of the Japanese”) by Harutake Iikura.
7. Yoake no machi de (”On the Streets of Daybreak”) by Keigo Higashino.
8. DDD 2 (DDD stands for Decoration Disorder Disconnection) by Kinoko Nasu.
9. Donkanryoku (”The Power of Obtuseness”) by Jun’ichi Watanabe.
10. Zaimu sanpyou ittai rikaihou (”Integrated Method for Understanding Financial Statements”) by Katsunori Kunisada.

Fahrenheit 451

From Amazon Bookstore's Blog

Apparently, Prospero's Books owner burns his own books as a form of protest after he couldn't find a home for several books.

I'm still saying my prayers for all those "dead" books.

Future Canon

One pastime people love is predicting the future, even if their conjectures are totally baseless. Anyway, New York Magazine asked several university personalities about the books they think will make it to The Future Canon. I was actually surprised a comic made it in there (Chris Ware is really talented).

1. Atonement, by Ian McEwan
2. Their Dogs Came With Them, by Helena María Viramontes
3. Zadie Smith
4. Call Me by Your Name, by André Aciman
5. Amitav Ghosh
6. J. M. Coetzee
7. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware
8. Colson Whitehead
9. Jonathan Lethem
10. I Looked Alive, by Gary Lutz
11. Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald
12. Jhumpa Lahiri

They also have a long list of The Best Novels You've Never Read.

Top 10 Discarded Books from Hotel Rooms

From Bookshelves of Doom

I honestly don't know what to make of this. Are you read but disliked? Or is it like those videos that you rent, good for one sitting and that's it? Or not read at all? Anyway, Guardian Unlimited gives us the top 10 discarded books in hotel rooms:

1. The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell
2. Don't You Know Who I Am? by Piers Morgan
3. A Whole New World by Jordan
4. Wicked by Jilly Cooper
5. Dr Who Creatures & Demons by Justin Richard
6. The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown
7. I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
8. Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay
9. The Story Of A Man And His Mouth by Chris Moyles
10. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

Shelving Books by Genre/Series and Pseudonyms

Visiting the book fair (which is honestly more of a book bazaar), one of the exhibitors I really disliked was Powerbooks. Not really apprehension but more of an inconvenience. The books weren't arranged by genre but rather by author. Whether you're fantasy, romance, horror, or general fiction, you were all lumped into the set of shelves. Which is fine if you have a small collection of books but not quite appropriate when you have dozens of shelves arranged in that way and a finite amount of time to browse through the books. Thankfully, this arrangement only applies to the book fair and not to their other branches. But what I do find peculiar at various bookstores to a lesser extent is how some books in a particular genre (in my personal experience, fantasy/science fiction) aren't shelved by series but by author. Troy Denning authoring a Forgotten Realms novel might be in the opposite side as R.A. Salvatore or Ed Greenwood, even if they're part of the same series. The same goes for other books penned by different authors but sharing the same world such as Thieves World or Conan. Or it might be a special reprint edition such as the SF Masterwork series or the Fantasy Masterwork series. It's convenient to have them in one area, arranged by series, instead of simply by author name. Personally, I prefer a mixed compromise between the two, a shelf being arranged by series (i.e. one area has all the Dragonlance novels, another area all the Lankhmar books) and then the rest of the shelf arranged by author (but hopefully the books of the author are arranged according to book chronology instead of alphabetically--in mysteries for example, having the top row of the shelf being occupied by Agatha Christie's Ms. Marple series instead of mixing it up with Poirot and Parker Pyne).

I was reading the last print issue of Dragon magazine and they have a featured entitled Unsolved Mysteries of D&D. There, they explain the author names Richard Awlinson and T.H. Lain (the latter I knew from a D&D article on the Wizards of the Coast site) are pseudonyms for several writers--the former for the Shadowdale trilogy set in Forgotten Realms and the latter D&D's iconic series. They state that the reason for doing so is so that the books get lumped in the same area of the shelf (and in the case of Richard "All-in-One" Awlinson, revealed the original authors in subsequent reprints). Of course this isn't the only application of collective ghost writers using pseudonyms. I always wondered how prolific Franklin W. Dixon could be writing all those Hardy Boys books (and the same applies for Carolyn Keene and Nancy Drew). It was a mixed surprise later on when I found out they were in actuality written by several different writers. And in many ways, I think the reason for adopting those pseudonyms isn't just to shelve the books in the same area but to give readers the illusion that they were all written by this one great author.

News Report of Banned Books

From ABA Omnibus

Here's an article on Book[s] on Penguins Top 'Challenged' List and it gives us a quick summary of the nature of books that are being banned. I wonder if globalization helps stem book bans or encourages it? (As the ABA Omnibus points out, Banned Books Week is one month away.)

Overall, the number of "challenged" books in 2006 jumped to 546, more than 30 percent higher than the previous year's total, 405, although still low compared to the mid-1990s, when challenges topped 750.