1. 21:47 28th Jan 2012

    Notes: 625

    Reblogged from laughingsquid

    Tags: resurrection

    image: Download

    laughingsquid: New York City’s CBGB Club Rumored To Be Resurrected Soon

    laughingsquid:

    New York City’s CBGB Club Rumored To Be Resurrected Soon

     

  2. 13:37

    Notes: 1

    Tags: Crime

    Someone who should know tells us why most crime novels are bad.

    The link above is Part Two of Adrian McKinty’s dissection of crime fiction publishing.

    The first post is here (and has 148 comments):

    In an ideal world only first novels would be published. The new writer has something to say and they put everything into that one book - all their jokes, all their sylistic quirks, all the things that make them weird and interesting; the book would come out and it would either be a hit or a miss and then someone else would come along with their story. Wouldn’t that be great? Readers would be continually getting new and original voices and because no one would have a reputation publishers would have to rely on a writer’s talent alone. Alas that isn’t how the world and especially the crime fiction world works. The books that sell a lot of copies are by established professional writers churning out series titles. Readers are reluctant to try new things and the non crime fiction reader who browses a random one of these books is put off because the novels are generally beyond terrible. When I was down at the caravan site in Warrnambool last week I talked to a bloke with the new Tom Clancy novel. “How is it?” I asked him. “It’s awful, but what else am I going to read?” he said cheerfully.

    Adrian runs a fabulous conversation, and I confess I was first drawn to his blog because he comes from Carrickfergus, a town that has a beautiful song attached to it in my mind. His own books are getting some great reviews internationally, too. As a non-crimefic reader, they’re going to be the first I pick up, if at all.

     

  3. 19:36 27th Jan 2012

    Notes: 1

    Tags: search

    How To Find That One Thing You Lost Online

    …this sounds very clever indeed. From ReadWriteWeb.

     

  4. 19:20

    Notes: 1

    Tags: reviews

    My review of Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears is now up at The Ember.

     

  5. 16:20

    Notes: 1

    Tags: versatility

    PRETTY. Thanks to Nanette Louchart-Fletcher, of Rummage (featured today on Typepad, whose blog clipping tool I’m only minimally closer to understanding.)This lovely shot is from her garden blog, Acacia et Coquelicot. I’m mentioning Nanette because Liz Corbett of Hanner Cymraes has nominated me as a Versatile Blogger, which is very sweet of her. Sadly, I’m not capable of filling all the requirements. I’m here at Tumblr as a spectator these days, a kind of ghost of versatility past. And I’m afraid I rather like it like that now. Once upon a time I linked and linked and linked…here’s where all that used to happen. If (IF) I get the time, I’ll do the seven things about me post.  And just for a few weeks, to sustain Liz’s faith in my past versatility, I’ll show who I’m following on Tumblr along the bottom of the blog here, and in the spirit of random visual blogging, you can click on a square down there and see where it takes you. And then I’ll hide those squares again, because I like a clean template, I do, I do.  But don’t forget to visit Nanette.

    PRETTY.

    Thanks to Nanette Louchart-Fletcher, of Rummage (featured today on Typepad, whose blog clipping tool I’m only minimally closer to understanding.)
    This lovely shot is from her garden blog, Acacia et Coquelicot.

    I’m mentioning Nanette because Liz Corbett of Hanner Cymraes has nominated me as a Versatile Blogger, which is very sweet of her.

    Sadly, I’m not capable of filling all the requirements. I’m here at Tumblr as a spectator these days, a kind of ghost of versatility past. And I’m afraid I rather like it like that now.

    Once upon a time I linked and linked and linked…here’s where all that used to happen.

    If (IF) I get the time, I’ll do the seven things about me post.  And just for a few weeks, to sustain Liz’s faith in my past versatility, I’ll show who I’m following on Tumblr along the bottom of the blog here, and in the spirit of random visual blogging, you can click on a square down there and see where it takes you.

    And then I’ll hide those squares again, because I like a clean template, I do, I do. 

    But don’t forget to visit Nanette.

     

  6. 15:00 26th Jan 2012

    Notes: 1

    GERALD MURNANE - Studios - The Apiary

    One minute inside Gerald Murnane’s writing haven. Filing cabinets and all. Thanks to Daniel Wood for the link.

     

  7. 14:59

    Notes: 1

    Tags: memoirreviews

    Mrs Winterson continued to have an effect on life choices far removed from her own experience: ‘She hated the small and the mean, and yet that is all she had. I bought a few big houses myself along the way, simply because I was trying out something for her. In fact, my tastes are more modest – but you don’t know that until you have bought and sold for the ghost of your mother.’
    — 

    Rather tough essay-review on Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? This quote happens to be something I rather sympathise with, even consider it to be something my own family members do.

    Sure, Winterson may be a bit larger than life, but some of her experiences are not that unusual, surely. Mars-Jones’ essay is perceptive, but borders on harsh for the most part.

    Adam Mars-Jones, LRB 26.

     

  8. 14:55

    Notes: 1

    Tags: reviews

    Friendship is so important that in English, even before the rise of Facebook, the word friend was spoken and written more than any other relational term, including mother or father.
    — 

    You’ve got to have friends | Inside Story

    Anna Cristina Pertierra reviewed three books on friendship, on and offline, for Inside Story earlier this year.

     

  9. 14:55

    Notes: 1

    Tags: tech

    We have a dialectical relationship with our machines: We create systems and they recreate us. We create computers first as complements to ourselves, to do the tasks we’re not particularly good at, things involving precision: long calculations, for example, and simple, repetitive tasks. All this is fine when we are using, say, a calculator. But as computers become ubiquitous, we find ourselves surrounded with these things based on precision. So more and more of the things we need to accomplish are tasks defined by computers more rigidly than we as humans would define them for ourselves. We are forced to become more precise in our actions to satisfy the needs of our own systems, which we built initially as helpers and which eventually gain a kind of power over us.
    — 

    Ellen Ullman interview - Close to the Machine

    This is one of the most interesting statements in this interview with programmer Ellen Ullman, in issue 15 of Stay Free magazine. Link via Maud Newton.

     

  10. 14:53

    Notes: 2

    Tags: writing

    Virago Press News & Blog | These Books Will Shock You…

    I am doing my bit for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge in my own way, part of which is to keep an eye on what an old and trusted favourite publisher is doing. 

    I must have read buckets of their books in the nineties, all from the library. All the fine green-bound ladies. Good to see this outfit is still going strong.