If you're a bibliophile like I am, you might have noticed that the endpapers of hardcover editions usually include a note about the typefaces used in the book. (For a more general layman's overview of the history of typography, I recommend the book Just My Type by Simon Garfield.) While the origin stories of typefaces might seem a relatively dry topic, they sometimes make for fascinating tales of adventure and intrigue. To wit, that of the Doves Type, one of the most influential typefaces of the past couple of centuries:
http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/february/recovering-the-doves-type
The improbable saga of their recovery seems like something straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel! (If compelled to choose one, I'd compare it to The Sign of the Four.) But it's the ending that strikes me; after such a journey, the "treasure hunter" and type designer Robert Green notes that he'll never sell the portion of the typeface that he kept for himself, saying, "It’s too precious. I feel very attached to it now I’ve retraced Cobden-Sanderson’s steps and stood on that very same spot of the bridge." I can sympathize with a sentimental attachment to a piece of history that becomes an obsession! It's fundamentally human to assign value to artifacts of culture, even those that seem a small and incidental portion of a more significant work.
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Melville House to Publish the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture
This just happened. Melville House has outdone itself:
http://www.mhpbooks.com/press-release-melville-house-announces-publication-of-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-on-torture/
The "Senate Torture Report," as the document is commonly known, is the product of a years-long investigation into the shocking and inhumane treatment of prisoners at the hands of the C.I.A., and the agency's vast attempts to hide its actions from both the rest of the government and the citizenry at large. It's a tremendously important work that shines a bright light on the evil that certain members of our public institutions insist, wrongly, is the price of preserving peace in our country.
Melville House, in the best tradition of letters in this democratic experiment we call the United States, is rushing to turn a heavily redacted, low-resolution, practically illegible set of images into a coherent and usable book by the end of the year. (Yes, that's in just a few weeks.) I can only imagine how chaotic and caffeinated their offices must be these days. But this is an important task. Without dissemination of information, democracy as we know it is meaningless. Only an informed public can truly self-govern in the way our forbearers intended.
Hats off to you, Melville House. What a way to close out the year.
http://www.mhpbooks.com/press-release-melville-house-announces-publication-of-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-on-torture/
The "Senate Torture Report," as the document is commonly known, is the product of a years-long investigation into the shocking and inhumane treatment of prisoners at the hands of the C.I.A., and the agency's vast attempts to hide its actions from both the rest of the government and the citizenry at large. It's a tremendously important work that shines a bright light on the evil that certain members of our public institutions insist, wrongly, is the price of preserving peace in our country.
Melville House, in the best tradition of letters in this democratic experiment we call the United States, is rushing to turn a heavily redacted, low-resolution, practically illegible set of images into a coherent and usable book by the end of the year. (Yes, that's in just a few weeks.) I can only imagine how chaotic and caffeinated their offices must be these days. But this is an important task. Without dissemination of information, democracy as we know it is meaningless. Only an informed public can truly self-govern in the way our forbearers intended.
Hats off to you, Melville House. What a way to close out the year.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Cover Spy
I've recently begun following a blog/Twitter account that's too much fun not to share:
http://coverspy.tumblr.com
http://twitter.com/coverspy
It's comprised of a team of "undercover" New Yorkers (though it has since expanded to other cities around the world) who report anonymously on what the fellow denizens of their home cities are reading in public. It's a little like Humans of New York, but even more anonymous; public readers are never approached by spies and usually don't know that they've been featured unless they happen to read the Tumblr or Twitter feeds and find that the short personal description accompanying the book cover matches them.
I've always been a bit of a Cover Spy. I tend to notice what my subway-riding compatriots are reading (and sometimes peer surreptitiously at the running headers on e-reader screens). Obviously, as someone in the publishing community, there is a natural inclination to pay attention to these things, but work aside, I find that it helps me keep a finger on the pulse of the city. There's usually a certain correlation between the books I see on the subway and bestseller lists or trending news topics. For example, there was a "summer of John Green" on the F train at around the time The Fault in Our Stars first hit theatres, and a spate of nonfiction about modern European history as the Euro crisis has been playing out.
But New York's cultural milieu is more than what's current or showing at the cinema. I often see people reading books you'd never expect at first glance; sometimes those are the most thought-provoking (teaches you not to judge a book by its cover, ha), like the guy in the power-suit reading Betty Friedan, or the little Jewish grandmother nose-deep in a science fiction paperback. I sometimes make up life stories for them in my head. I do.
Sometimes anonymity can be entertaining. Sometimes a title and author allow a moment of genuine insight. Until they catch you staring, and you have to awkwardly look away, or feign interest in something behind their heads.
http://coverspy.tumblr.com
http://twitter.com/coverspy
It's comprised of a team of "undercover" New Yorkers (though it has since expanded to other cities around the world) who report anonymously on what the fellow denizens of their home cities are reading in public. It's a little like Humans of New York, but even more anonymous; public readers are never approached by spies and usually don't know that they've been featured unless they happen to read the Tumblr or Twitter feeds and find that the short personal description accompanying the book cover matches them.
I've always been a bit of a Cover Spy. I tend to notice what my subway-riding compatriots are reading (and sometimes peer surreptitiously at the running headers on e-reader screens). Obviously, as someone in the publishing community, there is a natural inclination to pay attention to these things, but work aside, I find that it helps me keep a finger on the pulse of the city. There's usually a certain correlation between the books I see on the subway and bestseller lists or trending news topics. For example, there was a "summer of John Green" on the F train at around the time The Fault in Our Stars first hit theatres, and a spate of nonfiction about modern European history as the Euro crisis has been playing out.
But New York's cultural milieu is more than what's current or showing at the cinema. I often see people reading books you'd never expect at first glance; sometimes those are the most thought-provoking (teaches you not to judge a book by its cover, ha), like the guy in the power-suit reading Betty Friedan, or the little Jewish grandmother nose-deep in a science fiction paperback. I sometimes make up life stories for them in my head. I do.
Sometimes anonymity can be entertaining. Sometimes a title and author allow a moment of genuine insight. Until they catch you staring, and you have to awkwardly look away, or feign interest in something behind their heads.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
I Am Very Real: Kurt Vonnegut's letter on censorship
This week is Banned Books Week, which I am celebrating by reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It's a book that has frequently been censored and banned for its critical treatment of religion (true), and, more laughably, for its misogyny and its depiction of polygamy and violence (these are all elements that the book portrays negatively). There are many writers who communicate eloquently on the subject of censorship, Atwood included, but I am particularly struck by the following letter, written in 1973 by Kurt Vonnegut to the man who burned his books:
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html
We live, as Vonnegut points out, in a country that prizes and was indeed founded upon the ideal of freedom. Freedom of speech and of knowledge is enshrined in the very documents that form the fabric of our government. But true freedom only exists with unfettered access to information. It's horrible that teachers -- those who are responsible for the youngest, most impressionable members of our society -- would seek to restrict any child's learning.
Vonnegut rightly takes censorship as an insult -- to the writer, to the reader, and to the children who should be presumed intelligent and independent enough to read a work and think critically about it. A reader should be free to read -- and disagree with -- whatever she chooses. A reader who is never challenged by concepts that are difficult, disturbing, or opposed to her own perspective will never gain the rich education that reading offers, and will never learn to think for herself. No child should be denied that education on the whim of the adult at the front of the classroom.
And this is why Banned Books Week is important. It reminds us every year that this is an ongoing battle, that censorship still happens in this country, and that ignorance and bigotry must be fought at every juncture.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html
We live, as Vonnegut points out, in a country that prizes and was indeed founded upon the ideal of freedom. Freedom of speech and of knowledge is enshrined in the very documents that form the fabric of our government. But true freedom only exists with unfettered access to information. It's horrible that teachers -- those who are responsible for the youngest, most impressionable members of our society -- would seek to restrict any child's learning.
Vonnegut rightly takes censorship as an insult -- to the writer, to the reader, and to the children who should be presumed intelligent and independent enough to read a work and think critically about it. A reader should be free to read -- and disagree with -- whatever she chooses. A reader who is never challenged by concepts that are difficult, disturbing, or opposed to her own perspective will never gain the rich education that reading offers, and will never learn to think for herself. No child should be denied that education on the whim of the adult at the front of the classroom.
And this is why Banned Books Week is important. It reminds us every year that this is an ongoing battle, that censorship still happens in this country, and that ignorance and bigotry must be fought at every juncture.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
An Extremely Literary Week: BEA, Housing Works, and Shakespeare
I have just had possibly the most literary week of my life (outside of majoring in English at university), and it was spectacular. Here are some of the highlights:
BookExpo America
This is the annual trade fair for publishing in the US (which also attracts a lot of foreign exhibitors). As I did last year, I borrowed a pass from one of my coworkers and attended the fair for a few hours on Thursday. I got to gawk at the exhibits, catch up with some former colleagues, and grab a pile of galleys that I'm very excited to dive into (not literally):
And parked right in the Javits Center was the Penguin truck!
The moment I spotted this reminded me of being seven years old again, watching the ice cream truck come around the corner. (Maybe I was a weird kid.)
Housing Works Book Fair
Over the weekend, I volunteered at the Housing Works Book Fair. It's a great organization -- all proceeds from the bookstore go towards combating homelessness and AIDS. They have a street fair every summer where used books and media are sold very cheaply ($1 books!), with food, live music, and other festivities. There were pavilions full of books, which I was helping stock:
And at the end of the day, there were still boxes upon boxes of books remaining, so we constructed a great wall of books along the sidewalk (from which the books were loaded onto a truck):
Shakespeare in the Park
Tonight, my friend Deb won tickets to Much Ado About Nothing, the first play of this summer's Shakespeare in the Park. I adore Shakespeare, and though I've entered the lottery for (free!) tickets many times, I've never won. I was thrilled to finally be able to partake of this New York summer tradition, and it was every bit as excellent as I expected. I'd forgotten how funny Much Ado About Nothing really is (I read it years ago), and it's so much better live than it is on the page. I can't wait for King Lear during the second half of the season!
And that was my week. I'm looking forward to more literary pursuits in the coming months!
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Eleanor Catton on Literary Elitism, Some Thoughts
I recently read this year's Man Booker Prize winner, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It's a sprawling epic of a mystery novel set in Australia during the gold rush, and brings together a large cast of close third-person characters. It's tremendously ambitious and very well-written, though to me, it seems a little "constructed" -- in large part due to the constraints of its narrative structure, which assigns each of the viewpoint characters an astrological symbol, and bases each chapter on an astrological interaction.
I then found this article that Catton wrote on elitism within the literary community -- a topic I've discussed quite a few times with people in the publishing industry, with fellow English majors, and with people who are enthusiastic readers but not involved with such communities:
http://metromag.co.nz/metro-archive/eleanor-catton-on-literature-and-elitism
Catton writes eloquently on the subject of literary criticism, and the idea of critics and qualified tastemakers in general. Her biases are, of course, obvious: she's the winner of a major literary prize, and a product of the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) system, which teaches what is considered serious literature. (I have some of my own pet peeves with that school of thought, one of which is their rather rigid definition of what might be considered "serious literature" -- often snubbing genre fiction of equal quality -- but that's neither here nor there.)
Biases aside, Catton makes some excellent points. There is a difference between quality as discerned by a critic -- presumably someone well-educated and qualified specifically for the role -- and enjoyableness as experienced by the lay reader. That's part of the value of a degree in literature, after all: the ability to recognize quality and to critique. (That's not to say that only English majors are qualified to write novels, or that all novels are written by English majors -- it's merely that, statistically speaking, such an education is more likely to confer the necessary skills.) Also, it's less a matter of creation as it is of appreciation. There's always a context, an artistic tradition, in which a work of art is produced, and it's a critic's job to bring her knowledge of said context to bear when judging the merits of the piece. In the case of prizes, that's especially true: the only way to evaluate a novel as "better" or "worse" than any other novel, given the subjectivity of the reading experience, is to view it in the context of greatness, meaning, and technical mastery as established by the books that came before it. Obviously, any individual critic might have, say, a penchant for Shakespeare and a gripe against Dostoevsky -- personal preferences that color her judgment -- but across many readers, scholars, and thinkers over the centuries, "the canon" has generally been tested and found to be a functional measure of quality.
These books are not necessarily the most "enjoyable" to read -- in fact, many of the best books are, to a certain degree, difficult. They require a level of thought and engagement from the reader that makes the experience that much more rewarding. After all, art is in many ways a conversation -- with its creator, with all the art that preceded it, with its audience, and with the criticism and study that it engenders. People these days -- Americans, especially -- are culturally obsessed with the idea of genius, of creation springing forth like Athena from the mind of Zeus, without taking into account the foundation (personal or societal) laid in preparation for the act of creation in the present. (I've previously written about this here.) Just as a writer -- an artist in any medium, really -- learns the craft by studying the greats, so too should an informed and conscientious reader strive to be a better appreciator and critic by putting in the work to understand a novel in its proper context. Only then can the reader really evaluate the book, whether her reaction is positive or negative, or (most often) somewhere in between. A thoughtful and articulate negative criticism of a book, I find, usually requires the deepest literary background, because the critic must develop a good sense of what the book and its author were attempting to do, and where the work fell short, as compared to literary masters who did it well.
Anyway. This is a topic of particular interest to me, so I expect to revisit it later. Also, I imagine it won't go away anytime soon, so there will probably be more articles, and more perspectives, that catch my eye.
I then found this article that Catton wrote on elitism within the literary community -- a topic I've discussed quite a few times with people in the publishing industry, with fellow English majors, and with people who are enthusiastic readers but not involved with such communities:
http://metromag.co.nz/metro-archive/eleanor-catton-on-literature-and-elitism
Catton writes eloquently on the subject of literary criticism, and the idea of critics and qualified tastemakers in general. Her biases are, of course, obvious: she's the winner of a major literary prize, and a product of the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) system, which teaches what is considered serious literature. (I have some of my own pet peeves with that school of thought, one of which is their rather rigid definition of what might be considered "serious literature" -- often snubbing genre fiction of equal quality -- but that's neither here nor there.)
Biases aside, Catton makes some excellent points. There is a difference between quality as discerned by a critic -- presumably someone well-educated and qualified specifically for the role -- and enjoyableness as experienced by the lay reader. That's part of the value of a degree in literature, after all: the ability to recognize quality and to critique. (That's not to say that only English majors are qualified to write novels, or that all novels are written by English majors -- it's merely that, statistically speaking, such an education is more likely to confer the necessary skills.) Also, it's less a matter of creation as it is of appreciation. There's always a context, an artistic tradition, in which a work of art is produced, and it's a critic's job to bring her knowledge of said context to bear when judging the merits of the piece. In the case of prizes, that's especially true: the only way to evaluate a novel as "better" or "worse" than any other novel, given the subjectivity of the reading experience, is to view it in the context of greatness, meaning, and technical mastery as established by the books that came before it. Obviously, any individual critic might have, say, a penchant for Shakespeare and a gripe against Dostoevsky -- personal preferences that color her judgment -- but across many readers, scholars, and thinkers over the centuries, "the canon" has generally been tested and found to be a functional measure of quality.
These books are not necessarily the most "enjoyable" to read -- in fact, many of the best books are, to a certain degree, difficult. They require a level of thought and engagement from the reader that makes the experience that much more rewarding. After all, art is in many ways a conversation -- with its creator, with all the art that preceded it, with its audience, and with the criticism and study that it engenders. People these days -- Americans, especially -- are culturally obsessed with the idea of genius, of creation springing forth like Athena from the mind of Zeus, without taking into account the foundation (personal or societal) laid in preparation for the act of creation in the present. (I've previously written about this here.) Just as a writer -- an artist in any medium, really -- learns the craft by studying the greats, so too should an informed and conscientious reader strive to be a better appreciator and critic by putting in the work to understand a novel in its proper context. Only then can the reader really evaluate the book, whether her reaction is positive or negative, or (most often) somewhere in between. A thoughtful and articulate negative criticism of a book, I find, usually requires the deepest literary background, because the critic must develop a good sense of what the book and its author were attempting to do, and where the work fell short, as compared to literary masters who did it well.
Anyway. This is a topic of particular interest to me, so I expect to revisit it later. Also, I imagine it won't go away anytime soon, so there will probably be more articles, and more perspectives, that catch my eye.
Monday, December 30, 2013
BuzzFeed: The Strand Proves That Bookstores Are Not Dead
The Strand is one of my favorite New York bookstores, so I was especially pleased to see it featured in this holiday piece:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/the-86-year-old-strand-bookstore-just-proved-that-bookstores
There's been so much media buzz about "the death of the bookstore" in the wake of e-commerce gaining marketshare, but I think there's something to be said for a well-stocked, well-curated neighborhood bookstore with a friendly and helpful staff. Also, their Twitter is fun and their rare books room is wonderful. (I'm guessing that the Christmas shoppers weren't there for the rare books room, but nonetheless...)
Just a bit of holiday cheer for bibliophiles. :-)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/the-86-year-old-strand-bookstore-just-proved-that-bookstores
There's been so much media buzz about "the death of the bookstore" in the wake of e-commerce gaining marketshare, but I think there's something to be said for a well-stocked, well-curated neighborhood bookstore with a friendly and helpful staff. Also, their Twitter is fun and their rare books room is wonderful. (I'm guessing that the Christmas shoppers weren't there for the rare books room, but nonetheless...)
Just a bit of holiday cheer for bibliophiles. :-)
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Morley Walk!
This is what I did last Sunday (August 18th):
http://morleywalk.tumblr.com
Christopher Morley was a novelist, poet, and journalist -- and the founder of the eminent Sherlockian society the Baker Street Irregulars. However, he is perhaps most well-known as a tireless advocate for the book trade. One of his best-beloved novellas, The Haunted Bookshop, is set in a used-bookstore in Brooklyn, and is essentially an ode to bookselling, wrapped in a cute romance and a quaint mystery.
The Morley Walk, organized by Melville House (which publishes what is likely the most recognizable edition of The Haunted Bookshop and its prequel, Parnassus on Wheels), was splendid. It was a reading crossed with a walking tour of independent bookshops around Prospect Park. A small horde of bibliophiles descended upon the streets of Brooklyn, where we attempted not to get run over by passing cars, parents pushing baby strollers, and over-eager dogs as we migrated en masse from shop to shop, taking turns reading aloud from a copy of The Haunted Bookshop.
There were some people who thought we were a cult -- come to think of it, passersby mistaking Morley for Scripture in a mob of bookish people is actually rather fitting. I doubt I shall see most of the other participants again, but for an afternoon, we had found our tribe. And much like a novella, it was over far too soon.
http://morleywalk.tumblr.com
Christopher Morley was a novelist, poet, and journalist -- and the founder of the eminent Sherlockian society the Baker Street Irregulars. However, he is perhaps most well-known as a tireless advocate for the book trade. One of his best-beloved novellas, The Haunted Bookshop, is set in a used-bookstore in Brooklyn, and is essentially an ode to bookselling, wrapped in a cute romance and a quaint mystery.
The Morley Walk, organized by Melville House (which publishes what is likely the most recognizable edition of The Haunted Bookshop and its prequel, Parnassus on Wheels), was splendid. It was a reading crossed with a walking tour of independent bookshops around Prospect Park. A small horde of bibliophiles descended upon the streets of Brooklyn, where we attempted not to get run over by passing cars, parents pushing baby strollers, and over-eager dogs as we migrated en masse from shop to shop, taking turns reading aloud from a copy of The Haunted Bookshop.
There were some people who thought we were a cult -- come to think of it, passersby mistaking Morley for Scripture in a mob of bookish people is actually rather fitting. I doubt I shall see most of the other participants again, but for an afternoon, we had found our tribe. And much like a novella, it was over far too soon.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
If I Used Twitter
tonight's post would be:
That is all.
2nd place at YPG spelling bee: winner got "quixotic;" my word not found in OED. Still, pretty cool consolation prize: tinyurl.com/oac7w92.
It's a very graphically interesting cover design:
That is all.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Today
was wonderful and quintessentially New York -- the sort of day that makes me enormously thankful to live in such a vibrant, diverse city full of old friends and affable strangers. I don't mean to turn this blog into a series of diary entries -- that would seem rather self-indulgent -- but today was full of sights and sounds and people that I want to remember.
It began with brunch with a dear friend who is returning to the city after college, a relocation for which I'm grateful because I've missed her these few years. We go back a long time; we played together as children, went to the same elementary school and Chinese school, and have seen each other through our best and worst moments ever after.
We ate at a Greek place in our neighborhood in Queens; we've been coming here once or twice a year since high school. I had an excellent crêpe and we caught up on each other's lives -- we talked about work and friends and our grand ambitions in life. She's one of the few people with whom I discuss the latter topic; despite pursuing radically different fields, we have similarly coherent and somewhat lofty visions of the future. Kindred spirits, I'd say.
After brunch, I met up with a college friend in Manhattan. On the way there, I spotted a group of people in 1920s garb:
The snare drum (obscured in this photo by the man in black), the djembe, the bongos, and the bagpipes seem like a highly unlikely combination (especially the bagpipes!) but they work surprisingly well together. It was a perfect microcosm of the diversity and cooperative spirit of this extraordinary city. (My friend got their card, afterwards; apparently they have a website.)
We then got coffee with a third friend, another Stanford alumnus making his way in New York. We only had an hour, but it was an hour well-spent: a potent reminder that even in this bustling, hectic place, we make time for each other because it's the small moments as much as the grand gestures that comprise any human understanding.
We had dinner near his apartment in Greenwich Village with his roommate. We tried an American restaurant she suggested, and passed a merry hour or two getting to know each other. She's an architect from Hawai'i, so naturally I broached the question of whether she can play the ukulele! (Passably, was the answer.) My friend plays the guitar and also, to a lesser extent, the ukulele, so we're going to play for each other sometime. (I didn't know this about him until today.)
And then we went our separate ways, the two of them to catch a film in the Village, and I to the F train headed into Queens. I spent a quiet hour reading on the subway, with the rumble of the train and a dozen indistinct conversations in the background. In Queens, I stopped by my favorite neighborhood bakery to buy a cake for Father's Day tomorrow.
All in all, it was a lovely day in the City. Here's to more such days in the future.
It began with brunch with a dear friend who is returning to the city after college, a relocation for which I'm grateful because I've missed her these few years. We go back a long time; we played together as children, went to the same elementary school and Chinese school, and have seen each other through our best and worst moments ever after.
We ate at a Greek place in our neighborhood in Queens; we've been coming here once or twice a year since high school. I had an excellent crêpe and we caught up on each other's lives -- we talked about work and friends and our grand ambitions in life. She's one of the few people with whom I discuss the latter topic; despite pursuing radically different fields, we have similarly coherent and somewhat lofty visions of the future. Kindred spirits, I'd say.
After brunch, I met up with a college friend in Manhattan. On the way there, I spotted a group of people in 1920s garb:
There seem to be a number of Jazz Age-themed events going on this summer, even more so than usual (likely prompted by the recent The Great Gatsby film). I was reminded of the Gatsby party I attended in May -- exactly a month ago, as it happens -- which was an industry event hosted by Fitzgerald's publisher and included a costume contest. (I dressed up but didn't win; there were some truly spectacular costumes!)
So I got bubble tea in Chinatown with my friend (it seems like I have quite a few moments that involve bubble tea...). He's a Californian who moved to New York a few months ago, whom I didn't realize was in town until I bumped into him at an alumni event on Monday! He was a few years ahead of me in school and we'd lost touch for a while after he graduated, but he's now working at a start-up in Silicon Alley and lives downtown.
We met up with one of his friends in Central Park, who was hanging out on the lawn with a few other people we didn't know. It was a gathering of, at least from my perspective, friends and strangers connected to each other by a few tenuous degrees of separation. Though it seems unlikely that I'll encounter these people again -- and in a few months I would be hard-pressed to even recognize them on the street -- for an hour or so, we shared a blanket, a conversation, a patch of sunlight in the Park -- a tiny slice of New York.
At one point, there was a moment of silence -- a completely natural, contented lull in the conversation. We watched a group of small children chase each other around on the lawn, and soon observed that they were all following one small boy who held aloft some sort of styrofoam disc. I was distinctly reminded of The Lord of the Flies -- it was an uncanny analogue of the conch! I said as much to the others, and we had an entertaining few minutes trying to spot the Piggy of the group.
Our group splintered apart in twos and threes. My friend and I wandered through Central Park conversing and taking in the sights and sounds of summer. We stumbled upon a guitarist/vocalist duo performing in front of the lake (with a very professional sound system) and sat in the grass for a few songs. We found a large, fenced-off section of road where people were rollerskating in circles around a rock band which had set up in the middle of the walkway. There was a chalked-off section next to the band where people were dancing, and so we ended up swing-dancing to live music in the middle of a roller derby! (My friend is, incidentally, an excellent dancer; it's a shame we didn't overlap at school for longer.) We also happened upon trio of busking musicians consisting of two drummers and a bagpiper:
We then got coffee with a third friend, another Stanford alumnus making his way in New York. We only had an hour, but it was an hour well-spent: a potent reminder that even in this bustling, hectic place, we make time for each other because it's the small moments as much as the grand gestures that comprise any human understanding.
We had dinner near his apartment in Greenwich Village with his roommate. We tried an American restaurant she suggested, and passed a merry hour or two getting to know each other. She's an architect from Hawai'i, so naturally I broached the question of whether she can play the ukulele! (Passably, was the answer.) My friend plays the guitar and also, to a lesser extent, the ukulele, so we're going to play for each other sometime. (I didn't know this about him until today.)
And then we went our separate ways, the two of them to catch a film in the Village, and I to the F train headed into Queens. I spent a quiet hour reading on the subway, with the rumble of the train and a dozen indistinct conversations in the background. In Queens, I stopped by my favorite neighborhood bakery to buy a cake for Father's Day tomorrow.
All in all, it was a lovely day in the City. Here's to more such days in the future.
Friday, May 31, 2013
BookExpo America, or, "Hey, Look, a Galley!"
Today was my first time attending BEA (BookExpo America), which is the largest publishing trade fair in North America (and possibly the world, though the ones in London, Frankfurt, and Bologna are probably bigger). It's held at the Javits Center, which might be one of the most inconveniently located spaces in New York.
BEA was... huge. I was not expecting it to be quite so huge, even though, considering it's attended by all of trade publishing in the US, I really should have known. I saw some old friends from Algonquin, snagged a cupcake at an author signing, and of course, picked up a tote bag-full of ARCs:
(The tissue box is there for perspective. I lugged that pile from the West Side back to Queens in ninety-degree weather, and it's absolutely worth it.)
Advance reading copies -- and free finished books -- are one of the best perks in publishing (which, admittedly, is an industry without that many perks). I have fond memories from my college internship days of scouring the Penguin Classics overflow shelves for books on my autumn quarter syllabi. This time, the loot is mostly historical fiction, literary fiction, and women's fiction, with a random cookbook that I got from a friend at Workman in there (third from the bottom).
Other things seen at BEA:
I think they're Pokemon? (How many sales assistants does it take to assemble a five-foot Lego statue?)
This, too, might have looked more normal at Comic Con... :-P
Themed cupcakes!
(The post title is an inside joke, for those of you who are really confused.)
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Thoughts on the Past Four Years, Part 1
Our commencement was last month. Since then, I've been traveling -- visiting with friends and relatives in California -- and moving my possessions and the detritus of the past four years from California back to New York. I just got home on Tuesday, at some ungodly hour of morning. I've spent most of my time since unpacking and rearranging my room (and evicting my sister from it, as she's apparently taken up residence while I've been in school). It's more complicated that one might think, given that I have to consolidate/shift/toss a lot of my old stuff to make room for everything I've brought back. It's probably the most thorough cleaning my room's ever gotten. I got bored (of course) and consequently nostalgic, so I thought I'd take a break and begin setting down some of the mad whirlwind of thoughts that I have regarding my time at Stanford.
It was not an easy journey, both in terms of my pursuits and my direction. I had, at various points of these past four years, been tested on all fronts: academics, extra-curriculars, people, career. (The Stanford Duck Syndrome, if you will -- paddling furiously to stay afloat, while appearing mostly calm above the surface. The acronym, SDS, also somewhat ironically doubles for the Stanford Debate Society. Go figure.) Looking back, I'm not completely satisfied with my college experience -- there are things I would have done differently, things I wish I'd known going in -- but it was a tremendous period of personal growth.
Academics were challenging throughout, much more so than high school. It seems like a no-brainer, but as one of my grade school friends likes to point out, college is often easier than high school for the specialist and harder than high school for the generalist. I was a jack-of-all-trades in grade school, equally comfortable in the humanities and the sciences (I was, for example, simultaneously captain of the math and debate teams). If only because my high school had more of a humanities bent -- it ran a bit like a small liberal arts college -- I was considered quite good at the sciences among my peers (big fish in a small pond, as it were). I actually got to Stanford thinking that I would be pre-med -- mostly because my parents thought that it suited me -- and considered majoring in math or biology. The best example: I remember taking -- and then dropping -- the hard freshman math class (the H in 51H variously stood for "honors" and "hard" and "hellish," I'm told). It was very interesting material and I met some of my closest friends there, but I just didn't have the time and energy necessary to really do well, what with the other courses I was taking (yes, even as a first-quarter freshman I insisted on maxing out my course load) and the world-class calibre of students in the class (several of them math campers, including a few who did SUMaC, both my year and other years). Dropping the class was a surprisingly difficult choice to make. It was the first time I'd really encountered what I considered to be massive failure, and I felt as though I were giving up -- that completing the class could simply have been a matter of will. Accepting personal limits was never something I've done well, or gracefully, so that in itself was a learning experience.
For most of my freshman year, my courseload consisted of techie classes punctuated with the one series of humanities classes that all of us were required to take, known as IHUM (Introduction to the Humanities). My IHUM sequence was called "Ancient Empires," covering the civilizations of antiquity and taught by the wonderful archaeologist and professor Ian Morris. I quickly discovered that IHUM was my favorite course of the year, my sanity break from all the maths and chemistry and such. I should have realized then that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to be doing -- but I didn't know what it was that I actually wanted out of my college career, and for my future beyond.
My sophomore year consisted of change -- lots of it. I was learning myself, learning my strengths and weaknesses, figuring out what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my time at Stanford and my life thereafter. I had something of a personal crisis in the middle of my sophomore year, after having already taken four quarters of pre-med classes: I realized that pre-med just wasn't for me. By then, I'd tried all of the so-called "Asian" professions at least once; I'd interned over the past few summers at a hospital, on Wall Street, and at a law firm. While I enjoyed each of the internships (more as learning experiences than as career options), I couldn't quite see myself in any of the above industries for the rest of my life. Learning what I didn't want was important -- I'm just glad that I figured out what I did want, just in time (see this post from the end of sophomore year).
I'd begun taking history and creative writing classes for fun. I wanted to do more of it, but wasn't quite ready to give up premed and dash all my parents' hopes for me. But over the summer, I found myself working at Penguin as an editorial intern, and really absolutely loving it. It was something of a coincidence -- I'd applied because I liked the idea of working with books, but I didn't know anything about the industry going into the job. By the end of the summer, I didn't want to leave.
And so I went back for seconds in 2011. In the interim, I declared my history major at the last possible moment in my junior year -- I asked Prof. Morris to be my advisor, because he's awesome and because it was fitting. His class was what first made me consider majoring in history, after all. I began taking more English classes and wanting to do that as well. It wasn't a creative writing course, but ultimately a short story class (which I may have mentioned here), that sold me on the English major. (It seems that there is a recurring trope in my life where I am convinced to declare a major after taking an amazing class in the department, and end up asking the instructor to be my advisor. Elizabeth Tallent became my English faculty advisor.)
If all of that hadn't convinced me that publishing was right for me, one particular episode of my second Penguin summer did. One day towards the end of my internship, I was very casually handed a shiny new hardcover of Those Across the River -- a book I'd first read as a submission the previous summer, which I'd really liked and talked up to a few editors I worked with. I reread it that very night. The incredible rush that comes from holding in my hands a book that I, in some tiny way, had a part in bringing to fruition -- it's a pretty heady feeling.
That's how I ended up where I am, now. A job (and hopefully a career) in publishing, a degree in history and English, and back in New York City, my hometown. It's been a wild ride, to be sure -- not all of it went as smoothly or as well as I would have liked, but I survived, and am a more complete human being for it.
More to come. (Perhaps that ending was a little too... conclusive. There's more, really.)
It was not an easy journey, both in terms of my pursuits and my direction. I had, at various points of these past four years, been tested on all fronts: academics, extra-curriculars, people, career. (The Stanford Duck Syndrome, if you will -- paddling furiously to stay afloat, while appearing mostly calm above the surface. The acronym, SDS, also somewhat ironically doubles for the Stanford Debate Society. Go figure.) Looking back, I'm not completely satisfied with my college experience -- there are things I would have done differently, things I wish I'd known going in -- but it was a tremendous period of personal growth.
Academics were challenging throughout, much more so than high school. It seems like a no-brainer, but as one of my grade school friends likes to point out, college is often easier than high school for the specialist and harder than high school for the generalist. I was a jack-of-all-trades in grade school, equally comfortable in the humanities and the sciences (I was, for example, simultaneously captain of the math and debate teams). If only because my high school had more of a humanities bent -- it ran a bit like a small liberal arts college -- I was considered quite good at the sciences among my peers (big fish in a small pond, as it were). I actually got to Stanford thinking that I would be pre-med -- mostly because my parents thought that it suited me -- and considered majoring in math or biology. The best example: I remember taking -- and then dropping -- the hard freshman math class (the H in 51H variously stood for "honors" and "hard" and "hellish," I'm told). It was very interesting material and I met some of my closest friends there, but I just didn't have the time and energy necessary to really do well, what with the other courses I was taking (yes, even as a first-quarter freshman I insisted on maxing out my course load) and the world-class calibre of students in the class (several of them math campers, including a few who did SUMaC, both my year and other years). Dropping the class was a surprisingly difficult choice to make. It was the first time I'd really encountered what I considered to be massive failure, and I felt as though I were giving up -- that completing the class could simply have been a matter of will. Accepting personal limits was never something I've done well, or gracefully, so that in itself was a learning experience.
For most of my freshman year, my courseload consisted of techie classes punctuated with the one series of humanities classes that all of us were required to take, known as IHUM (Introduction to the Humanities). My IHUM sequence was called "Ancient Empires," covering the civilizations of antiquity and taught by the wonderful archaeologist and professor Ian Morris. I quickly discovered that IHUM was my favorite course of the year, my sanity break from all the maths and chemistry and such. I should have realized then that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to be doing -- but I didn't know what it was that I actually wanted out of my college career, and for my future beyond.
My sophomore year consisted of change -- lots of it. I was learning myself, learning my strengths and weaknesses, figuring out what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my time at Stanford and my life thereafter. I had something of a personal crisis in the middle of my sophomore year, after having already taken four quarters of pre-med classes: I realized that pre-med just wasn't for me. By then, I'd tried all of the so-called "Asian" professions at least once; I'd interned over the past few summers at a hospital, on Wall Street, and at a law firm. While I enjoyed each of the internships (more as learning experiences than as career options), I couldn't quite see myself in any of the above industries for the rest of my life. Learning what I didn't want was important -- I'm just glad that I figured out what I did want, just in time (see this post from the end of sophomore year).
I'd begun taking history and creative writing classes for fun. I wanted to do more of it, but wasn't quite ready to give up premed and dash all my parents' hopes for me. But over the summer, I found myself working at Penguin as an editorial intern, and really absolutely loving it. It was something of a coincidence -- I'd applied because I liked the idea of working with books, but I didn't know anything about the industry going into the job. By the end of the summer, I didn't want to leave.
And so I went back for seconds in 2011. In the interim, I declared my history major at the last possible moment in my junior year -- I asked Prof. Morris to be my advisor, because he's awesome and because it was fitting. His class was what first made me consider majoring in history, after all. I began taking more English classes and wanting to do that as well. It wasn't a creative writing course, but ultimately a short story class (which I may have mentioned here), that sold me on the English major. (It seems that there is a recurring trope in my life where I am convinced to declare a major after taking an amazing class in the department, and end up asking the instructor to be my advisor. Elizabeth Tallent became my English faculty advisor.)
If all of that hadn't convinced me that publishing was right for me, one particular episode of my second Penguin summer did. One day towards the end of my internship, I was very casually handed a shiny new hardcover of Those Across the River -- a book I'd first read as a submission the previous summer, which I'd really liked and talked up to a few editors I worked with. I reread it that very night. The incredible rush that comes from holding in my hands a book that I, in some tiny way, had a part in bringing to fruition -- it's a pretty heady feeling.
That's how I ended up where I am, now. A job (and hopefully a career) in publishing, a degree in history and English, and back in New York City, my hometown. It's been a wild ride, to be sure -- not all of it went as smoothly or as well as I would have liked, but I survived, and am a more complete human being for it.
More to come. (Perhaps that ending was a little too... conclusive. There's more, really.)
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
R.I.P. Encyclopaedia Britannica
A sad day indeed:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/
We have an old set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica at home. It's from the 1980s, I believe. I was given it by my godparents after their daughter moved out, and it's been ensconced in a place of honor on the mantlepiece above the fireplace ever since. I remember using them as reference materials, of course, but more than that, I used to go downstairs and read an entry once in a while, just for fun (and to procrastinate on homework). It was a bit like the low-tech version of the Wikipedia game. I think it was one of the main reasons I was decent at trivia and parlor games, even though I generally fall flat on popular culture (a rather massive quiz bowl weakness, if you're playing individually).
We never did get another set -- which was probably a financially sound decision. I'm glad to have the one we do, and it saddens me that future generations of children might not have the opportunity to leaf through the Britannica on rainy afternoons. I thought nothing of it at the time, which was exactly the point -- such a pastime should be commonplace, and it won't be, anymore.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/
We have an old set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica at home. It's from the 1980s, I believe. I was given it by my godparents after their daughter moved out, and it's been ensconced in a place of honor on the mantlepiece above the fireplace ever since. I remember using them as reference materials, of course, but more than that, I used to go downstairs and read an entry once in a while, just for fun (and to procrastinate on homework). It was a bit like the low-tech version of the Wikipedia game. I think it was one of the main reasons I was decent at trivia and parlor games, even though I generally fall flat on popular culture (a rather massive quiz bowl weakness, if you're playing individually).
We never did get another set -- which was probably a financially sound decision. I'm glad to have the one we do, and it saddens me that future generations of children might not have the opportunity to leaf through the Britannica on rainy afternoons. I thought nothing of it at the time, which was exactly the point -- such a pastime should be commonplace, and it won't be, anymore.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Artists on PIPA and SOPA
There's been a lot of buzz about PIPA and SOPA, especially here in Silicon Valley. The online protests, most notably the Wikipedia blackout, have gotten a lot of people interested, if not involved. A perspective that hasn't gotten as much attention as it should, methinks, is that of the artists themselves, whose intellectual property is what's ultimately at stake. This (found via Neil Gaiman's blog) is worth reading:
http://stopthewall.us/artists/
They say it better than I ever could -- internet freedom means free publicity. I'll just add that I've discovered some of my favorite songs and musicians (such as Heather Dale and Jonathan Coulton) via YouTube, and some excellent television online (such as the BBC's Sherlock). If it weren't for the internet, if not for YouTube, I would not have gone and bought a Heather Dale album on iTunes, or bought some tracks from Jonathan Coulton's website. That would have been a net loss for the music industry. (Yes, I acknowledge that YouTube, being more akin to a streaming service than a downloading site, isn't necessarily what people mean when they say "pirating music.")
The greater part of the illegal download problem in America, and in the Western world at large, is not piracy so much as accessibility. By and large, we in the developed world don't balk at paying $0.99 for a track on iTunes, or $9.99 for an e-book; compare those to a $12 CD with about a dozen songs on it or an $8 (mass-market) or $12 (trade) paperback. What is problematic, rather, is when music, books, or films are not readily available for purchase -- leading those who really want to obtain said materials to seek other means to get them. (This, as far as I'm aware, often becomes an issue where foreign rights and such are concerned.) By and large, if there is a convenient venue for purchase at a fair price, Americans will pay for the electronic media they consume.
A side-note to the above: one of the truly significant illegal download problems in the developed world, is that of children or teenagers who don't have their own source of income. In the past, they would have asked their parents for money, or saved up their allowances, or done a bit of babysitting in order to purchase the media they want. I'm sure many adults today have fond childhood memories of going to the record store, for example, and buying that album they wanted with their hard-earned cash. Nowadays, it's much easier to bypass the work required to get the money to buy books or music by illegally downloading. I agree that children who don't grow up with a certain moral framework in which content creators should be compensated for their work might one-day become income-earning adults who pirate all of their media despite having the funds to pay for it. But in that case, much as children who commit petty crimes (vandalism and disruption of the peace come to mind) are generally granted more legal leeway than adults who do the same, I don't think that PIPA and SOPA are the right tools to use to crack down on underage media pirates. That's in the realm of killing an ant with a sledgehammer. Also, I would argue that children and teenagers without income fall somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum of "consumers who can afford to pay for all the content they want" and "consumers who would not consume content if it cost money."
In other, mostly developing countries, the concept of copyright is still rather hazy in the public consciousness. Photocopying -- or pirating -- of textbooks, DVDs, &c. is the norm, rather than the exception. Citizens of many of these countries wouldn't buy these products even if they were impossible to pirate -- they're prohibitively expensive. If people in, say, China were prevented in any meaningful way from illegally accessing copyrighted American media, they would just turn to other shows, other books, other music -- non-American media. The income for artists and media companies wouldn't substantially increase as a result of the largely outwards-facing bills. In these markets, increasing profits would mean substantially lowering prices, perhaps to a point where there would be no point in producing said content for these consumers, because it would not be cost-effective.
While PIPA and SOPA are largely well-intentioned -- an attempt to secure for creative individuals the rewards of their work -- they're very problematically written. They were written by politicians -- not the artists they're supposed to protect, or the technologists who are supposed to enforce it. In their current incarnation, they cause more harm than good, especially where censorship and due process are concerned. Additionally, as most of my techie friends would tell you, meaningful enforcement would be basically impossible. As the internet has become an essential component of life in this country and around the world, the law needs to reflect an understanding of how to govern the web. Someone in Washington really ought to put the lawmakers, the technologists, the media companies, and the artists all in the same room to hammer out a solution that addresses everyone's needs and comes with a thorough understanding of current technology. That's the only way it'll work.
http://stopthewall.us/artists/
They say it better than I ever could -- internet freedom means free publicity. I'll just add that I've discovered some of my favorite songs and musicians (such as Heather Dale and Jonathan Coulton) via YouTube, and some excellent television online (such as the BBC's Sherlock). If it weren't for the internet, if not for YouTube, I would not have gone and bought a Heather Dale album on iTunes, or bought some tracks from Jonathan Coulton's website. That would have been a net loss for the music industry. (Yes, I acknowledge that YouTube, being more akin to a streaming service than a downloading site, isn't necessarily what people mean when they say "pirating music.")
The greater part of the illegal download problem in America, and in the Western world at large, is not piracy so much as accessibility. By and large, we in the developed world don't balk at paying $0.99 for a track on iTunes, or $9.99 for an e-book; compare those to a $12 CD with about a dozen songs on it or an $8 (mass-market) or $12 (trade) paperback. What is problematic, rather, is when music, books, or films are not readily available for purchase -- leading those who really want to obtain said materials to seek other means to get them. (This, as far as I'm aware, often becomes an issue where foreign rights and such are concerned.) By and large, if there is a convenient venue for purchase at a fair price, Americans will pay for the electronic media they consume.
A side-note to the above: one of the truly significant illegal download problems in the developed world, is that of children or teenagers who don't have their own source of income. In the past, they would have asked their parents for money, or saved up their allowances, or done a bit of babysitting in order to purchase the media they want. I'm sure many adults today have fond childhood memories of going to the record store, for example, and buying that album they wanted with their hard-earned cash. Nowadays, it's much easier to bypass the work required to get the money to buy books or music by illegally downloading. I agree that children who don't grow up with a certain moral framework in which content creators should be compensated for their work might one-day become income-earning adults who pirate all of their media despite having the funds to pay for it. But in that case, much as children who commit petty crimes (vandalism and disruption of the peace come to mind) are generally granted more legal leeway than adults who do the same, I don't think that PIPA and SOPA are the right tools to use to crack down on underage media pirates. That's in the realm of killing an ant with a sledgehammer. Also, I would argue that children and teenagers without income fall somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum of "consumers who can afford to pay for all the content they want" and "consumers who would not consume content if it cost money."
In other, mostly developing countries, the concept of copyright is still rather hazy in the public consciousness. Photocopying -- or pirating -- of textbooks, DVDs, &c. is the norm, rather than the exception. Citizens of many of these countries wouldn't buy these products even if they were impossible to pirate -- they're prohibitively expensive. If people in, say, China were prevented in any meaningful way from illegally accessing copyrighted American media, they would just turn to other shows, other books, other music -- non-American media. The income for artists and media companies wouldn't substantially increase as a result of the largely outwards-facing bills. In these markets, increasing profits would mean substantially lowering prices, perhaps to a point where there would be no point in producing said content for these consumers, because it would not be cost-effective.
While PIPA and SOPA are largely well-intentioned -- an attempt to secure for creative individuals the rewards of their work -- they're very problematically written. They were written by politicians -- not the artists they're supposed to protect, or the technologists who are supposed to enforce it. In their current incarnation, they cause more harm than good, especially where censorship and due process are concerned. Additionally, as most of my techie friends would tell you, meaningful enforcement would be basically impossible. As the internet has become an essential component of life in this country and around the world, the law needs to reflect an understanding of how to govern the web. Someone in Washington really ought to put the lawmakers, the technologists, the media companies, and the artists all in the same room to hammer out a solution that addresses everyone's needs and comes with a thorough understanding of current technology. That's the only way it'll work.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Page One, a Documentary
I attended an on-campus screening of the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times (co-sponsored by The Stanford Daily and the communications department, I think) today. It was, I believe, showing at a number of smaller theatres over the summer, as well as at Sundance. I enjoyed it -- it was at once realistic and optimistic, and quite well-made, besides.
The heavy focus on the advent of citizen journalism and the much-hyped "death of (print) newspapers" mirrors the self-publishing and e-book issues in book publishing today -- something that I know better than I do than the news industry. In both cases, it's a matter of negotiating relatively peaceful change, especially where technology is concerned, under threat of obsolescence. News media, methinks, is less hidebound than book publishing in that regard.
It was interesting to note that much of the citizen journalism going on today is responsive and aggregative -- that is, bloggers and websites responding to reporting by traditional media outlets, and aggregating material from professional news media. Citizen journalism is just not sufficiently reliable and or comprehensive, at least not yet -- and I'm not convinced that it will ever be, because consistent, good, and consistently good journalism requires infrastructure (which in turn requires the sort of resources that civilian journalists can rarely access) and training (which is usually acquired at journalism school and/or through working in the field, under the guidance of more experienced journalists). Certainly, there are isolated incidences in which passersby on the ground are first to gain access to material simply because the spontaneity of some news precludes real-time coverage. But on the whole, I think the documentary has proven that professional journalism is not dead.
The heavy focus on the advent of citizen journalism and the much-hyped "death of (print) newspapers" mirrors the self-publishing and e-book issues in book publishing today -- something that I know better than I do than the news industry. In both cases, it's a matter of negotiating relatively peaceful change, especially where technology is concerned, under threat of obsolescence. News media, methinks, is less hidebound than book publishing in that regard.
It was interesting to note that much of the citizen journalism going on today is responsive and aggregative -- that is, bloggers and websites responding to reporting by traditional media outlets, and aggregating material from professional news media. Citizen journalism is just not sufficiently reliable and or comprehensive, at least not yet -- and I'm not convinced that it will ever be, because consistent, good, and consistently good journalism requires infrastructure (which in turn requires the sort of resources that civilian journalists can rarely access) and training (which is usually acquired at journalism school and/or through working in the field, under the guidance of more experienced journalists). Certainly, there are isolated incidences in which passersby on the ground are first to gain access to material simply because the spontaneity of some news precludes real-time coverage. But on the whole, I think the documentary has proven that professional journalism is not dead.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Summer Book List
I've decided to keep a list of books I've read this summer (for pleasure, not for work). There are a whole host of reasons: I'd be interested in my rate of reading (that is, the number of books I go through per month, or something like that), the breakdown of my reading habits (genre, rate/frequency of rereading, &c.), the amount of money I actually spend on books (as an undergraduate living at home, it's one of my biggest expenses, though one of the perks of working at a publishing house is all the free books I get!), and statistics of that nature.
Housekeeping: I bump this post to the top of the blog every time I add another book. It is in chronological order, with the most recently finished book at the bottom. The titles below link to the Amazon page (the exact edition I read, or as close to it as possible), and the authors link to the authors' Wikipedia pages, where available.
Reading
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Neuromancer** by William Gibson
Read
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Kraken by China Miéville
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara? by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy
River Town by Peter Hessler
A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay
Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay
Shadowflame by Dianne Sylvan
Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History by Patrick Hunt
Galileo* by Bertolt Brecht
The Little Prince* by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Hamlet* by William Shakespeare
Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell** by Susanna Clarke
Queen Defiant by Anne O'Brien
Urban Code by Anne Mikoleit and Moritz Pürckhauer
Just My Type by Simon Garfield
*reread
**started a long time ago, but didn't finish until now
Housekeeping: I bump this post to the top of the blog every time I add another book. It is in chronological order, with the most recently finished book at the bottom. The titles below link to the Amazon page (the exact edition I read, or as close to it as possible), and the authors link to the authors' Wikipedia pages, where available.
Reading
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Neuromancer** by William Gibson
Read
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Kraken by China Miéville
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara? by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy
River Town by Peter Hessler
A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay
Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay
Shadowflame by Dianne Sylvan
Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History by Patrick Hunt
Galileo* by Bertolt Brecht
The Little Prince* by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Hamlet* by William Shakespeare
Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell** by Susanna Clarke
Queen Defiant by Anne O'Brien
Urban Code by Anne Mikoleit and Moritz Pürckhauer
Just My Type by Simon Garfield
*reread
**started a long time ago, but didn't finish until now
Sunday, August 7, 2011
NYTimes: Book Tours at Google
Who says fuzzies and techies don't mix? This article says otherwise:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/us/13bcgoogle.html?src=recg
Google seems like a great place for authors to stop on tour, precisely because it (and Silicon Valley in general) has this pseudo-college campus feel. Just like at university, where students are encouraged to attend lectures and presentations outside of their specialties and even their comfort zones, it seems like these author talks are a way for techies to branch out after college. (I imagine these sorts of events are among the parts of college I'll miss most.) And given all the smart, literate (and nerdy) people at a place like Google, I'll wager the audience is perfect for book talks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/us/13bcgoogle.html?src=recg
Google seems like a great place for authors to stop on tour, precisely because it (and Silicon Valley in general) has this pseudo-college campus feel. Just like at university, where students are encouraged to attend lectures and presentations outside of their specialties and even their comfort zones, it seems like these author talks are a way for techies to branch out after college. (I imagine these sorts of events are among the parts of college I'll miss most.) And given all the smart, literate (and nerdy) people at a place like Google, I'll wager the audience is perfect for book talks.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Overheard in the Office #3
Not so much "overheard" as "was said in a meeting":
"I never know why people can't just write about a nice dismemberment."
Everyone here is lovely and (mostly) harmless, really.
"I never know why people can't just write about a nice dismemberment."
Everyone here is lovely and (mostly) harmless, really.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Wall Street Journal: How to Undress a Victorian Lady in Your Next Historical Romance
I was directed to this article by a number of people, but I think Nicole sent it first (no, it's not adult content -- it's The Wall Street Journal, after all):
http://online.wsj.com/article/
I really appreciate the effort some authors expend to get the details right. Historical fiction has a lot in common with science fiction, where the technology ought to be theoretically plausible, and fantasy, where the imagined world ought to be internally consistent and realistic within its constraints -- which is why we have people like Asimov writing science fiction, people like Tolkien writing fantasy, and a bevy of actual historians writing historical fiction. It's hard to do these genres well if you don't have the background.
I have made my own period costumes, and sporadically partake in historical reenactment (and yes, I do own a corset). I do my research; Stanford's libraries are excellent for this purpose. And as I sometimes mention on this blog, I'm a history major -- but I'm still, compared to film industry costumers, an amateur. Inaccuracies in books, films, etc. bother me quite a bit, because I always find myself thinking, if I, as a hobbyist with limited resources, can get it right (or at least moreso than this film), why can't a professional crew? (Some of my friends apparently enjoy watching bad quasi-medieval action flicks with me just to watch me go off about all the things the studio got wrong. Not sure what that says about me -- or them, for that matter.)
Anyhow. A pet peeve of mine.
http://online.wsj.com/article/
I really appreciate the effort some authors expend to get the details right. Historical fiction has a lot in common with science fiction, where the technology ought to be theoretically plausible, and fantasy, where the imagined world ought to be internally consistent and realistic within its constraints -- which is why we have people like Asimov writing science fiction, people like Tolkien writing fantasy, and a bevy of actual historians writing historical fiction. It's hard to do these genres well if you don't have the background.
I have made my own period costumes, and sporadically partake in historical reenactment (and yes, I do own a corset). I do my research; Stanford's libraries are excellent for this purpose. And as I sometimes mention on this blog, I'm a history major -- but I'm still, compared to film industry costumers, an amateur. Inaccuracies in books, films, etc. bother me quite a bit, because I always find myself thinking, if I, as a hobbyist with limited resources, can get it right (or at least moreso than this film), why can't a professional crew? (Some of my friends apparently enjoy watching bad quasi-medieval action flicks with me just to watch me go off about all the things the studio got wrong. Not sure what that says about me -- or them, for that matter.)
Anyhow. A pet peeve of mine.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
NYTimes: The City
An ode to my hometown, or rather, an analysis of its continued prominence in the collective consciousness:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/opinion/08judt.html?src=me&ref=general
I've always known that I wanted to come back to New York -- that wherever I went, for school or work or pleasure, I would never find a place that quite compared. Where else would you find world-class museums, a fantastic theatre scene, an equally fantastic classical music scene, Broadway, and just about every major culture and language on earth (and some not-so-major ones too) -- not to mention that it's the hub of so many different industries, one of which is the publishing industry. It's a bittersweet fate, I must admit -- I have made some fast friends here at Stanford, and I'm not looking forward to the day I graduate and leave them all. (Most of them are computer scientists, and likely to remain in Silicon Valley.) And yet, it's a homecoming.
The magic of the City, methinks, is that it's secure in its brilliant, often-conflicting identity. New York has never sought to prove anything, never tried to claim any dubious superlatives, never really defined itself, or attempted to. The best analogy I can think of would be classical Rome -- the center of the world in its day, comfortable subsuming other cultures, or coexisting with them, or ignoring them, as was expedient. It required assimilation, but only to a point. So long as Roman subjects accepted its legal and political jurisdiction, so long as they also adopted aspects of Roman identity, they were allowed to retain their own languages, customs, and beliefs. They were, within a generation or two, accorded the rights of a citizen of Rome. Rome did not fear its immigrants, did not shun the unusual or the foreign, but kept them all until they became no longer quite so strange. And this is how Rome endured for centuries as the foremost city in the (known) world. And so, too, does New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/opinion/08judt.html?src=me&ref=general
I've always known that I wanted to come back to New York -- that wherever I went, for school or work or pleasure, I would never find a place that quite compared. Where else would you find world-class museums, a fantastic theatre scene, an equally fantastic classical music scene, Broadway, and just about every major culture and language on earth (and some not-so-major ones too) -- not to mention that it's the hub of so many different industries, one of which is the publishing industry. It's a bittersweet fate, I must admit -- I have made some fast friends here at Stanford, and I'm not looking forward to the day I graduate and leave them all. (Most of them are computer scientists, and likely to remain in Silicon Valley.) And yet, it's a homecoming.
The magic of the City, methinks, is that it's secure in its brilliant, often-conflicting identity. New York has never sought to prove anything, never tried to claim any dubious superlatives, never really defined itself, or attempted to. The best analogy I can think of would be classical Rome -- the center of the world in its day, comfortable subsuming other cultures, or coexisting with them, or ignoring them, as was expedient. It required assimilation, but only to a point. So long as Roman subjects accepted its legal and political jurisdiction, so long as they also adopted aspects of Roman identity, they were allowed to retain their own languages, customs, and beliefs. They were, within a generation or two, accorded the rights of a citizen of Rome. Rome did not fear its immigrants, did not shun the unusual or the foreign, but kept them all until they became no longer quite so strange. And this is how Rome endured for centuries as the foremost city in the (known) world. And so, too, does New York.
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