not sure exactly what a hipster is, but maybe that's part of being a hipster...goodreads posted a hipster lit flowchart...it looks like i meet the first criteria - have you read infinite jest?...i also have the next two books in my "to read" list - 2666 and remembrance of things past...i have read satanic verses, but i don't get coffee from starbucks...i don't buy coffee from any place except korean instant coffee packets from the market, and i wear clothes from costco, which should be an automatic hipster disqualification...
another hipster related article about hipsters starting to hunt, following zuckerberg's example of killing and preparing the meat he eats...it would be pretty funny to see what would happen if a bunch of these hipster hunters ran into the normal ultra-conservative tea party hunters...
i may have a disposition for collecting things...i collect mainly books and firefly stuff, but i just started collecting hot wheels and small model ships...the strange part is that i also have a dislike for accumulating too much stuff...having a lot of things weighs me down, and the burden i feel is proportional to the cost and physical size of the item...it's why i don't like furniture and have put off buying a bed, sofa, and a real dining table...they're large and expensive - double whammy (but i did find a dining table i liked but world market wasn't willing to work a cheaper deal for a floor model...yes, i even try to haggle at retail stores)...i feel like i have to get rid of stuff after a certain point, and i think i will with some of my books and guns...i'll start reading books that i don't want to keep and sell them off as i finish them (some books i got by buying bulk lots on ebay, and that is why i have a lot that i don't really care to keep)....
i can't really explain why i collect other than i enjoy it, but it is in constant conflict with the side of me that doesn't want a lot of material things...i also see the futility in collecting things, since you can't really do much with the collection other than display it (maybe it's my way of decorating)...my tastes will probably change as time passes as well, and i might want to get rid of some of my collections later...for now, as long as i don't spend beyond my means and doesn't take up too much space, then it's ok...i already have buyer's remorse and can feel the cars "weighing" me down, because i bought too many...i can apply to get on "collection intervention" if it gets out of control...
for those who know me, it's pretty obvious why i collect firefly stuff, but i prefer things related to the ship and the characters (like the little damn heroes series from qmx)...the serenity ships that i have are what led to collecting model spaceships, and i thought it would be nice to have figures of ships that i liked...i'm interested in star trek ships like the various versions of the enterprise, voyager, and the defiant...i also have a few star wars ships like vader's advanced tie fighter, millennium falcon, and x-wing...i also have a version of mass effect's normandy...futurama's planet express is another that i am looking for, but that one is hard to find...i found one on ebay, but it's too bit expensive for what should be at most a 20 dollar toy...
my other new collecting hobby came about after a trip to the collectibles show called frank and sons...it was a few weeks after comic con, and i wanted to see if they had any merchandise from the convention...i walked by a vendor that had hot wheels and saw kitt, ecto-1, back to the future delorean, and the a-team van (my favorite of the four)...it wasn't too long after i read ready player one, so 80s references were fresh in my mind and couldn't pass up getting these cars...
blurry pic of kitt, ecto-1, a-team van, back to the future dmc-12, curiosity mars rover, original 60s tv batmobile, dark knight batmobiles, and little damn heroes in the back
in stores, they would only be a dollar each, but employees and scalpers get them all as soon as they're in stock and resell them at a higher price...they were still cheap when i got them though...however, i've seen kitt sell for $12 and ecto-1 for $15 now, and some vendors are planning to sell for up to $25 during xmas...buying these led to looking at regular hot wheels of cars that i liked, and i picked up a few ferraris and porsches...this led to buying more cars that i liked, and now i have too many...hard core collectors have thousands, but there is no way i could ever collect that many...the good thing is that outside of the 80s tv/movie cars, the cars that i like are not very collectible, so most are reasonably priced at around $1-3 bucks each but they still add up quickly...hot wheels makes limited edition treasure hunts and super treasure hunts, and these are what most collectors look for...i just look for die-cast versions of real cars that i like...mostly hot wheels, but matchbox makes some good ones too (both are owned by mattel)...the main difference that i can see between the two brands is that hot wheels is flashier and matchbox tends to be a little more realistic...hot wheels is easily the more popular brand though...there are some international brands like tomica and kyosho (japan) and corgi (uk) that are good, but are harder to find and more expensive...i'm going to have to find a cheap case to display the cars...
i went to the annual hot wheels convention in garden grove, but it was pretty small...about 5-6 rows of tables with people selling their cars...i ended up buying a few 50 cent and 1 dollar cars, because it felt like a waste to go there and pay for entrance and parking but leave with nothing...it was more for hard core collectors who were willing to spend hundreds of dollars per car for super rare or custom ones...there were also hot wheels designers who were signing stuff, and i think they introduced next year's new models...
i also went to a k-mart collector day...this is when k-mart lets people get first access to new hot wheels shipments and happens about 3 to 4 times a year...usually there are more people than cases, so people are given raffle tickets...if your number is called, you can pick a case to open and keep the ones that you like...afterwards, you can look for more that people left behind...the k-mart that i went to had a good ratio of cases to people, so i had the chance to pick a case...i was able to get two curiosity mars rovers and one treasure hunt from the box...the majority of the people there were older men and women in their 40-50's, and the collectors were pretty eager to get at the leftovers to see if people leave behind the more collectible stuff...there was a grandpa wearing a hot wheels tshirt who was pretty anxious to get the cars in my case (probably could tell that i wasn't a typical collector), but he was nice enough to tell me which were worth keeping...i heard some say that he worked at mattel but was a collector too...he ended up buying about 3 cases worth of cars...can't imagine how many cars he has if he started collecting them since they were first introduced...i had several special angry birds hot wheels, but since i'm not a fan of angry birds, i gave them and most of the cars in the case to the grandpa...in hindsight, it might have been better for me to buy them and trade them at frank and sons since they're selling for about 5 bucks each...below is a video about "k-day"...
i've always liked cars and used to collect micro machines as a kid, so maybe it was just a matter of time before i got interested in die cast cars...i still have the micro machines and have seen them in collectible stores for 1 to 5 dollars each, but i don't think there is much demand for them...it's pretty easy to go overboard with hot wheels and matchbox since they're small and fairly cheap, so i have to be careful...i think i'm pretty close to completing my collection for now...they release new models frequently, so there could be other cars that i might want...i look for exotics like ferraris and porsches, older model european and japanese cars, and certain makes like audi, bmw, and volvo...
i also have a few star wars figures (started by wanting to collect jedis and sith only), but my interest in star wars decreased greatly after the prequels and stopped buying them...those were some crappy movies...there are still certain characters in star wars that i like, and i came across a limited revan figure...i caved and ordered it on ebay (i need to stop looking at ebay and spending all my money)...revan is the main character in the knights of the old republic, which is part of the star wars expanded universe (the game also has a cool ship called the ebon hawk that would be great for my collection if they made a model of it)...i don't really consider this a real collection at this point...
haven't opened it yet
thanks to robokel for the yoda/vader bobble heads, large vader/maul, and inara's shuttle...doesn't take up too much space, but the rest of the cars are not pictured
i have a small gun collection, but there have been enough posts about them in my previous posts...also, i've decided that i want to get rid of most of the guns that i have now, and restart my collection...however, i'll hold off buying new guns for now...
the last thing i collect are books, and i won't delve too much into my book collection, since it will probably require its own post...for me, collecting books has a deeper meaning than collecting things like toys...books play an important role in the development of civilization as a whole, and they represent knowledge and progress in physical form...you can argue that it is really the printing press that allowed for the advancement, and digital print is just an evolution of it...however, there are many places in the world where electricity and electronic devices are still a luxury and the best way to spread information is through a real book...books are still a very important medium for spreading ideas, and it is something that is lost on kids growing up in the digital age...there is a reason why the nazis burned books, and reminds me of a well-known and prescient quote by heinrich heine..."where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people"...i can't deny the convenience of e-readers, and i actually would like to have all my books in digital format once they become as easy on the eyes as text on paper...however, i would still collect real books because of what they represent to me and the permanence of something on paper versus digital bits...i might pare it down to about 200 core books that i like, which would consist mostly of classic literature/fiction...i also don't trust the ebook business model, but that is a completely separate topic...
if you read this entire post, then i applaud your threshold for crappy rambling...that covers just about everything that i collect...collecting these things is pushing up my geek quotient, but as long as i don't larp or cosplay or play d&d, wow, 40k, or mtg, i should be outside the rarefied echelon of geekdom...what is needed is an official geek hierarchy chart
this article is about self publishers and the questionable business of paying for favorable book reviews...to me, from an integrity of advertising standpoint, there doesn't seem to be much difference between paying $99 for a slanted review on amazon vs paying a celebrity millions of dollars to endorse some product that he/she may not even like...if anything, the latter is worse, yet celebrity endorsements aren't questioned
most self-publishers probably have limited ways to market their work, and paying for reviews seems like a legitimate way to get "seed" reviews on sites to get more people to read their books and provide unsolicited reviews...if enough people read and review them, then they will even out the five-star paid reviews, and it solves the issue of not being able to get anyone to read your book because no one else has...however, i can see how self-publishers who do not pay for reviews and happen to have some good reviews might be hurt by this practice since people who read the good ones might immediately dismiss them as false...since these reviews might be the only source for buyers to get more information about the book, they may also have greater influence on someone's decision to buy than a review for a typical book that is from a major publisher...still not a big issue in my opinion, and it is better than it used be when there was very little self-publishing and no online reviews...fake online book reviews #firstworldproblems
can't believe the year is already half over...the millions came up with their list of books for the second half...i already have way too many books, and since i prefer to get used books, i'll probably won't read any of these this year...the millions is probably my favorite book blog...their taste in books seem to match mine
ray bradbury passed away, so i think it might be a good time to read a few of his books that i have on my shelf...they label him incorrectly as a sci-fi writer...his stories aren't about science...it's just that the setting might be on some far off planet or about an alien, but science is never the focus
i've read Fahrenheit 451 and martian chronicles...451 i really liked, but didn't like martian chronicles as much
there is a project to preserve a physical copy of every book...a massive undertaking, but in my opinion, a worthy one...if i had unlimited funds, this would be one of my projects...a private library of every book in existence
Do you love a book so much you want everyone to read it?
World Book Night launched in the UK in 2011 and saw passionate readers across that beautiful country, give 1 million books to light or non readers to spread the joy and love of reading. Reading changes lives and at the heart of World Book Night lies the simplest of ideas and acts - that of putting a book into another person’s hand and saying ‘this one’s amazing, you have to read it’.
Now, it's our time to join the cause.
World Book Night 2012 will be held on April 23 - in the US and the UK - and we’re looking for 50,000 volunteer book givers to hand out 20 copies each - for a total of 1 million free special World Book Night paperbacks!
In order to be a book giver you must be:
Aged 16 or over and a resident of the United States
Able to pick up 20 copies of your book from your local bookshop or library
Committed to giving your books away on World Book Night to non or light readers
Givers will be chosen based on
Where, to whom & why you want to give books away
the brief and wondrous life of oscar wao is probably the only one i would give away...i would consider giving away enders game and zeitoun, but i haven't read them yet
city lights is the first one listed...i might have been there, but i don't remember...i'll have to check it out the next time i'm in sf...i've been to shakespeare and company in paris but none of the others...hoping i'll have a chance to see the other ones...what is surprising is beijing's bookstore...books spread ideas and teach people...that's bad for countries that like to control their citizens...also, the article says that it is one of the few places where one can get banned books, which doesn't make much sense since that would mean that they're not really banned
this is another list based on bookstore aesthetics...some overlap with the lonely planet list...i want to check out the last bookstore in la, but i hate going to downtown
i was tempted to get a kindle or a nook after seeing the last price drop, but i think i'll jump on the ebook train when it gets down to 20 bucks and all ebooks are drm free...his argument doesn't apply to people like me, because i buy most of my books used, making them cheaper than ebooks (except free ebooks that are public domain)...also, i prefer mass market paperbacks over other types, because they're small, light, and easy to carry...i don't understand people who prefer hard cover books...in japan and korea, i noticed that most books are paperback, which makes more sense...they take up less room and require less material to print them...this is important in these countries, because they are really strict about recycling and how waste material is disposed of and space is a premium in most homes and apartments...a lot of international editions are available in small trade mass market size paperbacks in korea that are not available in the us...perfect for taking on the subway or bus
The mass market paperback is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet.
Ailing for months, its demise is now all but assured by Amazon’s recent bold announcement. Not the over-analyzed, over-iPad-compared Kindle Fire announcement. Rather, by the far less interesting news – to the gadgetphiles – that the least expensive, wonderfully readable and portable Kindle is now $79, a price point matched over the Black Friday holiday by Barnes & Noble for its Nook Simple Touch Limited Edition.
Mass market paperbacks, unlike their larger and higher-priced trade paperback siblings, are those books often inelegantly displayed in cheap wire fixtures along the front aisles of supermarkets and convenience stores, with soft covers to be ripped off and returned for full credit if the racked “product” doesn’t sell.
The Nook Simple Touch Limited Edition.
Sales of mass market paperbacks have not exactly been healthy lately. Not only has data from the Association of American Publishers shown continued dramatic drops in monthly sales, but numbers from Nielsen BookScan for the first half of 2011 reveal unit – not dollar – sales of mass market paperbacks fell 26.6% compared to the same period a year earlier. That, when BookScan notes overall sales of paper books dropped a not-insignificant 10.2%.
It is, as Publishers Weekly reported, especially devastating to genres that largely depend on the palm-sized, 4”x7” printed mass format: romance, mystery and science fiction/fantasy. BookScan’s stats state that unit sales of adult fiction dropped almost in lockstep, by 25.7%.
Not surprisingly, a large part of the reason (alongside the loss of retail shelf space and the struggling economy) is the rush to eBooks. This spring, Amazon passed a milestone. Paid sales of eBooks it offers surpassed sales of paper books, hardcover and paperback. Fiction appears to be leading the charge to digital, and it’s not as though fewer total books are being sold – a recent BookStats report, conducted jointly by the AAP and Book Industry Study Group, concludes the total number of books purchased was actually up 4.1% from 2008 to 2010.
A truly generic mass market paperback.
Even authors who once made a living off of mass market paperbacks hear the tolling bells. New York Times best-selling author Bob Mayer is something of a high priest of eBook advocacy and has created his own eBook publishing house, Who Dares Win Publishing. “I’ve never read an eBook but I make 90% of my revenue from eBooks,” he told a conference of the Northwest Independent Editors Guild in the Seattle area this summer. “When the big six (publishers) figure out the eBook is the new mass market paperback, publishing will change dramatically.”
Similarly, conference speakers from The Mountaineers Books and Allrecipes.com confirmed that genre fiction and fiction in general far outsells non-fiction in eBooks, and science-fiction and romance are digital’s bestselling genres. (Mayer and the other speakers also said the rise of eBooks has led to a huge increase of interest in, and the ability to sell, content that once would simply go out of print. But not without effort. As Mayer pointed out, “Content is king; promotion is queen.”)
Now factor in the new math. The cheapest Kindle and Nook Simple Touch were roughly $80 (pricing reinforced in ads from device resellers such as Target and Staples). A typical mass market paperback sells for $8.
For the price of ten paperback books, an avid reader can get a device that not only provides fiction at a lower per-book price than paper (once the book no longer carries the publisher’s usurious new-release premium), but also displays free classics and permits an entire library of current reading to be carried anywhere.
The original book-optimized Ikea Billy bookcase.
This isn’t just a tipping point. It’s a flipping point that can invert an industry: a sub-$100 magic consumer price point. EBook device prices have, over the months, rapidly fallen as mass market paperback prices have, over the years, slowly risen. And E Ink devices, tablet snobs aside, are perfect for portable, fast, bright-sunlight fiction consumption. Yum.
Yes, there are downsides for consumers. No books to give, dog-eared, to Friends of the Library sales. No place to put autographs (a startup is working on that). No reason to buy more bookshelves (Ikea is ahead of this trend, changing bookcase design to accommodate clutter as well as books on now-deeper shelves). No convenient tome to hurl at suddenly skittering cockroaches.
EBooks have attacked and are about to claim their first victim. Because victorious technology isn’t primarily in-your-face cool. It’s unremarkably common and cheap – and therefore devastating in its impact to everyday habits.
i haven't been reading much but i still manage to pick up more new books (used but new to me)...still stuck on the two books that you see on the right side of the page...although, i started reading storm of swords again, and i should finish sometime next week...i don't want to spoil it, but martin isn't shy about killing off characters
there aren't very many used bookstores in anymore because people read less and are switching to ebooks, but there is one good one nearby that seems to be doing ok...the store is called book off, and i check their stock once every few weeks...it is a japanese chain, but they have a large section of used books in english that are in very good condition...from time to time they will have newly released books for cheap...last weekend i picked up these three
reamde and freedom were hard covers, but they were only 5 bucks...too cheap to pass up so i got them...i would probably have to wait at least a year after the paperbacks are released to be able to find them used...brief interviews with hideous men was a good find too since used dfw books are hard to come by
i haven't read any of neal stephenson's books, but i keep picking them up when i find them at a good price...i'll probably start with cryptonomicon...i don't remember if i wrote this in my blog about comic con, but there was an exhibitor who was selling a rare pre-published signed print of snow crash for about 2000 bucks...his books are supposed to be pretty good, so i'll have to see if they live up to the hype
i remember corrections getting better as i read it, so i got freedom...also, franzen and dfw were friends, and i want to see how dfw's death may have influenced this book
my review of corrections from goodreads...
this book was difficult to like...the family was so frustratingly dysfunctional and the three spoiled yuppie children were so annoying in the beginning that it was hard to look past them and enjoy the better aspects of the book...namely, the satiric observations about the family in parallel to the american economy...the change from an industrial/manufacturing economy to a service/finance/internet economy as reflected in the professions of the father compared to his children...the economic boom of the 90s and the shift in thought from working hard and paying your dues to obtaining success by finding the next hot internet stock to become overnight paper millionaires (aflred, the father, versus the oldest son, gary)...the writing is very good, but at times a little too slick...there were also some parts that didn't seem to fit(for example, turd hallucinations)...the story is intricately connected, and a careful read would show that many situations, objects, and people are related in some way...the reader might gain a little more satisfaction from the book if the connections can be made...there isn't much of a plot beyond trying to get the family together for one last christmas, but a plot isn't necessary for this type of book...also, by the end, two of the three children were less annoying as they matured and made their "corrections"...ultimately, i think this is a book worth reading
I am drowning in books here. Even with two houses (one with a library tower) and two storage lockers, I've run out of places to put all the various copies of all the various editions of all my various titles that have accumulated over the years... and new ones are arriving all the time, demanding shelf space. So between now and the end of the year, I am going to slash some prices and offer some specials on many of my older books, to make room for the new ones.
First up: my 1982 historical novel FEVRE DREAM. Vampires on the antebellum Mississippi. Huck Finn with fangs. A finalist for the World Fantasy Award (lost to Michael Shea's NIFFT THE LEAN).
I bought a large stock of the first edition hardcovers when Poseidon Press remaindered them back in 1984, and have been selling off signed copies ever since... but now, after all those decades, my stock is almost exhausted. Looking at my shelf, I count sixteen (16) remaining copies. These are the Poseidon Press trade hardcovers, first edition, first printing... but they are remainder stamped, and on fourteen of the sixteen, the dustjackets are in pretty bad shape, with rips, tears, fraying on the edges, chunks missing. Two of the sixteen have no dustcovers at all. On t'other hand, I will be glad to sign and inscribed the books, no extra charge.
I've been selling FEVRE DREAM at $29 on the Signed Books page. To move these out and clear a little shelf space, I'm going to cut the price to $22 apiece for the fourteen copies with the beat-up dustjackets, and to $17 for the two copies with no dustjacket at all. Those prices include book rate/ media mail shipping within the US. Priority mail and overseas shipping will be extra; inquire of my assistant Ty at grrmbooks@gmail.com for a quote on that. (Depends on where you live).
Elsewise, it's first come, first served, so long as the supply last. Send your orders via PayPal to direwolf@georgerrmartin.com
Some of the dustjackets are in worse shape than others. (Though all of them have defects). The earliest orders will get the best copies, the later orders the ones that are more messed up).
(And if FEVRE DREAM isn't your cup of brew, or you already own a copy, check out the Signed Books page on my website for a list of my other available titles. Please note: I am NOT selling any of the Ice & Fire books, all of which are available easily at any bookstore. I only sell the older, out of print books and editions).
Thanks.
so if you are looking for cheaper copies of this out of print book, go order it
We hate when a book becomes popular simply because it was turned into a movie
Oprah was not the "final say" on what is awesome. We really didn't care what was on her show or what her latest book club book was. Really.
i hate it when a book that i like becomes an oprah book... seeing that stupid oprah's book club graphic on a book that i like pains me...especially when it is on one my favorite ones like anna karenina and east of eden...i doubt a typical oprah viewer would take the time and really read anna karenina or east of eden....the ones who bought it probably thought it was a nicholas sparks (see bullet point number 3 on the list) type book, but quickly realized it wasn't some sappy chick lit novel...i won't spend more time on why i hate what she and her show represents, but it is funny that some borders employees feel the same way
oct. 25th release date for 1Q84...the wind up bird chronicle is my favorite out of murakami's books, but large pieces of the book were edited out for some reason...i hope that is not true of his latest book, but based on the page count of the original japanese and english versions, it could be missing some stuff...i hate how they come out with hard covers first...i'll have to wait another year for the paperback version
jackpot at the market...they had dragonfruit, jackfruit, and some yellow fruit that is labelled as guava but didn't look like any guava i know
i also saw some durians, but they were frozen...maybe that's how they keep them from stinking...i wasn't sure about frozen fruit, so i didn't get it
also, stopped by borders again...i think they're getting down to the last couple weeks until closing...they say that they don't have an official last day, but they raised the discount to 70-80 percent...it also seemed like they opened up all their inventory...i saw books that i didn't see yesterday...i got two books by david foster wallace...the pale king and oblivion...the pale king is in hard back, and i don't usually get them...however, it was only 8 dollars, which would have been cheaper than the paperback version...the problem is that they're more cumbersome and you can't carry it around...also heavier to hold and read...i really don't know why people would prefer hard covers over paperback...i also got the gospel according to jesus christ by jose saramago...three good finds for 18 bucks...still high for what i usually pay for books since i get used ones and many are just a dollar each...still a good deal for new ones though
got a couple more from borders last night...one was on my wishlist and the other was close to being on my wishlist, so they were very good finds...and only about 4-5 dollars each...i got we by yevgeny zamyatin and the golden notebook by doris lessing (book titles are underlined or italicized...putting my elementary education to good use)
after getting a smart phone, i installed the goodreads app thinking that i could just search the books that i own instead of having to export my book list in csv and uploading it to my phone periodically...it turned out that the goodreads app can't search within just my book collection and i can only browse 20 books at a time...took forever to check if i had a certain book or if the book was in my wishlist...i'll have to go back to exporting my booklist to csv
