The temporary book

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May 242010
 

I was listening to one of my favourite podcasts this morning, A History of the World in 100 Objects, and it started me thinking about books as objects of historial record. And not just important books but every book, no matter how bad, how cheap, how crappy it is, is a historical record of something (even if it’s just “Joe Authorialambitions has written a book”). So an enormous amount of information about our world is preserved in books and available in books. Our judgements of a book’s worthiness are no guarantee of the future worth of the book as an object (in case you’re wondering, I’m listening to the Rosetta Stone chapter, which is a brilliant example of the worth of an object being completely separate from its content). Unfortunately though books, by their makeup, are rather temporary in the overall scheme of things. I have a book published in 1789 (The complete confectioner: or, The whole art of confectionary made easy: [...read more...]

Are e-books green? or, Everyone goes a-greenwashing

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May 242010
 

An interesting article from Stuff on the maybe not so environmentally friendly claims for e-books – ahead of Whitcoulls’ plans to sell e-books and the Kobo e-reader. Complete with a couple of vox-pops, as it were. It’s a little disingenuous for e-reader and e-book manufacturers to talk about being environmentally-friendly as if it was a driving force in the e-book industry – just like the book industry, we know it isn’t. But greenwashing is alive and well everywhere, right?

What’s BookieMonster reading? Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

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May 232010
 
What's BookieMonster reading? Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Watchmen! Dun dun duh duh! It feels like I have to start like that because to many graphic novel fans and beginners Watchmen is the graphic novel. I’m guessing it’s one of the most widely read graphic novels, in part due to its inclusion in Time Magazine’s 100 Best Novels (which was admittedly the 100 best novels from 1923 to the time of the article). And, actually, it is pretty damn good. There’s so much there, coming at you, a tonne of visual content, a tonne of dialogue, whipping backwards and forwards in time, a bit of physics, a splash of existential philosophising, a heaping helping of ambiguity, gore, psychological insight, war, and the apocalypse. I was exhausted by the end. But you can’t stop reading, the story is compelling, even whilst weaving in a sub-story (The Black Freighter) and annoying you with crappy female characters (yeah, Alan Moore – not [...read more...]

What’s BookieMonster reading? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1

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May 222010
 
What's BookieMonster reading? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1

Yes, it’s more graphic novels! And more to come (thanks Kim ). But for now I’m done with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 1 by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. And I don’t mean “done” like “I’m done with this show!” – The League of Extraordinary Gentlement is rather entertaining with one or two little annoyances. The illustration was quite likeable in a sort of painful way, all pointy faces and big dresses (I love a good Victorian woman), smoke, steam, lots and lots of steel, blood and bouncing boobs. I especially liked the look of Wilhelmina Murray (that Victorian woman thing) but her character? Ack. Ack, ack, ack. The writer just seemed to not completely have a handle on her character, giving her a shrill, harpy role, having her attacked and in danger of being raped – which, dude, what’s up with that? She’s supposed to be a woman who [...read more...]

What’s BookieMonster reading? Bonk : The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

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May 212010
 
What's BookieMonster reading? Bonk : The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

I have been going on a bit of Mary Roach binge – I read Spook a while ago and then rediscovered libraries and so have now read Stiff and Bonk. Bonk is (unfortunately) my least favourite – Stiff being the best and Spook close behind. Not that this is terrible – Roach at her best is still entertaining, diverting and informative – but Bonk is too meandering and needed a good edit. This being her third published book I couldn’t help wondering if the old author vs. editor competition had swung in the author’s favor this time around. Roach’s meandering style with lots of diversions is great but needs a serious directing hand to make sure she comes back to the topic once the meander is complete, and that hand was definitely lacking. More than once we sharply veered off the current path with a promise to return, only to find that [...read more...]

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