eddvick

Janna Silverstein forwards news that one venerable Seattle-area independent bookstore is closing, and another is going to have to leave its current location.

Bailey-Coy Books is the one that's closing, and the excellent Elliott Bay Book Company is considering a move, ironically, to the same neighborhood.

The bad economy is partially to blame. Lack of parking certainly hurts Elliott Bay. But both have been hurt a lot more by the availability of books at big box retailers and at Amazon. In a just world there would be room for all, but independent booksellers just can't compete with stores that mark books down so much as loss leaders. The biggest thing I'll miss is another venue for writers to read their work. I went to quite a few readings at Elliott Bay, and have little faith that a move to Capitol Hill will be beneficial for their bottom line.

Stephen Elliott might send you his book for free. The only thing you have to do is read it within a week and send it on to the next person. So, not totally free, but considering how central word of mouth is to selling a book, this sounds like a brilliant marketing tool.

I had not thought to see if Brodart had clearance merchandise before.

We are back from a week in Texas, guests of my brother and his family. Ron, his wife Lana, their daughter Emily, and Emily's son Adan live in Bedford, one of the 'mid-cities' between Dallas and Ft Worth. They were excellent hosts; and it was particularly great seeing my great-nephew, now two years old and quite possibly the loudest screecher on the face of the planet. Unusually, all four of Ron's children were there (I can't say "Ron and Lana's" because some of them are from Ron's first marriage), so we had a big cookout with Patrick, Preston, Lisa, and - of course - Emily.

Ron and Lana have a pool, where Katie spent as much time as possible. From being a passable-if-tentative swimmer she went to jumping off the diving board and racing across the pool. This happifies me.

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It's pleasant to find out that Bud Plant will be an exhibitor at the upcoming Seattle Book & Paper Show. I suppose I must have bought enough from him at last year's antiquarian book show.

There was an estate sale a few blocks from my work, so I checked it out. All of the books they had were newer, mostly by Clive Cussler and his ilk, except for a few older kid's books. Sure enough, in amongst them was a copy of Andre Norton's fifth (if I counted correctly) title, without dust jacket but in fine shape otherwise.

There are few ways I'd prefer to spend a dollar.

John Kendrick Bangs
1899 / Harper and Brothers

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On the strength of A House-Boat on the Styx, its sequels, and some other novels, Bangs is lumped with other turn-of-the-century fantasists like James Branch Cabell, JM Barrie, and George MacDonald. I'm not arguing with that decision, I endorse it, but Bangs like those other authors wrote in other genres and others forms a lot more than contemporary authors do (excepting Asimov, always excepting Asimov). Case in point: The Bicyclers.

The Bicyclers is a collection of four one-act plays using a common set of characters. Here's a bit from "A Proposal Under Difficulties", featuring Barlow and Yardsley, two competitors for the affections of Dorothy, where Bangs comes awfully close to inventing emoticons, or at least the 'applaud' sign for television audiences.

Yardsley: Oh, thanks. You are very kind.

Dorothy: I think so, too, Mr. Barlow. You are almost too kind, it seems to me.

Yardsley: Oh no: not too kind, Miss Andrews. Barlow simply realizes that one who has proposed marriage to young girls as frequently as he has knows how the thing is done, and he wishes to give me the benefit of his experience. (aside) That's a facer for Barlow.

Barlow: Ha, ha, ha! Another joke, I suppose. You see, my dear Bob, that I am duly appreciative. I laugh. Ha, ha, ha! But I must say that I laugh with some uncertainty. I don't know whether you intended that for a joke or for a staggerer. You should provide your conversation with a series of printed instructions for the listener. Get a lot of cards, and have printed on one, "Please laugh"; on another, "Kindly appear confused". Then when you mean to be jocose hand over the laughter card, and so on. Shall I stagger?

I also consider him a progenitor of sorts to fanfic, considering his creation of Raffles Holmes, a descendent of two famous fictional characters, as well as all the famous folks he put on the House-Boat.

Neal Stephenson
Atlantic / 1988

Carolyn See
Random House / 2002

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Not so much a how-to book, though there's a lot of practical advice. This is more of a why-to book. From chapter 18, the last chapter:

If you're not a bona fide "bestseller", money comes in a variety of ways. You can teach "creative writing" (if some institution will hire you), you can do the occasional book review, you can give inspirational speeches (if anyone will consent to listen), and you can sell books out of the trunk of your car. All that is fun. But money for the serious - and even frivolous - writer flows to you basically in three ways: by applying for grants, doing magazine pieces, and having some fun with the tax man. You can go on with your day job - T. S. Eliot was a banker, William Carlos Williams was a doctor, etc. - or you can go looking for "a big advance" with your big-advance truffle pig, but only a true maniac would expect to make money from writing short stories or literary novels.

There are a lot of assumptions in this paragraph, not the least the recognition of myself as a 'maniac'. But grants? If I didn't have a full time job that would be something interesting to follow up on. I'm writing grants for the adoption agency for which I work, and plan to write them for our SF conference Foolscap if we succeed in getting our 501(c)3.

Kim Long
1988 / Johnson Books

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I picked this one up cheaply at Half Price Books just to make sure I was getting lunar terminology and science correct. Sure it's dated, but I was looking for the basics. I'm trying to write a story for this contest, but it's slow slogging.

Here's a term I doubt I'll be using, from the glossary:

Apolune: The point in the orbit of an object (such as a spaceship) around the moon when it is farthest from the moon's surface.

Thomas Perry
2008 / Harcourt

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This novel is part of my booty for judging Jeff Wood's latest Snowbuni pinup contest. Thanks, Jeff!

I've read every one of Perry's books. This is not one of the better ones, though better than most suspense novels. I think the focus is on the assassin too much, and the heroine and her partners don't get to be clever enough. I can highly recommend Perry's Metzger's Dog or Island -- indeed any of his first nine books except Butcher Boy. His next one, coming in January, features his series character Jane Whitefield, whose specialty is helping people disappear. I'll be in line for it.

Roald Dahl
1982 / Scholastic

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Another one Katie read to me in the car. She likes Dahl a lot, except for Willie Wonka.

Charles Stross
2007 / Ace

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Call me a gradualist. The older I get the less I seem to believe in asymptotic futures. Maybe the singularity will come along and prove me wrong, but I think that generally things are going to get slowly better or slowly worse. Probably both at the same time.

Halting State's future is one of gradual improvement in tech. Driverless vehicles, massive LARPs, and virtual shared environmental overlays (ie:CopSpace) are the rule of the day. If there are gradual apocalypses in other spheres (the environment, population), they're shuffled off to the side. And that's fine, in what is at base a near future thriller. It starts with a robbery in a MMORPG and escalates (and escalates and escalates).

I won't give away any plot twists. Suffice to say it's a very satisfying read.

(edited to add) I forgot to mention one of the cooler elements of the novel: it's told in second person. This has the effect of making it appear to be an old text game, like Colossal Cave Adventure, which I played on SMU's Control Data Cyber 72 circa 1979.

So long as I'm linking to Lifehacker, I'll mention they have links to ways you can get 'free' books. Some are virtual, so are physical, some of the latter you may have to pay postage for.

G.M. Ford
2008 / Morrow

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Everything else gets put aside when a new Ford novel comes out.

Edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka
1992 / Norton

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There aren't very many flash fiction anthologies out there, and most of them appear to be co-edited by the Thomases. Anyway, most of the stories herein are good, some incomprehensible, some downright bad, and a very few brilliant. I have quite a few favorites, but am particularly partial to Marlene Buono's "Offerings", whose lead collects apologies:

Some days she could fit all the apologies into her purse, but most days she had to stuff the overflow into her pockets and under her wig. Sometimes she cut them into circles and dropped them into the coin rolls she picked up at the bank.

Barrington J. Bayley
1976 / Doubleday

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Bayley is an inventive, phildickian writer of space (and occasionally time) operas, largely forgotten. Garments sets two civilizations on a collision course, the paranoid Ziode and the garment-controlled Caean. Scenes alternate between Peder Forbarth, a lowly 'sartorial' who happens across a near-legendary suit of clothes that begin subtly altering him, and a Ziode ship secretly probing the origins of the Caean culture.

Octavia Butler
1993 / Four Walls Eight Windows

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Yes, this book will make for a lively discussion at Potlatch. It's a postapocalypse novel that states several times in the narrative that it's set during the apocalypse. Civil society has broken down: police only work for bribes and are best avoided, company towns with indentured servitude are making a comeback, roving bands of marauders are killing, pillaging, and burning everything in sight. And yet, it can get worse.

Edited by Mike Resnick
1996 / WC Books

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RAEBNC

Ken Bruen and Jason Starr
2007 / Hard Case Crime

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This was my most recent 'coat book', the book I keep in a jacket pocket to read while waiting here and there. At root a comedic serial killer book, it follows seven characters, only one of them vaguely likable, most of whom come to bad ends. The interest is not in rooting for anybody but in watching them collide with each other in a rocket of a plot. As such, Slide works. The down side for me was a number of in-jokes that didn't feel appropriate.