Diana Gabaldon, Naomi Novik, and a new Dunc & Egg novella from George R.R. Martin, all in one book? I think I might explode. If only it had a story from Scott Lynch, it would be like the All-Star game of series that KJ is dying for the next installment of.

Also, somehow I missed learning until last week that there is a new Outlander book coming on Tuesday. This is the seventh and perhaps... the last? I've been reading this series since college; so weird to think that it might be over.

Here's a credible rumor that Sean Bean is cast as Eddard Stark for the HBO Pilot of A Game of Thrones. This is kind of exciting, although part of me also feels bad for him. ;) From Boromir to Ned Stark?

Still, with Peter Dinklage confirmed as Tyrion Lannister, this is looking like it could actually be quite good. Let's hope it actually happens, and that GRRM isn't so distracted by the whole thing that we never get Book 5.

Or any other electronic book reader, as long as the issues of DRM and right of first sale and all the other copyright/ownership issues relating to ebooks are this unsettled:

Amazon deletes bought-and-paid for books from Kindles.

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

If I buy a book, I want to know that I own it. Bad enough that I can't sell or lend an ebook, under most terms of use; I can't even be sure that I'll be allowed to keep it? Again from the article:

...it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

By the way, you'll never guess who the author was: George Orwell. Of course. Life imitating art yet again.

Summer break, woo! It was a couple of crazy quarters there, but now it's over. Three weeks with no students, and now that the various meetings that cap the whole thing off are done I can actually relax.

Unfortunately, we don't actually get three weeks off. When I tell people I work at a college and that summer break is started, they tend to assume that I get three weeks of vacation, but no such luck. I am, however, taking a week on my own -- tomorrow night, I fly to Boston, from where I will finally make the pilgrimage to Ben & Jerry's (and cross Vermont off the list of states I haven't visited! Which will finish off New England, at long last) and then spend a few days hanging out with amybang and anzubird -- we're planning on a visit to Provincetown, if the rain doesn't wash it away, and other fun stuff. I get back next Tuesday.

Let's see, what else... the poison oak has almost faded, although I'm still peeling in places and have to fend off the occasional itching fit. I got a new keyboard to replace the one that died a couple of months ago -- it was getting old anyway, I think I bought it in 2000 when I got my G3 tower, but spilling a Diet Coke on it pretty much sealed its fate. Sadly, pretty much no one is making natural-style split keyboards for Macs anymore, probably because PC keyboards will work on a Mac now. So I got an MS Natural. It seems weird to be enthusiastic about a Microsoft product, but the shape of their natural keyboards works pretty much perfectly with my RSI issues, and the keys are incredibly responsive. I have one at work, too, so I knew I'd be happy with it. But I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted, so I bit the bullet and upgraded my OS to Leopard. On the plus side, the upgrade seems to have finally fixed my flaky wireless; fingers crossed that keeps working. In other technology news, I became an iPhone widow on Friday. T ordered it the day they were announced and started counting the hours, and it has gone above and beyond his expectations. I confess that seeing his in action has only increased temptation for me, but for now I'm still holding out.

In the media world, I finally got around to restarting Phoenix Wright 3, which I half-gave up on in the middle of the third case. Now I'm into the fifth case, which is awesome, but I can't talk about why without spoilers. So for right now, I'll content myself with sharing this fact: Diego Armando? Is HOT. As for books, right now I'm reading The Fall of Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman; it's enjoyable, but I have no idea how they wrote it before The Privilege of the Sword without having mapped out that entire book first. Finally, I watched the first two episodes of Merlin, thanks to bottle_of_shine's rec. I enjoyed it, although it took me most of the first episode to get past the expectation that the characters would conform to standard Arthurian canon. I knew going in, of course, that Merlin was Arthur's age, so I didn't mind that at all, but there were enough other differences that I found it jarring at first. Fortunately, by the time I watched the second ep, I was able to sit back and relax into the characters as they were. I think Guenevere is my favorite so far, but only two eps in is a little soon to be making predictions. I'll keep watching for sure.

I guess that sums it up for now. I know I haven't been very visible here lately, in terms of posting or commenting, partly because of the poison oak and partly from work stress, but with luck this break will be just what I need to straighten my head out and spend more time being active and less time spacing out.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

My review

Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Dear Jodi Picoult: please give the font changes between chapters a rest, it makes your books tiring to read. Thank you.

Otherwise, this book was entertaining, thought-provoking, and engaging, and I would have given three stars or maybe even four, until the ending, which made me so furious that I wanted to throw the book out the window. And I was on an airplane at the time.

( Significant spoilers follow. )

It was so frustrating that I think this is likely the last book by Jodi Picoult I will ever read. Anyone else read it, and have a similarly strong reaction? Does she do this kind of thing in every book, or just the two I managed to finish?

That's right: it's linkspam time!

• Neat collection of library buttons. If I were more graphically inclined, I'd be tempted to make icons out of a bunch of these.


• I can Tweet you with my brain: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have developed a machine that allows people to type via brain waves. Because tweets are so short, Twitter is the perfect application. The stated goal is to help people who've lost the power of speech to communicate, but I can think of other applications -- some less savory than others, of course.


• In Defense of Eye Candy: "Form follows function" is good design advice, but some designers take it too far. This article makes a nice case for taking the time to provide good aesthetics on websites. It also made me think of this piece on why Google's lead designer left the company.


• Working out on your Wii? Watch out for Nintendinitis.


• Fun article on the history, the present, and the future of the Harlequin romance novel.

In other news, we bought advance tickets for the Vatican Museums today, for Tuesday. Our flight leaves Sunday morning. I can hardly believe it.

My list of books for a the second annual Herding Cats rec challenge, in no particular order:

1. The Android's Dream by John Scalzi: One of the funniest adventure stories I have read in a long time. After S read this, she said it reminded her of the Dirk Gently books by Douglas Adams; I can see that, but it put me more in mind of the screwball comedy of Connie Willis. Either way, it's hard to go wrong.



2. His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik: I am hard pressed to think of another book I've read in the last three years that sucked me in as thoroughly as this book. Novik has created a fascinating and deep alternative universe and populated it with a cast of winning and compelling characters. My first impression review is here.



3. The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden by Cathrynne Valente: The first line of my review was "It's hard to know what to say about this book beyond heaping superlatives on it." So maybe that tells you all you need to know. Wheels-within-wheels storytelling at its very finest.



4. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch: Charming, fun, an excellent cast, heartbreaking in all the right ways. The sequel is also great. Original review.
   
   
5. Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey: This book came highly recommended by sources I trust, but I still went into it with some trepidation. But I was pleasantly surprised. Some of the best world building I have ever had the pleasure to read -- the setting is not-quite-medieval-Europe, and the pleasure of recognition of similarities and differences was one of the best parts of the book for me. Some excellent characters and twists, too. I actually liked the second and third books in the series better, but so much gets set up in this book that you really have to start with it. (I've also read the first two books of the second trilogy, which is also enjoyable but not quite on the same level as the first.)

I realize that all these titles are firmly set into the speculative fiction camp, but that's mostly what I've read and loved in the last couple of years. Maybe I'll get some good recs for other genres out of this year's list...

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins

Thoughtful and thought-provoking look at how new media is changing the ways in which we relate to old media. I found it highly engaging, especially as compared to the more academic articles in Fans Bloggers and Gamers: Media Consumers in a Digital Age -- I was even entertained, enough that I could read it while traveling. One of the things I appreciate about Henry Jenkins is that he writes about the Internet without either glorifying or demonizing it, and that he also looks at older media with a clear eye as well; he understands their strengths and weaknesses, and has a strong sense of where old media and new can complement one another. His approach is also very user-centered -- I think he does a good job of actually examining what people do, rather than being blinded by his expectations.

The book does have a serious downside: it's dated. The publication date is 2006, but the text is clearly much older, by several years in some cases. The chapter on media convergence and politics focuses on the 2004 presidential election, the chapter on Harry Potter was written before the release of HP5, the chapter on fans picking up clues from a television series to figure out the truth of what's happening focuses on Survivor and The Matrix series was used as the primary example of a cross-media text. I found myself itching for more recent perspectives: what does he make of Lost and the elaborate games the producers play with the fans? What about the cross-media presence of Heroes, or the success of Dr. Horrible, or the presidential campaign of Barack Obama? (As an aside, I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone in the Obama campaign read this book and applied its lessons to their online strategy.) I do read Jenkins's blog from time to time, and I plan to go back through his archives to see if he addresses any of these issues. But it is an unfortunate limitation of academic works on fandom.

That said, I still find what Jenkins has to say relevant and interesting, even if I have to make some of the broader connections myself. And his final call to action -- fighting censorship, overly broad copyright restrictions, and the consolidation of mass media -- is as timely as it ever was. Definitely recommended.

Also posted on GoodReads. View all my reviews.

I've probably done this before, but not in awhile, and I'm feeling like a distraction. So...

Post one of my fandoms and the number of any of these questions (as many or few as you like) and I'll tell you the answer!

Note #1: "All" is absolutely an option.
Note #2: Fandom choice is wide open. If you pick something I really don't know well enough, I'll let you know and you can pick a fall-back.

1. The first character I fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I would shag anytime:
6. The character I'd want to be like:
7. The character I'd slap:
8. A pairing that I love:
9. A pairing that I despise:
10. Favorite character:
11. What are my five favorite things about the fandom.
12. What are my five least favorite things about the fandom.
13. Who are my five favorite characters.
14. Who are my five least favorite characters.
15. What are my five favorite pairings.
16. What are my five least favorite pairings.
17. Which character are you most like.
18. What is my deep, dark fandom secret.

Some of you may have heard that the Author's Guild sued Amazon over the text-to-speech capability of the new Kindle, claiming that this feature infringes on their right to sell the rights to audio books. I could link you to any number of articles and blog posts explaining why this charge is clearly ridiculous, but Neil Gaiman (as usual) does the best job of it (make sure to also read the two posts he links at the top). (I am dismayed to see Roy Blount, Jr. leading the charge on the other side.)

Seems pretty clear-cut to me. But Amazon caved. Publishers will be able to opt-out of allowing the Kindle to read their books. Sorry, blind people! Don't have the money for the audio book edition, or no audio version exists? Too bad, so sad.

Is it just me that finds this pretty chilling? Especially coming on top of Google's settlement with the American Association of Publishers and (surprise!) the Authors Guild over their book scanning project. To be fair, that one makes more sense to me -- although most experts agreed that Google had a pretty good fair use case, it was risky to carry it forward in the current legal environment, which tends to favor copyright holders pretty strongly. But this case seems so much stronger toward fair use, and still Amazon gave in without a fight. And there's more: check out this New York Times article about excerpting, which brings up many of the same issues.

Why are we so willing to give up our fair use rights?

This one is ganked from penrynsdreams. It is also long. You have been warned.

The questions ask a lot about "favorites" but every voracious reader knows that choosing a single "favorite", even in a genre, even if multiple authors/titles are allowed, is pretty much impossible. So I went for well-loved, and in my current mood.

( Fifty questions about books. )

Also, obligatory link to my GoodReads profile.

Stacey's bookstore to close in March.

This is the closest independent bookstore to my home and to my work, and one of my favorites. I take groups of students there to go shopping, and sometimes trek over on my lunch hour to shop or browse. This is terrible. :\

I wonder if there will be some community effort to save it, like the one that saved Kepler's in Menlo Park. I hope so. I'd certainly sign up.

A few days ago, we decided that the library needed a total shelf-read by library staff. Ever since, I keep finding excuses to spend time doing it. You know, instead of my real work. Or today, staying longer than necessary after an Open House on a Saturday. But it's so satisfying, putting the shelves in order. I spend half an hour on a bookcase and it looks so much better when I'm done. The other day, I even found a book that had been so badly mis-shelved for so long that the system had marked it as lost.

I like shelving for the same reason -- it takes minimal brain power, but it's not totally mindless, and the effects are both noticeable and immediate. Instant gratification! I don't get a whole lot of that in my job, so sometimes it's nice to go for the quick win.

Sometimes I say that I knew librarianship was my calling because I actually enjoy shelving, and shelf-reading, and shifting (another project that should be undertaken soon).

In other news, T's work had its unofficial holiday party today. T made a chocolate cake *and* creme brulee, which made him everyone's favorite person for the day. And because no one thought to bring matches, he got to use his blowtorch to light some candles. The visual on that was, to say the least, amusing. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture; I'll have to see if anyone else did.

The party also included a white elephant gift exchange. My contribution? My copy of Twilight. The guy who opened it had never heard of it, although his wife recognized the title from hearing about the movie; the CEO, who was acting as master of ceremony for the exchange, pretended to read the back and made a joke about it being an erotic novel, and that theme carried through the rest of the exchange. If only they knew...

(Hey, look, an easy way to copy over reviews from Goodreads! Suddenly I find the idea of writing reviews there much more appealing...)

The Sunne In Splendour: A Novel of Richard III by Sharon Kay Penman
My review
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book because it came highly, highly recommended by a friend [kunstarniki -- thanks!], so maybe I was going into it with my expectations set too high. This is not to say I didn't enjoy it -- I did, very much. I hadn't realized that there was controversy over the common conception of Richard III, and I'm always interested in getting a different take on historical figures, especially when the new perspective is well-backed by the historical record. History is written by the winners, and Richard III was most definitely not a winner as far as the historical record goes.

The story was fascinating and engaging, well written, an excellent balancing act of dozens of characters. The only thing holding me back from five full stars: reams of exposition. Something like a quarter of the book is expository; to be fair, it's hard to cover some twenty years of eventful history without some level of exposition, but many places could have been pared or streamlined without affecting the story, and some segments would have been more effective if Penmen had detailed at least some of the action.

This is my only negative, though. Overall I would say this was a lovely book, and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in English history.

Back in January, SE and I placed a bet on the outcome of the presidential election. Not because we wanted different outcomes -- far from it! -- but because she felt that the American people were not yet ready to elect a president who wasn't a white man. I accepted her wager: if McCain was elected, I would owe her a bottle of wine (to share, because we would be needing it!); if not, she would take me to tea.

So today, I collected: we had a very posh tea at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. I've had high tea at the Fairmont in San Francisco, but never San Jose, so it was a new venue for all of us. Good quality tea, tasty scones with lots of Devon cream, very very fancy tea sandwiches (the ham with fig was my favorite), and a selection of little French pastries, all while seated in cozy couches in the lobby of the hotel. Very nice, although the atmosphere would have been better if football hadn't been playing on a huge TV screen over the bar. Overall a nice little escape and celebration, followed by a trip to the used bookstore and its semi-annual 25% off sale and then some Chinese food for dinner.

My to-read pile is really out of control. I thought I was being nice and moderate by getting only 6 books, but then I also borrowed a volume of manga from SE ("Black Jack" by Tezuka), and then I got home and saw how many books I still have to read from my big Amazon haul a couple months ago, and once again I am despairing of ever catching up. I also really need to get some of my older books sold -- I have an overflowing box in the bedroom, and another bag hiding in a cupboard (it used to be in the bedroom, by the box, until Lexi decided one day that 5:30 AM would be an excellent time to start pouncing on it). Of course, once I get rid of those books, what will happen? That's right, I'm going to turn them into more books. And so the cycle continues.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/660000266/post/1570009157.html

Oh, no! Your house is suddenly going up in flames! You have time to save all your animate loved ones (children, pets, housemates, etc.) a handful of vital possessions, and ONE BOOK from your beloved collection. (Just one!) Which book will you choose? (Decide quickly!)

There are some good answers (and agonizing!) in the comments to the entry above. But the decision was surprisingly easy for me: the German-language Bible that my grandfather gave me. Not at all practical, but it's irreplaceable in at least two ways.

So how about you?

These are all things I need to either finish reading or take a closer look at. But I thought they made an interesting contrast.

Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds. (A response to the much-blogged, much-quoted Atlantic article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", which I also still need to read.)

The End. (Speculation on the impending death of the book publishing business.)

Can games make your kid a better citizen? (Reporting on a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. I wonder if they ever hire librarians?)

Since I worked last Saturday, I took today off work and so far have managed to have a nice, lazy time of it. I started my morning in Panera, where I drank lots of coffee and worked on my FF in Space story (which *might* be done by the end of the month, at least for certain values of "done"); when I ran out of battery I came home and poked at the story a little more, and then I wandered off to the Ferry Building for lunch and to finish reading Red Seas Under Red Skies, the second Gentleman Bastard book, which sucked me in just as completely as the first book and left me almost as heartbroken, and now I am cursing that the next one isn't going to be out until February. Just what I needed, another series that will tempt me into buying all the books in hardback.

So all in all, I'd say that reading the adventures of Locke Lamora and working on a story that's threatening to turn into a Crimson Squad space pirate AU was a worthy way to spend this particular day. Avast, me hearties. Have some grog on me.

An afternoon of library blog surfing led me to a laugh-out-loud funny list of odd book titles, including such gems as:

The Great Pantyhose Crafts Book
227 Secrets Your Snake Wants You To Know
Cheese Problems Solved and
Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them

Many of the books on this list are winners of the Diagram Prize, presented each year by The Bookseller (which looks to be the British Publisher's Weekly) to honor a book with an (intentionally funny or otherwise) unusual title. This year's winner? Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers.

The vote to discover the oddest title of the past 30 years was run in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Tittle of the Year. The prize was first conceived by The Diagram Group's Bruce Robertson as a way of avoiding boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In its first year, in 1978, Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice picked up the award.

But why go as far as the title to make your judgments? In some cases, you might just stop at the cover...

Weekends have been full of plans lately, so I was very happy to have a couple of days this weekend that were made mostly of slothfulness (except for dinner at R&S's new place last night). Especially today, when the fog came back in and rendered the thought of going outside much less appealing.

So I did a lot of reading -- finished Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, of which more in a separate post -- and gaming. I have two main ones going right now: Mario Kart Wii and of course Final Fantasy IV. Mario Kart is much more fun and compelling than I would have ever expected. I've never been much for driving games, mostly because I suck at them, but this one is fun, and I'm surprisingly not terrible. I've been stuck on one particular series of races for a good week now (Special Cup at 150ccs, if anyone knows what that means), but I finally pulled out a good performance today, and won. So as far as I can tell, that's all the medal events; now I just need to get good enough that I don't get completely wiped out in online play.

Then of course there's FFIV, which is good so far. Great characters, which helps make up for some of the predictability of the plot line (although I can't decide whether the story is actually predictable in and of itself or if I've just heard enough hints dropped by fandom people that I can make better guesses than usual). Also, I learned yesterday that, to my chagrin, I've been pronouncing Rydia's name wrong in my head all this time. I'd assumed that the 'y' was a long "i" sound, but it's not, it's short. Like "Lydia" with an R instead of an L. Which, given Japanese, makes a lot more sense than a name that sounds like the word "rider".

( Spoilers through the return to Baron after Mount Ordeals )

Hmm, I suppose I need a FFIV icon... any suggestions?