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Posts Tagged ‘books’

  1. Social reading?

    March 8, 2007 by dafyd

    One of my bookcases (photo at Flickr)I love Last.fm. I love being able to track exactly what I’ve been listening to, when, over the last two years. I love finding other artists and albums that I should enjoy. And I love finding other people who like the same music as me.

    I love reading. I read, easily, a book a week. Often more. I tend to have more than one book on the go at once. I wish there was an easy way for me to keep track of what I read, when. I wish there was a way for me to find other people who read what I do. And I wish there was a way to find other authors and titles to enjoy.

    But there isn’t. There is – as far as I can tell – no “social reading” site out there. In this whole Web 2.0 thingy, books seem to have got left behind.

    Sure, there are sites (and software, for Macs, at least) that let you put your library online. That let you swap books with other users. That let you “release books into the wild“. That recommend new books to you.

    But nothing that truly acts as a Last.fm for books. LibraryThing is the closest, but it’s nothing like as easy to use as it should be. I have to dig around before I can enter when I start and finish reading, enter a review or tags, rate the book… Shelfari is also promising (and has lots of money from Amazon, so could get better), but still not what I want.

    Has anyone else come across a better “social reading” service? Or am I going to have to get my hands dirty and code something for myself?

    I’m going to keep a track of what I’m reading on LibraryThing for the time being, but from the playing about with it I’ve done so far, I can tell I’m going to get fed up with it quite quickly…

    Photo by me, at Flickr

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  2. Harry Potter goes camping

    March 5, 2007 by dafyd

    Newsweek has a fun article about the effect Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will have on summer holiday camps: [via TLC]

    Peter Kassen of Maine’s Hidden Valley Camp is issuing a gag order for his faster readers. “We as a community will be sworn to secrecy,” he says. “We want to make sure the surprises aren’t spoiled for the younger kids.” Kleinman is ordering dozens of books for counselors to read aloud to campers, and they’ll be using the book for clout. “Getting them to bed is always a challenge, but we’re going to tell them we aren’t reading until they get in bed.”

    Eleven-year-old Jake Kern, the camper whose father requested a midnight run, was satisfied to know that counselors will read the book aloud, but when he gets his own copy, he’ll read it straight through, neglecting even archery and baseball if he must. “Once I start it, I probably won’t put it down until I finish it,” he says.

    I know that when the last Potter novel was released, I saw a couple of dads of boys I knew at Waterstone’s, at midnight, buying copies for their sons, who were leaving for Scout camp the next morning.

    When Order of the Phoenix (book 5) was released, I was in the Hague, of all places. I picked my copy up at Schiphol airport, read it on the plane and train home, and was in Waterstone’s selling the book, bright and early on the Sunday.

    This year, I’ll be in Canada. Which means I’ll have to make do with the Canadian edition. Which, I’ve just discovered, is exactly the same as Bloomsbury’s UK edition. Now I’m happy. I can’t stand the US editions. Too cartoony. And American books always feel cheap. Something about the paper. Anyway, rant over.

    137 days to go, by the way. Have you pre-ordered yours yet? £8.99 from Waterstone’s and Amazon… Pre-order it from ‘Stone’s and you even get a free book…

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  3. 21 July 2007

    February 1, 2007 by dafyd

    Well, there goes my 7-7-7 theory (that is, that Book 7 would be published on 7/7/07)…

    jkr_2177.jpg

    Let the pre-orders commence!

    (JKR)

    Update: according to Bloomsbury, the two versions of the book have an RRP of a whopping £17.99 (approx $35), making them the most expensive Potter novels yet…

    …but it looks like Waterstone’s is price-matching Amazon.co.uk, selling both editions at £8.99 – more than 50% off.

    Preorder from Amazon.co.uk: Children’s Cover | Adult’s Cover
    Preorder from Waterstone’s: Children’s Cover | Adult’s Cover

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  4. Over-enthusiastic?

    January 5, 2007 by dafyd

    Umm… we don’t have any idea when it’s going to be published, and we don’t know it’s price, but the seventh and final Harry Potter novel already holds the top two spots on Amazon’s bestselling books chart…

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Amazon.co.uk

    I’m still adamant the book will be released on July 7 this year – 7/7/7 – although that does come dangerously close to film 5, which is out the next week…

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  5. More on Costa

    November 5, 2006 by dafyd

    Since I discovered last week that Costa were taking over the Whitbread Book Awards, I’ve been ruminating on what that means. Don’t ask why… it just seems to have got stuck in my mind.

    It’s not just that asking “Who won this year’s Costa?” sounds even worse than “Martin Amis won last year’s MAN Booker”.

    One thing that immediately sprung to mind was this article from the BBC, from when Whitbread announced that they would be stopping sponsoring the award. Yup, makes sense – very few people would immediately (or ever, in fact) associate the Whitbread Book Awards with TGI Friday’s or Premier Travel Inn, so the sponsorship makes little commercial sense. Same problem the Booker keeps facing. The line that interests me is a quote from a Whitbread representative:

    After long consideration, we decided our sponsorship was no longer commercially sensible, even under one of our other brand names.

    But Costa IS one of Whitbread’s other brand names. Has it really taken Whitbread a year to realise that they can’t find anyone else to sponsor the awards? Or have they decided to keep hold of it for the time being?

    Costa, of course, operates coffee shops inside several bookstores, including my Waterstone’s. I can’t help feeling that there will be certain merchandising advantages to the new deal, but I wonder whether there could be downsides, too… Waterstone’s, for example, has always heavily promoted the Award, but not all of its coffee shop concessions are operated by Costa. Will a Waterstone’s with a Coffee Republic on its second floor really be able to devote a window to Costa? I don’t think so, somehow…

    Oh – why this obsession with Costa, all of a sudden? Well, there is one here in Alex. Two, in fact. Strange, but true. I’ve not spotted a Starbucks, but there are a couple of Costas.

    In other book news… I really, really recommend reading The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips. Fantastic read, terrific adventure story, gloriously funny. Helps that I can picture where he’s talking about…!

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  6. On landing

    October 21, 2006 by dafyd

    I just wanted to share this passage with you. It’s from a novel by a chappy called Paul Micou, The Cover Artist, which I found at the British Council the other week:

    Drunk and discombobulated, Oscar Lemoine bounced on to the windswept tarmac of Val d’Argent’s private airport in the middle of a November night, protected from physical harm by an aeroplane. Elizabeth lay curled in a seat next to him. His drunkenness was due to having sat on a Paris runway drinking gin for three hours – after assisting a desperate fellow-traveller in convincing a sympathetic crew member to bend the rules – while the authorities held their collective finger in the air to gauge the winds on the southern coast. Oscar imbibed an even larger amount while airborne because the flight attendants had all gone pale and were hugging each other as if for the last time. On landing, while Oscar held hands with his drunken seatmate and petted Elizabeth’s brow, the smallish and disreputable-looking aeroplane skidded ninety degrees in an unexpected inch of slush, while trying to turn towards the terminal. The craft tipped one of its wheels off the ground, and made most of the passengers scream. The captain quickly apologised; the flight attendants swore and made hand gestures suggesting that the pilot was a booze-soaked incompetent.

    It’s a great novel, a cross between Evelyn Waugh and Douglas Adams. Alas, it is now out of print, but there appears to be a few copies at AbeBooks.

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  7. Al-Kitaab

    August 1, 2006 by dafyd

    Tagged by Rob:

    1. Grab the nearest book.
    2. Open the book to page 123.
    3. Find the fifth sentence.
    4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
    5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
    6. Tag three people.

    Here we go, then – from this terribly exciting tome:

    When it occurs at the beginning of a sentence, إﻥﹼ marks the following noun as the topic of the sentence. إﻥﹼ occurs frequently in expository texts (and less often in narrative ones) because the topic or topics under discussion (rather than actions or events) are the focus of the text.

    Gramatically, إﻥﹼ belongs to a group of articles called إﻥﹼ و أﺨوﺍﺘﻬﺎ.

    You asked!

    Anyhoo – next to be tagged: David, Tom and, umm, someone else. Anyone? Post in the comments, if you feel like it.

    And for this post, I learned a new skill: bi-directional, bi-lingual, multi-character-set HTML coding. Fun.

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  8. Books

    July 25, 2006 by dafyd

    b-minus-5 and counting: the Blogathon is on Saturday – that’s this Saturday – and very few people have pledged to sponsor me. Come on!

    If I don’t get sponsorship you won’t get to hear my witty anecdotes about meeting such literary luminaries as Johnny Ball and Bobby Robson (yes, that Bobby Robson). Can you afford to miss out?

    In related news, either side of my trip to Paris, I went to events at Waterstone’s to meet Jasper Fforde and Jeffrey Deaver. Their new books are absolutely top notch – and I’ll be writing reviews of them on Saturday.

    Totally unrelated news: my Arabic resit is on the first day it could possibly be – Wednesday 16th, one week after my birthday. Damn and blast. Better get cracking with the revision, I suppose.

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  9. Good Booking

    July 14, 2006 by dafyd

    Hey, good bookingI have been meaning for some time to collect all my reviews together in one place. I’ve just never had the time to sit and shift them across from one blog to another. But changes are afoot…

    This year – nay, this month – I’m going to be taking part in the Blogathon, a 24-hour sponsored blog to raise money for BookAid International, a jolly worthy organisation that helps promote literacy among those less well off than you or I, in places around the world considerably hotter and less fortunate than here (Nottingham, that is. If you are in Cairo, for example, you may need to adjust accordingly).

    Anyhoo – I’m going to spend my 24 hour blog reviewing books. Mainly because that’s one of the things I like doing, but also because I want to share with the world which books I like, and which I think are fit only to be thrown at the poor people who work at WH Smith’s. And if I can help some children half way around the world at the same time – bonus!

    So, to recap: July 29 2006, 24 hours. 48 book reviews. That means I need 48 books to review. I can get a fair few together, I reckon… but if there’s anything you want my opinion on, shout at me. I might even pay attention.

    So I don’t clutter up this blog (nearly 50 posts in a day is an awful lot…) I’m going to be blogging in my brand spanking new books blog – which will, eventually, be where I put all my reviews.

    What’s that you say? Sponsor me? Why, that’s jolly kind of you. You can pledge to sponsor me at the Blogathon site, and actually donate money to BookAid at their site. Thank you.

    Oh – while you’re about it: Rob and Lemurgirl are going to be blogathonning too… why not head over and support them as well?

    Good Booking is probably trademarked in some way by Penguin Books Ltd. No infringement or endorsement intended or implied.

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  10. Books

    March 5, 2006 by dafyd

    So, I’ve been a bit lax posting around here recently. Sorry about that. Summative essays, other college stuff, other other stuff… it all started adding up. But here’s something new, anyway.

    I thought I might share a few of the books I’ve been reading recently. Not the boring texts for uni – no, these are genuine bestsellers direct from your friendly neighbourhood bookshop.

    The Constant GardenerThe Constant Gardener by John Le Carré

    Yes, I know this isn’t a new book. And yes, I know I only bought it because of the movie – well, it was in Waterstone’s 3 for 2 because of the movie, therefore I bought it. But it is very, very good.

    I’ve been reading quite a lot of Le Carré recently – I don’t know why, probably because there’s lots of them in the library and they are jolly good reads. But this one is different. There’s no obvious enemy – unlike the Smiley books, the reader doesn’t know that Karla and his Soviet friends are the bad guys, and the Smiley and co are the good guys.

    And there seems to be a much greater political angle in this book. Obviously, it’s set now (ish – it was published in 2000, so a few years ago, I suppose) in Kenya, and Le Carré makes it very clear what he thinks of certain elements of Kenyan government, the British diplomatic corps, multinational pharmaceutical corporations…

    But this political stance doesn’t get too heavy for the story. This is one of his best page-turners, with some very strong characters (one of whom is dead almost all the way through – not too sure how Rachel Weisz can get so much acclaim for playing her… must see the film!) and some quite dramatic moments. Read it!

    (I’ll post more when I get round to it. In the meantime, have a look at Five People You Meet in Heaven, Saturday and The Way I Live Now…)

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