Brandon Sanderson has said that one of the two main ideas for the first Mistborn novel was to create a fantasy version of a heist story like Ocean’s Eleven or Sneakers. I probably wasn’t the only one to make the connection before reading that that was his intent, so it did come across. I think [...]
Archive of posts filed under the books category.
Of interest to writers
Barry Eisler has an article in The Guardian today continuing to point out the problems with the arguments supporting legacy publishers against the Justice Department’s suit. It’s good, but what prompted this post was the great links in the article to some things I hadn’t come across before.
Trust Busting
A lot of people are blogging lately about the civil antitrust suit the US Department of Justice filed against Apple and 5 of the Big 6 publishers. Some authors are saying some pretty ridiculous things to paint Amazon as the bad guy and the Big 6 as the underdogs, and of course the publishers themselves want [...]
More about the motivations of the Authors Guild
I should have mentioned this sooner, but on Friday Barry Eisler put up a nice post on his blog about the motivations of the Authors Guild. It explains the point more thoroughly than the original comment I made on the topic.
First Drafting
There’s been a lot going on lately. I’m writing a novel, which I started a few months (a year?) ago and then let sit. I’ve been continuing to write it intermittently, and I am at a point where I really feel a need to finish it, hopefully this year. It’s been slow going. There are [...]
Eating Animals
I just finished reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I’ve mentioned it here before, but I finally got around to buying and reading it, and there’s so much more here that needs to be told than I knew.
The “Authors Guild” Speaks
Scott Turow, President of the Authors Guild, posted an open letter to its members regarding the US Department of Justice’s impending anti-trust lawsuit against five of the Big 6 book publishers, plus Apple. The contents of the letter are laughable, and there have been responses already posted by Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler, Suzanne White, David Gaughran, and probably [...]
media consumption
Looking forward to playing two games on the 360 this week: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which unfortunately was ordered last week for $10 more than it is this week, and Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012, for which the first expansion hits Wednesday.
finally
The A/C seems to be fixed now, just in time for… fall. Anyway. I still haven’t stopped running away from sitting down to write. But I’m enjoying reading to Keisha when she lets me (less often since I started reading Ready Player One to her… she’d prefer to get back to The Dresden Files).
Oops, I forgot the title.
This week I… …finished Persona 3. Started playing “The Answer,” the follow-up in the FES version which I have. I also recently got Persona 4, which I will play at some point after finishing “The Answer.” I really like Persona 3. The social game aspect seems like it could be a game on its own if [...]
Punished by Freakonomics
I just watched Freakonomics on Netflix Instant Watch. There was some really interesting stuff there, like the theory about Roe v. Wade being responsible for most of the 90s’ drop in crime rate. But having read Punished by Rewards, the stuff about incentives was depressing.
Scalzi’s Writing
A while back I started reading John Scalzi’s blog, which has some cool info for writers. I don’t usually read sci-fi, so I hadn’t actually read any of his stuff. Then I read his April Fools’ prologue to the first book of his non-existent fantasy trilogy The Shadow War of the Night Dragons.
Reality is Broken
This morning (yesterday morning now; I’ve been working on this post all day) I followed a link shared on Twitter by Jamie Madigan and Brenda Brathwaite to read an article entitled “I Don’t Want to be a Superhero.” Having read through almost all of Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards by now, it got me thinking [...]
Eating Veggies
I’ve been moving toward vegetarianism and veganism this year. I recently saw an RSA interview with Jonathan Safran Foer about his book Eating Animals, and I’m looking forward to reading it. Then over the weekend saw the segment with Kathy Freston, author of Veganist. I’ve also read probably almost half of Becoming Vegan, but have [...]
