Elegies, Pond Water
First up, via the the always wonderful Steve Silberman–good words from Cory Doctorow:
Anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself. We must stop them from being allowed to do it. The library of tomorrow should be better than the library of today. The ability to loan our books to more than one person at once is a feature, not a bug. We all know this. It’s time we stop pretending that the pirates of copyright are right. These people were readers before they were publishers before they were writers before they worked in the legal department before they were agents before they were salespeople and marketers. We are the people of the book, and we need to start acting like it.
I’ve been enjoying Eugene Lim’s blog lately. Some highlights: Debussy on mystery, art–the films of Desplechin–photgraphy and book reviews and sonnets.
And Joel Johnson talks about living in New York. Entertaining and mournful as hell.
Eugene Lim’s Reading Diary
For those who often feel they’re having trouble figuring out what to read next, if you have any proclivity for experimentally-based fiction and so forth, the reading diary of Eugene Lim, editor of Ellipsis Press, is a really great database of some obscure to semi-obscure works that all seem worthy of greater attention.
Lim’s reviews are short and smart and to the point, and don’t spend more than enough time talking than to get you excited on the concept and execution of the book. Whereas other review sites can be burdensome or have too much to say, these are snippets, wise-minded ones, and there is quite a trove already online.
Recently posts by Lim include: The Changeling by Joy Williams, The Easy Chain by Evan Dara, Main Brides by Gail Scott, Liquidation by Irme Kirtesz, Marsupial by Derek White, and months and months more. A quick fix for your ‘what next’ troubles, for sure, and some great musings for books you might have already read.
And if you haven’t yet already, Lim’s own Fog and Car should be right at the top of your list. Here’s my prior post on that novel. Do a buy.