Reading rants & raves

April 10, 2008 — Thursday

Free Hugo Short Stories

Fan of Sci-Fi? If so, you might want to check out these two short stories from The New Space Opera from Harper Collins that are up for a Hugo. They are available as a pdf for free:

Ken Macleod - Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359 (pdf)

Greg Egan - Glory (pdf)

— michael | 07:07 PM

April 09, 2008 — Wednesday

What are the essential books for any personal library? This is probably always a matter of personal choice, but nevertheless, the Telegraph has what it considers to be the 110 best books: The perfect library. Those 110 books are broken down into the following eleven categories (yes, ten books per category):

Many of the books are obvious, but there are some choices I’m not sure I’d agree with, but with only ten choices per category, I’m sure it’s hard to make choices. What about you? What are some of the books you think are a must for any library?

— michael | 03:46 PM

March 26, 2008 — Wednesday

Best First and Last Lines from Novels

The American Book Review has put together a list of the 100 Best First Lines from Novels (pdf) and the 100 Best Last Lines from Novels (pdf). Many of the lines are the ones you’d expect, but of course, that’s why they are there. I certainly found some of my favorites in the list. What about you? What are you’re favorite first or last lines?

— michael | 03:19 PM

March 10, 2008 — Monday

Free Science Fiction Short Story Podcasts

Fan of science fiction? You might want to check out the collaboration between StarShipSofa and the British Science Fiction Association which are working together to make available as a free podcast all five of the sci-fi short stories that have been shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Short Story 2007, one per day this week. You can go grab the first story now: BSFA Best Short Story Nominee 2007 Terminal by Chaz Brenchley (mp3), check out some of the other podcasts available for download, and you can check back throughout the week for other BSFA Short Story nominees. You can view the shortlist of all BSFA awards.

via BoingBoing

— michael | 09:35 AM

March 03, 2008 — Monday

Free Neil Gaiman Book

A follow up to the free Neil Gaiman book we discussed earlier: It appears the book chosen was American Gods. Of course, rather than being truly free, the book is fully available, but only by paging through page images online. Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing) is less than pleased with the format:

However, I think that Harper Collins got this one wrong. They’ve put the text of American Gods up in a wrapper that loads pictures of the pages from the printed book, one page at a time, with no facility for offline reading. The whole thing runs incredibly slowly and is unbelievably painful to use. I think we can be pretty sure that no one will read this version instead of buying the printed book—but that’s only because practically no one is going to read this version, period.

Gaiman himself recognizes things aren’t perfect:

I’m currently talking to Harpers about ways we can make the American Gods online reading experience a more pleasant one. And about ways to give American Gods away that would make Harper Collins happy while also making, say, Cory Doctorow happy too.

In the meantime, regardless of form, American Gods is available online, and for you Gaiman fans, also note that Volume 1 of his Sandman (pdf) comic/graphic novel is available online.

— michael | 09:31 AM

February 11, 2008 — Monday

Neil Gaiman Book online for Free?

Moving on from a free audio short story, Neil Gaiman (and HarperCollins) is going to make one of his stories available for free as an eText. You can visit Gaiman’s blog and vote for which Gaiman story you want free.

You can also find out more from the New York Times: HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web.

via BoingBoing

— michael | 10:00 AM

January 28, 2008 — Monday

Free Neil Gaiman Audio Story

HarperCollins e-books & e-audio is making A Study in Emerald a short story by Neil Gaiman and read by him available for free. So, if you're a Gaiman fan, you might want to check it out. HarperCollins explains the story:

Alluding to both the Sherlock Holmes canon and the Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, this Hugo Award winning short story will delight fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, and of course, Neil Gaiman.

For more, you can visit, the HarperCollins page on Neil Gaiman, or you can download the mp3 of A Study in Emerald directly.

— michael | 09:15 AM

January 15, 2008 — Tuesday

Pulp Fiction on NPR

NPR is reporting (Pulp Fiction Murdered Long Sentences) on Vintage Books new collection of pulp fiction private detective stories: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps edited by Otto Penzler.

The story looks at, among other things, the way that writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett changed the way stories worked by using much shorter, clipped sentences instead of the much longer sentences of Henry James that were filled with lots of description.

You can read and example of this in Charles G. Booth’s Stag Party (pdf) on NPR courtesy Vintage Books.

— michael | 03:30 PM

January 14, 2008 — Monday

Free Graphic Novels Online

If you’ a fan of graphic novels, or if you’ been interested in learning more, DailyBits has put together a list of 17 different graphic novels that are available online.... for free!

Most are the first volume, although some are published online, so there is more available. Some of the titles include: Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile, Y: The Last Man Vol. 1: Unmanned , and The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes among numerous others.

— michael | 09:24 AM

June 14, 2007 — Thursday

Summer Reading: Moby-Dick

Rebecca Stott reports on NPR on reading Moby-Dick. Stott introduces Melville's book by explaining:

There's nothing like it in the history of literature, except perhaps Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, with its eccentric characters, plotless episodes, entangled digressions, puns, obsessions and tricks.

Stott explains the reasons she enjoys the book, and you can read the rest or listen. There is even an excerpt from the beginning of the novel.

You can also check out a copy of Moby-Dick from the Libraries (there are many other copies).

You could also download a copy of Moby Dick from Project Gutenberg (they also a couple different versions including an audio version).

— michael | 04:30 PM

April 30, 2007 — Monday

National Poetry Month: Thomas Hardy

In honor of National Poetry Month:

Drummer Hodge

                    I
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
        Uncoffined—just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
        That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
        Each night above his mound.

                    II
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—
        Fresh from his Wessex home—
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
        The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
        Strange stars amid the gloam.

                    III
Yet portion of that unknown plain
        Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
        Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
    His stars eternally.

—Thomas Hardy

— michael | 02:39 PM

April 27, 2007 — Friday

National Poetry Month: Gerard Manley Hopkins

In honor of National Poetry Month:

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’ delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep degree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flash filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lsot are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

— michael | 04:18 PM

April 24, 2007 — Tuesday

National Poetry Month: E.E. Cummings

In honor of National Poetry Month: Poems by E.E. Cummings

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

—E.E. Cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

—E.E. Cummings

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you’re young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

—E.E. Cummings

— michael | 05:06 PM

April 20, 2007 — Friday

National Poetry Month: William Butler Yeats

In honor of National Poetry Month:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— William Butler Yeats

— michael | 06:54 PM

April 19, 2007 — Thursday

National Poetry Month: Emily Dickinson

In honor of National Poetry Month: Poems by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity—

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

Again, all poems by Emily Dickinson

— michael | 07:01 AM

April 14, 2007 — Saturday

National Poetry Month: Jabberwocky

In honor of National Poetry Month:

Jabberwocky
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
        And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
        The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
    Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
        And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
    The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
        And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
    The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
        He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
    Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
        He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
        And the mome raths outgrabe.

—Lewis Carroll

— michael | 05:53 PM

April 13, 2007 — Friday

National Poetry Month: Dulce et Decorum Est

In honor of National Poetry Month:

Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!— An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

—Wilfred Owen

— michael | 10:02 AM

April 09, 2007 — Monday

Tennyson's Ulysses

In honor of National Poetry Month:

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

— michael | 11:04 AM

March 29, 2007 — Thursday

Ten Most Expensive Books of 2006

FineBooks & Collections Magazine has posted a list of the "Ten Most Expensive Books of 2006." The list includes Shakespeare, the first printed atlas, a copy of the 13^th Amendment, and an illuminated manuscript. The cost of these is pretty significant, with nine of the top ten costing more than a million dollars. And the value of these and similar rare books is only likely to increase:

The investment returns of superlative books continue to be astounding. In 1972, the copy of the first printed atlas (at #2 on the Fine Books Top Ten) sold for $180,000. Its $4 million current price tag represents a 9 percent annual rate of return over thirty-four years.

To find out the other items in the list and the cost of each, along with photos from the books, you can read more: Ten Most Expensive Books of 2006

— michael | 02:55 PM

March 27, 2007 — Tuesday

New Tolkien Book

The Independent is reporting (in " Tolkien Jr completes Lord of Rings") that Christopher Tolkien has finished work on a new novel by his father, J.R.R. Tolkien: The Children of Húrin. Set to be released by HarperCollins on April 17^th, the book

...is likely to be a publishing sensation, particularly as it is illustrated by veteran Middle Earth artist Alan Lee, who won an Oscar for art direction on Peter Jackson's third film The Return of The King. Lee provided 25 pencil sketches and eight paintings for the first edition of the book...

For more information: Tolkien Library - The Children of Húrin - FAQ

— michael | 02:28 PM | Comments (1)