PETRONA

iFiction, a web service for authors

I've been hearing good things about Andrew Burt's ifiction web resource for authors. He's written about it here: LabLit.com article/267.

Since many authors know nothing about setting up web pages, let alone the intricacies of password protections and taking payments via Paypal, iFiction lets authors link to a page that displays their story or novel and collects payment or donations via credit card for any pieces they might want to publish on the Internet. All the funds collected go to the author (none to me, though of course PayPal is happy to get their share: 30 cents outright and 3% of any money that is eventually collected from readers) and most pieces are either free (donate if you like ‘em) or less than a dollar.
iFiction allows an author to choose how much of their story they want to display for free, then collects payment before letting the reader see the ending. If you have an audience for directly selling some of your work, iFiction makes it easier for your readers to pay you. If they have to think about how to get money to you, and have no encouragement to do so, it cuts down the chance they actually will. Here they can just click, you get paid, and they get to read.
iFiction is intended for authors who have an existing audience, for example a writer who has already sold the piece to a print market and wants to make available a reprint online to squeeze some more money out of the project. But anyone is free to use it as they wish. Essentially all an author needs to do is click a button to upload a manuscript and enter their PayPal payment address, then spread the word.
And spreading the word is the hard part. iFiction is not like an online magazine or bookshop, since there's no marketing. Nor is iFiction itself intended to be a destination site, which is why it's designed for authors with an existing readership base – so they can simply link to iFiction pages as a display and payment collection site.

A table of contents of the fiction you can read at the website is here, and the instructions for authors are here. And for more about the hero of the hour, Andrew Burt, go here. 

RSS and Profiles from Snap Shots

Those little "windows" at the end of live links on Petrona are called snap shots, and they are freely available from, er, Snap Shots. They allow the reader a preview of the site at the link, in a little window, which a lot of people find very useful.

Snap Shots has taken off exponentially since the service first became available, and new features keep being added. Yesterday I noticed that RSS was showing in some of the previews, and sure enough today I received an email from Snap Shots (or "Team Snap" as they call themselves) announcing this addition. "RSS Shot is one of the most technically-challenging Snap Shots we've released to date. Whenever you link to websites that have RSS associated with them, RSS Shot will do one of two things: If you link to the site or blog's index, RSS Shot will render 2-4 of the most recent articles on the site; or if you link to a specific article or permalink on an RSS-enabled site, RSS Shot will show the headline, initial text, and time/date stamp of the article." This is a neat upgrade, as it means that the preview the reader sees will be of the most recently updated content of the site, rather than (as now) a relatively old version of it.

Snap Shots also link to MySpace profiles, and another new feature is called ProfileShots, in which the information in the profile (like name, photo) is automatically reformatted into the shot itself. This particular application isn't of use to me, but apparently "additional social network profiles will be introduced in the coming weeks", which might be useful for Facebook (my latest foray into the chatosphere), Revish, Nature Network and so on.

Having written all that, here's the best thing: "both RSS Shots and ProfileShots are automatic. You don't have to do anything to enable them besides linking to the content you want us to show." I recommend signing up to Snap Shots and giving it a try, especially as you can choose the design of the little preview window to match that of your blog ;-) . Installation is simple, i.e. I could do it.

Cracking crime-fiction reviews

I've read some wonderful book reviews recently - in the blogosphere, natch. I was reminded of one of my teenager favourite reads, Julian Symons, in this post at Dewey's Dartboard about The Progress of a Crime. I loved Symons' books, and it is nice to read that this one, at least, holds up even though first published in 1960. Symons was also president of the crime writers' organisation of the day, and a very good chap all round, if my memory serves.

Via Elizabeth Baines: In Search of Adam, by the generous, charming, funny, but typographically over-inventive blogger Caroline Smailes is almost out. The story of how the book came to be published is a great one, and if your eyes can manage it, you can read all about it on Caroline's truly individual blog.

Here is Bill Peschel on Los Angeles Noir, a short story collection edited by Denise Hamilton, a post that has done more than most to tempt me back into reading the format. Because I have read so many short crime-fiction stories (and other types of short fiction), I stopped when everything merged into a forgettable whole. But I do fairly often read crime-fiction novels that I think would have been far better if written as a short story rather than padded out into a long one, so I don't fully understand my reluctance. But returning to the subject at hand, Bill's review is superb and will certainly enable you to decide whether to read the book. (I might buy it just for the Michael Connelly.)

Material Witness has a couple of cracking reviews, of Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, and Dead Connection by Alafair Burke. Based on these, I have ordered Flynn's book from Amazon and, although it will be hard, I'll wait for the paperback of the Burke --- I loved her previous three books so it was not hard to persuade me to sign up to this one.

I've fallen in love with the blog Crime Always Pays (thanks, Karen!) , so although these posts aren't strictly reviews I'll sneak them in to the end of this post ---- they defy summary so just get on over and read about some geezer who isn't anything to do with salt and "You wanna do it here or down the station, punk?", interview with Pat Mullan. Pat bears up under the rubber truncheon a lot better than Paris Hilton did, I'll give him that, even though she probably wins on the mugshot stakes.

Kirkus Reviews features Ellen Baker

The ever-vigilant OWL (omnipresent Wisconsin librarian), also known as Dave Lull, alerts me to a special issue of Kirkus Reviews called First Fiction Spotlight: Promising debuts from important new voices. The magazine highlights first novels by talented authors including The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani, set in seventeenth century Iran and on Cathy's book pile waiting for the end of GCSEs; The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin; Consumption by Kevin Patterson; The Midnight Choir by the excellent writer Gene Kerrigan (which isn't a first novel but is a "US debut" - I highly recommend reading it on the basis of his actual first novel, Little Criminals); and "a character-driven two family saga, Keeping the House by Ellen Baker" (page 4). From the review:

Keeping the House is the story of two women, separated by generations, who are bound to each other by a single house in Pine Rapids, Wisc. Dolly Magnuson, a 1950s housewife who's new to town, finds solace in the old Mickelson house on top of the hill, while struggling to adjust to her new role as wife and homemaker. As she's drawn into the history of the town, she learns about the turn-of-the-century saga of the once-powerful Mickelson family-- in particular the first female inhabitant of the house, Wilma-- and the story of their downfall.

Congratulations to Ellen Baker (whose website is here) for having her novel featured -- US publication is on 10 July. You can follow Ellen's blog (Keeping the House) here, and apparently, says Ellen, you can now find Dolly Magnuson on MySpace.

Sad questions; indigestible answers

I've read a few sad stories recently --- sad for different reasons.

Should I add fake comments to my blog?, asks a Problogger reader. Well, I'm aware of some skullduggery and deception that go on in the blogosphere, but the idea of fake comments is somewhat breathtaking.  Reminds me a bit of those agony aunts who make up the problems.

Here is a genuinely sad story: the admirable and worthy librarian and queen of the wikis Meredith Farkas asks Is my book out? Good question. She's having a raw deal, made more poignant if you've been following the gestation and progress of her book via her blog over the past year or more.

Indigestible reading for libraries. Yes, Tim Coates is at it again, telling tales out of school and making everyone sad or cross (or both). There seems to be no way out of this one, a sort of mass paralysis on all sides.

That's it from me for tonight, I will return with some happier content.....sometime.

Father's day is coming up

Father's day in the UK is this Sunday, causing some consternation at Petrona towers as the father here has three daughters, rather too many acquired present-years to allow much room for ingenuity, and a birthday pretty smartly afterwards. But relief is at hand.

What does it mean to be male?, asks Lyn Gardner in the Guardian blog. This Father's Day, a startling piece of site-specific theatre will attempt to answer the question. A few tickets to Boychild, a "mixture of performance, sound installation, sculpture, video and bakery" is obviously the thing. Lyn's vivid description indicates the play (?) is right up the MP's street:

"It has been a year in the making, bringing together men of all ages (from seven to over 70) and all backgrounds, including fathers to be, those serving time in Portland's Young Offenders Institute and health service staff. It takes the audience on a journey around the building and a journey through life from foetus through sprouting puberty to old age. Along the way, it aims to shatter the myths and stereotypes that exist around masculinity. Storor asks, "Why is it that men's hearts often give out before women's?" He is not just asking a medical question, but a metaphysical one too. Boychild may not supply the answers but it should provoke debate."

And as if that isn't enough, here is the ultimate gift (via Going Underground blog),  a Metropolitan Line table made from "reclaimed enamel, a snip at £1250 plus VAT". I must drop a hint to a passing daughter.

Maybe, on second thoughts, the usual giant Toblerone bar and latest Sharpe novel will do the trick after all for one most comfortable in the groves of academe. (It is OK, the MP is only aware of this blog in theory, so the "surprise" will not be compromised.)

Wellcome collection opens on 21 June

The Wellcome collection Medicine Life + Art opens on 21 June in London. The venue is open every day, with galleries open from Tuesdays to Sundays. Exhibitions and events are free. There is also a library, conference centre and club, as well as a cafe and the inevitable shop.
The exhibitions present a rich picture of the cultural and social implications of medicine past and present, through three galleries including exhibits and artworks from Henry Wellcome's original collection, as well as current medical topics such as obesity, genetics and malaria through the eyes of scientists, artists and patients. The opening programme includes exhibitions about the heart as well as sleeping and dreaming, examining each subject from a scientific, cultural and social perspective.
For more information and details of how to get there, see the Wellcome collection website.

(Cross-posted at Nautilus.)

'Cult of the Amateur' reviewed

Over at the blog Social Media, the post Putting the lie to 'Cult of the Amateur' links to reviews by two people who really, really did not like Andrew Keen's book.

Terry Heaton's post The terrified world view of Andrew Keen sum's up the book's position:  "the personal media revolution will destroy Hollywood, the professional press and the advertising industry, thus collapsing our economy." In his interesting analysis of the book and its arguments, Heaton concludes that “  'The cult of the amateur' is nothing more than a can of neatly stacked red herrings, and that doesn’t make for a debate at all."

The other review is Amateurish cult of the amateur by Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media blog. This review is less interesting because its theme is not only to analyse the book but also to defend the reviewer's own book and writings on the topic. Nevertheless, one can get a vivid snapshot of some of the issues from it, for example a case of mainstream journalists and bloggers coming up against the libel laws.

At risk of stating the self-evident, Andrew Keen must be crying all the way to the bank. Terry Heaton's quote at the top of his blog sums it up pretty well: "Postmodernism is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: Reinvent yourself for the 21st century or die! Some would rather die than change." Leonard Sweet, cultural historian.

Adopt a Book from the British Library

If I have a usual routine, it is that I spend between one and two hours an evening, somewhere between 8.30 and 10.30 pm, blogging (by which I mean reading and answering personal emails, reading items in my RSS reader and writing blog posts). This evening, however, I am distracted by a huge bruise on my foot. I was leaving my office this morning to walk across the room outside when my foot twisted under me. I've been in pain all day and am now finding it too distracting to write anything coherent or to process much that I'm reading.

I'll therefore bow out for the evening with this link: Adopt a Book from the British Library "a novel gift idea. The beneficiary of your gift can enjoy benefits such as a personalised bookplate added to your chosen book and the chance to view it on a behind the scenes tour. Adopt a Book supports our conservation team, helping us preserve the world's knowledge for future generations. There are hundreds of books available for adoption; you can browse these or search for something specific".

I'm off to conserve my foot, but conserving the world's knowledge sounds a much more worthy occupation.

ITW debut scholarship awards

From the International Thriller Writers' e-newsletter:

On behalf of the ITW Scholarship Committee (thank you Elaine Flinn, Gregg Olsen & JT Ellison!), we are pleased to announce the two winners of the ITW debut author scholarship for 2007 ThrillerFest in New York:

Rhodi Hawk (A TWISTER LADDER, Tor/Forge Summer 2008)
Derek Nikitas (PYRES, St. Martin's Minotaur October 2007)

Thank you to everyone who applied. We were pleased with the response and will be announcing the 2008 Scholarship Program this fall.

Allison Brennan
ITW Scholarship Committee Chair

My warmest congratulations to both authors.

Hold it right there

Via Bill Peschel:

I was just about to log off when I found this promise, highlighted in a post on Planet Peschel:

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life - lifehack.org.

Definitely not a promise to ignore, I rushed straight on over to find out the answers. Well, it's mostly good common sense, but what is conspicuously missing is how to turn the advice into reality. Oh well,  I'll return to my imperfect existence, although there was a little glimmer of hope there, for a minute.

Book reviews as conversation

After writing quite a few posts over the past couple of days and messing about with the design of Petrona I don't have a lot of time left over for writing posts today, so I will simply link here to a few I've recently read elsewhere that show the lovely "review-conversation" nature of blogging. Do visit the links provided and add your comments.

Uriah Robinson on Crime Scraps reviews Ruth Rendell's End in Tears, and in addition discusses his reading history of Rendell's series and how that might have been affected by the TV version.

Peter of Detectives Beyond Borders continues to review and discuss Colin Watson's Flaxborough chronicles, this time, among other topics, the depiction of violence in crime fiction. As a postscript, Peter quotes Watson on Anthony Berkely Cox, who "had written in 1930 that the detective story was in the process of developing into the novel with a crime theme, `holding its readers less by mathematical than by psychological ties.' "  "That seems an astonishingly prescient statement", writes Peter. Quite so.

Karen at Euro Crime has updated the website's awards page so that all the current Duncan Lawrie dagger shortlisted books are on one page, with links to their reviews on Euro Crime. You can visit the link at the start of this paragraph to add your own views of the shortlist, either what is on it or what isn't but should be (Susan Hill has elsewhere written about how cross she is about the lack of inclusion of The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam.) Karen provides here a list of translated, eligible crime novels that could and/or should have been considered for the "international" category.

Neil Pearson at the Hay festival

Link: It's a Crime! (or a mystery...): Serious book collecting at Hay, in a fun way, with Neil Pearson & Rick Gekoski.

CrimeFicReader (of It's a Crime!)  has been writing some wonderful posts about the Hay festival, full of her usual wit, insight and knowledge. She's excelled herself at the link above, though --- I have to admit that I am strongly predisposed to the subject matter, Neil Pearson, but even if you are misguided enough not to be an admirer of this courteous, funny and extremely handsome gentleman, it's a fascinating post about Pearson in his guise as Not Martin Amis, a book collector and the author of a book about Jack Kahane and his Obelisk press (the book includes a bibliography of the books, or "smut", that was published ).

CrimeFicReader's two earlier posts about the Hay festival can be read here (part 1) and here (part 2). As she's mentioned in an earlier post, she's had some difficult times recently, which makes these wonderful accounts all the more admirable. Thanks, CrimeFicReader!

Bronze Inside and Out, by Mary Scriver

Via Dave Lull, from the University of Calgary Press website:

"Bronze Inside and Out is a literary biography of sculptor Bob Scriver, written by his wife, Mary Strachan Scriver. Bob Scriver is best known for his work in bronze and for his pivotal role in the rise of “cowboy art.” Living and working on the Montana Blackfoot Reservation, Scriver created a bronze foundry, a museum, and a studio – an atelier based on classical methods, but with local Blackfoot artisans. His importance in the still-developing genre of “western art” cannot be overstated.
Mary Strachan Scriver lived and worked with Bob Scriver for over a decade and was instrumental in his rise to international acclaim. Working alongside her husband, she became intimately familiar with the man, his work, and his process. Her frank and uncensored narration includes details that give the reader a unique picture of Scriver both as man and as artist. Mary Strachan Scriver also provides a fascinating look into the practice of bronze casting, cleverly structuring the story of Bob Scriver’s life according to the steps in this complicated and temperamental process. She lives in Valier, Montana. She has worked as a teacher, a writer, and a Unitarian minister."

She blogs as Prairie Mary.

You can read Brian W. Dippie's foreword to Bronze Inside and Out at Librarian's Place, as well as a pithy account of how the book came to be published, by Mary Scriver herself.

You can order the book here.

Mostly about Peter James

Do you, like me, get confused between Peter Temple, Peter James and Bill James? I have got Peter James fixed in my mind, at least, because I've read his past three books.

My review of his latest, Not Dead Enough, was posted to Euro Crime last weekend. Karen's summary of my review is that the plot is not too taxing but I'm still addicted to the series. Spot on. See here for Euro Crime's other new reviews of last week: Pat Austin on The Reckoning by Sue Walker (I'm not reading her again after her disappointing first, but Pat is positive about this one); Karen on the audio version of Blood on the Wood by Gillian Linscott; and Mike Ripley's latest crime file round up. And there are lots of new competitions, so head on over.

There is an interview with Peter James on Material Witness blog -- PJ, like me, is a fan of Desmond Bagley's Running Blind and of Red Leaves by Thomas Cook, but I have to say that Scarlett Johannsen is not the first person who leaps into my mind to play PJ in a movie about his life, even with the recommended props.

If you are quick, you can listen to Mark Lawson interviewing Peter James on BBC radio 4 -- until Monday, says Karen. If you don't get the chance to listen, or even if you do, there is a review of the interview at Material Witness, again.

Now I must go and read some of the Bill Jameses and Peter Temples in my bookshelves to get them clear in my mind, too.

Frank Wilson on what to read this summer

Link: CRITICAL MASS: The Philadelphia Inquirer's Frank Wilson on What to Read This Summer.

Frank is taking part in the US National Book Critics' Circle current project in which writers are asked to recommend a book by a non-US author. You can read Frank's choice at the link above. I won't reveal it here, but if after reading Frank's piece you want to read more about the book (synopsis and reviews), here is a link to its Powell's page.

Frank Wilson is book review editor of the Philadelphia Inquirier and blogs at Books, Inq. You can find his collected book reviews for the paper via the link in the right-hand column of Petrona, under "sites I like".  Here is a link to an earlier interview with Frank, on the Critical Mass blog.

Blogger & Podcaster Guide

Link: Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: Blogger & Podcaster Guide.

Interesting post here about a new magazine called Blogger and Podcaster Guide, a weekly "TV guide" for bloggers and podcasters (natch) in partnership with USA Today. Joe Wikert interviews the publisher, Larry Genkin:

JW: What's the goal of the new Blogger & Podcaster Guide?

LG: There are three goals I have for the Blogger & Podcaster Guide: 1) To move the audience for blogs and podcast beyond early adopters; 2) To make it easier for people to find blog/podcast content on the topics of interest to them. (Today this isn't a very easy task. Just go to a search engine and try to quickly find a relevant blog/podcast from the mish-mash of results that are served up); 3) Help bloggers and podcasters generate larger audiences so they can better monetize their efforts and more effectively accomplish their objectives.

More of the interview is at Joe's blog (link above).

The fourteen million dollar movie

Link: DVD Dossier Blog: Amazon Glitch Prices DVD For The Rich.

Amazon.com is charging $14,049,429 for "The Gunrunner," a 1984 crime drama starring Kevin Costner. The website says that the suggested retail price for the film is $20,070,612. But if you pre-order you can cleverly save more than six million dollars ($6,021,183 to be exact), and also qualify for free shipping.

If you don't believe me, there is a screenshot at the link above.

Blogs wanted -- dead or alive

Link: Bloggers Blog: Millions of Dead Blogs Won't Stop Blogging.

I have often wondered what happens to all those millions, or even billions, of inactive blogs that we keep reading about. Technorati tracks them all, but we are told that only a very few per cent are "live", which means updated at least once a week (or maybe month). We know that people start blogs all the time but most of them don't continue after 3 months.

So I am glad to learn from the post above that these dead blogs are not like debris in outer space, making life dangerous for future explorers, or like aeroplane routes that are stretched to bursting point so that yet more runways and airports have to be built as passengers endlessly circle above.

Of course, the article isn't really about space, but about "the future of blogging", in my opinion a pointless topic. As the Bloggers Blog post states, a lot of people start blogs and get bored with them because they have no useful purpose. But a lot of people feel comfortable with the medium, and those people will carry on blogging because their blogs do have a useful purpose for them.

I believe that the stand-alone blog (like this one) will gradually become less common, as new bloggers come onto the scene they will choose to blog within their social network (MySpace, Facebook, Nature Network and so on). Other people will shift to more "chat" like services, such as the currently popular Twitter, or the various instant messaging systems available that can be integrated into one's web socialising platform. These options were not available to me when I started blogging (so far as I know), and if they had been, I might have set up my blog differently. It will always be thus: innovations will inevitably change the nature of blogging and other types of internet sociability, but one thing is for sure, it ain't going away.

Are there any other views on Public Libraries?

Link: info NeoGnostic: Are there any other views on Public Libraries?.

From Chris Armstrong's post: "Most readers of iNG will be aware of concerns voiced here in the past about what is happening (or not) to public libraries in the UK. Those same readers cannot fail to be aware of the continuing onslaught from Tim Coates in The Good Library Blog on any body which has any responsibility for public libraries: from CILIP to MLA; from Demos to the (now closing) Laser Foundation.

Now, we have Richard Wallis of library systems producer, Talis weighing in with a reasoned analysis of the state of play so far." [links provided in iNG blog post linked above.]

Chris concludes: "Talis are very committed to libraries (obviously!)... I wonder if that extends to hosting a forum of the great and the good - professional bodies, government, MLA, and the concerned - to work out a way forward that will benefit the public and their libraries?" Good question.

Climate Feedback: Shaping the Kyoto successor

Link: Climate Feedback: Shaping the Kyoto successor.

Back to more serious, though welcomly accessible, science. One of Nature Publishing Group's new blogs is Climate Feedback (see link above), "to facilitate lively and informative discussion on the science and wider implications of global warming. The blog aims to be an informal forum for debate and commentary on climate science in our journals and others, in the news, and in the world at large." So if you want the unbiased, independent and accurate picture of what's what about climate science and policy, do subscribe. At the link above and at the blog's associated web publication Nature Reports Climate Change, is a report of the G8 summit: what was just agreed about carbon emissions policy and what it all means. Taken together, the blog and website are welcome additions to an area of science that could do with a lot more light and a lot less heat (pun sort of intended).

How manly do men feel?

Link: The malleability of men's gender self-concept - Self and Identity.

Reading through tables of contents and RSS feeds of scientific journals, news publications and blogs is usually a serious business, not least (in the case of journals) trying to decipher the language of specialism, so often designed to communicate to an obscure few rather than to enlighten the many, one feels. Every so often I come across an example that I want to share. The one at the link above is a case in point.

The malleability of men's gender self-concept. Authors: Cade McCall, University of California. Santa Barbara; Nilanjana Dasgupta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"The present study tested the influence of social status and gender salience on the malleability of men's gender self-concepts at an automatic versus controlled level. Male participants were placed in a superior or subordinate role relative to a male or female confederate for a joint task; subsequently their automatic and controlled beliefs about themselves were measured. We predicted first, that men placed in a subordinate role would protect against the threat to their self-concept by automatically self-stereotyping more than men placed in a superior role. As a secondary hypothesis, we predicted that the presence of a female interaction partner would increase the situational salience of gender, which in turn would evoke gender stereotypic self-descriptions. Results confirmed these hypotheses. These data suggest that men's gender self-concepts are malleable and that situational cues differentially affect self-conceptions at an automatic and controlled level."

An Alternate Kettle of Fish

An Alternate Kettle of Fish (don't click on the link if you are a suspicious type, but do if you want to see some sweet little pictures in needle eyes) has just given me the infamous but harmless "thinking blogger award", which last time caused various other bloggers to publicly criticise me for accepting it. (I can't bear to link to those harsh comments as I found them too hurtful at the time and have no wish to revisit.) In acknowledging the kindness of alternatefish for giving me this award (or accolade, or meme, or compliment or call it what you wish), I point out in advance to any detractors that I am not linking to anything that will give anyone any vast sums of money, or posting any "evil" badges. An Alternate Kettle of Fish (alternatefish's) blog does feature the "evil thinking blogger" badge which, as with the one I posted on Petrona when I was given the award previously, is not "live" and leads you nowhere, so there is nobody at the other end to rake in the dollars from the hordes of referrals. I note, incidentally, that at least one of my previous critics later accepted the "award" in a post, when given to him/her.

Thank you, alternatefish, I am most grateful. I recall that I am supposed to pass on the award (or accolade, or meme, or whatever you wish to call it) to some other bloggers, so how about two of my blogroll's latest members, Close Reading and Material Witness? 

London underground book project plus rant

Thanks to James Long for this (USA) link: Boing Boing: London Book Project to flood the tube with free books. And Karen of Euro Crime tells me that she found this article in the Australian press, which leads to the London Book Project website in the country of origin (UK).

"Have you seen any books lying around on the tube?" Karen asks me. No, but I have seen plenty of scrumpled and dirty free newspapers. Londoners get one in the morning and three every evening. In the evening, I run a gauntlet at King's Cross main line, King's Cross underground, Vauxhall or Waterloo underground and Vauxhall overground or Waterloo main line of aggressive people leaping out at me in each location waving the darn things, each and every day. The rival newspaper "hand outers" (what is the word for people giving things away?) stand next to each other and make you feel like a character from Daphne Du Maurier's The Birds in order to get past them. I have taken to removing my daily (paid for) newspaper or book out of my bag and holding it in front of me to show that I do not require reading material, but it does not make any difference. By the time I get to Kingston (zone 6) the news-flappers have long since given up and one is left in peace.

In the mornings, I am refugee using the (slightly slower and marginally less annoying) overground train service to avoid the horrid underground (overcrowded, smelly, grotty trains and impolite behaviour of many fellow-travellers). In the evenings I use the tube because the train connection times aren't good -- ghastly experience. The book project is the best argument I have yet seen for returning to the tube in the mornings, but as I see it is an official London Underground initiative, I can't help wishing they'd spend the money on improving the service, even though that probably makes me a Philistine.

Well, that was a bit of a blogger's rant.  I hope I'll be calmer next time.

A long day in the life of a blogger

Last night I was enjoying a novel experiment by Clare Dudman, Keeper of the Snails, who decided to record her thoughts every two hours during the day. Here is her first post, at 6.30 am, and here is her last, at half past midnight.  Reading this little window into Clare's life is a strangely intimate experience, pushing the envelope of the boundary between flesh-and-blood and internet-based reality in social interaction.

Owing to the time-delay on my RSS reader, I thought when I crashed out at 10 pm-ish that Clare had finished at 6.30, but I saw at 8 am today that she'd kept going for 18 hours (and I assume she got up at least half an hour before her first post and went to bed half an hour at least after, so that makes 19 waking hours). I shall stop moaning about my 6 am starts forthwith, as my evenings end (or, rather, the functional part of me shuts down) at more like 10 pm.

Thank you, Clare, I enjoyed reading your diary for the day.

Crime round-up from the lost post

Here is my attempt to reconstruct the post that was lost in a Typepad server error last night.

Various crime-fiction blogs have bought the news of the Crime Writers' Association "Dagger" awards shortlists. Karen's two Euro Crime entries are useful because they contain short summaries of all the books. Here is her "International dagger" (code for "not originally written in the English language") list; and here (thanks to losing the post, I can now bring you this additional link) is the "main prize" shortlist. I have read only one book on the former list (though several of the authors) and none on the second, so won't offer an opinion on who I think should take the prize. If you'd like to see all the other categories of shortlist as well, here is the lot (I assume) on Shotsmag, complete with useful summaries.

Peter of Detectives Beyond Borders asks, in the context of reading the excellent Karin Fossum, whether anyone can "think of crime fiction that features police or other investigators, but whose investigators are explored and portrayed less thoroughly than those they investigate?" If you have any answers, join Karen of Euro Crime and myself in the comments to Peter's post.

David Montgomery of Crime Fiction Dossier provides a useful list of good sources for short crime fiction. I don't read short fiction these days, but have read many a short crime-fiction story in the past, starting with Conan Doyle of course. If you like the format, I am sure David's recommendations are worth checking out.

Elaine of Random Jottings throws her hat into the ring of reviewing Chris Ewan's The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam. I'm definitely going to read this book based on this review and what I've already read about it, but from the size of my unread collection I am happy to wait for the paperback. In the meantime, according to Jessica Ruston of the Book Bar, you can visit the author's MySpace page and make friends.

In celebration of The Rap Sheet's first birthday, the blog has been collecting together recommendations of many people's favourite overlooked, underappreciated or forgotten crime fiction author. There have been at least nine posts of all the nominations, and I'm glad to say they have all been gathered together into one post here. This is obviously a very useful link for any future time when I may be short of something to read.

I think that was all that I included in the lost post, so will end here.

Normal service will be resumed later

Typepad has, unusually, let me down and lost an entire post by telling me there was a server error when I pressed "save". It is too late to reconstruct the post, and I don't know if I have the energy anyway, but for now, I'm giving up. Good night.

Close Reading and Material Witness

Two new  blogs on Petrona's blogroll and in my RSS reader subscription (I apologise for the lack of organisation of said blogroll -- I still haven't found the time to categorise the blogs since the move from Bloglines to Google Reader. One day..).

One blog is Material Witness, "diary of a crime-fiction addict".

The other is Close Reading, "literary criticism by and for the common reader".

I'm enjoying them both very much -- well worth a look. Strangely, they are both Typepad blogs and both have the same design, which I've only just noticed while making the links in this post. (This is what comes of reading blogs through an RSS reader-- they all look the same.) The content of these two is very different and, in both cases, stimulating to read.

Vox haikus and questions

Possibly not entirely uncoincidentally, I received a Vox email at roughly the same time as the Moveable Type message mentioned in my previous post.

Some keen person has written a 200-page Vox handbook in Japanese.  A few of these were given away to people who wrote blogging haikus. Here are the three winners:

Pictures, books, and film
to remember it always
Vox brings great pleasure

Question of the Day
lights up LCD displays
around the Vox world

I blog to unwind
twisted, tangled thoughts within.
You read it and smile.

You can read about the Japanese handbook, and read all the haiku entries, here. If you are a haiku fan, here is the Vox haiku group.

Because Vox came on the scene before Revish or Bookshare (on Facebook), I archive all my book reviews there, which otherwise are scattered on Petrona, Euro Crime and, occasionally, at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Now that I am so torn between Revish and Bookshare, I wonder what to do about Vox. There are advantages and disadvantages to all three book sites. What I need is some time to do some website sorting. And how could that happen?

Moveable Type 4

Exciting news from Moveable Type/Typepad. "We're pleased to announce the beta release of Movable Type 4—and to provide you with the first look. MT4 has over 50 new features that have been inspired by your comments and suggestions, and will enable you to build, drive, and manage entire blogging websites and communities. With MT4, you'll be able to turn your site's readers into members and your audience into communities."

Well, in my case that won't be likely, time is too short to be more than a mere user,  but as they say: "This is the biggest set of improvements in Movable Type's history, and shows off a dramatically new look and feel."

I know there will be lots on the tech blogs about this, but I haven't time to look at those tonight. I'm sure Caxton would approve, if he had a blog. (He probably does, as Chaucer and Lady Bracknell have them, but if so I haven't discovered it yet.)

The Baby Juggler

The Baby Juggler: Three kids, two jobs, one life: Blogged off.

I had to laugh at this post on "The Baby Juggler" blog. The blog tells of the exhausting life of a woman who works (in the same building as me, as it happens, by pure coincidence), has three very young children -- and, recently, a blog. This post is about putting the children to bed after a long day:

To be honest, the thought of lying down in her cosy little bed really appealed. We snuggled up together like spoons, and she burbled about her day for a while, slowly winding down like a little clockwork doll, until her voice trailed off and I could tell from her breathing that she had fallen asleep. I lay there for a while, thinking about my day.... and the next thing I knew, I was waking up and it was after 11pm. The evening had passed and I'd spent it asleep in my daughter's bed. I wandered downstairs feeling faintly cross that I'd wasted the evening and wondering whether there will ever be a time when life isn't quite this insanely tiring. Of course, when I asked Paul whether he hadn't wondered where I was all evening, he simply replied, "Oh, I assumed you were writing your blog!"

No further comment ;-)

On Chesil Beach reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer

I'd like to thank Frank Wilson for asking me to review a wonderful book, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The book has just been published in the USA and my review of it can be seen by visiting this link (I don't know who wrote the title of the review but it is lovely):

A beach honeymoon amid shifting sands.

A few bits of blogs

Sixty years of images from the Cannes film festival, via Open Culture Blog.

Theatres must develop new material for children, says Lyn Gardner, instead of relying on book adaptations. She is a children's reviewer who knows what she's talking about, as she takes children along to the plays she is reviewing for the Guardian.

These years, I look forward to seeing about two films a year at the cinema. Anything with Viggo Mortensten in it (however bad the film, he will deliver -- even without a beard I can't think of anyone else I would rather look at on a movie screen for a couple of hours) and a few others. Atonement is one. I'm pleased, but not surprised, to read that it looks good "mightily impressive", even.

Good meme here from Stephen Lang, in case anyone wants to pick it up.

Tom of Random Thinking has the most lovely review of Murder, She Wrote -- the worst TV series ever?

Agricola of Close Reading reviews Notes on a Scandal, a movie starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett and based on the book by Zoe Heller, which is on my DVD rental list.

Another review of Jed Rubenfeld's Interpretation of Murder, this one by De Scribe of Bookends. And Becky of A Book A Week reviews Clare Dudman's readable and engaging One Day the Ice will Reveal All Its Dead (aka Wegener's Jigsaw).

If you don't know what a wiki is and what it can do for you, look here -- a post by the experts over at O'Reilly Radar.

For about a year before I started blogging, I tracked website updates and journal tables of contents via Bloglines, a RSS reader. RSS is the most wonderful way to manage the information you want to know but don't want to know about it until it suits you. Since starting blogging, I use it for all my blog reading, too. A few months ago I switched from Bloglines, the well-established market leader, to Google Reader. Google Reader has been steadily adding new features since then, and now I see from a Problogger post that it has far and away the biggest market share. Interesting times, especially as, as John Battelle and numerous others have reported, Google has now acquired Feedburner, the best web management and distribution tool out there (that I've found) .

Many blogs have reported that Amazon is about to provide a "lightening" POD service: here is the Booksellers' Association blog take.  And here's a post from Joe Wikert about the Times Emit publishing blog.

OK, off to read a good book now.

(update: the Cannes festival link has been fixed, thanks Dave Lull for p0inting it out.)

Book review prize news from Revish

From this month's Revish newsletter:

* Review of the month results

Boy was this hard. An average of nearly 2 reviews a day were posted in May, and choosing the best 3 was too difficult, so we've chosen the best 5 instead. Our favourite review will receive $40 of Amazon gift vouchers, and the four runners-up will receive Revish t-shirts or $20 of Amazon vouchers.

Our pick for top review was Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut, reviewed by A. Bowdoin Van Riper.

This betrays the geekiness of the panel a little, but more than that it shows that the best reviews aren't necessarily of the best books.

Runners-up are:

+ Echo, reviewed by Amanda.

+ The Man Who Was Thursday, reviewed by Chinsmith.

+ Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, reviewed by deargreenplace.

+ Ice Moon, reviewed by Maxine Clarke.

Further Revish news:

We'll be running another review of the month competition in the summer, and hope to have a full voting system ready for the autumn, making the whole thing much more democratic.


* Book explorers: Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. camelrc has started a book group on Revish under the banner "Book explorers": a capital idea. The first book the group will be discussing, starting at the end of June, is Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I'm signed up for it, you should too (says Dan Champion, aka Mr Revish).

Lovell and his telescopic vision

This will be my last post about the Saturday Times books supplement, mainly because Jenny wants to play Sims, for which she needs my computer as the DVD player doesn't work on hers. (Yes, I could use hers to continue posting, but I've got bored for the moment and want to go and read my book in a snatched Sunday moment of peace). So although there are a couple of other things I have to write, I'll content myself with one only, an excellent article by Giles Whittell about Sir Bernard Lovell, inventor (is that the word?) of the Jodrell Bank radiotelescope among many other achievements.

In 1957 the project was behind schedule and over budget. At that time, everyone was obsessed with Sputnik, which was thought might be able to carry an intercontinental ballistic missile. Hence came the famous call from Whitehall. "Lovell and his team worked nonstop for 48 hours turning their giant listening device into something that could also transmit. 'A few days after the launch we got this marvellous echo from the carrier rocket. In fact I think I have it here.' He [the 94-year old Lovell] pulls an old photograph from the pile on his desk -- a photograph of a man and a line across the screen. 'There's me pointing to the echo, which no man had yet seen. I had a camera photographing the cathode ray tube and this was shown to the press about an hour later. This was the ICBM moving over Cumbria at 17,000 mph. It was dramatic.'  "

Wonderful stuff. The article is in support of a new First Move literary festival , from 15 to 17 June, celebrating the first time the Lovell telescope (at Jodrell Bank) moved under power.

Ghost authors for children

I'm shocked! Lucy Daniels, author of the Animal Ark series of children's books, doesn't exist. Nor does Daisy Meadows, author of the currently popular Rainbow Magic series.

I already knew that Francine Pascal did not really write the Sweet Valley High books, and that Carolyn Keane did not write Nancy Drew. Mills and Boon is also well known for its pseudonymous authors. But now I learn (via The Times Saturday books supplement again) that there is a company called Working Partners that is responsible for a huge number of series "single author" books. Examples provided (never heard of them) are the Lady Grace mysteries, Warriors and Beast Quest (in development).

"I am surprised that they are the only company of their kind in Britain" says Penny Morris, a director of Orchard, the company that publishes the Rainbow Magic series. "They now cover all the bases with their ideas." Oh, that's OK then.

Columns and fonts

The editor of the Times books supplement is obviously a reader of Petrona, because in the "hot type" industry column this week are two stories you read here first: the woman who was rude about bloggers as book reviewers while her publicist was asking them to review her latest book; and the Harry Potter bookshelf poetry competition. (I myself have the Grumpy Old Bookman to thank for the former, and Dave Lull for the latter.)

I mention this because another entry in the column, about which naturally I'd already read about on various blogs, is about writers' favourite fonts -- a question being asked of them at Hay. Apparently the inelegant (in my opinion) Courier is a hot favourite, said to be a reassuring reminder of the old typewriter. Nicholson Baker is quoted as stating: "You need the sentences to look their worst until the dress rehearsal of the galleys, when all the serifs come out dancing".

I rather like Garamond, myself, but you don't see it much these Minion days.

In the dark by Deborah Moggach

Maybe it is a bit early to be thinking about holiday reads, but the weather is nice and it is June now. So a mini-review in the Times caught my eye. The book is In the Dark by the reliable Deborah Moggach (though maybe she should stay away from adapting Jane Austen for the screen). From the brief review:

"The Moggach miracle continues  -- here's another vivid, gripping yarn from the author of Tulip Fever. The place is South London, the time is the First World War.......Eithne, a pretty widow with a young son, runs a boarding house  filled with eccentric characters, including a blind communist and a man suffering from shell shock. Oh Eithne, please don't marry that sinister butcher! Deckchair-book of the month, with a plot as twisty as a mountain road."

Here's a link to the book on Amazon (UK site). I've read half a dozen of Moggach's previous books and, in the main, enjoyed them immensely.

Too much tragic realism?

Reading the (Saturday) Times book supplement today (Sunday), I found much to catch my interest. Sometimes there is very little, or one article, but this week, for me, is a good one.

The children's book review round-up (by Amanda Craig) included the title Fearless by Tim Lott, for readers aged 11, and the author's first children's book. According to the review, Little Fearless's mother is taken away by armed guards, but not before she has given her daughter three gifts. The girl is a laundress slave in an institute and helps the other girls by telling them stories. She escapes to tell the girls' families what is happening to them but they won't listen. Unwilling to let her friends down, Fearless returns  to them three times, on each occasion giving them one of her mother's gifts. Eventually she is imprisoned in an underground room and dies in the arms of her best friend and betrayer. 

The review admiringly states: "This may sound grim, but it is gripping and one of the most original children's books I have read for some time. The awfulness of many English children's lives is insufficiently recognised....." and how much better is Fearless than "the fluff that pretends that childhood suffering doesn't exist".

I disagree with this view. I don't think the book sounds at all suitable for an 11 year old of any sensitivity or imagination; many popular children's books contain quite awful tragedies; and in what sense does the plot summary provided by the reviewer apply to "many English children"? The opposite, by and large, I would think. There is much tragedy and drama in the books that children of this age love, most notably in the very popular Harry Potter series, which reduces them to tears at various junctures. Harry Potter is fantasy that meets tragedy head-on, but in the mind of the young reader, provides various ways to deal with the worst things that can happen to you. Jenny has just finished a newly published book (translated from the French) called "The Princess and the Captain" which ends sadly -- but the book tells an explorer's adventure and that is what stuck in her mind when she was telling me about it. Matilda, Tracy Beaker, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and many other popular 11-year-oldish children's favourites deal with life's tragedies, but not at relentless, miserable and frightening length.

I recently saw a film called Pan's Labyrinth which sounds rather like Fearless. The film tells of the fantasy world a girl constructs to escape the awfulness of her daily life in Spain during the Second World War. It was a grim film, and in one sense ended tragically --- but it was not classified as suitable for 11 year olds, even though the film was mainly about one.

Children can learn about the existence of tragedies and discover ways to deal with them by reading stories. The Times reviewer did not say whether she had found out what any 11 year olds thought of Fearless: the review was based on her own, adult reading. Maybe there are plenty of 11 year olds who would like this book, but based on the ones I know, I somehow doubt that it will become a classic among that age-group.

Eggcorn of the week?

I came across a good eggcorn at work the other day. A colleague had sent an email to a couple of scientists to ask them to be interviewed for an article. The scientists replied that they would be happy to do so, but they were copying in an administrative assistant to the email exchange because she "keeps us on a tight lease".

The mind boggles (either way, actually).

Do you have any good examples of eggcorns?