|
11/7/2009 8:33:41 PM
|
topic:
A celebration of illiteracy!
Bruce
Posts 62
|
Yup, I was happy with Coles [I'm in Calgary btw]. And WH Smith. Chnook Mall used to have three, count 'em, three bookstores...now it has a Chapters. Big whup.
Someone pointed out that this latest brain-fart by the bean counters will scuttle the impulse book buying aesthete. Pages on Kensington is the last independent in Calgary, a city of a million. How lame is that?
|
|
11/7/2009 8:15:26 PM
|
topic:
A celebration of illiteracy!
Madison
Posts 119
|
Me too, that's where I went to buy my pokemans novels when I was a kid. They never had as much as Chapters and Indigo.
|
|
11/7/2009 8:05:39 PM
|
topic:
A celebration of illiteracy!
alastair_mayer
Posts 391
|
Madison wrote:
In Canada, they closed the Coles branch a few years ago.
Oh, man. Way back when I discovered science fiction, I went to high school in Toronto. I used to pass by a Coles every day on the way to/from school. It was just a small one (on Bloor St between Spadina and Bathurst) but I'd be in there a couple of times a week to see if they had anything new. They probably didn't have more than a twenty or thirty titles, in a wire rack all face out. There just wasn't much SF in those days (mid/late 60s). But I have a fond memory for Coles bookstores.
|
|
11/7/2009 8:05:08 PM
|
topic:
Oh Fabrice, Poor Fabrice...!
Fabrice D.
Posts 856
|
jemmerling wrote:
Lukas Jackson wrote: "Bones from the former St. Lawrence Cemetery deposited (dumped?) in 1848 in the western ossuary then transferred in September 1859." 1848 was the year of the Paris Commune, perhaps there's a connection.
Clearly deposited, not dumped.
The Paris Commune was in 1871, not in 1848.
__
edited by Fabrice D. on 11/7/2009
|
|
11/7/2009 8:04:04 PM
|
topic:
Oh Fabrice, Poor Fabrice...!
Fabrice D.
Posts 856
|
jemmerling.[/quote wrote:
|
|
11/7/2009 7:59:15 PM
|
topic:
Oh Jim, Poor Jim.....
Fabrice D.
Posts 856
|
I know my geography. I even lived less than 100 km from these islands, and went there several times, so I know where they are.
|
|
11/7/2009 7:23:36 PM
|
topic:
Balloons
Madison
Posts 119
|
Speaking of Up:
|
|
11/7/2009 7:19:16 PM
|
topic:
Balloons
Bill Moonroe
Posts 3225
|
Please tell me the balloons were made of C4 or filled with liquid nitrogen, or something like that.
|
|
11/7/2009 6:45:50 PM
|
topic:
January 2010 Asimov's In Review
Rich Horton
Posts 238
|
For me, "A Letter from the Emperor" is the clear best story of the issue.
"Conditional Love" is also nice work, nice manipulation of readers' natural sympathies.
Both "The Jekyll Island Horror" and "Wonder House" use something SF readers of a certain age (mine, I suppose) are predisposed to like -- evocation of the old pulp publishing era -- and while that's peripheral to Steele's story it's central to Roberson's, fatally so, in my view. (Not as bad as, but in the same direction of bad as, Burstein's "Cosmic Corkscrew" thing from a few years ago.)
|
|
11/7/2009 6:15:49 PM
|
topic:
A celebration of illiteracy!
Madison
Posts 119
|
In Canada, they closed the Coles branch a few years ago. This was the bookstore in shopping malls (Chapters/Indigo owns all the bookstores in Canada). This shut down their entire mall chain, so there's only the mega stores to go to. This pissed me off, because there was a time when my mall had two, count'em two, bookstores. Now it's just food and clothes and assininity.
|
|
11/7/2009 6:11:52 PM
|
topic:
First Rejection
Madison
Posts 119
|
I could tell you, but I haven't gotten either a rejection or an acceptance back yet. 
|
|
11/7/2009 5:42:03 PM
|
topic:
McKay and Cater, Thats a tough one for TPTB ????
Captain Mitty
Posts 256
|
|
|
11/7/2009 5:26:01 PM
|
topic:
NaNoWriMo 2009
Madison
Posts 119
|
I've finished the thing I was working on so I'll start this for real later tonight. I think I'll set down some events first or something; I don't know.
|
|
11/7/2009 4:23:19 PM
|
topic:
Balloons
Alex
Posts 894
|
Bill Moonroe wrote:
Did anyone see the special Balloon Boy episode of Mythbusters this last week? I wanted to stay up for it, but was running out of gas.
They did get the kid off of the ground; but it took a thousand more balloons than estimated. (3500 total, iirc )
|
|
11/7/2009 3:58:29 PM
|
topic:
A celebration of illiteracy!
Bill Moonroe
Posts 3225
|
Hey, I celebrate Illiteracy each and every day at work. Each time I pitch a worn out copy of a 1950s edition of "The Sound and the Fury" to make room for another Hannah Montana/iCarly film festival, I feel like I'm doing my part.
Ah. B. Dalton. Haven't seen one of those in years. Those bright, prison jumpsuit orange bags, the row after row of the latest releases.
Our Waldenbooks was long ago converted to a BevMo. Which does fuel writing dreams, but isn't quite the same.
Still, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton were little prerunners to Borders and Barnes & Noble. It's places like the Book and Art Den that are worth really getting depressed about. The little guys always have the neatest stuff.
|
|
11/7/2009 3:49:25 PM
|
topic:
A celebration of illiteracy!
Bruce
Posts 62
|
So the family owned, 44-year old Book and Art Den in Banff was closed a few months ago. The owners cited the recent local opening of the Canadian chain Indigo books as a contributing factor. This came on the heels of the closure of McNalley-Robinson book store in the downtown core and the loss of about 90% of the used book store over the last fifteen years. And feast your eyes on the debacles below:
"Borders to Close 200 Waldenbooks Stores: Borders Group Inc. will close 200 Waldenbooks stores in January, cutting 1,500 jobs. The company plans to focus on more profitable superstores, and will leave only about 130 mall-based stores open. Borders shut down 112 stores during the 2008 fiscal year, and closed an average of 66 stores per year between 2001 and 2007."
AND!
"Barnes & Noble to Close Remaining B. Dalton Stores: After closing 35 to 40 B. Dalton stores a year for years now, Barnes & Noble is preparing to shutter the last remaining group of 50 Dalton outlets."
A triumph of mediocrity. Soon, if you want a book, you're either going to have to get in a car and drive to one of these charmless big-box stores or order on-line. Bleh.
|
|
11/7/2009 3:39:18 PM
|
topic:
Oh Fabrice, Poor Fabrice...!
Kevin C.
Posts 1064
|
jemmerling wrote:
1848 was the year of the Paris Commune, perhaps there's a connection.
Here in the Americas, where there's plenty of room to bury our dead, we forget that the reuse of cemeteries was common in congested European cities. I wonder how films such as Poltergeist play in Europe?
|
|
11/7/2009 3:34:26 PM
|
topic:
Balloons
pc
Posts 1415
|
We can't forget the blimp-ish Jupiter craft in Clarke's "A Meeting with Medusa."
|
|
11/7/2009 3:30:35 PM
|
topic:
Fritz Leiber: the Horror, the Humor, the Man
jimbraiden
Posts 1702
|
Getting a waiter's attention.
I was once, many years ago, in a very posh restaurant in London and trying without any success to get the attention of the waiter.
An elderly gentleman at the table next to us noted my problem and leant across.
"Throw your glass on the floor, " he said.
"What?"
"Throw your glass on the floor."
I did.
The glass shattered and instantly I had half a dozen waiters converging on me.
The gentleman winked at me.
"Never fails."
And he was right.
|
|
11/7/2009 3:26:22 PM
|
topic:
Stand on Zanzibar book group
John E. Rogers, Jr.
Posts 1286
|
Just finished continuity (26) - "Here Comes a Chopper." Brunner once again - as with the riot chapter - displays his skill at adrenaline-pumping action sequences. Here, Daniel (Mark I at the onset, Mark II [with a vengeance] at the end) takes on a mucker on the campus at Dedication University. Brilliantly executed (so to speak). Thrilling. Unsettling - with a powerhouse closing moment.
This puts me at p. 350 - out of 505 total.
Loved the speech by the lunar psychologist. His assessment - that no partisans and no muckers were possible in the closed-off, man-against-hostile-environment confines of the Moonbase - rang true. A rich indictment of the chaotic randomness and unpredictability, and the supreme lack of direct personal investment, of the seven billion strong Earthside culture. Particularly enjoyed the emphasis he placed on the relationship between the men and women of the base - having only to do with the merits of the individual - not their political or religious identities. Optimistic. Real.
Similarly, loved Norman's stunned realization of how Zad - indeed, how Beninia - viewed Elihu's considered advice. That is - that was that. The deal was done. Zad had reached out to a trusted friend - Elihu - had asked for help - guidance - on the issue of the vacuum in office that his impending death would cause, and on the concomitant issue of the the survival of the nation itself without Zad himself running things. Elihu had headed West, pondered, planned, taken action - by approaching GT, and returned with his strategy fully plotted and his hand-picked support staff at hand. And Zad was going to accept it - at face value - in toto - because Elihu was family - or like family. To Norman, the lack of discussion, lack of negotiation and argument, is mind-boggling - UNTIL he comprehends the reality - which is that Zad and Beninia are essentially a family, not a corporation, not even exactly a country. Zad is like the father, his ministers the eldest children. The father had asked an old family friend to take the lead in this time of turmoil. So be it.
Wasn't overjoyed with Daniel's treatment of Bronwen - but that's further evidence of the growing ascendancy of Mark II, I suppose.
Guys - this is fiction writing at its very best. Complex. Nuanced. Intensely personal - yet also Big Pictured. Crisp, ultra-professional prose. Scholarly at the right moments, and gut-punchingly exciting at others.
Zanzibar has moved into my top five SF novels of all time.
|
|
pages:
1 2
|
