I find myself staring down the barrel of having to take care of some things hanging off the business end of the stick here. That sounds worse than it is actually - it amounts to tuning the DAB radio into Hairband FM and riffling through blog posts of those who are much further ahead in the writing game than I am (or at least when it comes to bodies of work). Disappointingly, I find that Nick Hornby has fallen right off the blog radar. As he points out himself, he is possibly the world's worst blogger (he's not, I know way slacker people with far more than a two year gap since the last post). Mr Hornby is however a great example of something I would pay good money to get behind the paywall of. I wouldn't expect the world from him and he could always divert any funds he made to his Treehouse project if it made him feel better. It will happen one day with somebody that's for sure - the world will go to war over being expected to pay for such things but as a daily blog surfer, I'd be behind such a thing and you can't argue with the Treehouse idea. It's not like you'd be giving things away for free when you haven't posted for two years? Is it?
Mostly, I think that one day, someone with balls of steel will figure out that to make things 'special' again in the world, we're not going to be able to give stuff away for free forever.
Mr H/Penguin - you can have that idea if you like and count me in.
Talking of which - and I hope I don't get bullets flying into my inbox - here's one of Nick's posts from a really long time ago that made me laugh hard and long:
In Borders… I watch with fascination as a local author rearranges the shop in order to optimise his chances of sales. He is not happy with the container that has been clipped to the section of the bookshelf displaying his book; the container holds flyers advertising a related product but it partially obscures the book’s cover, so while nobody is looking (apart from me) the author unclips it and sticks it somewhere else, where it will partially obscure the cover of somebody else’s work. He then spots someone picking up and leafing through a competing hardback, so he grabs his own and thrusts it into the bewildered shopper’s hands. I suppose this is what we have to do during a depression, but I’m not sure I have the stomach for it.
These kind of things really happen. I've seen them with my own eyes and pray to the gods of pride on a daily basis that I never feel a need to act this desperately. Good story though. This all came to the surface because I was researching my books of the year list mentioned a while back. I read both A Long Way Down and Juliet Naked this year (remiss, I know. I learned all I know about falling behind from Hornby himself) and forgot how good they were - or even that I had read them at all because I read them both in a day (separate days - I'm not that fast) and then handed them on to be loved elsewhere as I tend to do with great books.
If you're looking for something short to fill a train ride - you might love Everyone's Reading Bastard. If you don't, all hope may be lost.
COMMERCIAL BREAK:
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I found out today that the greatest book ever written by human being - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is headed to TV. This is either the nest news ever or... well, it is the best news ever but how I feel about it afterwards all depends on how it pans out. Part of me says that I should steer well away from anything to do with it but an equal part of me knows I'll be right there, phone off the hook. I picked this golden nugget up from here - who are definitely some people who should know better than to call it a 'fantasy epic'. That's a cheap shot for search engines if ever I saw one. That's like calling Wuthering Heights, Chick Lit.
Sigh.
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Something else potentially full of excitement is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who - which might hold this in store for us. Interesting. I'm going to stay away from trailers if I can and hope the BBC give them about £8 to make it with so that the whole project hinges on a story rather than the 'digital smartness' that it seems to be geared at. One raised eyebrow to throw in the ring here is that for a long time, Moffat has continually stated that villain X, villain Y etc, from years gone by have not much of a place in modern Who. But given that very same audience won't give a damn about eight of these Doctors, what then? Hell, the older audience only give a crap about seven of them (you can even insert your own number here - there are some pretty dire years to chew on). It will be interesting that's for sure - and I hope with all my heart that they knock it out of the ballpark.
No pressure then...
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Finally, in the continuing import of stuff I had gathered on tumblr, this:
"Jim Tierney - designer par excellence and just starting out by the looks of things. If these and the other samples on his site are anything to go by, I predict very, very excellent things. Check out this pull tab on From The Earth To The Moon. To see the die-cuts on all the titles, click into the site.
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Let's wrap this puppy up and put it to bed with the assistance of some of the mighty Blind Melon...
Got a couple of days off this week. I've got a ton of stuff that I want to do and one thing that has to be done. So tomorrow, Rhiannon et moi are heading off to see TinTin. There's a couple of great trailers for it