Month: September 2019

I know we have a few indy booksellers reading this (I can see your follows), so tell me if this is true: Quill is reporting that BookNet is reporting that Indy’s are reporting good things. It’s like when a fire goes through a forest (let’s call this fire…. uh…. “Amazindigapters”) and then all the healthy new green shoots come up. Are you healthy and green, wee bookstores of my dreams?

I have a soft spot for Stephen King. And I frankly think that when 500 years pass, people will be more likely to study and read him than most of the literary writers we venerate today. So I suppose it’s good that, according to the NYT, King’s new book is his scariest yet — in part because the evil monsters are …. wait for it …. us.

I don’t know. The vampires in Salem’s Lot were pretty damn scary. I was about 10 when I read it, and my dad climbed the side of the house outside my bedroom window at night to knock on it and hiss, “Geordie…. open the window….” And you all wonder why I’m like this?

Dude, I’ll just take a cheque, thanks. But for those of you who are freaking the F out before readings, etc., apparently there’s someone willing to take your money (read: your publisher’s money — haha, like either of you have any) to help you calm down.

My older son is upset in grade 11 because his first semester is history, drama, English, and French. He has to wait a whole 4 months until he gets his math and chemistry. Not sure he’s mine. But if you have younger kids headed on this path, the article below seems to be a good starting point. (Behind paywall at the Globe. Pppthhbbtt.)

Too many books for your space, like me (pretty sure we’re near 5G)? Don’t get rid of them: organize them better.

This site is hilarious. And it uses the first social/blog site I found myself too old to learn to how to use: Tumblr.

Everything is better with googly eyes, especially book covers.

So, I did something rash.

Back in 2012 I shut Bookninja down to concentrate on my personal life and writing. When I started the site in 2003 with Pete, there was very little else like it. Dennis, Jessa, Maud, Mark and a few others were all doing it, but it was mostly American-centred and I wanted something similar for good old Glacierland. But after 8 years, the comments section was often toxic and it seemed to me at the time that many other blogs had sprung up, that could do just as good a job. Why not let younger, more interesting folk might take up the mantel on their various blogs?

Over the last couple years, though, I realized that the unmitigated dumpster-fire known as “The Literary World” had driven me completely underground. I could barely read the news, much less comment on it. I hate living like that.

Recently I realized that when my kids ask me what to do when they feel out of place or under siege by life, I say things like: “Well, then create your own space” and “Time to sally forth with your troops and break the siege.” Which kind of makes me a hypocrite for hiding for seven years.

Further, I feel like I was always out of the loop in terms of what’s happening in the world. Bookninja gave me a chance to go out and seek out daily news that I was interested in.

So, this is me not being a hypocrite anymore. And me trying to “get out” more.

Besides the technical pieces (the new WordPress is bizarre and scary to me), the literary news landscape has changed while I was gone, so please send me stories you think I’m missing. There’s a tips link above that you can send through. Even anonymously.

My goal is to post a few things each day that I find interesting, using the same character/voice I used to use, but tempered by the existential dread I’ve come to rely on in my day-to-day decision making. I’m doing this for me, people. Not you.

Well, a little bit you.

Hope you enjoy. We’ll see how long it lasts! Now to not burn out.

(The old site is lost to time, but there’s a capture at The Wayback Machine, if you’re interested.)

Sorry, I meant, Free Kids Books!

I wish more papers had the space to do this sort of general question and answer stuff. It can draw out some interesting nuggets. To wit:

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

Every time I try to read a Jane Austen novel it feels like a terrible slog to me. I’m not engaged by books which I think of as “parlor people” literature. Austen and Henry James are the two literary greats whose books I just don’t like at all.