Will: And then I keep having these hallucinations where a stag comes into my house and follows me around.
Hannibal: No that's a real stag.
Will: What?
Hannibal: He's been living with you for months now, I thought you'd progressed from stray dogs to woodland creatures that's why I didn't say anything.
Will: ...
Hannibal: I call him Gerhart .
June
Read. This. Book.
http://wp.me/pGVzJ-JI <— the Raging Biblioholism review… but, really, don’t even read it. Just trust me, this once: read nothing about this book; just pick it up when it comes out and start reading it. I promise you’ll be rewarded.
"Britain’s culture secretary, Maria Miller, keeps asking theatre to come up with arguments to justify subsidy; perhaps someone should send her a bound copy of Mamet’s last six plays. Would we have had Stoppard’s Arcadia, Bennett’s The History Boys and Churchill’s Love and Information if these playwrights had been required to launch them, cold, in the West End?"
from The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/jun/12/david-mamet-lost-the-plot
On Reviewing, Spoilers, and Whether or Not to Engage
Indulge a bit of long-form here, if you will.
As many might know, I also review books over at Raging Biblioholism. Recently, I reviewed a book (that I quite enjoyed) that won’t be coming out until September - and the publisher gave me a little rap on the knuckles, saying that they’d envisioned my review would come out MUCH later (read: closer to/after the publication date). And so I found myself considering how I would handle reviewing books I picked up at the BEA - because, as (again) some might know, I came away with a fuck-load (actual metric weight) of books - many of them not coming out for months.
Now, in a situation like that, there are certain books I desperately want to read. The new Lemony Snicket, the new Chuck Palahniuk, the new Jonathan Lethem… and I’m currently hoarding/loving/obsessing over Marisha Pessl’s Night Film. The earliest of those, Night Film, doesn’t come out til late August. The others are Sept/Oct releases. But the way I review is to write about what I read as soon as I’ve read it - obviously trying to be as vague and spoiler-free as possible and instead trying to drum up buzz as much as lil’ ol me can do.
So finding my review of said new Snicket book receiving some… barely-tempered irritation, I’d call it, over at a major Snicket message board has got me thinking. Here’s the link to that conversation: http://asoue.proboards.com/thread/32420/when-last-review-mild-spoilers
There’s some real… anger, almost, directed at the ARC/galley culture as well as at my review in particular. I tried my best to keep any major spoilers under wraps and kept the rest as vague as I could while still addressing, as critically as I could, the book itself. But should I have kept the review under wraps until closer to pub date? Does it ruin the experience of a book for a reader to see a review - positive or negative - so early in the pub cycle? And more importantly, once I’ve received an ARC - through whatever means, whether a publisher sending out an ARC or a giveaway or something like BEA - do I have an obligation to anyone or anything other than MY readers?
I don’t know if I have the answer to these questions - nor do I think the answers are necessarily extant at this point in the still nascent blog-review culture. But if you (dear friends & readers) have any thoughts on this, I’d be really interested in hearing them. So, fire away?
A week out is too close not to share part of my new song with you.
Single hits iTunes next Tuesday…
Enjoy (partially)
JM
Dowling Duncan and redesigning the American Dollar:
Why the size?
We have kept the width the same as the existing dollars. However we have changed the size of the note so that the one dollar is shorter and the 100 dollar is the longest. When stacked on top of each other it is easy to see how much money you have. It also makes it easier for the visually impaired to distinguish between notes.Why a vertical format?
When we researched how notes are used we realized people tend to handle and deal with money vertically rather than horizontally. You tend to hold a wallet or purse vertically when searching for notes. The majority of people hand over notes vertically when making purchases. All machines accept notes vertically. Therefore a vertical note makes more sense.Why different colors?
It’s one of the strongest ways graphically to distinguish one note from another.Why these designs?
We wanted a concept behind the imagery so that the image directly relates to the value of each note. We also wanted the notes to be educational, not only for those living in America but visitors as well. Each note uses a black and white image depicting a particular aspect of American history and culture. They are then overprinted with informational graphics or a pattern relating to that particular image.$1 – The first African American president
$5 – The five biggest native American tribes
$10 – The bill of rights, the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution
$20 – 20th Century America
$50 – The 50 States of America
$100 – The first 100 days of President Franklin Roosevelt. During this time he led the congress to pass more important legislations than most presidents pass in their entire term. This helped fight the economic crises at the time of the great depression. Ever since, every new president has been judged on how well they have done during the first 100 days of their term.
(via msholgerbadstuber)
"Now he’s finished the story he is trying to decide how much he can rewrite it, if he views the sequence as one very long novel. Can he do a second draft? He hopes so. Currently, Stephen King is a character in the fifth and sixth Dark Tower books, and Stephen King the non-fictional author is wondering whether to take him out on the next draft."
—- From Neil Gaiman’s interview with Stephen King (here)
My knee-jerk reaction was like “AUGHR, you bastard! Don’t change more than you already have!”
But then I had a second reaction (spoilers for the series follow, sort of):
WHAT IF this new version, starting with the “resumption” revision of The Gunslinger, is truly a new go-round for Roland. The ‘first drafts’ of the series, we saw Roland get that much closer to finishing his quest… but what if, effectively, this would be another step that much closer to completing the quest? Maybe he has the horn with him this time?
How incredible would that be?!
Hannibal MBTI Personality Type: Will Graham
beneath the quiet exterior, INFJs hold deep convictions about the weightier matters of life.
…reblogging because I too am an INFJ.
