talking nerdy

 Today I got this major bug up my butt that I absolutely had to have a copy of Karen Tei Yamashita's I Hotel to take with me on my trip to Seattle.  So off we go to my local B&N to look for one. While I'm standing there becoming upset because they didn't have even one copy, I struck up a conversation with a man who was considering buying Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.  He was saying how aside from the Larsson series he'd read one other book from a Scandinavian author & he couldn't remember the title, but then described the story. As it turns out, it was Henning Mankell's Man From Beijing, and so I felt like I had to introduce him to the Wallander series. Then I checked my iphone to see if the Larsson book was coming out in paper any time soon, and I thought we were finished with our little chat.  But no! He told me I couldn't leave because he felt he had to give me something.  This started a long and wonderful discussion of books translated from Spanish to English, and I was so impressed because the first title he gave me was Red April, by Santiago Roncagliolo, and I had just received that book in the mail this week!  Then he went through a long list of authors (Mario Vargas Llosa, Jose Saramago, yada yada) but all of the books he mentioned I'd already read (or they're on my shelf to be read).  But still he said "don't go...I want to give you something."  So finally he comes up with author Laura Restrepo, whose books I'd never read (and which are also NOT carried at the local B&N).  Then it was time to go.
 
 What a cool conversation! I love when I find someone who shares my tastes in books and also enjoys talking about them, even when it's someone I'd never met before. I may try this again some time!

I'll read you in my dreams...

Has this ever happened to anyone but me? I was laying in bed reading The Singer's Gun and must have dozed off, but I don't think my brain was ready to give up the book.  I dreamed dialogue, plotline and could even see the characters doing their thing -- all within a very short span of time, and it all made sense in the context of the novel.  Next thing I know, I'm awake -- so I started reading again and of course, it wasn't the same as I had dreamed it.  I think if this happens again, I'm going to try to write it all down. 

July: light, relaxing reading

It's time for laying out by the pool with a cold drink and a stack of books.  Nothing too heavy or too thought-provoking, just fun.  The three Rs of summer: rest, relax and read. Yeah.

An open letter to an anonymous nattering nabob of negativity

I am referring to an email that I received from an anonymous poster today about my earlier review of Columbine, by Dave Cullen. Not only did this person attack me personally, but also three of my blogger friends who reviewed the same book.(I have left out the names of my blogger friends -- otherwise the email is as quoted here).

Here's the email

You are all idiots. Dave Cullen is nothing but a lying famewhore and anyone who has even the slightest bit of knowledge about Columbine knows this.

Nancy , the fact that you can read one book on a complex subject like this and think you know so much that you don't need to read anymore shows you as being ignorant and intellectually lazy.
The success of this book shows the sad lack of intelligence in today's book buying public.

Pathetic!

As it so happens, I know who sent this email. This person left a string of rants on Amazon.com on several reviews of this same book.  Here's another example of her work re this book:

on Amazon (12/2009):

You obviously work for/with Dave Cullen or his publishing house.
Either that or your mind numbingly ignorant.
Probably the latter.

The only thing that Dave Cullen deserves credit for is being a lying , egotistical famewhore with a gift for making frighteningly stupid people buy into his false, worthless bs.

note the use of the word "famewhore," which led me immediately to Amazon.com and this person. I'd read her comments before.

and again in February of this year, in response to another comment:

However, I do understand why all you small minded folks get upset when someone dares to state the truth about your lying famewhore idol Cullen and his worthless book that should rightly be labeled a book of fiction

How can so many people be so stupid? 

Once again, she uses the word famewhore, this time with such venom that I felt like I needed to stand away from my computer to protect myself.

So let's get this straight, point by point.

1."You are all idiots."
 Neither myself nor my friends are idiots. You don't even know us so how in the world can you say we are idiots? Here is the definition of an idiot:

id·i·ot (d-t)

n.

A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.

2. "Dave Cullen is nothing but a lying famewhore and anyone who has even the slightest bit of knowledge about Columbine knows this."
 I suppose you were there the day everyone was shot and you know that Cullen is lying because you saw everything firsthand -- you were the star witness of events 10 years ago.
If you read what I wrote in my review, I noted that I wasn't there, so there was no way at all for me to comment on Mr. Cullen's veracity on the subject. I guess since you were there, you can speak to my comment.

 3. "Nancy , the fact that you can read one book on a complex subject like this and think you know so much that you don't need to read anymore shows you as being ignorant and intellectually lazy."

a)Well, why don't you write to my former PhD advisers and the panel for my oral exams and ask them for yourself.  When you're finished with that, I'll send you translations of works in Chinese and Japanese I've done and we'll sit down over a lovely cup of tea and discuss them, along with a quick little conversation about the relationship between state-sponsored Shinto and WWII in Japan. 
b) Then we'll have a lovely chat with former university students I've taught and they can give you the scoop on how truly intellectually lazy and ignorant I was for them.
c) Point your finger back at yourself:  you are a bit lazy in your reading skills, because I never said that I "think I know so much."  Here is the exact quotation:

I think I've read all I want to read about Columbine -- I'm interested but not obsessed, and quite happy with Cullen's book. I'm sure Mr. Kass' book is fine as well, but I'm done with Columbine for now.

d) I have a life. I don't dwell or obsess, especially about something that happened 10 years ago.



4. "The success of this book shows the sad lack of intelligence in today's book buying public."

 Yes. Well, I've just added UFO Kids by Allan Zullo to my Amazon wishlist. You know, the one you reviewed on Amazon with 4 stars, saying

This enjoyable book tells the true stories of some encounters that children and teenagers had with aliens and their spececraft. The names and places were changed of course but these are all real documented cases. Most of the stories involved benevolent , kind aliens but one story in the book was about a group of aliens that seemed to have sinister motivations towards humans.I guess , just like people, they all aren't nice! This book had a fresh perspective in focusing on the experiences of kids and teens because its usually only the encounters of adults that you read about.

5. "Pathetic!"
See #4 above.

You can disagree with me all you want. In fact, I think it's absolutely wonderful that you don't have to think like me, and vice versa. What a dreary world it would be if that were the case. But know this: my thoughts about Columbine came from my head and they're my opinions. You don't have to like them and I don't write my book reviews to win any popularity contests. They're written so I can remember what I thought of a particular book at the time I read it.  To attack me and my blogging friends because you disagree with my opinion (and doing it behind a blanket of anonymity) is just uncalled for.  I have never attacked you or what you've written about any book so why do it to me? You don't even know me.  If you have something to add in terms of discussing the book, awesome. You can disagree, you can state why you think what I'm saying is not to your liking, but quit attacking me and people who share my interests in books. That's just wrong. I've never hurt you nor have I gotten in your business.

So please, just go away and leave me alone. I don't know you, nor do I want to. Discussion about books is fun, but not when you are bullying me or people who write on my blog. 

Woot is a hoot...look what I just bought

I just bought a t-shirt with this picture on it at woot.com.  Here's the blurb:

Dude, everybody can see your ISBN

If you purchased this book without a jacket, you should know that it is either stolen property or else some kind of perverted nudist that gets its sick kicks frolicking around in the altogether. It may have been reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, or it might have just shucked its garb and skipped off the shelf to prance through the countryside au naturale like a shameless pagan, but either way, neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this dirty, dirty “stripped book.”
Wear this shirt: between the covers, if you know what we mean.
Don’t wear this shirt: to the emergency PTA meeting about LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER. (Go topless!)
This shirt tells the world: “NAKED LUNCH is both my favorite book and my favorite meal.”

If you haven't met woot.com, go check it out. They have t-shirts for every occasion (and other stuff as well) but the shirts are what will catch your eye.  Seriously. 

Totally off topic: The end of an era -- goodbye Law and Order

r.i.p.

Today I received an email about how to reset my Twitter account password and panicked because I hadn't asked to reset it. So I figured someone's trying to get into it (for the life of me I don't know why because I barely use it and then only for book-related things) and went to see if I made any postings I didn't know about in case I had been hacked (which I didn't). However, I was scanning down the tweets I've missed in the last couple of days and someone from Living Social (where I use Visual Bookshelf from Facebook) posted that Law and Order was being canceled. I'm like "WHAT??????????" and clicked on the link for the New York Times that the person left. Imagine my surprise when I found out that this was not just another rumor, but the truth.

Many people wrote in to the NYT  (myself included) to bemoan L&O's fate, and I read one comment there that said  "get a grip...it's just a tv show." While that may be the case, and while the loss of one long-running show may not change how the Earth spins on its axis or make me want to jump out of a window or something, it's still one of my favorites and I'm not alone in that category.

Let me just say that this is definitely the end of an era, not just for Law and Order, but for me as well. I can honestly with no hesitation whatsoever say that there is absolutely nothing left for me to watch on any of the big three original networks. Now that L&O is going away, there won't be a need to look at the on-screen directory to see what's on the regular network channels; it's only cable channels and PBS that will be on in the house when I'm ready to sit down for some television watching. I feel like something of a certain quality and intelligence has been taken away and I'm a wee bit sad -- after all of the many years of watching this show, I'm going to miss it. And to the powers that be at NBC....I have just one question: what were you thinking???????????

Goodbye, Jack McCoy and the DA's staff; see you later, Lt. Van Buren and all of New York's finest working with you -- it's been a pleasure.  You will all be missed. To the actors who played all of these people throughout the years...you rock. Thank you. To everyone connected with producing the show, well, you was robbed by the network.

happy mother's day to all of my reader friends

My hat's especially off to those of you with small children who still manage to find time in the day to read. I've totally forgotten what a tremendous feat this is! I'm in Seattle with my son & his family and reading time doesn't manage to catch up to me until about 8 pm.

I hope everyone has a great mother's day ...and now I'm going to go get dim sum.

home. tired. leaving again shortly.

home again after a mini-vacation and ready for sleep. How come whenever I go on vacation I come home exhausted? And it's off to Seattle the day after tomorrow for two weeks.

I got a lot of reading done but that's all going to have to wait for tomorrow, along with the roundup for April. I can't even think right now.

Used books are great, but not when they're supposed to be new.

Larry and I went to our local Barnes and Noble yesterday to pick up a few books for him to read on our upcoming cruise (yes, another one).  While he was over perusing what B&N stocks as far as Jefferson Bass, I was prowling the new fiction shelves and I picked up Craig Nova's book The Informer (on the wishlist forever) opened it up to page one, and the first thing I saw was a torn page, bottom right corner. Guess what else I saw on that page -- fingerprints that looked like someone had eaten a chocolate-chip cookie and forgot to clean their hands. To add to my woes, that was the only copy B&N actually had in stock. So what if I had wanted to buy it? Okay, I did (I figure buying a cruise read is a good excuse for breaking the self-imposed ban on buying books) but there was no way I was going to buy that particular copy.  How are they going to sell it?

I'm just standing there in a bit of shock, and Larry comes back to find me. I show him the book and start to tell him my opinion on readers who take their cappucinos, chocolate-chip cookies and a clean new book back to the comfy chairs to read and don't bother to clean their hands while doing it. As I'm launching into my tempest in a teapot tirade, a guy grabs a trade paperback off the shelf, sits down with his coffee and starts reading in the chair, and bends the cover all the way back so that only one page is showing.  You know darn well that when his coffee's finished, he's going to stick that book back on the shelf, now with a creased spine.Oh, the horror of it all.

So please people, if you're going to spend a quiet Saturday morning at the bookstore, taking care of your coffee fix and test driving a novel, please be clean about it. And for Pete's sake, please try to think of other people who may actually want to BUY the book you've just bent back or because you forgot to take a napkin with your cookie, you've left chocolate fingerprints on. If I wanted a used book, I'd have gone to a bookstore where I know the books have already been read, and even then, I wouldn't pick up the food-stained ones.

sometimes a book comes along...

where you don't want it to end. And that's where I am with this book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell. I'm at the last one hundred pages mark and bemoaning the fact that it's almost over. I will be back with a real review shortly, but if you have received an ARC of this book, get on it and start reading.

Personal attacks over a book review. How utterly ridiculous.

Today I finished my book, The Stoning of Soraya M, and as is my usual practice, I went to see what other readers of the book thought. My big mistake was starting with the Amazon reviews of this book (actually, I was so disgusted I didn't look at others and turned off my computer for the day).I won't go into specifics, but I looked at several reviews where people's comments were just downright nasty. Beyond nasty. Someone made a comment that said something about the fact that laws about stoning exist in Muslim scriptures, which was followed by someone else telling them they were stupid and knew nothing about Islam. Then that was followed by a lot of anti-Islamic rhetoric and things just heated up from there. Someone who tried to take a middle-of-the-road stance was blasted for being too far left politically.  It made me wonder if people like myself are a dying breed: people who really just like to read and want to sometimes share their opinions about the book itself in case anyone else was ever planning to read it (which is what I thought the purpose of book reviews were).  Why must anyone feel compelled to be downright nasty in responding to what someone says? It has almost scared me off even thinking about writing a review of this book anywhere, including here in my reading journal. I'm still thinking about whether or not to write it. Of course, here I have the option of filtering remarks, but it wouldn't stop them from coming in if someone didn't like what I had to say about this book.

It's like this pretty much anywhere where people can make comments or where people can speak their minds. They hide behind their anonymity and feel free to make ugly statements about anyone or anything. Don't get me wrong. People do have the right to say whatever they want. I object to the utter meanness and nastiness coming out, calling people names and getting in other people's faces when they disagree.  I mean, who ARE these people? Are they small-minded individuals whose voice doesn't really matter anywhere else so they have to put in their two cents worth in an anonymous forum? Or are they like this all of the time, unpleasant and venomous, not giving a crap about what anyone else thinks about them? Do they go to bed at night thinking "I showed him/her! Hah!" God help anyone who tries to make a point with this people. It's like watching the Jerry Springer show unfolding in a forum sometimes. There's no intelligent debate...it's a case of "my way or the highway," or "if I wanted your opinion I'd beat it out of you." And all of this over a book???????? It's just ridiculous.

this Wii thing...or, nostalgia

Wii is becoming a real time sucker. Whereas we rarely watch television anyway, preferring to walk upstairs, pick up books and read at night, now we're trying to outdo each other in Wii bowling.

I also discovered that you could use it as a regular Nintendo, so we bought games that I used to play with my kids when they were younger.  The first few bars of the theme song for Super Mario Brothers brought back memories, but when I heard the music from Bubble Bobble, I had a major flashback. Blast from the past, so to speak.  I was that kind of mom who didn't allow gruesome or shoot-em-up type games in the house.  Being a native Californian who grew up largely during the 70s, I was anti-gun, pro peace, harmony and love at the time so killing wasn't something I wanted done at my home. Even faked. I took it as far as not even allowing super soakers (remember those?) or toy guns.  I figured my kids had enough friends who had that type of stuff at their homes, so I never bought them. When they were little, the boys got carefully meted-out time for playing video games -- they had to match an hour of reading for one hour on the video games and to make sure they didn't cheat I made them do oral book reports on what they'd read.  They hated me, of course, at first, but they eventually went through a lot of books. One went on to get a BA in English and one went on to work at Borders while going to school. Coincidence? Hmmmm. And I must say, those old games were great while I was working on my PhD...when my brain just couldn't take any more, but I wasn't tired enough to sleep, out came the old NES games.

So now if I want to, I can turn on the Wii and just listen to the old Nintendo game theme songs if I need a moment for recapturing some of the past with my kids. My all time favorite Nintendo theme is from the game "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," a great strategy game that we used to play way back when.It's a far cry from bowling, to be sure.

uh-oh! Reading time distraction!

Tonight Nancy and Larry bought a Wii. I realize that we are probably the last two people on the planet to buy one, but now we own it. I just spent the last hour or so playing the thing and having a blast. Loser in the bowling takes tequila shots.  Guess who lost -- ME! Luckily we only did best 3 out of 5.

Will this be the downfall in Nancy's reading life? Hmmm. I doubt it, but I highly recommend one for all couples. 

for those of you who receive ARCs from the publisher, PLEASE READ

I just saw something that really torqued me, and I think that if you are someone who receives or asks for ARCs when they come out, this article on the blog called "Lori's Reading Corner" will be of interest to you. It's about ARCs being sold on Ebay, some for ridiculously high amounts of money.

Now, I know that someone somewhere is going to come up with the statement that the people who sell ARCs on line have a right to make money however they choose, but that's crap. Sheer and simple crap. When a book's cover says "Not for resale" it means that no one, absolutely no one should profit from it. Plain and simple.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am seeing more and more people taking the attitude of "the rules are not for me" and doing what they want, not realizing that their actions have consequences that branch out past themselves. In this case, if people are making money from selling ARCs, the flow of advanced reader copies is going to stop. Period. I'll be sad when that happens. There goes Librarything early reviewers. There goes first reads on Goodreads.  There go the Booktrib book giveaways.  There goes Amazon Vine.  And who knows what else. My advice to the blogger who wrote this: contact the publisher and author when she sees blatant ARC selling on Ebay or anywhere else. I even offered to help her out. I like getting these free books and guess what? Sometimes after I get an ARC, I like the book so much that I buy it when it's released!

Please read the article. It's important.

I just got flew in from New Jersey and boy are my arms tired.

But seriously folks, between the cruise and my nephew's bar mitzvah celebration up in Cherry Hill NJ, I'm seriously beat.  I think we were home a total of two days after the cruise before we left to go up north so not only am I tired, but I'm seem to be lagging behind. I'm not even going to post "It's Monday, What Am I Reading" until tomorrow, although normally I'm on it first thing on Monday mornings.  Oh well.

Seeing family is always a good time, and to make things even better, my daughter became engaged this week! How cool is that?

tomorrow then.

books in the mail

It's been a while since I updated what I've received in the mail, so here goes.

From Random House (via Librarything's Early Reviewers Program -- thanks!)

Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show, by Frank Delaney. (new fiction)

From Swaptree:  

• Metropole, by Ferenc Karinthy - fiction
• The Knight of Maison Rouge - historical fiction
  

From Paperback Swap:

• Behind the Crimson Blind, by Carter Dickson - mystery
• In Pale Batalions, by Robert Goddard - mystery
• He Died With His Eyes Open, (Factory 1), by Derek Raymond - mystery
• Poet in the Gutter, by John Baker  - mystery
•  Death in the Stocks, by Georgette Heyer - mystery
• The Circus of Dr. Lao, by George G. Finney - sci-fi

(bought from Paperback Swap's new feature, the PBS Market)

• Wings to the Kingdom, by Cherie Priest

From Amazon:

• A Dark Matter, by Peter Straub - horror
• The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, by Thomas Mullen - fiction

...and I'm going to Barnes and Noble tonight so we'll see what I bring home.

Given away this week (to swaptree or PBS):
Breaking Dawn, by Stephanie Meyer
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley
The Inquisitor, by Catherine Jinks
The Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia Fraser