Outer space, weirder than you thought

But not just because of the space itself. Sometimes the human aspect is the weirdest. Mary Roach's next book is going to be about all the shit we don't talk about when going into space, and some of it is just weird.

Sure, being in space makes you hotter, but, if you're a Japanese astronaut, they make you origami 1,000 paper cranes to see how you deal with boredom and monotony. The plus is, you get a wish after the thousand paper cranes. The downside is, anyone who doesn't wish for Sadako to live is a fucking monster, and doesn't get to go on the shuttle. What a traumatizing story. Thus concludes today's chapter of "For real, you gave that to children?"

Dothraki is real, squees from my face

So, ok, deep breaths: HBO created a grammar for the language Dothraki from A Game of Thrones. No I'm not that excited whatever shut up.

The Country Bunny is the best books ever

At the New Yorker Book Bench, Kelly Bare writes about introducing her son to books she read as a child, including The Country Bunny.

I looooved this book as a kid (hey, Jews love Easter too...for candy and bunnies...). Some fun facts about the secret civil rights and feminist undertones:

“The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes” was published in 1939 by Du Bose Heyward, who is most famous for “Porgy and Bess” (he wrote the novel “Porgy,” co-wrote the play of the same name with his wife, Dorothy Heyward, and wrote the libretto and some of the lyrics for Gershwin’s opera). It’s illustrated by Marjorie Flack, whom you probably know (if you know her) from “The Story About Ping,” and it is the kid-lit total package. Lyrical writing, glowing illustrations, fuel for the imagination, a sense of humor, and, of course, a message: plucky little girl bunnies who defy prejudice and believe in themselves can grow up to become fully actualized lady bunnies who raise smart, happy, kind children and do fulfilling work outside the warren.

Having an excuse to purchase this book is on my list of reasons to have children. Also on the list is making it less weird to go see children's movies, and having a small tribe to begin building my army.

Publishing and desperation

This great Jacket Copy post includes the following quotes:

[P]ublishers were at heart “a slow-moving, retarded group of people.”

And:

“Publishers are square-dancing on a sinking ship.”

The speaker is described thusly:

Whiskered, sporting a fedora and a sly grin, he is the kind of attendee conferences love to have. He's here because of his popular Twitter stream, Sockington, in which the travails of his cat, Sockington, are meted out 140 characters at a time.

I also take all of my advice from people promoting cats. Seriously. Worth the read for hilarity!

A preemptive bookshelf eulogy

Woe to the world, reader types--the bookshelf is dead! Well, not actually, but it's coming. Ok, not really soon, but eventually. Russell Smith writes:

People come to see my minuscule new living room and say, hmm, you could have another foot and a half without that wall of bookshelves. True, but then you would never be able to distract yourself, while waiting for me to dress, by pulling down, at random, Weapons of World War II and 100 Erotic Drawings.

But you’d probably have brought your own e-reader with you, which you’d be looking at anyway (checking Facebook, updating: “I am so mad right now”). Book-walls are just aesthetic now, just an unusually dense wallpaper: We don’t really need them for consultation....And all our books will be invisible, like our music: The sum total of our literary experience will be a list of file names on a grey plastic machine in a briefcase.

After careful consideration, I think Smith is overreacting a little here. There will always been a need for secret bookcase passages, and a place to store trophies.

Girls are better readers, also cooler in general

A survey of students aged 5 to 16 showed that, while boys and girls read the same number of books, girls choose more difficult titles than boys. Ladies: always awesomer. What I found interesting was this:

High-achieving children - defined as reading two years above their age - are not challenging themselves enough when it comes to reading as they tend to opt for easier books than their reading ability warrants, the report suggests.

[...]

"If they [children] are reading books that are below their independent reading level it may give them enjoyment but it won't extend their reading ability and literacy rates are at risk of continuing to decline," [Professor Topping] said.

I have trouble believing that, considering the difficulty getting kids to read in the first place, the article judges children who read for fun. Also, content often dictates reading level to some degree, and you know what you're getting into, more or less, when reading YA fiction versus adult fiction--something pretty obvious when you consider the large number of adults reading the Twilight novels.

Rags to riches is much better than rags to rags

We all love Susan Boyle (or we did the first time we heard her, at any rate) because she was so unexpected, and it was nice to root for someone for once, instead of tearing someone down. This is the underlying theory behind Tatjana Soli's formula for writers to like as people, and honestly, I think it's a pretty solid formula, because it's hard to root for the Lauren Conrad-as-author types of the world.

So here's a "hurrah" for all of you currently humble, quirky job havers, who will one day shoot to immortality (and hopefully not for falling down in a YouTube video). As for me, my story will track my meteoric rise to fame from humble waffle and burrito connoisseur to...er...arrogant waffle and burrito connoisseur. Bask in my humble glory while you can!

I think I'm turning Japanese, in order to write my cellphone novel

15 year-old "Bunny" wrote a three volume novel on her cellphone, which has been turned into a paperback and has sold over 110,000 copies and grossed more than $611,000. She's a Japanese high school student, who doesn't want her friends to know she's been writing because "It's embarassing." Dude, seriously, all of my writing profits are also an embarrassment. An embarrassment of riches! (Zing.)

The moral here is that I need to become a 15 year Japanese girl. This is only doable through MySpace or creepy chat rooms. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Hamlet (from the mouth of babes)

Brian Cox teaches a 2 and a half year old Halmet's soliloquy. And you know what? He is a baller.

It's like Hamlet-let! As in, you know, Hamlet, and the "let" from piglets...no? Whatever, it's adorable.

Soldier and author

The New York Times has an article about soldiers who write about combat, and says the main difference between soldier writers of yore and of today is that the modern American army is an all volunteer force. The article says:

As part of a modern all-volunteer force, they explore the timeless theme of the futility of war — but wars that they for the most part support. The books, many written as rites of passage by members of a highly educated young officer corps, are filled with gore, inept commanders and anguish over men lost in combat, but not questions about the conflicts themselves.

I don't think I've read enough books by soldiers to truly spot a difference between the writing of draftees and volunteers, but I think it's an interesting comparison, if anyone else is more qualified to comment.

Macmillan and Amazon: Not friends

I'm sure this has already reached your ears, reader types, but in case not, Amazon gave Macmillan the proverbial Facebook unfriend (defriend?), delisting all Macmillan titles from the bookseller's site. Galleycat has a great round-up of events and coverage, and John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, issued a response, which outlines the proposed system that Amazon rejected:

Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set for each book individually....Our disagreement is not about short term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market.

So, interesting so far. Then Amazon released a statement, that says:

We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.

For a little perspective on Amazon's stance, Amazon UK delisted Hachette in May of 2008 during a fight over discounting, and it doesn't appear that things were settled until June of 2009, if Bookseller's dates are accurate (props if anyone can tell me if that's right). In the Hachette situation, while titles were not removed from Amazon whole hog, the option to "buy now" by clicking one button was gone, and instead of buying from Hachette the consumer had to go through through a third party seller. So, while there is a precedent for delisting publishers for extended periods of time, I'm going to have to assume that Amazon's need to capitulate so quickly is at least in part because, as Sargent says, "The agency model would allow Amazon to make more money selling our books, not less."

I'm not a sales type (although a little birdie has told me that a sales type will be discussing this topic today), so I can only make guesses and assumptions, but I would assume that Amazon a) doesn't want e-book prices dictated by publishers (dur) and is taking an aggressive stand on it now, and b) will fold for money after taking what Cory Doctorow is calling a farcical stance on consumer rights.

Librarians and comedians: They have some books for you

If you are looking for a good Thursday afternoon read (admit it, you're not working anymore), a bunch of comedians recommend books, and here's a list of the best books by librarians.

Your weekend could start tonight, and the weekend is for reading! And drinking! Sometimes simultaneously. 

Old school, new school, we all cheer for ice cream

Not excited about the Apple tablet? Maybe you'd like to go old school, with a vintage Macbook cover.

Books, people. They're still cool.

The world of tomorrow: Book reviews

The NYTimes blog Paper Cuts reports on McSweeney's take on the book review.

Apparently it is very similar to the book review of today. Womp womp.

Reading things you hate is good for you, I swear

Laura Miller wrote an article in Salon, encouraging us to record what we read and look for our reading blind spots. People are creatures of habit, and we tend to gravitate to the same genre (and to accept the subtle cues of covers in said genres).

And hey, just because you think you hate something doesn't mean you really do. Remember when you were seven and tried brussels sprouts (yea, I looked it up, that is actually how it is spelled), and thought they were terrible, but as an adult realize that they are super delicious? Substitute your own food choice, if you are of the terrible heathen persuasion that b-sprouts are not d-licious.

In the vein of tolerance, I'm going to find and read a thriller and try not to hate it. Suggestions (and similar professions of tolerance so I don't have to be principled alone) are welcome.

Pride and Prejudice and spin-offs

Kate Ward is mad, because there are too many Pride and Prejudice spin-offs, and a lot of them suck. But, to quote Joel McHale, "Our mantra is that 90 percent of all television is bad, and ten percent has never been better. We make fun of that 90 percent." Books are mostly the same: 90 percent crap, 10 percent worth my time (which means every year 30,000 books or so worth reading come out, which clearly is 29,950 more than I can aspire to read).

So maybe we should ban spin-offs. But then we wouldn't have Gregory Maguire's Wicked (book or musical!), or "Clueless," or "Bride and Prejudice," which may be the single most watched movie by me. Hell, even Shakespeare borrowed plots. And, as we saw in the previous post,Shakespeare is the golden standard for modern action.

Resolutions for the new year

Welcome to the new 2010 version of Combreviations, in which the content and quality are basically the same (womp womp, I know). The internet was abuzz in the last week rounding up 2009, and showed us favorite e-readers, the best film adaptations, the things that went down in children's books, and literary stories abounded. Oprah's books dominated the decade, and some people went back into a whole century of writing.

2010, which could be mantastic, may bring us the Apple tablet, the e-reader paradox, and The Babysitter's Club is coming back (but that's a whole separate post).

Do you have any reading resolutions for the new year? Check out some here and here for ideas. I, for one, resolve to read more books and less internet. I am already questioning my resolution resolve on that one.