books

Thursday various

  • Just what is a documentary these days?

    So the salient question might not be, “What is a documentary?” — an abstract, theoretical approach to a form that is grounded in the concrete facts of life. Instead it might make sense to ask what (or whom) a given documentary is for? Is it a goad to awareness, an incitement to action, a spur to further thought? A window? A mirror? The more you think about it, the less obvious the truth appears to be.

  • I think somewhere, in the back of my brain, I knew that Eric Stoltz had originally been cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future — had, in fact, filmed for several weeks — but it’s still weird and kind of amazing to see the footage.
  • The Wire Monopoly? Sometimes parody edges up right up against the things we wish were real. [via]
  • Children’s picture books are apparently a dying art, thanks to parents starting kids on chapter books earlier and earlier:

    Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher. [via]

  • And finally, The Doctor is now immortal. Or always was. Or whatever. I’m still a Doctor Who neophyte compared to some, but even I know “continuity” is a very slippery slope in that universe.

Monday various

  • Today is the first day of the online raffle in support of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series. There are lot of excellent prizes, from signed first drafts and story critiques to used keyboards (Neil Gaiman’s) and Tuckerizations galore, all for the cost of $1 each. I’ve not yet actually made it to a KGB reading myself — they’ve either conflicted with my schedule or I’ve been a little intimidated about going to one by myself — but I understand they put together a really great series. The raffle runs until October 25.
  • Today is also Columbus Day. (In America. Some people insist on claiming it’s Thanksgiving elsewhere.) After reading this article about the real Columbus, you may be wishing it wasn’t.
  • You know, there may very well be lots of edible mushrooms in NYC, but I think I’ll pass.
  • I was sure this was an Onion headline when I first saw it: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic. But no, not in the least:

    The self-driving car initiative is an example of Google’s willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years, Dr. Thrun said. Even the most optimistic predictions put the deployment of the technology more than eight years away. [via]

  • And finally, I find the final word in today’s Writer’s Almanac just a little odd:

    It was on this day in 1975 that Saturday Night Live premiered….There was a fake advertisement for triple-blade razors, a product obviously considered ridiculous by comedians in 1975, just after the two-blade razor came out—the faux commercial ended, “Because you’ll believe anything.” These days, there are many more blades on razors—in 2006, Schickette announced plans for a nine-bladed razor—and Saturday Night Live is now in its 35th season.

Wet Wednes–oh, wait, never mind

It was actually relatively dry here today, with even a little bit of sun. Which is good and bad. It’s still very much summer here, with only a few hints of fall. Right now, for instance, I still have the air conditioner on. And this evening, there were a lot of mosquitoes out and about, way too many for what’s almost October. Some folks might want to keep denying global warming and climate change, but I think the rest of us will be over here in the real world. Even if it is getting unseasonably warm here.

In other news…well, my back is pretty much the same. Maybe slightly different aches and pains, but aches and pains nevertheless. I’m trying to keep active and stretching, which seems to help, but I’m still thinking about calling my spine doctor again.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t believe chiropractics was a crock.

I did finish reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale this morning, so that’s something at least. I liked the book quite a lot. It was a little different than I expected, and I think like any novel, especially one with sfnal elements, it’s more about the time it was written than about the future. In this case, that time was the 1980s, although the book isn’t at all what I would call dated — parts of it are still frighteningly relevant, there’s little about the dystopia that feels particularly quaint, and the book is every bit as creepy at times as Heather (who sent me the book) advertised.

I’m curious now about the movie version, which seems quite difficult to procure on DVD. I’m tempted to seek it out, only I suspect, from most of the reviews and its poor box office at the time, that it’s actually dreadful. There was a lot I liked about the book, but I would never have thought to call it cinematic.

And as to the whole “is it sci-fi or not” argument that seems to dog Atwood constantly, I tend to agree with what Jeff VanderMeer says about it. I’ve only read two of Atwood’s books now, and none of her most recent books, but I could definitely see reading more.

Zero history

So that was kind of an interesting day.

Still lots of work keeping me busy at the office, and a meeting we’d planned for tomorrow to discuss it got pushed to this afternoon. It’s good, though, in that what’s expected of me on this new project is a little clearer now, but the trickier elements still won’t be finished until December. Of course, the need to be finished by December. That’s the thing about textbooks: because of adoption cycles, when professors are picking the books for their classes (or having them picked for them), you actually have a pretty limited window of when you can publish. If you miss the fall adoption cycle, for instance, you might be better off just waiting another six months and trying for the spring. And that’s kind of tough to do, when you also have to time things up with manuscript delivery and a six-to-seven-month production schedule. This particular textbook represents brand new territory for us in a lot of ways, production-wise, so it’s going to be an interesting learning experience.

Hopefully also a relatively painless one.

I ran an errand at lunchtime that took me a little further uptown, closer to Broadway, so I decided to stop in a place I haven’t been to since March and try the same sandwich I had then, a tempeh “Reuben.” It’s not much to look at, maybe. But, again, it was tastier than any miso mustard-glazed fermented soybean cake topped with avocado, ginger sauerkraut, and spicy Russian dressing on vegan 7-grain bread has any business being. If the sandwich was cheaper, and the place was closer…well, I still don’t think I’d eat it often. It’s not that tasty. But it’s weird and healthy enough that I don’t mind trying it every now and then.

Later, I took the subway downtown to meet me father for dinner around Union Square, near where he works. We ate at Pete’s Tavern, which is allegedly where O. Henry wrote many of his most famous short stories, though I’m afraid no ironic twist endings occurred to me as I ate my bacon cheeseburger. I was mostly just talking with my father and trying to figure out why my alma mater, Penn State, was on the silent but ESPN-displaying big-screen TV in the corner. (Apparently, this was going on, whatever it is.)

And then we split up, my father going home, and me going to the nearby Barnes & Noble bookstore for a reading and signing by William Gibson. That’s him up there at top. He read a chapter from his newest book, Zero History, and then opened up the floor to some actually quite interesting Q&A. (I always cringe a little at the Q parts, but nobody was too awkward or overly fawning to be painful to watch.) I really liked when he talked about using the tools of science fiction to investigate the present, which is really the only thing he’s ever done, he said, and about how science fiction is usually pretty lousy at prediction. A smart young reader would look at Neuromancer today, he said, and in twenty pages have figured out the central mystery: where did all the cell phones go?

After the talk, he signed books for awhile — and believe me, some people asked him to sign a lot of books. Then I got the subway to Penn Station and got a train home. On which I had the lovely coda to my day of watching some guy stumble around, presumably drunk but possibly sick, and throw up a little in the corner of the car. I don’t know if that, or the jackass filming him on his iPhone, was more annoying.

At least I got a lot of reading done.

And now, I think, I shall go to bed.