Category Archives: Books

Quote of the Day

Posted on 2017-03-07 by

This past weekend, I read a couple of YA novels that took the standard fairy-tale premise of “the prince saves the princess and they lived happily ever after” and turn it around into “the princess saves the princess (and whether … Continue reading →

Quote | Posted on 2017-03-07 by | Tagged , ,

Reflections

Sitting here after spending another late morning abed with a book, I came to think for a moment: those authors whose books meant so much to me when I was growing up, they are as much older than me now … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2017-03-05 by | Tagged

Are cookbooks taking over publishing?

Cookbooks are said to be the hottest category in trade publishing right now, but it’s probably a stretch to say they’re “taking over”. However, I wasted quite a bit of time creating the following (somewhat silly) table, counting the number … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2016-12-27 by | Tagged

Quote of the day

Posted on 2016-09-17 by

(A teacher in a sorcery school is giving an impromptu lecture:) “Each of you may live a long time; each of you is of significant strength. You could do good, if you could judge all the consequences of what you … Continue reading →

Quote | Posted on 2016-09-17 by | Tagged ,

Advice for fantasy writers

Advice for fantasy writers, from a reader (Originally published as a sequence of tweets in slightly different form.) Let the story go where it needs to go. Don’t fill in too much of the background. Remember that, if you’re successful, … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2016-09-16 by | Tagged

Go buy these books

I first became aware of Graydon Saunders many years ago, through the intercession of (or perhaps collaboration with) Welsh-Canadian fantasy writer Jo Walton. While it was as a poet that I knew him, he apparently works in IT (specifically document-processing … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2016-09-04 by | Tagged ,

From the “Pointless SQL Queries” file…

Somehow, the question came up on alt.usage.english of the distribution of author surnames (in people’s personal libraries) over the letters of the alphabet. Since I have a library database, I came up with the followng crazy query to answer this … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2015-08-05 by | Tagged

2014 in review: new books

Posted on 2014-12-30 by

It seems to be a custom for bloggers, like journalists, to write end-of-the-year pieces. I’ve been writing this for more than a year now, so I figure that’s sufficient to consider it a real thing. I’m going to start, though, … Continue reading →

Posted in Books

Unbelievable cookbook idiocy

The Amazon fairy just deposited a copy of Ovenly (by Agatha Kulaga and Erin Patinkin) in my mailbox. In the front matter, it says: As we sent out our recipes fo testing, we heard from friends, colleagues and family that … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2014-10-02 by | Tagged ,

Yet more recipe pointers

I’ve been a bit of a tear lately annotating cookbooks for recipes I might want to make. I’ve intentionally avoided doing this for the big “encyclopedic” cookbooks, like Joy, which are more for reference than for inspiration, but I’m about … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2014-07-21 by | Tagged