You never know what might turn up a garage sale. Like a set of Ansel Adams’ glass negatives….perhaps. (Not only did this guy pick them up at a garage sale but he kept them in his loft for 10 years.)
If you are wondering just how much Ansel Adams memorabilia is worth, then look at our feature on the most collectible photography books.
Twilight is but the latest episode in a long and deep Vampire history, for centuries the tall, dark, and undead have haunted the pages of literature. Today we chronicle the history of these blood sucking creatures of the night.
1816
A group of friends were holidaying in a villa near Lake Geneva during the unseasonably cold “year without a summer.” John William Polidori, Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley decided to pass the time with a ghost story competition. This epic gathering produced two of the first vampire tales in English literature – Polidori’s The Vampyre and Lord Byron’s unfinished Fragment of a Novel. Mary Shelley’s entry was to become the basis for her classic contribution to horror, Frankenstein.
1845-47
Vampire stories started to become more popular in this period and they also began to make their way on to youth reading lists. James Malcolm Rymer published Varney the Vampire as a series of penny dreadfuls (which were an early type of pulp pamphlet aimed at working class adolescents). The serialization proved to be very popular, so much so that it was later published as a single epic book. The story was highly influential on future vampire lore, perpetuating many themes common in vampire tales today such as having fangs leaving two puncture wounds, coming through a window to attack a sleeping maiden, hypnotic powers, and superhuman strength. Varney was also the first example of a sympathetic vampire who loathes his own condition but is helpless to stop it.
1872
Sheridan le Fanu’s classic novella Carmilla was the one of the first to successfully add erotic fixations into vampire literature, with a female vampire seducing the novel’s heroine to draw her vital fluids. This was also one of the first examples of the lesbian vampire trope.
1897
Dracula by Bram Stoker; the quintessential vampire book is published. The book mixed medieval myths and previous vampire fiction with sex, blood and death to create a novel that struck a chord with late 19th century Britain. Stoker’s vampire hunter, Abraham Van Helsing, helped create a trend for heroes willing to fight the undead. After Dracula, authors continued to create vampire stories but most failed to captivate reading audiences in the same way. No new concepts were introduced until the golden age of science fiction.
1954
I am Legend by Richard Matheson popularizes the use of vampires in science fiction in his post-apocalyptic vision of a world crippled by a disease that induces vampirism. The book has been adapted into multiple films over the years. I am Legend is often referred to as the first modern vampire novel.
See more vampire history… and a list of twenty of the strangest vampire titles on record.
Apparently, November 18th has been dubbed ‘International Science Fiction Reshelving Day’ by…well, it doesn’t really say by whom, that I could see, but I think “by nerds” is a safe assumption.
In short, a bunch of science fiction fans feel deeply wronged that books belonging to their genre of choice are being shelved in fiction (general) rather than the separate sci-fi section.
Or, taken directly from the FAQ of the horse’s mouth:
1.What is International Science Fiction Reshelving Day?
International Science Fiction Reshelving Day (ISFRD) is a day each year when science fiction and fantasy readers reshelve all the books that should be in the science fiction section of bookstores but which are not.For example, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood explores dystopic future in which the United States has been replaced by a theocracy named Gilead, in which women do not possess even basic human rights. Science fiction, right? Not in most bookstores, at least in the United States.
ISFRD is the day when we quietly take these books from where they are shelved in bookstores and reshelve them in the science fiction section.
2.So, you just move the books?
Yes. We move books from where they are to where we believe they belong.3.Why?
When a genre fiction book is shelved as general fiction, it does a disservice to two types of reason. Those who enjoy genre fiction may not find the book and non-genre readers may not recognize that they might enjoy other books of that genre.In addition, it reinforced the notion that non-genre books are somehow better than genre books. It does this by suggesting, however passively, that the misshelved genre books are good enough to have escaped the genre sections of the bookstore.
We do not expect to stop misshelving, but we hope to bring attention to the problem. Consider it an act of protest.
And so, in an act of protest likely accompanied by giggling and snorting, the plan is to swarm unsuspecting bookstores and stealthily reshelve the books where THEY think they should go, thereby….um….annoying the employees/owners of the store, adding extra work to their day, and accomplishing little, that I can see.
A world of “sheesh”.
Welly welly well, my dear droogs. Not at all sure how I feel about this (thanks, Quill and Quire!).
It seems Yann Martel’s fantastical, dark, strange and wonderful novel Life of Pi is to be made into a movie, directed by Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Hulk, Brokeback Mountain). I thought Ang Lee did a decent job of Brokeback Mountain, which was adapted from E. Annie Proulx’s short story of the same name – the conflict, emotions and bond between Ennis and Jack was portrayed well on the big screen, and did the story justice.
But while Brokeback had the challenge of emotional struggle, secrecy, and inner turmoil to portray, it was essentially a presentation of facts, in terms of a linear, undisputed storyline – this is what happened, this is what happened next. Life of Pi is anything but. Much of the novel, if you’ve never read it, is impossible (or is it?), magical, and possibly delusional. It has two separate stories running in parallel, and much of the interpretation, the decision of truth, is left up to the reader. I feel one way about it (mostly), and most people I know with whom I’ve discussed the book subscribe to the other possible interpretation. I’m very curious to see how this will be handled in the film version.
I remain cautiously optimistic, with a decent side of skepticism. The film is still being scripted, so no word on the who or when thus far. We’ll keep you posted!
The Inkwell Bookstore in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has an excellent blog. Their post on 10 Reasons Why Book Club is like Church is very funny.
10. Half the participants are lonely old women, the other half are just there for the wine.
9. There’s always one member who not only falls asleep, they snore.
8. Miss a few meetings, and they make you feel like you’re going to Hell.
7. When interpretations vary, arguments follow.
6. Audible farts are inexplicably hilarious.
5. New members = potential mates.
4. No one’s ever finished the book/The Book.
3. Donations are strongly encouraged, willfully withheld.
2. You’re too chickensh*t to admit that you thought the book/The Book was boring.
1. They keep promising you an author appearance, but in the end…nope.
I love this story from the UK where Martin Amis – the highly regarded author and darling of the literary media – has made it very clear that he hates Jordan / Katie Price – the former glamour model whose ghosted novels and frequently published memoirs sell by the truckload.
“She has no waist… an interesting face… but all we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone,” he told the Hay Festival in London this week where he was actually supposed to promoting his latest novel.
Her latest novel Sapphire is still riding high in the bestsellers list, three months after publication, while her first novel outsold the entire Booker prize shortlist.
In trying to understand this, Amis has read both volumes of Price’s autobiographies, and avidly follows her exploits in the tabloids. He even admits she has inspired a character, Threnody, in his upcoming novella State Of England – saying she ‘isn’t based on, but you should bear in mind, Jordan’.
>I’m glad he has at least read her books. I love the idea of Martin Amis sitting down in his extensive library surrounded by Hemingways, WH Auden collections and probably a few Sartres with a Katie Price book in his hand – I can imagine him muttering and cursing under his breath as he remembers that Katie has sold thousands of books in 2009 and that he’s probably sold a couple of hundred.
Here’s my take. For years everyone made fun of Katie Price as a witless peroxide blonde with huge knockers and guess what? She turns out to be an astute businesswoman who cleverly develops her own brand and works relentless to promote herself. She even develops a new set of fans away from the men who loved her topless photos – now young girls love her for her horse-themed books and women buy her autobiographies.
Years ago, I was promoting a charity netball game in London where lots of celebs turned up to play. Katie Price came along – at the time she was still Jordan with unfeasibly large breasts. She got stuck in and played as best as she could considering several pounds of silicon slowed her running ability and also hampered her ball-handing, but none of the other celebs would pass the ball to her. After the final whistle, they completely shunned her. You could just tell they hated her.
Well, Katie Price has the last laugh now. Personally, I’m happy to see people reading – even if the books are ghosted and rubbish. Like a lot of other people in the UK, she probably doesn’t even know who Martin Amis is. I’m sure Price will be completely unfazed by Amis’ comments because….. she’s too busy being Katie Price.
Next week, I’m heading home to the UK for the first time in a year and a half and high streets might look a little different from my last visit. According to a very scary business story in The Times, one in 10 of all shops in Britain have closed in the past nine months and independent bookshops have been hit particularly hard.
I remember feeling intensely sad the first time I heard the story about Elena Desserich – the five-year-old girl diagnosed with brain cancer who hid hundreds of little notes around the house for her parents, Brooke and Keith, to discover after she had died.
This sad story and the notes have been turned into a book called Notes Left Behind and the Today Show focused on the Desserichs this morning. Notes Left Behind was originally self-published but has since been picked up by the publisher, William Morrow.
Here is an excerpt from the book…(I can’t read it – I have two young daughters.)
By the way, all proceeds from this book go towards the family’s cancer foundation.
Sarah Palin is all the rage again with the publication of Going Rogue coming up soon. I won’t be reading this particular memoir but many people will – it is already a bestseller on Amazon.com on pre-orders alone. But did you know that Palin is already a published author…sort of?
Yes…. Palin wrote the foreword for Wild Wonderful Alaska Seafood by Steve Lee and Sue Ashworth, and published by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. I think I’d actually prefer to read Wild Wonderful Alaska Seafood than Going Rogue. I am quite sure the seafood in Alaska is really wild and wonderful.
The website of the Alaska Seaford Marketing Institute offers a host of fun facts, including that the average salmon boat is 37 ft. long and giant vegetables are common in Alaska due to the extremely long days in summer. Alaska has grown a record cabbage weighing in at 94 pounds.
I’d pay good money to see a 94-pound cabbage. How did I get from Sarah Palin to giant cabbages?
Courtesy of the BBC, an article about what your bookshelf says about you.
“Books somehow reflect an aspect of our personality that people don’t easily see. I have a friend who has a reputation for being an ice queen, but when I went to her place, I noticed all these cheesy romantic novels in her bookcases.”
The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary was finally published yesterday after more than 40 years of research. From The Times
The editors have organised approximately 800,000 meanings into conceptual fields, which show the chronological development of themes and ideas. The three fundamental categories are the External World, the Mind, and Society. These are broken down into less broad domains: the External World is divided into the Earth, life, physical sensibility, matter, existence, relative properties, and the supernatural. The text eventually discriminates more than 236,000 categories; a giant index facilitates cross-referencing.
As the article later explains the beauty of this book is that it continues where the traditional thesaurus has left off, including words that are technical, archaic or obsolete. This may not sound amazingly useful at first but, to steal an example, if you are writing a Victorian historical fiction novel you can now easily work out which words were common vernacular at any given period in English history.
Let us suppose I want to know about the history of words used of people considered dirty. “Hog” has had this sense since the early 15th century, “daggle-tail” was first employed in the 1570s and is last recorded in 1881, and “scrubber” is first attested in 1959. In my novel of Victorian loucheness, there can be hogs and maybe daggle-tails, but no scrubbers.
“Cinema” – in the sense of the venue for film screenings – is first attested in 1913, five years after “picture palace”. “Movie house” can be spotted the following year, “nickelodeon” in 1921. “Ticket-chopper” first makes an appearance in 1915, “usherette” in 1925, and “drive-in” in 1950 – two years later than “ozoner”, an American slang term for the drive-in cinema.
The New Yorker’s excellent Book Bench blog informed me about a book called 50 Things to Do with a Book: (Now That Reading Is Dead) by Bruce McCall. Beautiful irony!
Thanks to The Daily Beast for the heads-up on the latest in the world of comics – Stephen King!
The man just can’t stop writing, and it works, so I guess he decided to try something new. He’s been publishing books left, right and center for 35 years, since his first book – the chilling tale of a telekinetic teen with a psychotic mother, Carrie – first hit the shelves in 1974. In that time he’s written upwards of 60 novels, as well as loads of short fiction, writing instructions and more. And now, perhaps bored and looking for something fresh, perhaps titillated by a comic he’s read, perhaps aware that both comics and vampires are enjoying a lot of popularity of late and jumping on the ol’ bandwagon (*ahem*), he’s writing a vampire comic book.
The book, titled American Vampire will begin releasing issues in March, through Vertigo (an imprint of DC), and King is on board for the first five issues.
I have to admit – I’m curious. I haven’t read anything new of Stephen King in years because it all started to seem the same to me, but if he’s excited about something fresh in a new medium, he might just rock it – back in the days of Misery, It and Cujo, he could scare the bejesus out of me with the best of them.
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