“In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors.” Just in time for the biggest book release in the history of the universe, a contrarian view from the Washington Post. It’s out tonight at midnight but rumours of leaks have been happening for the past few days. […]
The author of the popular Freakonomics book looks at the question, “If public libraries didn’t exist, could you start one today?” “But here’s the point I’m (finally) getting to: if there was no such thing today as the public library and someone like Bill Gates proposed to establish them in cities and towns across the […]
As opposed to the last time I did this, this avatar is officially sanctioned. (Oh, and the Simpsons movie better not suck – even though I have an inordinate amount of fear that it will!)Inspired by Kristina O, Michelle L and various others who changed their Facebook profile photos to 2-D form (which I'm told […]
When I posted that jokey one-liner yesterday about the ridiculousness of Madonna lecturing me about saving the environment, I knew her blather was typical celebrity hypocrisy. I didn't realise just how bad she is though. Thanks Madge. Go steal another kid from the third world. (Of course, we live in a world where even “celebrity-as-saviour” […]
Madonna can't do it but I sincerely believe that Duran Duran still has the power to save the world. Thank God for Simon Le Bon!
The worldwide series of concerts known as Live Earth have started today in Australia and Japan and will be moving around the world for the next 24 hours. Although not directly related to Live Earth, there are a couple relevant sites you might want to check out: Earth Charter is “a declaration of fundamental principles […]
I am…26.58 % mainstream in my musical listening habits. Kinda surprising – I would've guessed I was about 80% mainstream. Actually I probably am 80% mainstream if this site could look at my CD collection. But my online music listening habits (which are tracked by last.fm and which is where these stats are drawn from) […]
LibrarianActivist has highlighted a couple sites in the past that offer free e-book downloads but this page has a comprehensive list of all the options online for getting free e-books and tree-books. (I love that the title of the post where I saw it on MetaFilter is “The Best Place To Get Free Books” and […]
Someone on the Hawksley Workman “Papershoes” message board re-posted a review of the Hawksley Workman concert we went to in London last May. Because I’m not a regular contributing member there, I think some of the commenters who had the impression I was a new Hawksley fan attending my first concert of his for some […]
A classmate wrote recently and mentioned in passing that I should read The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed. This made me realise it might be interesting to do an open post asking my readers (most of whom are librarians, writers or book industry types) what books they're reading and/or would […]
