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probooklover

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About probooklover

  • Birthday 04/18/1973

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  1. hmm - Sarah Water's book is a great haunted house novel. That could well be up your street. My fave of the bunch has to be 'Me Cheeta'. Tarzan's simian sidekick's autobiography. hilarious and brilliant.
  2. Just been announced... http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/thisyear/longlist how many have you read?
  3. why not? weren't some of dickens novels first published as serials? what's the difference?
  4. the death of the advance is something that hit the music business a few years back. it looks as if books will continue to follow the music model (think of the current 1st gen ebook readers as the bookish equivalent of an ipod) so next up will be an explosion in illegal swapping/sharing of books, accompanied by some kind of 'myspace for words' where amateurs can self-publish for attention rather than money. the handful of top-tier artists will shrink (and make bigger sums of money than ever before for themselves and their publishers. Oh, hi JK!), while the number of amateur/semi-professionals producing great stuff while making no money will increase. For consumers, it's tremendously exciting (who doesn't have an mp3 player nowadays???). For mid-level professionals, time to think about revenue. As recorded music crashed, the industry propped itself up with merchandising and live events - perhaps publishing will do something similar. Sounds very doom and gloom but for those ready to avoid Big Music's mistakes and embrace the new media, there are exciting opportunities, i think. Personally, i think micro-payments and mobile phones will combine to create new text formats. Howsabout a 10p/chapter neverending text novel that's updated daily? Would you pay
  5. i could never set a time limit. some books you can rattle through in a day, some can take weeks. setting a limit seems a bit arbitrary i do pay attention to the rate though. the longer each page takes, the less likely i am to finish the book!
  6. I've reread The Image Men several times. Love the characters, love the plot and i've picked up on different elements by reading it at different times in my life. Hugely impressed and inspired as a teen, the sarcasm and cynicism were much more apparent when i reread it in my thirties. That's most interesting thing about rereading across a long timespan - the book stays the same but often the reader has changed.
  7. wow - that's pretty good going. i've just gone from the sublime to the ridiculous - david simon's the corner then Mark Frith's Celeb diaries
  8. i think the way ebook readers have polarised book lovers into the love and hate camps is really similar to the effect of mp3s and digital mixing on the DJ community. 'you can never beat the feel of vinyl', 'records are more tactile', 'i love seeing/flicking through the records on my shelves', 'records sound better' vs 'i can take 5,000 albums to a gig on mp3', 'you can find music on the net for free' DJs were generally very wary of digital mixing at first, but a few years into the debate and ipods are ubiquitous and digital mixing (if you count CDs) is now the norm - although vinyl DJs are still around too, of course. if publishing follows the same pattern, we can expect to see many more ebooks and ebook readers over the next few years. the good news for taditionalist, is that in music, vinyl sales are actually on the increase at the moment, so it looks like it's not an either or choice. given the major labels' experience of digital music, i would be amazed if publishers aren't *very* wary about digital. the big music guns got the internet wrong for along time (some still are getting it wrong) and the industry's numbers are in freefall, despite there being more music production and consumption than ever. personally - i've had a play with the sony and would love one for holidays and the commute. 8 paperbacks in the suitcase vs one sony ebook reader is no brainer!
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