February 28, 2008
Geek Networking of the 1990s was Quaint, Televised, Canadian
Explore the origins of Sci Fi fandom. See how little Neil Gaiman has changed in 15 years. Recoil at the (usual) curtness of Harlan Ellison. Be amazed by the teenaged Garth Ennis.
Chuckle at 90s TV graphics. I could probably do a rather long essay on how internet graphics changed the visual design landscape of television. I'll save that for another obsession.
(via neil gaiman, Prisoners of gravity: Fans, a response to neil gaiman's sharing of the Fans You Tube by the creator of Fans)
Posted by Groonk at 03:17 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Comics, Culture, Documentary, History, Tee Vee
Someone On This Earth Needs Their Head Kicked
(via ponzu, amazon)
Posted by Groonk at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
January 26, 2008
Amazon.com Bought Rowling's, The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Turn My Eyes Green.
I learned about this acquisition through 7d just now.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard is extensively illustrated and handwritten by the bard herself--all 157 pages of it. It's bound in brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones.Enjoy these first images of the book and reviews of each of the fairy tales (if you want to be sure of a link that will permanently work, use www.amazon.com/beedlebard).
Amazon.com has dedicated several pages full of information, reviews(SPOILERS in there) and rather large photos of the book in effort to lord over the rest of us peasants what we don't have and can never buy.
Bastards.
(via 7d, amazon.com)
Posted by Groonk at 08:44 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Just Freaking Neat
January 20, 2008
Japanese Cell-Phone Novelists get a bit of Cred
Five of the top 10 best-selling novels in Japan last year began as novels written on cellular phones, mostly composed on keypads by young women and read by others on their mobile phones, the New York Times reported.[...]
Would-be novelists are paid only if their novels are reproduced and sold as traditional books, not when readers access their works online, the newspaper said. One such novel, "If You," was the No. 5 best-selling novel last year with 400,000 copies, the Times said, citing book distributor Tohan.
Posted by Groonk at 09:34 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Only in Japan, Technology
January 19, 2008
In the Future, Hot Robot Luvin' will be Normal
Weeks ago, Warren Ellis posted a much blog reacted(53 as of this posting) Three Laws of Robotics. The special thing about these laws are they came from his mind...so...you know, be sitting down when you read them. I almost cracked a rib from laughing.
A few days ago the Colbert Report interviewed David Levy who wrote an entire book on the subject called Love + Sex with Robots. Levy did this without a scent of parody or snarkiness or satire. In fact, he proclaimed sex with robots will occur within 5 years. Love will take another half century.
The one thing Levy didn't touch on is that no one will expect them to be as smart as they are sexy.
A dangerous mistake to make.
(via warrenellis.com and my writerless TV)
Posted by Groonk at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Robots, Sex, The Future
October 29, 2007
Christopher Walken Tells You a Tale
I may have to make him GNET's new mascot.
(via house blowing youtube)
Posted by Groonk at 03:25 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Funny, Just Freaking Neat, Video
October 28, 2007
10 Tales of Terror: Each about 30 Seconds(Give or Take)
More Halloween goodies. Six writers were challenged to terrify us in the shortest time possible. Each story read by the author who wrote it.
One of those writers is Neil Gaiman. Two others that caught my interest: John Moe and Sean Cole.
(via neil gaiman)
Posted by Groonk at 01:17 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share, Holiday
FREE: "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman
It *looks* like Halloween but it *feels* like Christmas.
Alluding to both the Sherlock Holmes canon and the Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, this Hugo Award winning short story will delight fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, and of course, Neil Gaiman. A Study in Emerald draws listeners in through carefully revealed details as a consulting detective and his narrator friend solve the mystery of a murdered German noble. But with its subtle allusions and surprise ending, this mystery hints that the real fun in solving this case lies in imagining all the details that Gaiman doesn’t reveal, and challenges listeners to be detectives themselves.
download: "A Study in Emerald"
(via neil gaiman journal)
Posted by Groonk at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share, Holiday, Just Freaking Neat
October 13, 2007
Trials of the Knights Templars now in Book Form
It took 700 years for the information inside to be revealed.
A reproduction of the minutes of trials against the Templars, "'Processus Contra Templarios -- Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars"' is a massive work and much more than a book -- with a 5,900 euros ($8,333) price tag.
"This is a milestone because it is the first time that these documents are being released by the Vatican, which gives a stamp of authority to the entire project," said Professor Barbara Frale, a medievalist at the Vatican's Secret Archives.
"Nothing before this offered scholars original documents of the trials of the Templars," she told Reuters in a telephone interview ahead of the official presentation of the work on October 25.
The epic comes in a soft leather case that includes a large-format book including scholarly commentary, reproductions of original parchments in Latin, and -- to tantalize Templar buffs -- replicas of the wax seals used by 14th-century inquisitors.
(via yahoo news)
Posted by Groonk at 01:03 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Religion
September 25, 2007
Cory Doctorow On Giving Away Books and Getting Paid for It
Cory Doctorow, writer of stuff and co-editor of Boing Boing talks about how selling his printed books and giving away editions in ebook form has actually helped sell more printed copies of his works.
Many of us have assumed, a priori, that electronic books substitute for print books. While I don't have controlled, quantitative data to refute the proposition, I do have plenty of experience with this stuff, and all that experience leads me to believe that giving away my books is selling the hell out of them.
--Cory Doctorow
(via locus magazine)
Posted by Groonk at 03:01 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share, Marketing
September 10, 2007
There was such a Person Named Madeleine L'Engle
Madeline L'Engle's thoughts will be sorely missed.
"A Wrinkle in Time" was not the sort of book you were assigned in school; with its New Testament quotations and witchy supporting characters it was at once too Christian and too blasphemous. It was the sort of book you discovered on your own, shelved as it was in the big kids' section, and that you read ferociously into the night with a mug of Swiss Miss -- a replica of Meg's homemade cocoa. You didn't talk about the book at school. Meg's awkwardness, her anger, her imperfections were too intensely private, too attuned to your own gangly self-loathing. As with "Bridge to Terabithia" or the Ramona Quimby series, you wondered, perhaps, if it had been written for you.
You learned about tesseracts -- those convenient shortcuts that made dimension-skipping possible for Meg, her genius little brother Charles Wallace, and her boyfriend, Calvin, who saw behind her dorky specs a pair of "dreamboat eyes." You also learned about Einstein's theory of relativity, a smattering of Latin and a goodly amount of Shakespeare.
Woven through every story line: the unfailing message to be yourself, delivered not in a syrupy parental way but in a jarring and often scary one. In "Wrinkle" the trio travels to the planet Camazots, where children can be euthanized for bouncing a ball out of rhythm and society is controlled by a giant, pulsing brain called IT. Attempting to resist conformity, Meg recites the Declaration of Independence, only to have IT reply that "all men are created equal" is exactly the point: On Camazots "everybody is the same as everybody else."
"No!" Meg shouts triumphantly. " Like and equal are not the same thing at all!"
(via washington post)
Posted by Groonk at 05:33 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, People Who Died
August 13, 2007
Human 2.0 or The Technological Singularity
Yes, it is more than a MI:3 MacGuffin.
Yet another documentary I don't have time to lay eyes on.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BywCMkbG-Jg2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmzPHzu7RlI
3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Go3Thymuo
4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xLYI3Q6BcI
5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyRiizhPrvE
6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f48NT73ex2o
you can also read Ray Kurzeils "The Singularity Is Near" (http://www.kurzweilai.net/)
and about AI development: http://www.novamente.net , http://www.numenta.com
(via The convulsing Engine)
Posted by Groonk at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Research, Technology, Video
July 20, 2007
Hide Your Potter-Love with Snazzy(Fake and Dirty) Book Covers
The following are for grown-ups who are ashamed of being in love with a kids book for so long. I don't count myself among the shameful. Rowling's book is an excellent read. And a good read is a good read, no matter who it's marketed towards.
But for you lame asses who can't handle this kind of logical thinking, there's a flurry of fake Harry Potter book covers waiting for you to print them out and hide your shame.
(via buzz feed)
Posted by Groonk at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
July 16, 2007
CROOKED LITTLE VEIN is Set to Tease
The first chapter of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN lives online at your local internet Amazon.com dealer.
I'm sure there will be no "swishing" or "flicking." Horcruxes are pretty much right out.
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 10:50 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
May 25, 2007
July is for Reading
While everyone else has visions of horcruxes dancing in their heads. My mind is fixed on CROOKED LITTLE VEIN.
If Chuck Palahniuk was kidnapped, Raymond Chandler was resurrected, their DNA was spliced together, and the mad scientists responsible for those events wanted something to read on lonely nights in the lab, Crooked Little Vein would be the result.[...]
It’s all there in front of you, pulsing with strangeness and testing your stomach’s resolve. Crooked Little Vein is vintage Warren Ellis, and it’s time more people know just what that means.
Indeed, it is.
(via warrenellis.com, the inside flap)
Posted by Groonk at 03:38 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Quotables
April 24, 2007
Neil Gaiman's Reading Things and Answering Questions
I always find these things when I don't have the time to watch them. It's 2 hours long but I'm sure it's worth the time. If you have never heard Mr Gaiman read his works aloud, now's a damn good time to start.
The Open Tools feature on the embed does many wonderful things like provide a video chapter skip, a transcript and a way for you to embed the vid on your site if you so choose.
(via neilgaiman)
Posted by Groonk at 09:59 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Just Freaking Neat, Video
April 19, 2007
A List of Books Some Authors Wished We'd Forget
Barring the gigs that helped to pay the rent, this noise must really be embarrassing.
Thanks to the Web, literary fiascos may never again slip softly into the safety of oblivion. "Out of print" no longer means not available. And though you might be able buy up all the copies for sale on Amazon, good luck purging your dud from all those used book stores, not to mention excerpts posted on vicious blogs. Bill O'Reilly, the "novelist," learned this lesson the hard way. And years before The DiVinci Code, Dan Brown wrote a hacky dating advice book—under the name "Danielle" Brown.
A publisher re-released Brown's dating book complete with his real name emblazoned on the cover. Words fail to describe my amusement.
(via radar online)
Posted by Groonk at 07:56 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
April 13, 2007
'Stray Shopping Carts' Won for Being Weird
"The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification" was named winner of the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for oddest book title.The book, written by Buffalo, N.Y.-based artist Julian Montague and published by Harry N. Abrams, beat "How Green Were the Nazis?" a study of the environmental policies of the Third Reich.
I'd own them both, for ten american dollars.
(via 7d, myway news)
Posted by Groonk at 06:13 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Weird
February 01, 2007
The Internet Jesus has a Novel Coming Out
I was gonna wait for the book cover, but fuck it. Have a quick taste of His Ellis-ness:
This summer, Warren Ellis’ first novel, Crooked Little Vein debuts from William Morrow. The book follows a burned-out private detective that is put on the trail of the U.S. Constitution… no, not that one – the real one. Hired for this by a corrupt Presidential aide, Michael McGill sets out on a cross-country scavenger hunt that reveals a surreal underbelly and threatens to make him a part of it. McGill is joined by a surreal and socialable college student named Trix who serves both as his assistant and encouraging voice as he descends to his ultimate destination.[...]
Newsarama: What inspired you to write about such lurid activities as you have in Crooked Little Vein?
WE: It's all out there, Chris. This is what the internet trades in every day. These activities are the stuff of normal life and leisure for millions of people. It may be colorful, but it's certainly real. I invented very, very little in Crooked Little Vein. Even the macroherpetophiles; I found them back in the early days of the web, when I was writing professionally about the internet for a British computer magazine.
[...]
NRAMA: That said, what's the secret to writing material that is far out of bounds from most people's experiences and still making it accessible to them without watering down your intentions?
WE: Not hyping it, I think. The protagonist, Mike McGill, is our eyes into the world of the book, and most of the time he's really not sure what's happening to him, which I think is a useful representation of a reader immersing themselves in the book. But he's low-key. He doesn't run around waving his hands and shrieking. It's all presented matter-of-factly, with some humor, and Mike's there just trying to cope. It keeps the material grounded. And when I vary the tone, and things get substantially scarier halfway through, I think that helps carry the reader through.
(via warren ellis, newsarama)
Posted by Groonk at 02:43 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Interviews
January 26, 2007
TO: All Sexy Hollywood Ladies-- Scott Baio Probably Fucked You
The thought of Scott Baio being a rampant poon hound is not as bewildering as the Screech sex tape, but it's just as disturbing.
What's a guy to do when he's "dated and made love to some of the most desirable, beautiful starlets in Hollywood" but still can't find love? If you're Scott Baio, you find two co-writers to package up your pinhead thoughts and try to sell a book.[...]
Hey Baio, here's a thought: kissing and telling about those kisses in a book might not be the best way to fix you're "alone problem."
You're excerpts are fuuny though:
On being a teen heartthrob:"I got tight with Charles Laufer, the owner and publisher of Tiger Beat, which became an effective promotional tool.... One girl sent me her underwear that she'd peed and menstruated in, didn't wipe and ran a mile in, so I could have her natural body fluids and odors.
[...]
On his attempt to pick up Beverly D'Angelo (the Vacation movies, Entourage):
"Beverly was standing there at Liza's party. I didn't even introduce myself. I walked right over to her and confessed, "You know, you have one of the sexiest qualities a woman can ever have.
'Oh yeah? What's that?' she asked. 'You have an overbite.'
'I don't have an overbite, dear,' she said. 'I have a cocksucker's mouth.'"
Ms D'Angelo, I may have fallen in love with you a little bit.
Is that strange?
Posted by Groonk at 02:55 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Marketing, Sex
January 17, 2007
Futurologist Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts, Leaves Body Jan 11, 2007
I hate that I discovered him on his Death Day.
Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was a prolific American novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist, anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher.His writing, which often shows a sense of humor and optimism, is described by him as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations--to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models (maps) and no one model elevated to the Truth."[1] And: "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything."
(via ontd and boingboing)
Posted by Groonk at 08:21 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, People Who Died
January 15, 2007
'To Kill a Mockingbird' Still Bringing People Together
She shunned the press yet spoke to the performers. Her book is still a best-seller since its publication in 1960.
Nice.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Reclusive author Harper Lee attended a high school play based on her book, "To Kill a Mockingbird," on Wednesday, then met with students who appeared in the production.The production brought together about 60 students from nearly all-white Mountain Brook High and all-black Fairfield High Preparatory School.
The 80-year-old Lee was invited as a special guest to be honored by education and arts officials. Famous for prizing her privacy, she rarely speaks to reporters, though she does occasionally meet with students.
(via 7d and mywaynews and ontd)
Posted by Groonk at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Alabama, Books, Just Freaking Neat
January 10, 2007
Wherein You Find Links that May be of Great Use
And all of them regarding Neil Gaiman. Imagine that.
The Quotable Neil
"Well, yes, you'd ask my permission first. And then I'd say no, but I'd add that if you want to do a web page of quotes that you've collected that you like, I'd be fine with that and happily link to it. --Neil Gaiman 11/29/05"
Read Yourself Raw's: RECOMMENDED BY... NEIL GAIMAN
Neil Gaiman is one of the top writers in modern comics. He is the creator/writer of the award-winning horror-weird series Sandman, and the graphic novel's Mr Punch, Violent Cases and Signal To Noise. He is also a best-selling novelist with American Gods and his children's novel Coraline both enjoying enormous critical success.
This pleasant bit of nostalgia from this fellow at COMICS SHOULD BE GOOD(which includes reference to a Riddler story that was written by Gaiman.
Then, two years ago, my parents drove out to Arizona for Christmas and brought some more. Now, the last two long boxes have arrived, and I'm in nerd heaven. These are comics I loved back in the day, mind you, but I haven't read them in 12 long years. Some of them suck, obviously, because I'm not perfect, but it's still nice to see them. I can't wait to dig into them when I have a chance. Here are the highlights of the two lost long boxes, exiled for so long in a closet in Plumstead Township, PA
(via neil gaiman journal)
Posted by Groonk at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Blogged, Books, Just Freaking Neat, Quotables
December 21, 2006
Jack Kerouac Shares THE ROAD with Steve Allen
Wow. How in the hell did I miss this? I should visit BoingBoing more in 2007.
There is a year's worth of other videos at BoingBoing, right now.
There's a documentary on Jack Kerouac on You Tube in its entiety.
(via boingboing 2006 year in video review and vintage YouTube and Jack Kerouac)
Posted by Groonk at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Interviews, Video
December 20, 2006
John Hodgman Gives Away Precious Knowledge and His Book
You know him best as the funny and affable PC guy who is in a constant losing battle with that snide and pretensious Mac guy in those generally amusing Mac commercials. But John Hodgman is more than that. He's recited Hobo names. He blogs funny and clever. He's on the Daily Show in most amusing ways.
Now he's giving away his book The Areas of My Expertise via iTunes for FREE for a limited time only and with apologies to those in CANADA, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY, and the UK.
I'm grabbing mine now, as I post, via BoingBoing's provided link.
(via Boingboing and neil gaiman)
behold the majestic hobo
You found it. You went under the cut, of your own volition, and found the video cut I planted and gave no clue that it was lying in wait for you here.
I suppose you feel extremely proud of yourself right now. Keep feeling that.
Posted by Groonk at 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share, Just Freaking Neat, Video
December 18, 2006
HOTW: The Unsuggester Proves Why I'll Never Read Eragon
This week's Hero of the Week comes early cause I plan on being the hell away from the internet for a good week and a half. HERO OF THE WEEK unofficially began with Danny DeVito's The View tirade. I made the decision to do HOTW every week but finals made me forget my head.
As long as I remember the commitment, HOTW will be: 1)weekly 2)around Friday or so and 3) possibly in the Groonkly Bits section. Thereby forcing me to put words, even the stupidest of words, to digital paper at least once a week.
The Library Thing has a new feature called The Unsuggester which works as follows.
Unsuggester takes "people who like this also like that" and turns it on its head. It analyzes the eight million books LibraryThing members have recorded as owned or read, and comes back with books least likely to share a library with the book you suggest. The unsuggestions come from LibraryThing data, not from Amazon.
I ran my latest pet peeve Eragon through The Unsuggester and it verified many suspicions. Some author names that came up: Fyodor Dostoevsky, C. G. Jung,Hunter S. Thompson, Sigmund Freud, William Faulkner, Aristotle, and Ian Fleming to name a few. According to The Unsuggester, Eragon is the antithesis of any kind of intelligent thought. Sure, that's a bold statement, but that's my new creedo, "Bold and an opinionated prick."
As most outspoken writers tend to be.
(via neil gaiman)
Posted by Groonk at 11:15 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Just Freaking Neat
November 09, 2006
Babycakes will Disrupt Your Senses
I suggest you read The Fabulous Jouni's webcomic version of Neil Gaiman's short story "Babycakes." It is very well done and it will disturb your soul.
You'll eventually go back to your lives...mostly.
(via The Dreaming)
Posted by Groonk at 08:33 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Comics
October 13, 2006
"The History & Hauntings of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium"
"Those Who Linger" is a site pushing a book about a haunted hospital in Louisville, KY. It was shared to me by Charles in June. June is not an especially pagan month but October is. And so it was posted.
[...]
By 2001, this once regal and majestic hospital had been ravaged by time, the elements and vandals and was a shell of its former self. Waverly Hills had now become every town’s “haunted house”. Vagrants took to living here and kids broke in for the rush of finding a “ghost” or just to get high. It started to get the reputation of being haunted and rumors had it that satanic rituals were taking place within its walls. There were tales of a little girl running up and down the third floor solarium playing hide and seek with trespassers, of a little boy playing with his leather ball, of rooms lighting up as if there was still power to the building, doors slamming, disembodied voices, a hearse driving up and dropping off coffins and an old woman running from the front door with her wrists bleeding screaming “help me, somebody save me!” The years went by and the owner decided to sell the property to the new owners, who took possession in 2001.
The "body chute" concept has more ick factor than any ghost you can think up.
Posted by Groonk at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
October 01, 2006
88 Years later, New Robert Frost Poem Found
So good things do come from research papers.
The 35-line poem, called "War Thoughts at Home" and dated 1918, was apparently inspired by the death of a fellow poet in World War I.
Student Robert Stilling said he was alerted to the poem by a 1947 letter by Melcher in which he referred to an unpublished poem handwritten in a copy of Frost's book "North of Boston".
Stilling said in a paper that when he read the letter it set off "little scholarly alarm bells" and sent him looking for the book at the Charlottesville university library. Frost died in 1963 aged 88.
It took several months to verify the handwriting and check whether the poem had been published before, said Kevin Morrissey, managing editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review which has permission from Frost's estate to publish the poem.
Two stanzas have been released so far.
"We must just watch our chance
And escape one by one-
Though the fight is no more done
Than the war is in France."
Than the war is in France!
She thinks of a winter camp
Where soldiers for France are made.
She draws down the window shade
And it glows with an early lamp.
I must remember to look for the rest of the poem this week.
(via reuters and Robert Frost)
Posted by Groonk at 07:04 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Research, War
September 28, 2006
Facts, Books and Shadowy French Names
A research paper for class revealed two things to me.
1) Alibris had a good portion of used books that I needed on the cheap.( Originally posted here in April 2004)
2) The Library Thing would have been a handy thing if only I had visited the thing a couple of weeks beforehand.
LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.
3) The word "silhouette" was born from frenchman Etienne de Silhouette's name around the time of Madame de Pompadour.
4) I'm lucky that I'm an English major and not a math major.
Posted by Groonk at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Research
September 14, 2006
"Why Smart People Do Dumb Things?"
Guy Kawaski's article on why big brained folk fail to backup their harddrives touched on everybody's raw nerve. So many dead harddrives, so much lost information(no, I don't mean porn...exclusively).
I know a couple people who fall in the categories skimmed in this article. People including me, I freely admit. I won't be vilgar and name other names though.
You smarties know who you are. It's the nature of the beast.
Truly, the book answers much deeper questions than why I was too dumb to backup my MacBook, but the concepts are the same. The authors list four reasons why smart, famous, powerful, and rich people who should obviously know better end up crashing and burning:
(The reasons mentioned are:Hubris, Arrogance, Narcissim and the Unconscious Need to Fail. Read all of Guy's article to get the complete scoop)
And the Tao of Backup is a funny site that will point you on the way..to backing-up periodically.
(via guy kawasaki's blog and amanda unboomed)
Posted by Groonk at 04:43 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Just Freaking Neat, Linkable
September 08, 2006
Google To Try and Steal Project Gutenberg's Thunder, Free Domain Mega Search Begins
Project Gutenberg has been doing this for years. That's all I'm saying.
And, honestly, Project Gutenberg is my first choice for finding free domain books. Google will be a distant second.
Using Google's Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante's "Inferno" and Aesop's "Fables" will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.
(via diggnation and business week online)
Posted by Groonk at 07:41 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Google-fied
August 28, 2006
A Scholar Says Iliad and Odyssey was Penned by a Woman
Andrew Dalby, author of Rediscovering Homer, argues that the attribution of the poems to Homer was founded on a falsehood.
]...]
Dalby explained to Discovery News that the earliest references to Homer by writers such as Herodotus and the Greek poet Pindar indicate the poet lived around 800 B.C.
But based on geographical references in the poems, Dalby believes the Iliad was composed in 650 B.C., while the Odyssey was written in 630 B.C., well after Homer’s supposed lifetime.
Aside from the poems themselves, no concrete clues exist to identify their author, but Dalby builds a case that the person probably was a woman.
Dalby explained that women throughout the ancient world were "often the last and most skillful exponents of an oral tradition."
For example, the world’s first named poet was a Sumerian woman named Enheduanna, who lived from around 2285-2250 B.C. Dalby said women also saved the ancient oral poetry of the northern Japanese, many Irish traditions, and numerous English folk ballads.
If the poet was a woman, Dalby believes her name is probably lost to history.
"I would guess that Sappho (a female Greek poet) and her contemporary, the male poet Alkaios, probably knew the name, but they did not mention it in their own poetry," Dalby said.
(via discovery news)
Posted by Groonk at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, History, Just Freaking Neat, Research
August 25, 2006
Nobel Prize-winning German writer was Technically a Nazi
Yet he won the Nobel for an anti-nazi book:
He told a German newspaper he had been recruited at the age of 17 into an SS tank division and served in Dresden.
Previously it was only known he had served as a soldier and was wounded and taken prisoner by US forces.
[...]
"My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote this book [Peeling Onions]," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview.
"It had to come out, finally."
Grass, who was born in 1927, is widely admired as a novelist whose books frequently revisit the war years and is also known as an outspoken peace activist.
First the new pope and now this guy. You just don't know people do you?
(via warren ellis and his horrible new website design)
Posted by Groonk at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, WorldWarII
June 14, 2006
What are the Great SF Novels of the 90s?
Andrew Wheeler's trying to find them. Drop a note on his blog if you have any suggestions.
(via The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.)
Posted by Groonk at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
May 25, 2006
Mystical Martial Arts Cat, Varjak Paw
It may be a kids book, reading ages 9-12, but it sounds like the most brilliant thing ever.
Posted by Groonk at 06:06 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
May 20, 2006
Cuba shares over 20K Hemingway papers with US
The move is part of a deal on restoring Hemingway's legacy that, correspondents say, has united the usually feuding governments of Havana and Washington.
Hemingway spent much of his time living in Cuba between 1939 and 1960.
[...]
The documents sent include copies of letters in which Hemingway outlines his stance on World War Two and the Spanish Civil War.
(via bbc news)
Posted by Groonk at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, History
May 16, 2006
Read it before it reads you
Jessica Stover made a trailer for her book.
Plot outline: Set against the violent underworld of black-market book publishing and a society that despises all things literary, a rookie author strives to bring her prose to the masses by going back to her online roots.
(via ajgentile)
Posted by Groonk at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Marketing, Trailers
May 12, 2006
King Dork: "Life is a wince-a-thon"
So there's this book called King Dork written by Frank Portman that's caught my eye.
Pop Candy says:
6. It's a funny, intelligent, inspiring, can't-even-put- it-down-when-I- go-to- the-bathroom story. Seriously, I vowed to only write about this well-publicized book after I read it myself, and I'm happy to report that it's worth the hype.
The plot of King Dork involves a scrawny 10th grader trying to realize his rock 'n' roll dreams (and solve a murder mystery), but that's all you need to know. Skip the press and just read the dang thing. And for all of you doubters who don't believe you could appreciate something from the bookstore's "young adult" section, I suggest you bring those Harry Potter books out of hiding and get over it.
I read the excerpt and have come to one conclusion..."I am King Dork"
(via Pop candy)
Posted by Groonk at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
March 15, 2006
Daily Show Read: Misquoting Jesus
The popular perception of the Bible as a divinely perfect book receives scant support from Ehrman, who sees in Holy Writ ample evidence of human fallibility and ecclesiastical politics. Though himself schooled in evangelical literalism, Ehrman has come to regard his earlier faith in the inerrant inspiration of the Bible as misguided, given that the original texts have disappeared and that the extant texts available do not agree with one another. Most of the textual discrepancies, Ehrman acknowledges, matter little, but some do profoundly affect religious doctrine. To assess how ignorant or theologically manipulative scribes may have changed the biblical text, modern scholars have developed procedures for comparing diverging texts.
Posted by Groonk at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Religion
January 23, 2006
DRM-free MP3 Audiobooks
There also be entirely free books as MP3 downloads available.
(via boingboing)
Posted by Groonk at 08:05 AM | Comments (2) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share
January 19, 2006
Sandow Birk thinks Hell is in L.A.
Medicmike bought a new book 
You're lucky it wasn't Jersey.
(via medicmike)
Posted by Groonk at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
December 19, 2005
Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq
A digital photo gallery of the many casualties of the current Iraq war.
In other words, realizations that many people should see.
Disposable Heroes
Nina Berman's book, Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq has a strength, a force that delivers a punch to your emotional solar plexus when you read it.
by Peter Howe
(via medicmike, i think)
Posted by Groonk at 08:54 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, War
"The Lady and the Panda"
It is a wonderful old-fashioned tome on the discovery of the giant pandas - one of last century’s most remarkable stories - and the relatively untold details of the woman who should get more credit for "finding" them. The search for the first live giant pandas is a fascinating but true tale of cryptozoology discovery, captured with adventure in The Lady and the Panda .
Vicki Croke’s book is an exciting, warm, and intriguing volume about Ruth Harkness’ personal journey to be the initial Westerner to catch and return with the first live giant pandas. This is a book I’ve wanted to write myself for years, and I’m glad to finally see someone, appropriately a seasoned woman writer, do a great job with this subject. The Lady and the Panda also gives due credit to Harkness’ Chinese guide and eventual lover Quentin Young, who showed her how to find the giant pandas.
(via boingboing)
Posted by Groonk at 03:07 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
October 04, 2005
The William Canaris Mystery
Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) eighteen months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris turned against the Fuhrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler would start a war Germany could not win.
In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England, and fed General Franco vital information that helped him keep Spain out of the war.
For years he played a dangerous double game, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. The SS chief, Heinrich Himmler became suspicious of the Abwehr and by 1944, when Abwehr personnel were involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler, he had the evidence to arrest Canaris himself. Canaris was executed a few weeks before the end of the war
Posted by Groonk at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, WorldWarII
Gypsy Jazz
Django Reinhardt & Doktor Jazz
On Django Reinhardt:
Jean Baptiste "Django" Reinhardt (January 23, 1910 – May 16, 1953) was a Belgian Gypsy jazz musician. He was the very first important jazz musician who was born in Europe. His most renowned tunes include Minor Swing, Tears, Belleville and Nuages. Django is pronounced zhane-go (with a long 'a').
[...]
Reinhardt survived World War II unscathed, unlike many other gypsies who perished in the concentration death camps of the Nazis. He had the help of a Luftwaffe official named Dietrich Schultz-Kohn, a.k.a. Doktor Jazz, who deeply admired his music. In 1943 he married Sophie Ziegler, with whom he had a son, Babik Reinhardt, who went on to become a respected guitarist in his own right.
After the war, Reinhardt rejoined Grappelli in the UK, and went on to tour the United States, opening for Duke Ellington, and playing at Carnegie Hall, as well as making more recordings.
Django Reinhardt was then among the first people in France to appreciate and understand the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (he sought after them when he first arrived in New York). He integrated some elements of their music, still never compromising his own musical visions.
Jazz Against Nazi Germany
In Different Drummers, Michael Kater--a distinguished historian and himself a jazz musician--explores the underground history of jazz in Hitler's Germany. He offers a frightening and fascinating look at life and popular culture during the Third Reich, showing that for the Nazis, jazz was an especially threatening form of expression. Not only were its creators at the very bottom of the Nazi racial hierarchy, but the very essence of jazz--spontaneity, improvisation, and, above all, individuality--represented a direct challenge to the repetitive, simple, uniform pulse of German march music and indeed everyday life. The fact that many of the most talented European jazz artists were Jewish only made the music more objectionable. In tracing the growth of what would become a bold and eloquent form of social protest, Kater mines a trove of previously untapped archival records and assembles interviews with surviving witnesses as he brings to life a little-known aspect of wartime Germany. He introduces us to groups such as the Weintraub Syncopators, Germany's best indigenous jazz band; the Harlem Club of Frankfurt, whose male members wore their hair long in defiance of Nazi conventions; and the Hamburg Swings--the most daring radicals of all--who openly challenged the Gestapo with a series of mass dance rallies.» Jazz Research: Here we find a "list current research projects - scholarly studies as well as discographical or biographical book projects or ongoing dissertation projects from different fields concerned in some way with jazz research." It's constantly being updated.
» The Django Reinhardt Swing Page
» Tribute to Gainsbourg (sucker's in french)
» Jazz Guitar Licks : Django Reinhardt
» GYPSY The life of Django Reinhardt: A review of this book by The New Yorker
(a ponzu inspired bit of research)
Posted by Groonk at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, History, Music, Research, WorldWarII
September 19, 2005
READ: 1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
1491 is not so much the story of a year, as of what that year stands for: the long-debated (and often-dismissed) question of what human civilization in the Americas was like before the Europeans crashed the party. The history books most Americans were (and still are) raised on describe the continents before Columbus as a vast, underused territory, sparsely populated by primitives whose cultures would inevitably bow before the advanced technologies of the Europeans. For decades, though, among the archaeologists, anthropologists, paleolinguists, and others whose discoveries Charles C. Mann brings together in 1491, different stories have been emerging. Among the revelations: the first Americans may not have come over the Bering land bridge around 12,000 B.C. but by boat along the Pacific coast 10 or even 20 thousand years earlier; the Americas were a far more urban, more populated, and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even "timeless" natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention.This is strange. I recently had a conversation with Dunc about this very subject. Now I have a source of my own thanks to Book TV.
Posted by Groonk at 12:57 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
September 18, 2005
READ: Everything Bad Is Good for You
I haven't read it meself, but I like the premise of it.
Basically what he's saying is that video games and television shows and whot not are extremely more complex now than they were 30 years ago. Which is true. Watch and episode of Dallas then watch Six Feet Under and you tell me which one is smarter. He goes on to say that the problem solving in videos games also help add to brain power. Johnson's not saying that these things can or should replace books, but that they aren't the pariahs that some groups make them out to be.
I speak with confidence cause I just watched him do a book lecture on Book TV. I also saw him on Daily Show some months ago.
Posted by Groonk at 06:03 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
September 16, 2005
When Sci Fi Predicts the Future
I looked over the article Gaiman mentioned. It seems Delany's book describes in great detail "the unfolding of racially-charged violence, rape, and looting in "Bellona," a major American city struck by an unspecified catastrophe and ignored by the National Guard.".
(via neil gaiman)
Posted by Groonk at 03:25 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
September 13, 2005
365 Tomorrows
update: What a neat idea.
update: Here's a sample of one of the stories.
"Yes," I said. I was running low on patience.
"No, I mean, do you really know? More than just the site?"
Reluctantly, I shook my head.
"You ever meet anyone who worked for them?"
"Don't think so."
"You haven't. Nobody works for them anymore."
I shrugged, and took the man's empty pint. I didn't offer to refill it.
"They're self-contained. It's all automated, in there. It's underground."
I nudged the basket of pretzels in his direction. "Why don't you eat something?" I suggested. He shook his head with so much force that I thought he might knock himself off of the stool.
"Listen. Hear me out. You know how Google works," he said, but didn't want for a response. "They cache things, right? Like they send out these spiders and take pictures of everything on the web, so when you're searching, you're not even searching the internet."
I've heard that before, but it never made much of a difference to me. "Same thing, though," I said.
"You ever wonder why Google doesn't cache it's own searches?"
(via boingboing)
Posted by Groonk at 02:02 AM | Comments (2) | Ministry of Books
August 29, 2005
Matt Fraction Could by My New Hero
"The Five Fists of Science is the story of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla teaming up to bring about world peace by compulsion-- and how that peace will interfere with the plans of an evil science cabal led by Thomas Edison," says writer Matt Fraction. "An all-out war between magic and science is fought on the streets of New York City in 1899, and it is an absolutely true story, up to a point."(via badsignal)
Posted by Groonk at 06:06 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Comics, Tesla
August 25, 2005
LISTEN: First track of ANANSI BOYS
Comedian and actor and Neil Gaiman friend Lenny Henry reads the first track of Gaiman's forthcoming book ANANSI BOYS. This is from the audio book version(approx 16 meg).
Gaiman gives permission to spread this aboot...so spread it!
(via neilgaiman)
Posted by Groonk at 02:16 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share
August 23, 2005
Another Book I want: Any Easy Intimacy
Originally printed as a limited edition with hand drawn covers, Top Shelf presents the final chapter of Jeffrey Brown's so-called 'Girlfriend Trilogy." AEIOU continues to explore the subtleties of relationships explored in CLUMSY and UNLIKELY, concentrating this time on the differences between knowing and loving someone, invoking the reader's relationship with the book as a parallel to being involved with someone.
The story is told with Brown's trademark expressive drawings and juxtaposition of humor and heartache.
-- 224 pages, 4" x 6"
An Ellis review.
(via badsignal)
Posted by Groonk at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Comics
August 19, 2005
Books for all Hours!
PARIS (AP) - Readers craving Homer, Baudelaire or Lewis Carroll in the middle of the night can get a quick fix at one of the French capital's five newly installed book vending machines.
"We have customers who know exactly what they want and come at all hours to get it," said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres, a low-cost publisher and book store chain that debuted the vending machines in June. "It's as if our stores were open 24 hours a day."
Stocked with 25 of Maxi-Livres best-selling titles, the machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes. Classics like "The Odyssey" by Homer and Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" share the limited shelf space with such practical must-haves as "100 Delicious Couscous" and "Verb Conjugations."
"Our biggest vending machine sellers are 'The Wok Cookbook' and a French-English dictionary," said Chambon, who added that poet Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" - "The Flowers of Evil" - also is "very popular."
Regardless of whether they fall into the category of high culture or low, all books cost a modest $2.45.
Read lady, read!
(via 7d)
Posted by Groonk at 03:27 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, On the French
Daily Show Read: My Father the Spy
Richardson looked and acted the part. While other officials in Vietnam dressed in fatigues or short sleeves, he always wore a black business suit. Scholarly, a little ponderous in his manner and speech, he kept a copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, his favorite Stoic emperor, by his side. "I do my duty," wrote Aurelius. "Other things do not trouble me."
(via thedailyshow)
Posted by Groonk at 01:37 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
August 15, 2005
Name that Character
The profits will go to the First Amendment Project, which defends the free speech rights of activists, writers and artists.
"It feels a little scary for most writers because when you're writing you're completely in charge. You can say this book is all mine, it's my world," said Chabon, who sits on the project's board. "Whether giving some of that over has any monetary value or not, we'll see."
(via 7d)
Posted by Groonk at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
August 14, 2005
Supervert
Download eLibraries of Georges Bataille and the Marquis de Sade.
(via badsignal)
Posted by Groonk at 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share, Sex
August 13, 2005
"shining gems of text"
_The light of the disk is endless
like the light of the disks in the sky, sun and moon.
With a single push of our finger on a button
We pull up the shining gems of text_
-Gelek Rinpoche
Why do I like this idea? Because it's a new age and some monks seem to have made their peace with it. Everything good doesn't have to come from ancient texts and scrolls. Does it?
(via boingboing)
Posted by Groonk at 07:08 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Culture, Religion
August 04, 2005
An Exclusive 23 year old Neil Gaiman story
It's called, The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds.
So I've put up my third ever published short story -- it's about 23 years old. It's juvenilia, but I hope not entirely without interest, about a murder in NurseryLand, and is one of the very few hardboiled detective stories I've written. Presenting Little Jack Horner, private eye, in The Case of the Four And Twenty Blackbirds. http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/4&20.asp
It was reprinted in ANGELS AND VISITATIONS, and in a handful of anthologies, but wasn't in Smoke and Mirrors, so it will probably be new to many of you.
Anansi Boys is on my "must get" list.
(via neilgaimanjournal)
Posted by Groonk at 02:18 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
August 03, 2005
Why Do Men Have Nipples?
"It's really remarkable how often you get accosted," said Goldberg, 39. "There are the medical questions from family and friends, and then there are the drunk and outrageous questions where somebody wants to drop their pants and show you a rash or something."
The book, subtitled, "Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini," (Three Rivers Press), is co-authored by humorist Mark Leyner.
"People tend to know so little about their bodies as compared to their cars or their laptops," said Leyner, 49, of Hoboken, New Jersey. "When I worked in a pharmacy in Washington, D.C., people would ask me medical questions all the time. I was just a 22-year-old cashier at Rite Aid."
(via yahoonews)
Posted by Groonk at 01:28 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
June 28, 2005
Slashdot Interviews: Blogosphere's Wil Wheaton
Wheaton shares thoughts on the industry and other things in this Slashdot e-interview:
* You want to publish a book? It's easier than ever to create an e-book with free software like Scribus and OpenOffice.org, and use a service like PayPalDownloads to deliver it.
* You want to release your music? Garageband will host your files and connect you with people who want to hear you.
* You have a great idea for a play? There are 99 seat Equity-waiver theaters in every big city in America.
* Don't want to shop your brilliant short film to myopic studio buyers who are just going to steal your idea anyway? Produce it yourself! Film it on digital video, edit it on your Mac, and create your own DVDs.
* When you've got a physical product to sell, PayPal will process payments for you and create shipping labels you can print, or you can use a service like Yahoo Shopping to do your fulfillment.
If you've got passion, you believe in yourself, and you're willing to take financial risks, you don't need anyone's permission to release your work. Your success or failure won't be left in the hands of anyone else. You are in charge, and you'll sink or swim based upon your efforts. I'll repeat, as the voice of experience: You do not need the so-called traditional channels of distribution to get your work to an audience, and you'll probably be happier and more successful by not going through those channels.
I must keep these thoughts in mind.
(via slashdot)
Posted by Groonk at 06:54 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Interviews, Quotables
Comparing Pottery
Ever noticed how American bookcovers are lame, tame and otherwise uninteresting?
I mean, honestly, which one of these looks like the more interesting read?
 US Cover |
 UK Cover |
Seriously, which one? Uncle Fluffy stirring up some pea soup or Grandpa Fire getting ready to burn your ass with the bootleg he made in his footy tub.
I've also got chapter pics from other Hary Potter books and book covers from other countries.
I'm gearing up for The Half-Blood Prince. Can you tell?
Posted by Groonk at 03:39 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
June 27, 2005
Ninja Mind Control
A book on how to put The Claw on some guy's balls.
(via flickr)
Posted by Groonk at 06:31 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Martial Arts
April 24, 2005
Hippos Go Berserk
As the honorary nieces and nephews grow older, I find myself discovering books that would be perfect for them.
All through the hippo night,
Hippos play with great delight.
But at the hippo break of day,
The hippos all must go away.
(via 7d)
Posted by Groonk at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books
April 23, 2005
Daily Show Read: No God But God
You need this:
"change or wither"--Jon Stewart
Though it