The award winning Kate Pullinger has written blog post called: Why I Still Don’t Have an E-Reader. And I thought it might be helpful to talk about the points she raises They are all reasonable and valid and probably the same as lots of people have but I wonder if I can ‘overcome those objections’ as they say in sales.

Here we go:

A confession: despite the fact that I think of myself as an ‘early adopter’, a ‘digital native’, and even – god forbid – a bit of a webby geek, I do not have an e-reader nor do I use my fancy smartphone as an ereader. The reasons for this are as follows:

1. Ereaders are all so ugly, apart from the fancy expensive one. I have enough white and grey plastic in my life already thank you. And the fancy expensive one is way too fancy and expensive.

This a fair point. Amazon’s Kindle is a nicer shade of black INMO and Sony are trying to keep them semi-smart with their chrome looking ones. But once you stick a cover on them you can’t see what colour it is from the outside. Amazon are doing some wicked colours for their covers:

2. Why should I buy a piece of hardware that restricts where I can purchase content? I do not want to buy all my books from that online bookseller. I do not want to have to have a whole pile of different ereader apps on my fancy smartphone according to where I buy my content.

To be fair you can only read one book at a time. I can half see this point. You do lock yourself in if you go for Amazons or Apples offerings but you’re locked into certain devices as well when buying from Waterstones, WHSmith and others who use Adobe DRM. So you can’t really take your reading anywhere you like. But those fancy apps do allow some movements from devices. But are you likely to reread a book once you’ve read it? And you may be limited but you can never loose a book as all stores I’ve encountered let you download a purchase again if you delete it.

I’d rather be able to read than not. I can’t always carry a book with my but I always have my phone and I’d rather take one device than a pile of books when I travel.

3. Why should I buy a thing that restricts what I can do with the books I buy, that won’t allow me to lend books to friends? That’s just stupid.

But ‘selling’ a book to a friend by getting them to buy their own copy rather than giving it away supports the writer and publisher doesn’t it? A book is a physical licensed copy which is just easier to give away as nothing is there to stop you. I’ve seen some magazine apps on the iPhone you can lend and you loose the right to read for a certain time which would fix the problem – Amazon for example could let you give away a book and you loose access to it forever or a certain time limit perhaps?

4. Ereaders cost too much, even the cheaper ones cost too much, and I’m paranoid that an EVEN BETTER ONE will suddenly appear, and I’m tired of buying things that become obselete within months – days – of purchase.

It’s the when’s the right time to buy a computer syndrome, right? A computer is just a tool so you should buy one that fits your needs there and then. I like new shiny but my last laptop was only replaced as I dropped it after four years. My iPhone is a 3G not 4 as I don’t see anything that is a must have. I only got a 3G iPhone as this one has a compass so I can find my way around when I go to London using the compass.

I’ve only got a Kindle as I like the new wireless features and ease of use. The screen is much better but if my Sony was easier I probably would have used it until it died or got dropped.  I don’t see the Kindle especially as something I want to upgrade in a hurry. It has a good screen and the store is too easy to use!

5. All the companies involved, especially the fruit one, and the one-breasted warrior woman one, are way too annoying with their attempts to rule the world.

It’s the way of globalisation – if some company is going to do x,y or z why not us? I do have ethics and morals but where shopping and consumerism is concerned convenience, service and price are musts. I’m an Apple boy as it’s frustration free compared with the big M even if I pay a premium for it.

I can see that could be a problem in regards to royalties, controls and rights etc. I’m an outsider looking in. And there is always going to real books and I’m going to keep buying real books for a long time to come. Like CDs I’m just going to buy special ones and download the rest.

6. I want to pay for content, i.e. STUFF TO READ, not the platform to read it on. I know, I know, a book is a platform too, and, given that most writers get less than 10% per book sold, you could argue that I’m already paying more than 90% of a book’s price to get the gadget (in this case a book) that delivers the content (the words the writer wrote), and that, in the case of a book, it’s insanity to buy the same gadget over and over again, when you could buy just one gadget and get each new set of content delivered straight to that instead. I’d be happy to do that, apart from numbers 1-5 above.

I’m paying for the connivence. I can read bigger books easier. I can try samples out. I can read magazines I’ve can’t easily get like Asivmov and Clarkesworld. I like reading on an ereader and it’s nothing to do with the fact its a gadget. It’s easier to hold and easier to turn the pages and I can do it one handed.

The truth is I really do want an ereader. I love the idea of a device for reading, a device that holds all my books in one slim well-designed piece of kit, a device that allows me to annotate and search and read, read, read. But the device I want, that allows me to buy books from wherever I want, whenever I want, to share them with whoever I want, to read how/when/and why I want (whether that’s alone in a corner or social media’d up the hoo-hah), in whatever format I want (which, ahem, includes Flash) DOES NOT EXIST.

Give it 5 or 10 years and you might just get just that!

My final word for now to anyone who wants an ereader:  Only get one if you think you it might do something you want – make reading lighter, buying books easier, help you read by making text bigger, help you hide what you are reading. It has to have a value or it’s just going to gather dust.

Thank Kate for an interesting post. I hope you didn’t mind me bounding ideas off it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

God is a slick god. Temple knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe…

Older than her years and completely alone, Temple is just trying to live one day at a time in a post-apocalyptic world, where the undead roam endlessly, and the remnant of mankind who have survived, at times, seem to retain little humanity themselves.

This is the world she was born into. Temple has known nothing else. Her journey takes her to far-flung places, to people struggling to maintain some semblance of civilization – and to those who have created a new world order for themselves.

When she comes across the helpless Maury, she attempts to set one thing right, if she can just get him back to his family in Texas then maybe it will bring redemption for some of the terrible things she’s done in her past. Because Temple has had to fight to survive, has done things that she’s not proud of and, along the road, she’s made enemies.

Now one vengeful man is determined that, in a world gone mad, killing her is the one thing that makes sense…

Graeme, and James both love this novel – and I’ve dipped into the opening. There is something about the prose.  See an extract here. As well as Alden Bell’s Top Ten Zombie Movies. The literary influences behind The Reapers Are The Angels and Alden in conversation with Mark Charan Newton on his blog.

Keeping up with technology is a relatively expensive hobby. There is always the latest x, y or z to buy. It doesn’t apply just to gadgets but media too. Just when you think that you’ve got your collection of 78s complete someone comes out with cassettes, CDs, DVD Audio, and now currently MP3 if we’re talking music. Or you’ve got your Betamax, VHS, laserdisc, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and mp4s collection and someone comes out with something new to get you to upgrade.

So that’s the two main forms of entertainment covered – something to listen to and something to watch. Both have needed technology to convey themselves from the start but it’s not the same with books.

Printed matter on the other hand has, since Guttenberg (1440), been pretty much the same – ink pressed onto sheets which are then bound together and sold, which not only makes it the oldest media but the most convenient (assuming you can read).

I’d say they were pretty much ingrained and our love of physical books is going to be pretty hard to shift. We don’t need to upgrade books to see a clearer picture or to hear a crisper note. Plus books are cheap. And they don’t stop working if you drop them.

So why have I just gone out and bought a Kindle? Firstly, I am a complete and utter geek. I love my technology and gadgets. So something that is going to bring my love of books and love of tech together is going to gain my interest.

But as I said books don’t need technology to work so there has to be another reason beyond tech fetishes. And it’s about convenience.

Now my first attempt at e-reading wasn’t convenient in the slightest. And that probably explains why my Sony Reader 505 has spent more time on the shelf than in my bag (sorry mum). It doesn’t help that I get review copies which does skew my buying habits. It doesn’t stop me buying though.

So buying a book, connecting cables, transferring it was and is much more hassle than cracking open an all in one book. Though when I did us it I quite enjoyed it. There are benefits to hand-sized e-readers what use e-ink like the Sony Readers and Kindle. Mainly for me is that you can lay them flat and you can turn the pages at the touch of a button.

But wait there is more. With iBooks on the iPhone/iPad and the Kindle apps (PC/Mac/iPad/iPhone/Android) plus the Kindle itself you sync your reading so you can swap device without worrying about which page you were on.

Take today for example. I went to get a haircut and I thought it was going to be quiet. It wasn’t so I had the choice of either reading a way out of date magazine or continuing reading Peter F Hamilton’s Judas Unchained on my iPhone’s Kindle app. I chose the book. So I’m further along than if I hadn’t have used my phone to read on.

I’ve read in bed with the light off using my iPad and both iBooks and the Kindle app different books of course, which makes it easier to read in bed when you can’t have the light on.

Back to the Kindle. It’s e-ink display means that you can read it in bright sunlight as the screen is reflective just like paper. It does look like grey paper with black type and it’s much sharper and darker than my Sony 505. But unlike paper I’m in control of the size of the type. I can vary the font slightly and alter line spacing meaning that I can alter it for my own personal needs/preferences. No more need for large print books for example.

So we’ve covered the fact I can reader it flat and can turn pages faster meaning I can read faster, I can read the same book on my phone as well as using a dedicated device and I can personalise my experience. But we’ve not mentioned the killer feature. Books in less than 60 seconds. That’s right you can use either the wifi (mine is wifi only) or the 3G connection to download Amazon’s Kindle store and buy books and newspaper subscriptions.

You can do it with iBooks but you can also read that same book outside in bright sun light. Plus there something about the size of a paperback or a paper back sized ereader that feels right. If Sony had announced a UK store and wireless transmission and syncing of books I’d probably be in a tougher position. I might choose the Sony as they, unlike Amazon and Apple, are using a universal format, with a bit of DRM thrown in. But this DRM can be used on a wider range of devices.

Not that it really matters to be honest. Amazon isn’t going anywhere and neither is Apple. Even if they did you’ve probably read all the books you’ve bought. And how many books do you end up re-reading? I guess there is the fact you can’t share books as easily though I think if you’re a family you can though syncing might be affected if you’re all reading the same book at the same time.

The other benefit is the sample function and I recommend this feature even if you are going to buy the book anyway. Not all books have had the same level of care taken in the conversion. I don’t understand why publishers are letting books be supplied with spaces between every single paragraph? I want a book not a webpage. And it really does spoil my flow. But hopefully they’ll get better processes in place.

It’s not every book by a long shot but I made the mistake of buying one without checking only to be frustrated with space paragraphing. But that’s not limited to the Kindle. iBooks and books from Waterstones etc suffer equally with shoddy conversions. The weird thing is that it’s not one publisher or one author or one anything. It’s just random. Though more funny than frustrating is when they’ve left in the hyphens from the print edition.

The Kindle is a solid piece of technology. They’ve waited for version 3 before releasing it in the UK with its own UK store. Plus it’s now a better black colour. I ended up spending £29.99 on a case for it, which is a little more than it should cost. It’s a good case. Stiff on the outside. Fluffy on the inside. Though it does add more to the weight of the thing. Not enough to be inconvenient but it’s not as light as it was with it. And you can bend it under like the advert shows.

For the non-techy book reader it can’t get much better. You don’t need cables to get your books only charging, or a computer as it handles all the file transfer stuff, or card details (it’s linked to your Amazon account) so literally one click. If you happen to loose your Kindle all your books are safe as you can download them to a replacement Kindle.

I can’t see too many negatives. It’s not going to appeal to the casual four book a year book buyer. But for those of us who spend more time reading than average it’s a boom. You can don’t have to worry about which book to take. You just take the Kindle. You don’t need to worry if a book is too heavy for your bag or too uncomfortable to hold. The reader doesn’t change. And at the minute Amazon are going some really great prices so you can try books you might not have done for less £££.

So there we have it. Anything else you want to know about ebooks, ereading etc. ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

On Thursday, 2nd February 2006 I wrote to Evening Standards Letters after they published an article on Stephen King (they published me too). I almost forgotten I’d wrote it. But it might fuel a few reactions and I thought you might like to read it:

In response to ‘For whom the cell tolls’ In defence of Stephen King.

I really don’t know who Harold Bloom is but I know Stephen King. I read his work, and watch his films. Dolores Claiborne is one of my favourite books and Green Mile is a rare film that made me cry at the end. These are not what Stephen King is known for. I’ve never read The Shining, which was published in the year I was born or know any more about it than the reference in The Simpsons. But this shows how influential Stephen King has been on American and British culture. He has been since controversial the publication of Carrie. Maybe Harold Bloom needs to watch more television? Or read more books? And see what people really like.

As an aspiring, to get published, writer I have a choice. Do I write literary fiction or something more popular? In truth I just write but my influences are what I read. I read popular writers like King, Rankin, Pratchett, to name a few. So I write like them.

But they never seem to get the level of respect that Nick Laird, Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith, get even though they are read by a vastly bigger audience.

As a writer do I want to read or do I want to be respected. It seems you can’t be both. You have to wonder if it the readers or the writers that are wrong? Novels should be about stories and characters and if those characters are engaging enough. If that’s the case then people will read them. You only have to look at classic writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, J RR Tolkien to see that.

Should Stephen spend more time editing? Is he just repeating himself? Has he gone stale? I like his later books. So for me he’s more enjoyable now he’s writing without the addictions. Stephen doesn’t always get it right but I’d rather know that there is another one coming along in a few months than worrying that I’ve misread a masterpiece.

Does liking Stephen King make me culturely dumb? It just means reading his style of novel is more enjoyable than ones that only critics seem to love. Harold Bloom sounds like he should be important but it doesn’t seem that the readers, me included, are put off just because he doesn’t like something.

I’m no longer an active writer in the sense that I’m actively writing something for publication but the rest of it still stands. Am I culturally dumb do you think if I’m not really interested in works that would stretch me as much as bore me to tears? I don’t have a inferiority complex about it to be honest. I just know what I like and life is too short not to enjoy yourself.

A review copy of Surface Detail landed in the house today and if you think that it looks exciting on screen the real thing is better! The detail on the space scene looks stunning and the burning eyes along with skin really draw you in and make you wonder who is looking at you. A lot of SF fans should pick it up for a closer look.

Now I have to admit that the only Banks I’ve read is Consider Phlebas and that I abandoned halfway through but after 22 years on what is Surface Detail about?

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y’breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful – and arguably deranged – warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war – brutal, far-reaching – is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it’s about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the centre of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

I’m always up for a murder story with a twist so I’m gonna give Banks another go.

Any thoughts on the cover?

I’ve got another review over at SFRevu. This time it’s ?The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions by Robert Rankin. I had some nice things to say about it too:

Rankin is great at pacing and placing set pieces to amuse you. Not everything works but writing funny is hard and you have to to accept that things are funny because they are Rankin-esque. That isn’t to say that you have to have read any of this stuff before but if you haven’t, he does like to tell a tall-tale or two. And you just have to accept the truth as he presents it. There are some great footnotes reminding you that history is wrong about certain things – usually people’s premature deaths.

You can read more in the review.

Anyone a Rankin fan?

?This year, the fun of complaining about the Man Booker prize has been rather spoiled by the fact that the judging panel appears to have compiled a pretty strong longlist. Disappointingly, nearly all the books appear to be interesting – and at least two on the list – The Slap andRoom – are even proving excitingly divisive and controversial.

To be honest the actual Man Booker does seem like it’s going to come out with something that’s not a compromise prize and the nominations for the Not the Booker are quite strict:

This first round is for nominations. All you have to do is name one book – and only one book – you’d like to see considered for the prize, in the comments section below. This time next week I’ll put up a full list of all nominations and round two will begin. In round two, you vote for the book on the list that you’d most like to see go through. The five books with the most votes will go into the next stage as our shorter shortlist. Easy!

Anyone got any they’d like to see shortlisted on the NTB?

Speaking of shortlisting today the inaugural Longlist for The Green Carnation Prize was announced today:

I’ll let the Chair of The Green Carnation Prize, Paul Magrs, tell you about it:

“This all came about because, suddenly it was literary award season again and longlists were getting bandied about like crazy. And it’s annoying because those lists seem a bit ready-made, middlebrow, monotonous and obvious. Anyway, late July 2010 and there’s the usual palaver about the Booker Longlist. It was obviously going to be the same old gubbins and some of the same old names. And the same nonsense about ‘literary’ fiction being a separate, rarefied preserve, quite apart from other genres.

Anyway, we thought – wouldn’t it be fun and great to do something a bit different?

And then we thought – there’s no prize yet for gay men’s books in the UK. That’s a scandalous thought. There ought to be something that celebrates and publicizes the breadth and variety of their work.

Writing by gay men can be funny, exciting, harrowing, uplifting and challenging – and it can range right across the genres. It can also be created by men from all classes and races.

So here we are – this small panel – setting ourselves the somewhat daunting task of looking at what the queer fellas have brought out this year.

There’s no prize money in this… Maybe a bit of kudos for the winner! There’s our love and devotion as well, of course – and a bit of shouting about the writing we love. Maybe one day we’ll get sponsorship or something. But we’re kicking off anyway, and we think it’ll be fun. Hope you’ll join us…!”

It’s not something that does get celebrated enough. Women have their Orange Prize for Fiction. International writers have the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize…I could go on… so what not gay men’s books?

And there are gay genre characters like in novels like: The Forever War, City of Ruin, Great and Secret Show, The Steel Remains, Lost Souls, Iron Council… to get you started,  incase you thought that genre wasn’t imbracing social norms.

So what did they come up with?

And this years ‘Green Carnation Bunch’ are…

• Generation A by Douglas Coupland (Windmill Books)
• Bryant and May Off the Rails by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)
• Paperboy by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)
• In A Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Atlantic Books)
• God Says No by James Hannaham (McSweeney’s)
• London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp (Myriad Editions)
• Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin (Doubleday)
• Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer (Granta)
• Man’s World by Rupert Smith (Arcadia Books)
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Tuskar Rock Press)
• City Boy by Edmund White (Bloomsbury)

I’d love to know how many books they had to choose from? I might have to try and bride one of the judges… It’s great to see Bryant and May Off the Rails on their representing  genre too.

One of the judges, Simon Savage, is hosting a discussion on his blog, Savage Reads if you want to talk more about it.

And finally, Richard & Judy’s Book Club is back and they have selected 8 surprising and interesting titles:

The Wilding – Maria McCannThe Snowman – Jo Nesbo

Operation Mincemeat – Ben Macintyre

Sister – Rosamund Lupton

A Place of Secrets – Rachel Hore

Waiting for Columbus – Thomas Trofimuk

The Crying Tree – Naseem Rakha

No and Me – Delphine de Vigan

They’ve teamed up with WHSmith and you can find more about that on their site. And Farm Lane Books Blog has the covers, links to Amazon and initial thoughts on her blog. Though the only one that’s grabbed me is The Snowman, which I’ve had in the TBR for far too long.

So there we are. Lots of places to jump in and start talking about books. Quite an exciting post I think.

New Feature: Book Burning look at that feeling when you hear about a book and your mind starts firing and you just can’t wait to read it. Well I’m going to be sharing those here. I might go cold on them  after!

Wanting this one is pretty easy to explain. First it’s a collection of short stories as it says in the blurb:

The Devil is known by many names: Serpent, Tempter, Beast, Adversary, Wanderer, Dragon, Rebel. His traps and machinations are the stuff of legends. His faces are legion. No matter what face the devil wears, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL has them all.

Thirty-five stories, from classics to the cutting edge, exploring the many sides of Satan, Lucifer, the Lord of the Flies, the Father of Lies, the Prince of the Powers of the Air and Darkness, the First of the Fallen… and a Man of Wealth and Taste. Sit down and spend a little time with the Devil.

The same applies to discussing literature of all forms and stripes. Sometimes, we just don’t know what we know and we think we know more than what we really know (and yes, I realize that sounds like something Donald Rumsfeld might have said about the situation in Iraq several years ago). But yet we often make the mistake of presuming that our perspective is the “privileged” one, that others who disparage our opinions are somehow wrong.

link: OF Blog of the Fallen: Perspectives, namely those in that rat’s cage called review blogging

That’s because I’m part of a wonderful bubble that’s in danger of being broken like this:

So, traipsing home disappointed I started to wonder (and then Larry’s post punched it home) about the perspectives of bloggers. Thanks to reading other blogs and being infected by buzz, we become all wrapped up in shiny releases – and sometimes little realise that those releases have absolutely NO impact on booksellers.

link: Floor to Ceiling Books: Living In The Blogger Bubble

Absolutely NO impact on booksellers is probably a little strong. I think there is probably some disconnect between what happens online and what happens in bricks & mortar but that’s not a bad thing. As I’ve mentioned before I can walk into a bookshop and find gems that haven’t been on my radar, which was exciting and occasionally expensive.

But the book-o-sphere is having an impact. I’d guarantee that some books we get excited about and have spikes in online sales they would not have done so without all the buzz that goes from blog to blog.

There are arguments about where are spotlight should fall:

I’m increasingly discovering that there is something resembling a backlist movement. This is what the internet should be used for – not to prop up the titles that get decent amounts of marketing spend on them (mine included) but exploring niches and discovering range.

link: Genre Diversity – Mark Charan Newton

I’m a Pom-pon boy. It’s called NextRead for a reason. For me it’s a game of discovery of my next read. I could and did for a while read a small narrow range of authors and I’d be quiet happy to carry on but some small corner of me is a writer. I know that there are writers there that have someone worth reading and giving them a moment of my time is quite exciting when you find authors you meet minds with. And there is no better feeling than reading a book you totally get.

Speaking of meetings of minds and getting. Well I did get this and I didn’t meet minds on it at all:

Yet the perception – that I believed for a second that fantasy was inferior – proved pervasive. Weirdmage asked, “If you really think Speculative Fiction is an inferior genre, why start a blog about it?” while LEC took after Alex’s tactic, wondering “Are you trying to become the Literary Scotsman, Niall?”

Let me stop for just a second to say: no. I have none of the delusions of grandeur, as if blogging about literary fiction – so called – would somehow grant me such grandeur, that so many commenters seem to assume.

link: The Speculative Scotsman: From the Comments: Complex Inferiority

I think I’m off his Christmas card list for my comment on the earlier post, From the Comments: Inferior Fantasy. Before we carry on just take a second to read it through and make up your own mind.

Right, decided?

This takes us back to the start of this post. If you’re going to say something controversial like Rant: Science Fiction isn’t just dying it has crumbled to dust. Where is the new blood? make sure you explain yourself and not let your point get lost. My point was that we need to support the new writers SF a little more and question why the default in SF is to go backwards. I don’t think I did well there. I did better at Mark’s challenge of diversity with my celebration of short stories.

But there is lighting fires and championing what you believe in like the need for more SF authors on the block and getting people reading and there is:

Fantasy can be a bit crap, can’t it? However close the genre may be to our hearts, we’ve all read some particularly awful examples of the form in our time, I’m sure.

Yes fantasy can be crap an so can literary fiction and crime and chic lit and so on. But you know what? Fantasy can we wonderful as can literary fiction and crime and chic lit etc. Literary fiction isn’t the cream that’s been saved from joining the mould in a pint of milk. Fantasy isn’t a bit grubby and unrefined, which is what came across in the rest of Niall’s post:

‘The cream of the crop of non-genre fiction is going to be necessarily creamier than that in fantasy’

And I think at this point I couldn’t come up with something better than:

Sorry but this is really a load of bollocks.

Alright lets look at this again:

I don’t need for every fantasy novel I read to be academically and intellectually remarkable. I don’t demand that all of fantasy must suddenly devote its attention entire to impressing notoriously hard-to-please critics. That’s not what I want from the genre by any stretch. I understand that what matters most of all, in terms of the experience of reading, is that, as @NextRead put it, we have a good time. I had a good time with The Way of Kings (more on which later, and elsewhere, in fact). But is having a good time truly all that matters? In a vacuum, that kind of argument might fly. As one genre among many, however, and as a staunch supporter of that genre with high hopes that it be less often on the receiving end of snooty, derisory and dismissive attitudes, the likes of which we’re constantly complaining about across the blogosphere, I want twenty Ian McDonalds where I’ve suggested there might be ten, as it stands. I want a hundred Ian McDonalds, damn it. And how is that such a horrendous thing to hope for?

link: The Speculative Scotsman: From the Comments: Complex Inferiority

There are loads of things to address…

I’m happy with what’s on my shelves. I know that there are going to be a range of storytellers there and a wide range of ways they can be told. And I do have my preferences in what stories I immediately want to read and some stories I get persuaded to read by others (I’ll never forgive them for Twelve never especially James Long- I question his taste I really do ) but I’m never stuck for something to read and something to try.

If you want a certain style of writing then go for those authors that do it for you. Is it really true that those who want their ‘genre in a lit fic style’, whatever that means, come up short? – I can take a stab at some authors that would fit but I don’t really think in those terms.

Everyone is a critic in some way even if it’s just saying to your friends, ‘You have to read Twilight! I want to know if your Team Edward!’

I’d love to know who are doing this:

…that it be less often on the receiving end of snooty, derisory and dismissive attitudes, the likes of which we’re constantly complaining about across the blogosphere.

Who have those snooty, derisory and dismissive attitudes? And does it matter?

The only issue should be between the author and the reader. Did they manage to tell you a story that by the end you found you enjoyed. If not, is it you or the author? You can’t complain when you get a burger at McDonalds – you want pretentiousness choose a Michelin Star!

Now I’m doing it. I’m reinforcing the idea that one thing is better than another. It’s an easy trap to fall into isn’t it…

And after making a whole post about it what do I really want to say?

I’m more interested in finding interesting books and reading and sharing them.

And you know what if you’re worried about being judged for your reading buy an iPad or a Kindle and keep reading what you want!

And if you need help finding your idea book there is a a whole book-o-sphere to help you out!

It’s taken over a week to sort out with testing and backing up and planning and other behind the scenes boring stuff with has taken me away from updating the blog as I needed to freeze the blog to copy stuff.

There is plenty going on around the book-o-sphere including some new covers and I’ve stuck one hot cover on the sidebar as a teaser.

I love it.

What do you think of the cover? Good? Bad? Meh?

UPDATE

eek – I seem to be having ongoing problems – if you need to email me try gmail  - it’s nextread then at then the gmail and dot com

Sorry!!