Yeah but it’s books!
So there!
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You can also request them in your library as a preorder too. That’s helpful for the author. In particular for those of us who like books that may get series. Typically there are declining sales across series so preordering (even in the library) gets the publisher or print more, gets them to even quicker, and makes them more likely to commission sequels.
I’m not sure it’s entirely true that films have shorter windows. They tended to always have a pretty brief run it’s just that, prior to Jaws, most of them had staggered releases across territories (in part to save money on prints) so it just happens all at once. That said you often see a film running for ages, for example I’m still here ran for ages, or Blue Road did too. What I see more is that there are forced big openings of whatever shit film they want to be a blockbuster, pushing out mid ranking films that actually have audiences. Earlier in the summer I looked at the numbers booked in my local cinema and it was funny that they had so many screenings of films that nobody wanted to see with other films with solid audiences on small screens and bad times.
That strikes me as a vertical integration problem.
ETA
I believe Charles Stross has written about what you can do for authors (and yes, preordering is good!)
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Promising…
More than thirty years ago, Sinéad O’Connor shocked the world by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II in an act of protest against the violence perpetrated by the Catholic Church. This single act cemented O’Connor’s place as a fearless voice and activist that would later push even further as Sinead became an advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness, the LGBTQ+ community, and abortion rights. Here in Nothing Compares to You, a renowned and multi-generational group of women and non-binary authors come together to pay tribute to O’Connor’s impact on our world and in their own lives and development as humans and artists.
Nothing Compares to You is a loving and accessible reconsideration and entry point for understanding the Irish icon. Exploring themes such as gender identity, spirituality, artistic expression, and personal transformation, this collection shows that Sinead’s voice continues to ring on even after her death and brilliantly illustrates the power of creative expression to inspire far beyond any presumed lines of age, culture, or class.
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The Tor newsletter has a comic con related sweepstake to win a batch of books
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I recently finished this. A fun romp with an attempt to knock Holmes down a peg or two.
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Just finished The Rich People Have Gone Away: A Novel by Regina Porter. Probably the first novel I’ve read dealing with the COVID pandemic. Intriguing, even as I had a distaste for most of the characters and their motivations. I also thought the anger from one character at the end was disingenuous.
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There must be a way to make books act as structural elements of a building when not actively being used.
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Holmes needs a good pegging
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Irina Adler is our top woman for the job.
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Oops, didn’t realize that thread was closed (regarding Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song):
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It was a very devastating read. How things just get worse and worse and worse throughout the whole thing… and I loved his writing style for this novel. It fit with the endlessly suffocating action happening in that woman’s life… it gets increasingly suffocating as events move along.
I have not read anything else by him, so I don’t know if it’s his regular style or if he did it specifically to match the topic matter.
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One great part about the novel, {spoiler ahead}
is that Ellish is a wife and a mother with a job and by the time she’s being kicked out of her job, it is revealed she is a PHD microbiologist working in an important lab. The sudden shift in the reader’s perception, going from the impression of working class to educated middle class is made much more terrible when the entire lab staff becomes made up of unqualified political appointees.
Think about how many families that is happening to today, not only here in Trumpistan, but also in other war torn places like Gaza, Ukraine, and others.
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Got it on Saturday. One of the few times I will pay a higher price for a book that qualifies for Amazon Prime, instead of paying 6 or 7 bucks and getting it a week later.
THAT’S how much Ms. Fitzhugh’s work has influenced me. Only error I spotted is a description of Mr. Waldenstein’s delivery vehicle as a motorcycle; it was not. It was deliveryman’s trike, with a large lidded box between the two back wheels that was pedal-powered.
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I found these comics in a second-hand bookstore. I have already finished the first volume of autobiographical comic book take on the life of late congressman John Lewis, but it focus on the struggle of black American activists from the late 1950s to the 1960s.
I barely knew about the life of black people in southern US under the Jim Crow system. Sure I know people such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. But reading this book I realize that the struggle for people’s rights was much larger and the violence that the reactionary forces carried out against them was terrible.
Small acts of rebellion by people unhappy with injustice often led to disproportionate reactions. One thing that caught my attention was the political system in the United States. People firmly believed they had theliberty to deny the freedom to a group of human beings and that this was right and whoever wanted to change this should suffer even more. Another interesting thing was to note the role of religion in this struggle. Churches were unifying places, with cohesive communities capable of navigating this unfair system and providing opportunities for people.
I confess that I have to go back and forth reading it several times. There are so many names, so many places and dates that I sometimes get lost. So many people who were willing to fight for what they believed in, even getting hit on the head, ending up in jail and sometimes being murdered was something that really moved me.
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Once I was out and about in Decatur (which is a small city right next to ATL). It was during the Decatur book festival… and there was John Lewis at a booth promoting this comic! He also came and spoke to a class I was in during undergrad, as one of the students was an intern in his office. I also saw him getting coffee at a starbucks that was on the first floor of the building where his ATL office was… it was adjacent to GSU’s campus…
And once at San Diego Comiccon, he cosplayed as his younger self and led a march through the convention…
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I’m still reading the comics, but you can see his evolution from an idealistic young man to a man who sees that the fight requires going back and forth, but never stopping moving forward.
I found it funny how his emphasis on pacifist methods, non-violent actions and the support he received from Protestant churches were not taken into account by white people and the authorities. In the book he clearly shows the contrast between his methods and those of other activists and how whites and authorities perceived them. Despite following examples like Gandhi’s, they were feared as dangerous communists who were against God’s laws.
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Yeah, the demonization of the non-violent resistance movement was awful and shows just how violent the white establishment actually was. This was a key part of the tactic, to show a real difference between the Movement and the white segregationist, for whites who were on the fence about it. Seeing young people not resisting, but being met with violent force anyway left a huge impression on many whites who did not live in the south and never thought about race relations much. The nature of the mass media at the time helped - largely centralized, unlike today…
But I’ve always thought that it was a method that worked at that time and place, and won’t necessarily always be successful. We saw that with BLM, where it was largely non-violent, but got twisted all out of proportion by the right wing media and social media…
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Julio’s Day by Gilbert Hernandez. A lifetime, 100 years compressed into a single day. Of course, it was rushed. Julio was born in the early 20th century in a remote part of the United States, and like Forrest Gump, his life, full of joys and sorrows, intertwined with the country’s history. He is a closeted gay man, but what choice does He have? Life could be hard for men like him in the backwater land. This comic books It’s quite disappointing, precisely because it’s rushed and falls well short of Mr. Hernandez’s other works. Look for Love & Rockets, especially the stories around the fictitious village of Palomar to get an idea of the power of his talent.
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Publication day for HEALTH CARE CIVIL RIGHTS: How Discrimination Law Fails Patients from @ucpress.bsky.social!
118 in depth interviews, analysis of 1500 health insurance plan documents and dozens of legal cases, 8 years of research to explain why our laws fail us when we need them most.
Also critical context for what’s happening now: how federal funding got to be the key to civil rights enforcement, why trans health care rights are the primary target, and how under- and un-regulated health insurance markets weaken our rights.
…
Free and open access!
Link: Health Care Civil Rights by Anna Kirkland - Paper - University of California Press
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She discusses several books and shows, and there are spoilers…
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