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“But that’s just a cosmetic detail; the real meat of Grossman’s article is his thesis that the novel, which was born out of economic circumstance, will become “cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever” in response to today’s market conditions. Mostly, he’s focused on the digital world—e-books, podcasts, Japan’s cellphone-based keitai shosetsu and emerging American counterparts, and fanfiction repositories.”
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‘Publisher Walt Shiel offered these thoughts: “The e-book reading experience is still no where near on a par with that of a print book, so a higher price is just not acceptable to me…As a micro-publisher, I see e-books as an integral part of our information business model. We publish all our e-books with a coupon for a discount (equal to the e-book purchase price) applicable to the purchase price of the print edition.”‘
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” have a dumb question, one that’s been nagging at me recently: What exactly is an author or book website supposed to do? The short answer is sell books. But it ain’t that simple.”
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“We think of the novel as a transcendent, timeless thing, but it was shaped by the forces of money and technology just as much as by creative genius.” (via @sarahw)
Jan 232009
The Serial Killers Club by Jeff Povey
Publication: Hachette Audiobook, read by Holter Graham, 7:01 long (2006) / ISBN 9781594836398
Genre: Thriller
Rating: 4.5/5
Find paper copy @ Amazon
I am so glad I picked up this audiobook from my library. It made the first week of school bearable. Summary from Amazon:
When the anonymous narrator, who combines a blithe Bertie Wooster–like innocence with a psychopathic taste for slaughter, “accidentally” kills a mass murderer, he assumes the man’s identity. An odd set of personal advertisements lure the narrator to Chicago, where he encounters the club of the book’s title. Since the club’s members adopt the names of movie stars as aliases, he decides to become Douglas Fairbanks Jr. “Doug” quickly moves from shock and fear to preying on his fellow club members, attracting the notice of a bizarre FBI agent, who offers to let him off the hook if he finishes off the rest of them.
The entire plot is absurd and ridiculous, and thus hilarious. Doug has a strange grasp on reality, and the people around him are just as insane. A serial killer who kills people with a pitchfork? Another who kills people via ink poisoning? Ha! And poor Doug– he keep assimilating the other serial killer’s personalities and quirks, and I think it made him even more insane that he already was (and funnier, of course).
It’s surprising that I ended up liking Dougie at all, but I think he was so weird and yet enthusiastic I couldn’t help it. Though his reality was obviously not the same as the other killers’ (he got so unstable I started thinking Agent Wade was a hallucination), I still wanted him to “win,” survive the rest of the killers and the electric chair. This next part could be a spoiler: the ending made me really happy, and though I had a fun time trying to figure out who the Kentucky Killer– a superstar serial killer– was, I didn’t expect the solution that I was given. (Maybe I’m just really bad at solving mysteries; I can’t help thinking that someone better at it would have figured it out before me. But maybe the writing was just that good, and so maybe I’m not a blind idiot. Um.)
Holter Graham is an excellent reader: he uses different voices for all the characters, and, even better, he changes his intonation and speed when the story calls for it. It makes for a really engaging, lively performance. I loved it!
I’d recommend this to anyone who wants a dark, humorous thriller, and I can confidently say that if you like that sort of thing, The Serial Killers Club will make you lol. If you care about looking nuts in public, then maybe don’t get the audiobook– I know I got more than a few weird looks when I was walking around laughing to myself– but do get the book. It’s worth it.
Apparently there’s going to be some sort of sequel, with Dougie getting into trouble again. I look forward to reading it!
Other reviews: The Casual Observer | Book-Blog.com | Tony’s Blogosphere
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