Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Interesting posts and other things that have caught my eye this week. It isn’t actually everything, since I didn’t want to kill myself copy-pasting, so for the entire link collection check out my Delicious page.

Books in General

• Girl / Tor.com
  “In the private domain, court life is not grueling diplomacy or international posturing, but a backdrop for fashion and a tiara. Books concerned with the public domain, by contrast, deal with politics, crime, military, science, and medicine. Guess which books typically get the girl protagonists?”
• deepad: I Didn’t Dream of Dragons
  “There isn’t even an Indian speculative fiction genre–how many of us do you think, were we to be authors who wished to world-build in an AU Brazilian setting, would be able to afford a plane ticket to visit there. And on a smaller level–try talking to the elite academic professors at Delhi University or the University of Ghana. Find out how long it takes for academic journals to reach them, or how the library at the University of Chicago is better stocked in South East Asian texts than any Indian library. Compare how many undergraduates in the US have free access to LexusNexus, with the number of elite Indian private school teachers who rely on Wikipedia because they can’t afford subscriptions to academic article sites.”

Authors & Publishers

• Cherie Priest » Blog Archive » Control
  “In short, of course authors would love it if everyone could buy brand new copies of their books. But the next best thing is borrowing books from a friend or library; and no, most of the authors I know don’t have problems with used book stores, either. The reasons are primarily twofold: (1). original purchase, and (2). scale.”

Book Wishlist

• Eye of the Crow by Shane Peacock. Ms Bookish says: “I know this is a children’s book, but the fact is, once you start reading, you’ll find yourself drawn into the world of 1860s London – drawn so deeply in you can almost smell the grime and feel the grit. And you’re not going to be thinking to yourself, I’m reading a children’s book – you’re going to be too deep in the story to remember that you actually are reading a book.”
• Plus a buttload of books I found through the Unsung YA posts, which I’ll list tomorrow.

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