It’s been a while since I closed the various “book stuff” tabs, so let’s take a run through those, shall we? I came to this by the Lord Dunsany connection, but I don’t think you need to be on that page at all to enjoy H. E. Gowers’ HASCHISCH HALLUCINATIONS, posted over at the blog of master-designer-and-artist-of-the-eldritch John Coulthart. I’ve… Read more →
Tag: things to buy
Keep Hitting Play
I like to think of myself as pretty musically eclectic: it’s not so much that I like one category of music or another, but rather that I like the good stuff. Which leads to lots of pockets of music that appeal to me throughout the entire space of music. There are areas I’ve kind of shied away from for one… Read more →
Book wear
Yeah, there are a few shirts at Out Of Print that I would totally wear… but there’s only one Immediate Must Buy. I wish it were black, or at least something dark, but there is no denying the power of Bulgarkov and his book. And hey, good cause. Read more →
Vaguely book-related
You know the drill: links with pithy comments. Let’s start off this list with Jo Walton costing me a pile of money. I’ve mentioned before enjoying her Tor.com reviews, and finding significant alignment between her tastes and mine… so when she reviews a series of spy novels that I somehow have never even heard of, and makes them sound very… Read more →
“Without music life would be a mistake”
(photo credit: www.iliaphotography.com) In the weeks (well, at this point I guess I could say “months” although it doesn’t feel like it) that I’ve been back in Ontario, I’ve had a number of encounters with things that were once regular parts of my life before my near-decade out East, and some have been shocking and jarring, others kind of like… Read more →
Finder: Go Read It
No, I’m not talking about Emma Bull‘s 1994 novel Finder–although I think you should go read that too, and all the other Borderlands stuff. I’m talking about Carla Speed McNeil’s comic Finder. Why should you read it, you might ask? Well, I think it’s one of the best straight up science fiction comics out there, and I’ve been following it… Read more →
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
One of my favourite possessions is my Tilley. Yes, I know that most people who wear them are at least a generation older than I am. Yes, I know they’re hardly fashionable. I could care less–I am quite fond of my khaki/olive T5. Here’s the thing: it fits–no small thing for a man who was laughed out of a hat… Read more →
Let Us Talk Of Webcomics: Part 1, Dresden Codak.
I read a fair number of comics–you know the old school printed kind that one buys at speciality stores these days (admittedly some of them can be purchased at the larger bookstores as well, particularly the Asian imports, but most of what I read is speciality shop only). The “direct market” has been in some trouble for a while now,… Read more →
More Book-y Bits
Did you get a chance to experience the cognitive dissonance that comes from VanderMeerian words read in a high-toned children’s literature type voice? Speaking of VanderMeerian weirdness, there was a nice little slice of it over at Tor.com. Sometime soon (yes, Real Soon Now) I will write another golden book post, and this one will focus on a Pat Cadigan… Read more →
Closing the book-related tabs
And here we go again… I’ve been reading Jeff’s daily reviews of the books in the Penguin Great Ideas series. While I don’t think I’m interested in trying to read all sixty of them in sixty days (despite Jeff’s examples and the exhortation of the Harvard University Press) I am very impressed with the presentation of the volumes, and have… Read more →
Closing tabs from last year
You know the drill. I’m skipping the stuff that deals with Bush, Harper, or books, which should get their own posts. I had a weird fascination with Cass Elliot for a while there, primarily as a reaction to how much I was digging her tune California Earthquake. There were some weird side effects of this, from the relatively obvious, like… Read more →
A few words about “ouch”
Since an online discussion brought this back to my mind today: That’s a habanero pepper. (It’s a close cousin of, and more or less interchangeable with, the scotch bonnet pepper.) For most people in North America, it’s the hottest pepper you can easily get your hands on–indeed, there are probably lots of people who think it’s the hottest pepper, hands… Read more →
Artist & Savvy Businessman
As I write this I’m downloading five new tracks by my oft-mentioned-here pal Danny Michel. It appears that just before Christmas Danny made a deal to get digital rights to his back catalogue back from the label in exchange for giving them the rights to retail physical copies of his new indie CD. At least that’s what I get out… Read more →
Adding Some Character
When I finally gave in to Jobs and switched from my series of non-Apple mp3 players to the iPod I wanted to give mine some character. Ironically, one of the primary reasons I switched was all the third-party stuff that was available for the iPod, so it was easy to start looking into ways to “trick it out”. My first… Read more →
Aside
You may recall me marvelling at some of the images from Berni Wrightson’s Frankenstein portfolio. Well, today I picked up Dark Horse’s new big, beautiful hardcover edition of Frankenstein that’s lavishly illustrated with Wrightson’s images. It is a thing of beauty, and a steal at a $30 retail. There’s a preview online that gives you a sense of both the illustrations and the text design/layout.
