review – Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

On February 28, 2009February 28, 2009 By Rick McIn books, product endorsements, travelLeave a comment

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar is the most recent Paul Theroux book.

He retraces his rail journey from Europe through Asia of 30-years earlier.

Theroux has mellowed with age. Now in his mid-60s, he’s less disagreeable than ever before in this, another travel classic.

I’ve read all his travel books. He’s one of my favourite authors. Always entertaining and informative. This one is as good as any of the others. Read it.

Still, critics call Theroux: arrogant, dishonest, a narcissist, a misanthropist.

Certainly he’s envious of greater writers than himself, especially Nobel Prize in Literature winner V. S. Naipaul. Theroux thinks much about the great authors, obviously because he thinks himself just as skilled a wordsmith, unrecognized. Unawarded.

Theroux’s the son of a French-Canadian father and an Italian mother, I learned.

ghost-train

Amazon – Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

This book has rekindled my interest in travel. I’m ruminating future prospects right now.

Aging too, I liked the moments on this long journey where Paul Theroux found himself “content”. Even happy.

do you need a Kindle?

On February 27, 2009February 25, 2009 By Rick McIn audiocasts, books, product endorsements1 Comment

I don’t.

Because I no longer read.

I pick up very few newspapers or magazines. And almost never read books.

My preferred input source is my ears. I listen to audiocasts including:

Buzz Out Loud

The Economist

NY Times Front Page

MacBreak Weekly

net@night

NPR

On The Media

Slate Magazine

This American Life

This Week in Tech

WNYC Radio Lab

And listen to books on tape. Currently Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux.

But those who still like to use their eyes to read … are quite charmed by the Kindle.

A respected review:

The good:
Slimmer and sleeker looking than the original Kindle; large library of tens of thousands of e-books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs via Amazon’s familiar online store; built-in free wireless “Whispernet” data network–no PC needed; built-in keyboard for notes and navigation; a faster processor speeds up the device; with 2GB of internal memory, it’s capable of storing 1,500 electronic books; font size is adjustable; improved battery life; displays image files and plays MP3 and AAC audio; compatible with Windows and Mac machines; new Text-to-Speech feature allows you to have text read aloud.

The bad:
No expansion slot for adding more memory or accessing files; files such as PDFs and Word documents aren’t natively supported, and need to be converted at 10 cents a pop by Amazon; no protective carrying case included; battery is sealed into the device and isn’t removable; hardware and content is still too expensive.

The bottom line:
While it’s still short of perfection–and has a price tag that’s too high–the Amazon Kindle 2 offers a range of improvements that makes it the best overall e-book reader we’ve seen to date.

Price range: $359.00

CNET

upcoming new BBQ cookbook

On February 5, 2009February 4, 2009 By Rick McIn books, food, product endorsementsLeave a comment

barbecue-secrets-deluxe

Due later this Spring.

just finished the Twilight series

On January 28, 2009January 28, 2009 By Rick McIn books, movies, product endorsements2 Comments

All 4 published books are good. It kept me going right to the end. (I’d like to know what happens next to the Cullen clan.)

The writing is not Nobel Prize worthy, but the plot is engaging.

I’m looking forward to the next movie. Rumour is Dakota Fanning will play super vampire Jane.

Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)

Twilight is a series of four vampire-based fantasy/romance novels by the American author Stephenie Meyer. It follows the adventures of Isabella “Bella” Swan, a teenager who moves to Forks, Washington, and finds her life turned upside-down when she falls in love with a vampire named Edward Cullen. …

Wikipedia

I immediately started the next Harry Potter book in audio. It’s titled Harry Potter and the Gob of Deathly Phoenix Blood … something like that.

cruel and shallow money trench

On January 11, 2009January 8, 2009 By Rick McIn Apple, books, music1 Comment

I love the Hunter S. Thompson line so often attributed to the Record Industry:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

This week Apple announced that all 10 million songs in itunes will soon be DRM (Digital Rights Management) free. A death sentence for the old model of music distribution.

Appetite for Self-Destruction is a new book by Rolling Stone magazine editor Steve Knopper.

The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age

… Should anyone care that in the process, the iPod has all but killed the music industry as we’ve known it? Maybe not, Steve Knopper writes in “Appetite for Self-Destruction,” his stark accounting of the mistakes major record labels have made since the end of the LP era and the arrival of digital music. These dinosaurs, he suggests, are largely responsible for their own demise. …

NY Times – When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won

This quotation has has achieved the status of urban legend. Here’s the original:

… The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. …

Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80’s

Price / music track will drop steadily into the forseeable future.

Twilight – vampire craze

On January 6, 2009January 6, 2009 By Rick McIn books, movies, music, product endorsements2 Comments

Buffy might have been a fad. But the new TV series True Blood seems to be a hit. (I saw episode #1. It was OK.)

And the staggering success of the Twilight novel series by Stephenie Meyer makes me believe this is a real “craze”. There’s almost a blood lust for these books.

Twilight is a series of four vampire-based fantasy/romance novels by the American author Stephenie Meyer. It follows the adventures of Isabella “Bella” Swan, a teenager who moves to Forks, Washington, and finds her life turned upside-down when she falls in love with a vampire named Edward Cullen. …

The Twilight series is popular among young adults, having sold 20 million copies in the United States and over 5 million further copies worldwide.

Wikipedia

Disclosure. Even I’ve read book 1. And quite enjoyed it. (These are the first and last Romance novels of my life.)

Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)

The author said she based book 1 Twilight on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. That’s a bit of stretch.

She posted a musical playlist to accompany book 1. Cool. It’s somewhat similar to the movie soundtrack which has already sold over a million copies.

Click PLAY or watch the Twilight Movie trailer on YouTube.

The film scores an overall approval rating of 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not good.

Actually, I thought it was quite good. Well cast. But some of the changes made to the book were unnecessary. Better would have been to stay more true to the details of the original.

I’m planning to read Book 2 in the series next. Leave a comment if you have an opinion on the vampire craze.

dead tree books are dead to me

On December 29, 2008December 24, 2008 By Rick McIn books, dead to meLeave a comment

The newspaper industry is shrinking.

Book publishers are hurting badly.

Some feel the next big thing is eBooks. (The Kindle is sold out until February.) But I don’t want a Kindle. It’s not much better than the book I have sitting unread on my bedside table.

I don’t want to “read”.

I like audible books.

Listening to books while I’m walking, biking, on the bus.

Sadly, there’s only one main distributor of audible books …

mainimage
Audible.com

And — since they were bought by Amazon last March — I’m not sure how quickly Audible is going to bring the books I want to MP3. Their selection is too limited for me.

I’m happy to pay $12 for an audio copy of a book I want … but they won’t produce an audio version of most books. No wonder publishers are failing.

death of the publishing industry

On December 28, 2008December 22, 2008 By Rick McIn books, economics, product complaintsLeave a comment

The economic news couldn’t be worse for the book industry. Now insiders are asking how literature will survive.

The end of days is here for the publishing industry — or it sure seems like it. On Dec. 3, now known as “Black Wednesday,” several major American publishers were dramatically downsized, leaving many celebrated editors and their colleagues jobless. …

Salon – Read it and weep

It’s bad.

But I’m not all that sympathetic.

Traditional book publishers are as almost as bad as music publishers, relying on a “star” system rather than allowing fair access for new talent.

If Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House and Macmillan all go bankrupt, something different — and better — will rise from the ashes. They’ve been terribly slow to innovate.

Where are the audio books? Ebooks? New technologies to encourage younguns to read?

onion_imagearticle2532
Onion – larger version

dead at 66 – Michael Crichton

On November 5, 2008November 5, 2008 By Rick McIn books, movies, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Rest in peace.

Crichton died unexpectedly Tuesday “after a courageous and private battle against cancer,” the release said. …

Crichton, a medical doctor, was attracted to cautionary science tales.

“Jurassic Park” — perhaps his best-known work — concerned capturing the DNA of dinosaurs and bringing them to life on a modern island, where they soon run amok; “The Andromeda Strain,” his first major fiction success, involves an alien microorganism that’s studied in a special military compound after causing death in a nearby community.

Crichton also invited controversy with some of his scientific views. He was an avowed skeptic of global climate change, giving lectures warning against “consensus science.”

…

Though most of Crichton’s books were major best-sellers involving science, he could ruffle feathers when he took on social issues. “Rising Sun” (1992) came out during a time when Americans feared Japanese ascendance, particularly when it came to technology. “Disclosure” (1994) was about a sexual harassment case. ..

Crichton was married five times and had one child.

CNN

I read most of his books and admired his craft. He was a doom and gloom pessimist, though, always finding the global catastrophe in every new technology.

It’s hard to choose a favourite book or movie.

Perhaps Westworld had more effect on me than any other.