“Some years ago — it might have been in 1984 — I told a friend of my growing delight in Jules Verne, and how I’d so much like to own one of his books in its original format. Verne’s novels were first published in the middle of the century before the one before this one. The series was called Voyages Extraordinaires. The publisher and editor was Verne’s dear friend Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The bindings were intaglio’d with globes and alembics, elephants and balloons, harpoons and astrolabes. Though they were tooled leather, they gave the sense of dark wood, of hand-turned brass. They seemed not just of another era but of another world. To run your fingers over the cover of a Hetzel octavo was to go on an extraordinary voyage, a Braille of wonder.
I was told that if I wanted to purchase a Voyage Extraordinaire, the place to go was the Librairie Jules Verne, called l’Île Mysterieuse. I was told they specialized in the author. I was not told that they sold nothing else.”
Howard A. Rodman on a visit to a mysterious island.
• 13 June 2011
powellandpressburger:
Wise Guys
This is like all of my favourite things happening at once.
• 10 June 2011 • 152 notes
lerevue asked: I just saw the trailer for Peppers...I live in Chicago...must see this, how can I?
Thanks for asking! PEEPERS isn’t scheduled for release in Chicago at the mo, but keep checking back, I’ll hopefully have DVD or VOD news soon!
• 9 June 2011 • 1 note
Hey, so… Peepers, the Montreal-set comedy about the lives of Peeping Toms I co-wrote and co-produced and acted in and spent five years of my life on and etc etc, “leads the 12th annual Canadian Comedy Awards with five nominations!”
One of the awards we’re nommed for, Best Film, is voted on by the public. So if you feel like it, you can register to vote here! I’d be happy if you did. (You have to be Canadian, though.)
• 9 June 2011 • 6 notes
eBooks should never be more expensive than paper books
My brother gave me a Kindle as a gift last year. I love it; I’m a big reader and it’s especially useful when I travel (I used to pack pounds of books whenever I went away for over a week). And theoretically, I like the idea of buying a book online and having it in my hands instantly. That’s a pleasant convenience. But I’m not willing to pay a premium for it, and that’s the main reason that since I got my Kindle, I’ve bought as many or more “paper” books than eBooks.
It hardly bears explaining, but a paper book is far more expensive for publishers to produce and distribute it; they are physical objects that need to be made, and shipped, and distributed, and sold by human beings. While eBooks almost certainly have some costs associated with their distribution, it stands to reason that they are negligible compared to the process of creating a physical object and sending it around the world.
So, frankly, it makes me angry when I see eBooks priced higher than their paperback equivalents. This isn’t a rare thing, either; in the past couple months, nearly all of the books I’ve browsed on Amazon with the intent to buy are cheaper in paper form.
Some examples (all in U.S. dollars, all Associates links):
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
(Charles C. Mann)
Paperback price: $9.52
Kindle price: $11.99
A Visit from the Goon Squad
(Jennifer Egan)
Paperback price: $8.22
Kindle price: $9.99
Cloud Atlas: A Novel
(David Mitchell)
Paperback price: $8.82
Kindle price: $11.99
If the Dead Rise Not (Bernie Gunther)
(Philip Kerr)
Paperback price: $8.59
Kindle price: $9.99
Now, in most cases I’ve found that the price difference isn’t huge—a couple of dollars, usually. And I’d probably be happy to pay the Kindle price if the paperback wasn’t cheaper. But the very fact that it is in all of these cases drives me insane. I just can’t do it; I can’t pay more for a digital version of a book that is less useful to me. I can’t lend them, really, in any reasonable way—even if the Kindle lending program was available here in Canada, it’s got way too many strings attached and I can’t resell them. And for god’s sake, they’re so much less expensive to produce and deliver to me. As convenient and wonderful as eBooks are, I’m just not happy spending money on them, and if more people catch on, that seems like it might become a problem for the people selling them.
• 31 May 2011 • 4 notes
CNN.com, always asking the tough questions.
• 18 May 2011 • 7 notes
I think Tumblr’s reply/reblog/ask/etc features would work a lot better if I could ever figure out who said what and who was replying to whom. Entries from other blogs that appear on my Dashboard that read “so-and-so replied to your post:” (really, my post?) make no sense at all.
• 13 May 2011 • 2 notes
