The mail is still coming in about my review of Barnes & Noble’s latest e-book reader, the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. Very little of the mail is actually about the reader, though. Most of it challenges the statements I made when I characterized the state of the e-book world right now. How Compatible Are Rival E-Readers?
Handsome young men in Stuttgart adapting an episode of Jason Yungbluth’s “Clarissa” comic. Yes, that J Yungbluth, of “Weapon Brown” fame, but, alas, these cats in Stuttgart aren’t doing that masterpiece. StuffedFriend
It’s going to be a strange world for those of us over 40 if book writing is going to become an unpaid vocation like composing, poetry, and most of the fine arts. Publishing today
Not only has she got a new book out, Are you my Mother?, but she won a Guggenheim and I just found out about both of those things. I must get out more. Congratulations, Ms. Bechdel.
On the heels of yesterday’s news that Microsoft is investing $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook and college businesses, B&N CEO William Lynch says that the company plans to embed NFC (near field communication) chips into Nooks. Users could take their Nook into a Barnes & Noble store and wave it near a print book to get info on it or buy it. That could help someone gain quick information on their Nook about a book, making it easy to go from browsing to buying. Consumers could also choose to just buy a printed book in the store with the additional information gleaned from the Nook. The model would help ensure that showrooming leads to sales through Barnes & Noble, whether users ultimately purchase a print or e-book, instead of sending them online and possibly Amazon. Soon you’ll be able to use your Nook to buy books in Barnes & Noble stores.
Over the years, Dr. Gimbel’s wonderful essays have graced the pages of J Bloglandia 1:1 and 2:2, and now, lucky world, he has a whole book on Einstein! Yay!
“Is relativity Jewish? The Nazis denigrated Albert Einstein’s revolutionary theory by calling it “Jewish science,” a charge typical of the ideological excesses of Hitler and his followers. Philosopher of science Steven Gimbel explores the many meanings of this provocative phrase and considers whether there is any sense in which Einstein’s theory of relativity is Jewish.
“Arguing that we must take seriously the possibility that the Nazis were in some measure correct, Gimbel examines Einstein and his work to explore how beliefs, background, and environment may—or may not—have influenced the work of the scientist. You cannot understand Einstein’s science, Gimbel declares, without knowing the history, religion, and philosophy that influenced it.” Einstein’s Jewish Science, Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion, by Steven Gimbel, John Hopkins University Press, ISBN 9781421405544
or Amazon:
Storylandia, Issue 6, Winter 2012
The Wapshott Journal of Fiction
Paullette Gaudet, The Deepest Crease Visible; T Sheehan, Amie and Sherry and the Twilight Diner; V. Ulea, Expecting a Star; JJ Steinfeld, The Furtive Men Play the Wretched Bar; Dustin Grayson, Best Head Ever; Chris Castle, Mall in Rainbows; cover by Magda Audifred
Where to buy: 10% off with this code: HDCYF4CR at this online store; Amazon, eligible for free shipping; Kindle ebook format only until July 20, 2012.
We were driving back to the city from Indio after the Coachella concert, and Mark, my best friend and roommate, was asking his usual road-trip questions. They had advanced over the years from things like “Would you rather be burned to death, or suffocate?” or “You and boyfriend Quentin Tarantino seek a third, available weekends—who responds to your ad?” to ones like “Would you be willing to live without love, if it meant you could own a house outright?” Mark had adjusted his questions recently to accommodate my increasing retreat from whimsy, I think—his more absurd proposals were now reserved for new acquaintances, and when I overheard them they made me sad for a time when I was younger, and drunker, and still thought I would someday meet Quentin Tarantino. Mark couldn’t, even for me, make his questions completely dull, so it didn’t surprise me when he asked, “Would you ever date a midget?”
Tom Sheehan Amie and Sherry and the Twilight Diner
On the morning of her 25th birthday, on a July day, Amie Lightstreet walked into the Twilight Diner, just off Exit 185, US 80 eastbound, in Pennsylvania. She went immediately to a table in the far corner, the last empty booth in the diner just before a couple came in the door. The waitress hurried over with a menu and said, “Coffee, Hon?”
She was expecting a baby.
“What are you having?” he wondered, watching the sunset.
“I think it’s going to be a star,” she said quietly, answering his thoughts.
He only smiled, caressing her head. She still looked like a girl—slim and lithe, her shoulders buried in a golden waterfall of hair.
Last time she gave birth to a wave. Emerald green—just like the color of her eyes—and it added music to the ocean.
“The ocean is silent on the inside and sounding on the outside,” she had said. “It needs music…” She had not known she was pregnant with the wave.
J. J. Steinfeld The Furtive Men Perform Nightly at the Wretched Street Bar
I still can’t get that writer woman out of my mind. It’s been almost a year since we were last together, since she disappeared, but I’m not worried about her. I know that wherever in the world she is, that woman knows exactly what she’s doing. It took me a long time to understand why she came to the stinking little bar I work at, but I sure found out. She called it the Wretched Street Bar and I liked that name a hell of a lot more than the Lilac Avenue Lounge, which it’s been called for longer than anyone I know can remember. She also gave the house band a great name: The Furtive Men. I’d like to see that writer woman again, but that’s impossible, as impossible as me ever quitting this place I work at and getting a regular daytime job.
Dustin Grayson Best Head Ever
Brian Hughes did not like to make an entrance. Attention made him sweat. His pink skin would blanch and turn the sour color of buttermilk. He was a teenager, looked exactly like one, and was nothing short of ordinary. He walked into St. Pius the same time as Paul, and while he had both hands open, no one shook, clapped, or embraced them. The only classmates who knew him were Paul and Katie Lee Marcovich, the girl he has loved ever since preschool.
Chris Castle The Mall in Rainbows
Henry Crowe walked back to the mall and fished the keys out of his pocket. He’d decided and then un-decided about ten times over. As he pulled the keys out of his pocket and jammed them in with a deep breath. He closed the door behind him without another thought.
The mall itself kept a certain amount of lights on overnight. As he stepped onto the ground floor the place was streaked in great, thick shadows; shops were visible but barely recognizable. The fast food places looked oddly beautiful and mysterious; the exclusive clothes shops seemed cheap and hokey. Henry stepped over to the fountain and dipped his fingers under the water, something that during the day he was forbidden to do. He looked down into the water and saw the coins shimmering back up at him. On his lunch break he counted them in sections; one half was tallied and one half remained.
He stepped onto the escalator and adjusted to the strange sensation of it not moving. His body wavered and he laughed, forcing one foot up and then the next, thinking; this is what it must feel like for a spaceman on the moon. The sound his feet made were not heavy and clunky as he imagined but lighter, like a football hitting a post. The sound reverberated across the whole spread of the building and as he reached the top level he was surprised to find he was out of breath. His thirties kept finding ways to keep him on his toes; sometimes it made him feel younger and other times it snapped at him and whispered he was old.
“Hey!” a voice called out from out of nowhere. Henry jolted back in shock and almost pitched back onto the escalator, grabbing the rail at the last moment. If he had had the breath he would have screamed. He looked round and saw a girl staring at him; in her left hand was a pink rucksack, in her right a can of mace.
Dr. Hackenbush Gains Perspective
AIDS and Class Warfare
By Ginger Mayerson
ISBN 9780982581346; 176 pages
It’s 1984 and Hackenbush’s broken heart is on the mend as she assists the very roguish, but devastatingly charming theater director, Monte Vista, in his last and greatest production. Mabel Hackenbush, better known as the singer, dancer, ukulele player extraordinaire, and front woman for Dr. Hackenbush and her Orchestra, has taken a chance on love and lost. After an epic binge, she can’t sing, won’t dance, and can only get through the day by focusing on her temp secretary job. Add in all this, the band has a big show coming up that Hackenbush might not be able to do in her current state of mind. Could this be the end of Dr. Hackenbush and her Orchestra? Into this dire situation saunters Monte Vista, theater maven supreme, who says he wants Hackenbush to help him write his memoirs. But for what he really wants… well, Hackenbush will have to call in reinforcements for that. And even then the outcome isn’t a sure thing.
