forgetgutenberg

Also, my daily quota of exclamation point.

I stumbled across a book called Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. The Introduction and Preface are absolutely charming (in particular, the author’s stance on postmodernism), and the Prologue thus far is delightful. It’s a selection of origin myths, following a certain formula, from a number of different people. The epigram for the chapter (in a Cyrillic original and an English translation) is from Janghar,  the Kalmyk national epic. Why had nobody mentioned this fount of unbelievable awesomeness? (To be fair, one of my best electives in collitch was a class called Nomads, Steppes, and Cities, which did hint at it quite a bit.)

What can I say? It’s research.

(Also, the Epilogue should be pretty great: it’s called The Barbarians, and claims to unpack the history of Western cultural stereotypes about barbarians…)

Also, due to a small ’splosion of ire on my internets a few days ago, I am thinking about the lines between joking about something harmful in order to make it possible to process it and joking about something in a way that trivializes it. Because, of course, I read a fair number of SF blogs, and some YA blogs, and there’s quite often an undercurrent of how we deal with race & cultures & other things that aren’t our own. It’s a big issue.

And for fun, I write novels. (Sometimes.) Believe me, I worry about how my “cultural appropriation” comes across. I like to think of myself as someone who does it mostly so I can learn, rather than contributing to glorification of various hideously colonialist misinterpretations. Or, you know, whatever. (Hence the research. My current project is an alternate/second world history of part of the Mongol empire. Kinda.)

(Also, I don’t necessarily think that abnormal should have a negative connotation. Just sayin’…)

But what I really want to be doing (aside from reading history) is embroidering a rug. Which is, clearly, a long-term project. And one I don’t have the materials for. But apparently there’s a technique which uses chain stitch on sturdy backing, and makes fabulous spirals and curves, and I really like the idea of making rugs. (Although, really, latch hook is pretty fun. Despite  a certain similarity in result to shag carpeting, and therefore something out of the ’70s. Not everything about the ’70s was awful, though. I’m pretty sure.)

And I’ve been watching Hill Street Blues, which I haven’t watched in, oh lordy. Probably more than fifteen years, tho’ I don’t want to dwell on that. It’s still really good. (And I’m surprised by how much of it I remember, and by the fact that one of the more delightful secondary characters from Star Trek (hi, I’m a huge geek, just so you know) was in an episode. So my facial recognition skills aren’t as bad as I thought they were.)

Now I’m just procrastinating. I bet there’s a more productive way to avoid doing things that might be misconstrued as work…

No?

Good.

1. How many people out there would pay $175 dollars a pop for nifty … huh. Actually, now that I think about this, it might not be a bad idea. The question is one of editorial oversight, and I suppose a little legal consideration: but. Nice editions of public domain books? Not actually a terrible idea. I mean, at least that much each, and oh boy limited edition… and what would Google say? (Also, I’d have to get over my fear of InDesign and figure out how to actually make printing four-up or eight-up work.)

2. I am fairly certain that I need to get over the detached chain stitch, which I am using to make lazy daisies, and … it’s out of hand.

3. There’s something broken in the way people think about books. I can’t figure out what it is. Well, ok, some of it is that people are unwilling to think critically in a historical context, and some of it is that I think we’ve lost track, as a group, of how bookselling profit works. You know, think back to lending libraries. It’s just like Netflix. Only with paper. And less mail. (Of course, who remembers that there used to be multiple daily mail deliveries in certain places?)

4. Why does anybody want to work in a bookstore, anyway?

1. You know who I think needs to get the EBM? Coffee shops.

2. What is going to save the independent bookstore? Quite possibly an archaic business model in which booksellers are printers.

3. Do I still value the independent bookstore? Kinda. Not as much as I did five or ten years ago. Shockingly, with age comes disillusionment.

4. Is there hope? Eh, probably. The future isn’t all bad.

5. Technicalities, however, are becoming more and more important – while the specificity of language we’re using gets blurrier and blurrier. I suppose that’s a jargon problem, along with a lack of respect for the layman.

6. Why is craft still, still a dirty word in some circles? (Why are people still beating the dead horse of art vs. craft, as though they’re somehow mutually exclusive? Or is that just me?)

Some things, in no particular order:

Making bread, since I still don’t do it very often, is an adventure and a treat. Fresh-baked bread with experimental red pepper dip: totally awesome. (It is exactly what I thought it was, and I would like to obtain a mortar and pestle for the next time. Also I will plan the roasted red peppers a little tiny bit better.)

I got Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. I can’t wait to start reading it. If there’s unexpected radio silence here, that’s probably why. (The cover, by the way, is kind of twee, adorable, and stood out quite well on the shelf. Of course, it was a face-out. The spine is nothing special.) (I am so irritated that the author teaches at the University of Chicago, and not somewhere local to me.)

I am thinking about POD in an entirely different context this week than I was last week. I still don’t know any of the useful technical details. I’m on the case, though.

Respect the Spindle, which is Abby Franquemont’s book, came out almost two months ago. I just noticed and read it on, erm, I think Saturday. It’s very good. It makes not carrying a spindle around everywhere seem quite silly.

It’s very close to the deadline for registering to do the open studio thing I did last year. I’m dithering. It’s probably silly not doing it, though.

It kind of horrifies me that Jerry Pinkney hadn’t won a Caldecott yet. I just, I dunno, assumed that he had. Ah, well, now he has.

I have been overcome by the urge to listen to opera and jazz again. What I need, I think, is a mashup of Philip Glass (Akhnaten) and Miles Davis (Bitches Brew).

… which is my cue to step the heck away from the internet.