I have intended to blog about these things for ages, but am always too busy at work. Since the kids thoughtfully got me up early this morning, I can blog.
First up, War Stories by UNKLE: utterly unexpected (by me at least), you’d never guess this was the James Lavelle who played Tribal Gathering. Some fantastically well produced and diverse rock, with guest vocals from Ian Astbury and the outstanding Gavin Clark.
Next, The Religion by Tim Willocks: a rollicking yarn based around the Muslim siege of Malta, defended by the Knights of St John. Written with a good eye for detail and a pretty brutal assessment of the qualities of the opposing sides, and some excellent characters.
Then, Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge: near-future science fiction with Vinge’s remarkable perceptiveness about both people and technology, with a really original take on the current politics of technology. Worth reading to get a glimpse of a real possible future, something that seems to be getting harder and harder.
Finally, Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible: truly one of the best recipe books of all time. We destroyed our first copy by spilling stuff on it while cooking, so got another copy immediately. Try the divine Coriander Chicken and the toothsome Vietnamese Pork. I swear everything you make out of this book will become a regular dish.
Antonia used to do this a lot.
I know [Paul](http://thelifestill.blogspot.com/index.html) will like this one.
This is a real translation of the Iliad, by the classics professor at Kansas State University.
What a great choice of photo!
There are some interesting numbers in [this Reuters story](http://today.reuters.com/misc/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-10-06T125540Z_01_L06708070_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-GOOGLE-BOOKS.xml).
> Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its encyclopaedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the “buy this book” Google link.
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> One of its many scientific titles, “Principles of Visual Anthropology”, has seen about one-quarter of the 1,206 views click on “buy this book”.
Those are remarkable conversion rates, and ones anyone would be pleased with. If you think a little about how shopping works in meatspace of course it’s not quite so surprising. Flicking through books in a bookshop before buying them is one of the great joys of going to a real bookshop. And you do want to see inside the books. You can see how this works for one of these titles, [Principles of Visual Anthropology](http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN311017930X&id=3TsiASDt0Gs&lpg=PR17&sig=9dv9UWTCTOg6LVB5KEn6OP5Ui-E), and you can see what a difference being able to see inside the book makes. It’s a very dry title, but you can at least get a real impression of what the book is like.
What I find bizarre is that publishers are so terrified of their own customers — at least right now. Just like mp3s, reading online is a significantly worse experience than the real thing. The quality of sound you get from an mp3 is poor compared to a CD, reading online is nowhere near as good as having the dead tree. Even for books I use primarily for reference, I get the dead tree copy if I use it more than occasionally.
Publishers real fears will be realised when good ebook readers are available cheaply. These are coming out now, and soon the experience might be good enough to really substitute for dead trees. The same is true of music, where increasing bandwidths will make standards like FLAC real options for download. I have already seen a whole load of FLAC downloads on (legal) torrent sites, and this will only increase.
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