The batteries are recharged! I honestly don’t know how some bloggers do it year after year, I just don’t have the stamina. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t read the blogs! Nothing recharges the ‘ol blogging batteries like lurking about all of your sites.
Lots of changes coming soon, to this site and the publishing industry in general. It’s going to be interesting! Much of which I think is summed up by Adrian Tomine’sNew Yorker cover this week. I’m going to frame it for my office.
So a belated congratulations to both the Theorist and Susannah, each for the new chapters they have just started! It rocks!
So thanks for sticking around and not deleting me off your RSS reader. We’ll be back up to speed soon. Too much time has passed and too much has gone on, I just have to figure out where to jump in.
Milestone Books
Vestavia Hills City Center
700 Montgomery Highway, Suite 106
Vestavia Hills, AL 35216
(205) 824-2223
**THIS STORE CLOSED IN FEB 2010. This post will remain up for archiving purposes.**
This is a great locally owned shop. The small storefront is misleading as the shop meanders back a good bit, making room for tons of new books and t-shirts. This general interest bookstore covers all of the major subject area and has a neat children’s area in the back. All with big comfy chairs to sit in and peruse some pages. The owners also do a good job of booking interesting local and regional authors that other stores might not make the time to host.
The Alabaster Library is having their annual book sale, April 26th and 27th. Paperbacks are 50 cents and hardbacks are $1. They said 50% of the stock is pulled from the shelves and 50% is donated, all sorted by category.
Philip Parker is the most prolific author in history, according to Amazon. The NY Times ran this article about Philip Parker and his amazing technicolor technical writing machines. Apparently, Parker unleashes his computers on the Internet, which look in every nook and cranny to glean all stats, numbers, data, etc. Then Parker peppers in a few introductions and transition pieces, hits another button to format, create charts and an index and…. bam! You have a collection of 200,000 “published” books (actually they’re sitting in a POD database waiting until someone buys one).
Most are dry niche-technical stuff. The kind of specialist info you might expect from a data miner like the one he is running. But he says that he’s looking to produce works in one area-of fiction… the romance novel.
“I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”
Wow. Writing so formulaic that someone thinks a computer could do it? It will be interesting to see if it ever happens.
