Notes from the frontline - Blaft

It's been a little bit since I wrote about my long standing project creating an annotated bibliography of science fiction translated into English, the project is well over the half way point. It should be done before the end of the month. Currently, I'm working on wrapping things up with my two largest sections, Japaneses and French science fiction. When these are done, I'll just have a few holes to fill, notably Russian, and German, both of which have substantial work, just not a lot of it.

Lately, I have been browsing a very high quality collection of short stories translated from Tamil into English, The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction. Jess Nevins, a librarian and knowledge producer, who I find worthy of esteem thinks highly of it. After getting a chance to peruse them myself, I have to say I agree with his assessment. If you're into pulp fiction, or science fiction, I would definitely by a copy, or two, or three. The book features extremely high quality annotations and illustration, and the first volume deals with modern authors rather then with pulp from the past, while the second volume also seems to have longer excerpts then the first one did and have a bit broader of a focus.

Blaft is an Indian publisher with an alternative bend who focuses mainly on translating stuff into English. They have a wonderful website, and I hope that they keep up the good work.

Keep it locked here for more updates, I'm a book away from finishing with the Japanese section the bib. I'll be posting something like that shortly.

A partial inventory of my books

I've been repacking all the books I left at my parents house before I went to South Carolina. Wow, there are a lot of books. Below is a list of what books I have they are organized into by box. There are typos. * indicates owned but not read. Enjoy.

Box Inventory
A1

1. Bright Star *
2. Darkness Visible
3. Norwegian Wood
4. Politics of fear*
5. Caves of steal*
6. Welcome to the Terror dome
7. Escapement
8. Catch 22
9. Shades of death *
10. Foucault’s Pendulum*
11. Death is a lonely Business
12. Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and Frankenstein *
13. Dandelion wine *
14. Jonathan Strange, and Mr. Norrell
15. God of Clocks *
16. The Difference Engine *
17. Lords of the Sky
18. The princess bride
19. We
20. Skid Road
21. Poems from Sanskrit
22. Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, signet classics, diary excerpts
23. Starship troopers
24. Acts of aggression
25. The Court of air,
26. Wicked *
27. MASH
28. Kingdom Beyond the Waves
29. The Scar
30. Mainspring
31. Stardust
32. Shadowplay
33. The destroyer
34. Pay check
35. In the evil hours *
36. Fires *
37. Zen and the art of Writing *
38. The Stranger
39. Peter’s Quotation
40. Spin
41. Pedrido Street Station
42. The Taquacores
43. Iron Angel *
44. How to wind Friends and influence people *
45. The lost art of walking *
46. Love is a mixed tape
47. Ripped*
48. No Country for old men*
49. Heft on wheels
50. Perfume
51. 25^th hour*
52. Survival in Auschwitz
53. The wasp Factory*
54. Library Wars 1, 2*, 3*
55. The angel Maker *

C1

1. The Magicains
2. Farenheit 451
3. Please Kill me
4. Someone comes to down, Someone Leaves town
5. The Rebel
6. Gun, With Occasional Music
7. The Hours *
8. Objective Liberal Scholarship *
9. The Elephant Vanishes *
10. First as Tragedy, then as farce *
11. A wild sheep chase
12. Depressiona Era Economics*
13. Galipolli
14. Shanghaied *
15. Trust us We’re experts *
16. In Pharos Army *
17. What I Talk about when I talk about running
18. The rider
19. The Plague
20. China Underground
21. The poetics of space *
22. The Night in Question
23. Sex Drugs and Coco puffs
24. Existentialism *
25. Dreams of my father
26. The English Pacient
27. Prince of tides
28. Little Brother
29. The Cellist of Sarajevo
30. Bomb the Suburbs
31. Stuff Happens
32. When the 9’s roll over
33. The art of racing in the rain
34. High Fidelity
35. On liberty
36. The Communist Manifesto

E1

1. American Hardcore
2. LD Debate Manual
3. Contemporary Rhetorical Theory
4. 501 books to read before you die *
5. How to DJ
6. Communicating at Work
7. Outlaw Bible of American Literature
8. Childhood Cancer Survivors guide *
9. Boneshaker
10. Peoples history of the United States
11. How I became a famous author *
12. Child of an anceinty city
13. Gorilla art book
14. Poetry books
15. Knots
16. Pocket atlas, dictionary, and german dictionary
17. The Buck book*

B1

1. Quiet Please
2. World war Z
3. Emergency Sex and Other desperate measures
4. Plants and Empire
5. A spot of bother *
6. Appetite for Destruction *
7. Unseen Academicals *
8. Architecture of Happiness*
9. People’s History of the Supreme Court
10. This book is overdue
11. The city and the city
12. Kapital *
13. Collected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harvard Classic
14. Wired for War *
15. Collected poems of W.B. Yeats *
16. You don’t have to be evil to work hear but it helps *
17. Jailbird *
18. Shadow Rise *
19. Violence *
20. The case for books*

And a new box
D1

1. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
2. A boy should know how to tie a tie*
3. Jeopardy
4. The Teachings of Buddha*
   
5. A very short introduction to the new deal and the great depression*
6. A very short introduction to citizenship*
7. Guns, germs and Steal
8. Shadowplay
9. that's the joint: a hip-hop reader
10. Land of the Blind
11. The Hippy narrative*
12. OF course in the end you become yourself*
13. The Outlaw bible of American Poetry*
14. Post Colonial Literature*
15. Agnotology *
    
16. Last night a dj saved my life
17. Biocapital
18. economics as Ideology
19. unequal protection
20. fight club
21. in defence of american liberties: a history of the ACLU*
22. Memory, History, Forgetting*
23. Myth of the Robber Barrons
24. A WANTED MAN
25. intoducing Chomsky
26. Library of shadows
27. sorrows of empire
28. the iron council

50 Science Fiction Fantasy novels for socialists from China Mieville.

I just stumbled across this. It's a couple years old now. The link is to a list of fifty science fiction and fantasy works for socialists compiled by China Mieville. It was a refreshing find after spending the day in the splendor of selling Glenn Beck's latest literary abortion.

For those of you not in the know. China Mieville is an incredibly brilliant and innovative science fiction and fantasy writer. His work can best be categorized in the sub genera deemed by Jeff Vandermeer "the new weird," and contains elements of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. I highly recommend checking out his books, The Scar, and The City and The City. I know a lot of people liked King Rat as well, but I couldn't find any drum and bass mixes to read it to.

One of the thing, I like about Mieville is his politics, and how, while they inform his writings, he isn't heavy handed about it. Rather Mieville seemingly keeps them at arms length, slowly seeping in and tinging his worlds in their sepia tones. So, while his Baslag novels are shaded with all of the human tragedies imposed by a corrupt republic, in the name of mercantilism capitalism, there is always something twice as sinister threatening the city state. His heroes are also invested in that city and its culture even as they flee from, rebel against, or try to save its decedent and exploitative soul.

oh, and Mieville?!? The dude has a Ph.D in international law from the London School of Economics! How bad ass is that? Plus I think he'd beat most SF authors in an fight any day of the week.

Major Karnage Chapter 1. and other matters.

I was looking at the publisher Chizine's website, and found this. I haven't watched it yet, so it may be terrible, but felt obligated to post something on here. So...



I'm reading A Book Of Tongues right now, by Gemma Files, also out on Chizine. It is pretty good, despite bordering on gay erotica. When I picked it up I knew it featured a homosexual relationship, but it goes father than that. It's not the gay sex that's been problematic for me, its the presence of graphic sex as a major part of the narrative. If you have a kid under 18 it may not be appropriate. I probably would have put the book down if it was hetero sex, But my liberal sensibilities haven't let me act on any possible bias. I', glad I listened to them because the book has just gotten interesting again.

So far the book has been enjoyable, the weird west style is tight, the magic is dirty, multicultural, and dark. I see some problems with the end of the second act, but I'll save my judgment until I finish the book. I may or may not write a review, although given all I've read and not written about, I doubt this will be the book to change anything.

Book News Roundup Friday - Volume 1 Issue 3

- A library in New Jersey is setting up blind dates for patrons on valentines day... with books. This according to a North Jersey news site. In this programs librarians have wrapped books pulled from all over the collection, and patrons can pick one up. The magic is that it's a clever way to get people to read something they never would have before. Thanks to mobylives for digging this up!

- The founder of Second Life has decided to create an artificial intelligence on Second Life. The Link to the article is here, and I stole it from Boing Boing. This has huge implications for lots of stuff. I almost think that it would be an ideal environment for an AI though. With all the libraries and what not on there it could avoid some of the problems of AI. Specifically giving a new intelligence reference points that would make communicating with it possible. In Housuke Nojiri's Usuper of the Sun the AI has just that problem. With out a set of indexing experiences the moment of sentience leads to an existential feedback loop that makes AI functionally a vegetable. Its logical to assume that real AI might face the same problem. Second life could provide a sort of handy set of memories to make any future AI more stable. Then again, that could just be the crazy talking. Either way, really exciting!

-TOR.Com has a really interesting article on the nature of good and evil, and scifi. Really interesting and written by Jon Evans, check it out here.

- NYPL Blog has some really good detective fiction recommends.

News Roundup - Vol. 1 Iss. 2

The news so far from Thursday, the 11th of February:

-Looks like the America's library is closed again. Why, snow why? Via LOC.gov. Also, Mobylives is down today because of the snow. I'm a sad panda.

- The King County Library System takes a look at the portrait work of Jill Greenberg. The review of her newest book is here. Via KCLS Library Talk

- Author Jon Scalzi checks out some new arrivals on his blog. Via Whatever. Scalzi also recently published a book called Your Hate Mail will be Graded of hate mail from his blog. I am really excited to read it.

- The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article about book selling and demographics. via Bookninja.

- In other news Shelf Talk has all the dirt on the latest about the final book in the Hunger Games Trilogy here.

- Some changes in the worldcat.org catalog. Digital records are being increasingly integrated into the general catalog search, in this case OAister. Check it out here!

- Sup indiebound.org?

Book News Vol. 1 issue 1

I have decided to take a page from Bookninja and do a news roundup. The reason is quite simple, my Twitter account has become cluttered. It should supplement this blog, not subvert it. It must be really annoying to be in the middle of one of my twitter spews. So, hurray! New feature! This should be posted almost every weekday.

So, what was in the news yesterday?
Book News:
-Diary that inspired Go Down, Moses discovered. Via NY Times.

Library Stuff:
-Library of Congress is closed! Pesky Snow! Via LOC Twitter.

-Worldcat.org gives you the power to make a list widget. Look for some here soon! Via Worldcat.org's blog.

- NYPL book chats The Shadow of the Wind.

This is the industry:
-Its the market stupid! E-booksellers should think about E-book buyers. Via NY Times.

Copyrights:
- An older Cory Doctorow piece on copyright.

- Canadian copyright group backtracks, result a more sane set of recommendations. Via Boing Boing.

Books to film: The Lightning Thief Trailer

The first book in the Percy Jackson series is coming to film. Check out the trailer! It looks really cool!

Books - An introduction

Blatantly ripped off from MOBYLIVES

Cory Doctorow - Makers Game

I'm working on a post about the top Sci-fi Fantasy book of 2009. While I haven't had a chance to read Makers yet, but I am looking forward too it. Here's a little game to keep you busy while I work on my net post, the Top Sci-Fi Novel of 2009.