Chairs 2, originally uploaded by liza31337.

We didn’t stay here during All Tomorrow’s Parties, but it wasn’t a whole lot better.

Tickets for next year are on sale already, same great location!

This was a pre-release copy but the book had come out by the time I read it, so I already knew it had gotten good reviews. It’s one of those parallel-stories-separated-in-time novels, and as is often the case the best parts are the historical fiction. Ebershoff fictionalizes an actual 19th century memoir with the much-superior title, Wife no.19, or the story of a life in bondage. Being a complete exposé of Mormonism, and revealing the sorrows, sacrifices and sufferings of women in polygamy. At least I don’t have to explain the plot.

Anyway, I recommend it. Don’t read it if you’re a woman and have recently been dicked over by a guy, though. Especially if you own a weapon.

In my free book feeding frenzy I picked up a few young adult novels without realizing it. I decided to give this one a chance because it was British and therefore automatically more interesting (also it had originally been published by Oxford University Press, which I flatter myself by thinking is a mark of quality).

Despite the goofy title, as a suspense novel it’s not bad. There are some genuinely creepy scenes. I can imagine that a young adult suspense story is likely to be superior to one for adults because the prose is necessarily more clear and events move along at a good clip.

The problem is that like any number of other horror, fantasy or science fiction books with wildly inexplicable happenings, it doesn’t actually resolve to any conclusion. The open-ended “I guess we’ll never know what really happened” ending is okay for high school creative writing classes but it just does not cut it in published fiction. Authors: if you don’t know how your story ends, figure that out before you write the book.

A bigger surprise than the ooh-so-mysterious ending is that the UK cover is, for once, far inferior. Those fonts, they burn!

The world’s best, easiest chicken stock:

1. Buy a slow-cooker and a whole duck

2. Tear apart duck

4. Put duck and 1.5 quarts water in slow-cooker

5. Set slow-cooker to 6 hours

We supplement the dog’s kibble with shredded duck (she seems to have a bad reaction to chicken) so I hit on this as the laziest way to prepare it.  It turns out that the (essentially leftover) cooking water is far and away the best “chicken” stock I’ve ever made, and I’ve made some pretty elaborate recipes.  If I happen to have random vegetables like carrots and celery around I’ll throw them in, but it really doesn’t matter.

You can strain or clarify it if you like (I don’t bother), but de-fatting it is trivial: just freeze it and scoop off the solid fat later. I have completely given up buying prepared stock now.

My most exciting personal development at the American Library Association conference was shipping back two huge boxes of free books. I learned from various attendees that running around the expo floor madly grabbing freebies is a sure sign of a publishing conference newbie and even a little bit gauche, but hey, nobody was reimbursing me more than $1000 in conference and travel fees.  Gimme my damn free books.

After the initial rush I felt silly shipping back all these books that, as one librarian said, “nobody ever reads,” so I’m going to make an effort to at least give all of them a chapter’s worth of a chance. There are 26 books in total.

The big score of the conference was a pre-release copy of the new Neal Stephenson, Anathem:

Spoiler-free summary: it’s good. I didn’t read the Baroque Cycle because I was waiting to find out if I’d like it, and I’m told I wouldn’t. I enjoyed Anathem though. So did Dan, although we liked different parts in different measures. It comes with a CD of various styles of chant, and while I like my music slow, repetitive and hypnotic, I had to rip it out of the player after track 3 to avoid escalating hostility.

If you already know you will read this then you’ll probably like it, and if you enjoy math and physics — well, then you would’ve read it anyway. I’m not sure if anyone who wasn’t already a nerd would be into it, although it might be possible to make it into a decent popular film.

I don’t like fantasy as a rule, but The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss had some pretty enthusiastic reviews on the back (“One of the best stories told in any medium in a decade” the Onion AV Club, wrote, breathlessly).

It’s… okay. It’s part one of three and pretty much stops rather than ends. Without giving away too much of the plot, I will say that it about a talented orphan boy at a boarding school for students of magic where he must use his skills to battle evil. Quite.

It’s actually not much like the Harry Potter novels, in fact, but a set-up like that is going to invite comparisons. The writing is pretty good. There aren’t any names with apostrophes in them. I’ll read the other two books in the series when they came out. I’ll probably even pay for them.

A victory for free content: positive advance word on a new book and two future sales in a series I’d have never read.

What better thing to do on a weekend of highs around 100F than spend time outside on the porch planting things?

This year’s haul:

• Basil (sweet, purple, Thai)
• Thyme (common)
• Oregano (Greek, hot)
• Lettuce (Romaine, two curly varieties)
• Mint
• Cilantro
• 2 tomatoes (Sunbrite)
• Lavender
• Rosemary
• Variegated sage

The lettuce was started back in April and won’t last much longer (I already pulled some of it to make room for basil). I’m not sure what I’ll do with the remaining space — maybe some late-season strawberries?

I had a great time writing up this post on alternate reality games for the O’Reilly TOC blog.  Elan and Sean gave me tons of material, much of which I had to cut to bring the interview down to bloggable size.

In related news I’ve been invited to contribute to the TeleRead blog as well. This means I need to come up with twice as many posts about e-books and electronic publishing, and I’m not sure I have that many opinions about anything.

I’ve been added to the roster of authors at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change publishing and technology blog. I’m going to be posting about issues relevant to developers in the publishing industry, and also speculating on some directions that publishers can take when dealing with online content. TOC’s primary audience is trade publishers, but I’ll occasionally address topics from the academic publishing world where I spend most of my time.

My first post is on the sexy topic of ebook file formats.

You might notice from my biography on the TOC blog that I appear to have quit my job to be an independent consultant. My first day with no paycheck is International Workers’ Day.

Quickly skimming an online version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, I came across this strikingly modern prose:

“I never was at his house; but they say it is a pretty sweet place.”

I imagined for a moment that Sir John lived in a rent-controlled penthouse featured on Apartment Therapy.  It was disappointing to re-read it correctly:

“I never was at his house; but they say it is a sweet pretty place.”

By E. A. Vander Veer
First Edition January 2008
Pages: 268
Series: The Missing Manuals
ISBN 10: 0-596-51769-6

Note: This was a review copy I received for free

I’ve done a bit of writing and editing for O’Reilly on the programming side which means I’ve come to expect a certain dry, technical style. That’s rarely a bad thing, though, as any developer who has suffered through someone else’s cutesy variable names can attest.

But this is a manual for a web site — already an inherently ridiculous concept — and what’s more, it’s a manual on Facebook. Currently on my Facebook home page:

• J– is now a fan of Fall Out Boy
• T– received a “fluff gift”
• Oh and Southwest airlines is apparently having a fare sale

These are not likely to be the subjects of the next Knuth book.

So on the lighter topic of Facebook.com and Facebook apps, it’s appropriate to interject some personality and wit:

Facebook lets you join only one regional network at a time. If you try to add a second, Facebook simply replaces the first with the second. That’s kind of annoying if you’re a multiple home owner, but on the bright side, you own multiple homes.

Plus, I’ll admit it, I learned some things. Facebook has an annoying habit of renaming concepts that already have names, so for example I had no idea that Notes were actual blog entries, and could be imported from external blog sources (I use a third-party app for that). I was also inspired to finally figure out how to get added to the network of my college alma mater, and start a new network for my company. So hey, useful.

The book has sound advice throughout in terms of the fuzzier aspects of Facebook: how to maintain a modicum of privacy, how to use the system to promote yourself or your employer. (The author also recognizes that the first thing everyone does is look up their exes, and provides helpful tips for that too.)

I hadn’t seen any of the Missing Manual series before so the layout was new to me. For me, a tech book just needs some text and an animal woodcut but for a popular “technical” book it’s pretty nice — lots of useful callouts in soothing colors and no incomprehensible icons or annoying cartoons. I don’t know if I’d recommend this book to any of my friends who are clearly all-too-capable of using Facebook already, but I totally recommend it for your boss who wants to know what this “MyFace” thing is he keeps hearing about.

The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov (trans. by Burgin & O’Conner)

I’m obsessed with being completely unspoiled about a book once I have made a commitment to reading it. This includes avoiding the back cover or inside flap until I am at least two-thirds of the way through. Since I knew I was going to read The Master and Margarita as part of this project I did no research whatsoever on it. I knew only that it was Russian, obviously, and I had a faint idea that it was written in the 1930′s. Otherwise I approached it as a completely blank slate.

I’ll extend the same courtesy to others and not describe the plot, even though I realize I’m an extremist in this regard. I will instead say this: The Master and Margarita is among the most moving, fantastical, dark and savagely funny novels I have ever read. I finished it before bed, thought about it for an hour, slept, woke up and re-read the haunting and beautiful conclusion the next morning.

I may not have felt this way if I hadn’t been “forced” to read it. The early chapters are disorienting and erratic, and if I had been reading casually I might have set it aside. That would have been a tragedy. This is a truly great work.

Death in Venice

Thomas Mann (trans. by Heim)

The Master and Margarita translation is in contemporary English, with crisp, conversational language. It was a real bummer to shift right into Death in Venice with its languid, overripe, high-falutin’ prose. Sure, I realize that it’s meant to evoke Italy and cholera and Greek tragedy and a gradual descent into idleness and debauchery. Maybe it was just the wrong time to read it (the book was listed for March). Luckily it’s short. I’m happy to move on.