Sunday, July 4, 2010

Some Comments on Books

I listen to On The Media pretty regularly. This past week was on updated re-broadcast that was all about books -- publishers and authors commenting on e-books; literature professors commenting on reading paper books vs. e-books vs. iPad vs. iPhone vs. audio books; black urban literature; war books.

One of the guests told us that it was 50 years after the invention of the (western) printing press before people started using page numbers.

I read The Passage (excerpt), by Justin Cronin, a professor at Rice University. It's the first book of a trilogy. It's gotten a lot of publicity, and is a hot seller. I liked it a lot. The science is fun, and, as far as I could tell, correct; and his dystopian America is very interesting. Great characters.

This is probably because of his Houston connections, but Texas is important in the story.

I know that publishing companies don't really have editors anymore, but I was a little surprised that an instructor of college fiction writing would occasionally have an unclear pronoun reference. It was rare, and I only noticed because I had to trace back who was saying what a couple of times.

I like books that are in series. I just started The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

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