If you are masochistic enough to want a poorly crocheted overlong early-teen 'Sunset Beach' with werewolves, self-harm and no sympathetic characters, read 'Lonely werewolf girl'. Otherwise Martin Millar seems best avoided.
It took a while to realise what the author had achieved as I never expected to be reading an American soap series, and kept getting distracted by the lack of prose quality and dumb-foundingly obvious anomalies.
[Suggestions/additions welcome but only until 1 November 2009, after which I will stop updating this post] [Exhibition spoilerage warning : Don't follow the following link or look at his other photos til after you've seen the exhibition or after it finishes.] Amazing hat from Tom Banwell's Flickr Stream.
The setting is a particular plus; you can compare the objects of the time with today's retro-futurist view of the directions we might have travelled. Also the museum has regular demonstrations of some of their machines at weekends and I was lucky enough accidentally time my visit so I saw a staffmember (Chris) demonstrate their beautiful brass Wimshust machine, explaining early electricity experiments and the use of the machine for after-dinner parlour tricks in the nineteenth century. As a university staffmember and Oxford resident, I thought I knew the museum well but the exhibition and the demonstration (suitable for primary-schoolchildren) surprised and delighted me.
Be warned that the exhibition will make you yearn for high-craftsmanship objets du désir of your own - if not the exhibits, then like period or contemporary work (see further below).
The main picture on the exhibition site is of a sculpture - these are the maker's thoughts on it. You can imagine a floating swarm of these would make a terrifying perimeter defence.
Exhibition blog - spoilered only if you follow the review links [end warning].
Alternatively, if you're a LinkedIn member involved in Steampunk and have feedback on the exhibition, curator Art Donovan created a discussion page here
We missed out on Thomas Willeford's monacle because some *^%&^& stole it. (Never mind that the artist got the museum wrong). As you'll see from the link, if you see someone with it and help it be returned, Willeford will do you a custom piece. Accompanying video of engine in action(Youtube) by Mr Jos de Wink.
Another (nearby-ish )Steampunk event is the Victorian Steampunk Society's exhibition of steampunk art, contraptions and sculptures and clothing - London 24 October 2009 but is sadly SOLD OUT.
People to know London Steampunk bands and hangers on (for the US this Abney Park video is a good introduction to the band and to Steampunk fashion). Londoner August Wahnsinger. Any of the artists or bloggers listed above.
Worldwide Steampunk A far more comprehensive (and audited) set of links with no attempt to partly restrict relevance to the UK is available at the (gothic) Dark Side of the Net's Steampunk Links page - recommended The link to Steampunk Games lacks the experimental 'Steamgunners'
There is appreciation that this is not a new development - for example a decent short rebuttal of claims that Steampunk is recent (with some nice contemporary links to MTV stuff) on the vintage of Steampunk 'Steampunk new oh please - 1985's Brazil' but sadly the timeline link is broken† and perhaps they should double check 'zeitgeist'; just becase the core aspects of the Steampunk phenomenon emerged at an earlier stage, doesn't mean that the gathering strength of the subculture synthesised from those earlier strands isn't itself of our time. (Futuristic nostalgia seems appropriate for the decades around the turn of the millenium.) ('Twelve Monkeys' could also be referenced but is obviously too recent to be considered a precursor, but Gilliam's imagination seems Steampunk-infused through today's lenses).
Rhodri Marsden blog article (in Independent Minds section)quoted extensively below. Of course The Guardian have picked up on this yesterday too (also here). It's been news since Sunday. Even Christian Science Monitor seems more enlightened than the Amazon filter idiots 'The LA Times blog Jacket Copy, for instance, points out that “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis – a “story of a sadistic murderer” is ranked while “Unfriendly Fire” – “a well-reviewed empirical analysis of military policy” that discusses gays in the military – is not'.
'Amazon rankings aren't just the book equivalent of the Top 40 singles chart; if you're removed from the rankings, you're also removed from the bestseller lists, and – crucially – removed from many search results. Your book is effectively relegated to a dusty room at the back of the shop, and will only be found if you're specifically looking for it. And perhaps not even then.
over the weekend, hundreds of other books also began losing their sales rankings and disappearing from searches, including ones written by Mark Probst. An enormous but presumably not exhaustive list is being maintained at meta_writer... ; it includes books as mainstream as Stephen Fry's autobiography and a critically acclaimed biog of Oscar Wilde, while over on Amazon UK, a book such as Ultimate Burlesque by Emily Dubberly is still on the site – but you try searching for it from the front page: it's not there. Amazon's response to the outcry has been the following email from their customer services department:
"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."
But books such by porn stars such as Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson have escaped the cull, while a guide to feminism for young women doesn't. As you might expect on such a colossal website, anomalies like these can be found everywhere, and people on Twitter have been uncovering them in their hundreds, following the lead of writers such as Zoe Margolis whose books have also suffered from deranking. The problem appears to be one of tagging: if a book is tagged "gay" – such as Stephen Fry's autobiography – it's out, but had it been tagged "memoir", it would have survived.
According to Publisher's Weekly, Amazon are now contradicting their earlier statement by describing the deranking as a "glitch"; but understandably, many suspect that this is a furious backpedalling in the face of widespread outrage. But if it does turn out to be a policy change, one can only furrow ones brow and imagine what kind of pressure from what kind of organisations could have possibly led to it?'
As the Guardian notes 'Amazon's customers are able to tag books themselves, and a number of contributors have flagged up hundreds of books affected by the "glitch" using the tag amazonfail.'
A list of books affected in some way (principally by rank-stripping) on either .com, .ca or .co.uk is being gradually compiled on this page. These include Annie Proulx's 'Brokeback Mountain', Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit', Jacqueline Carey's 'Kushiel's Legacy', Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'The Catch Trap', Neil McKenna's 'The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde', Dan Savage's 'The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant', Stephen Fry's 'Moab is my Washpot', the hardcover edition of John Barrowman's biography 'Anything Goes', 'The Story of O', Mark Probst's 'The Filly' (Young Adult fiction) and, of course, 'The Dictionary of Homophobia'.
My ha'penniesworth when signing: 'If you want to protect minors from exposure to adult themes, do as bookstores do and segment your store appropriately by having a separate childrens section/gateway/search engine. It is ludicrous to derank books written and marketed for teenagers to protect children and particularly ludicrous for your censorship to rely on unverified tags added by customers which do not necessarily relate to the sexual content level of the text and often conflate gender, sexuality and sex. Much crime and horror fiction and many factual books on history, for example, contain material which might be considered inappropriate for children - do you plan to derank all these? Different parents wish to protect their children from different things, as do different cultures - how much are you planning to suppress and how are you reaching those decisions? While I share concerns that children's exposure to sexual content should be reduced, choosing to censor all customers' access to any material deemed to relate to LGB matters in this way is inappropriate, disproportionate, indiscriminate and offensive.'
later edit: Approximately 57,000 titles were affected by an apparently erroneous flag change from'false' to 'true'
Having run out of other methods of procrastination, I thought I'd resort to random googling*. My first hit took me to children's book on Amazon.
I rather enjoyed the scathing review by 'sceptical' but it's disturbing that the book itself is out of stock. I'm hoping it is print on demand as it's possibly self-published (author = editor and shares surname with publishing house). Neate seems to be prolific in the field of educational books for children - I can only hope the remainder are rather better put together, especially as among these is listed a guide to children's informational books, whatever that might be.
From Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves Copyright 2000 pub Anchor 2nd Edition Mark Z. Danielewski. ISBN 1862 30110 7 707 page large format paperback edition (including index and credits) P543
Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.
P546 Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.
being on time for every meeting this weekend (well 10 minutes late for one due to ad hoc bus arrival estimate being off)
getting into Ministry despite our host not making it
frenetic dancing
meeting a nice Brazilian
watching lovely drossy tv
watching Amelie again
making a personal maze record at Leeds Castle
realizing that the guy in front of us was holding a box of baby barn owls
lots of cake, plants, waterfowl (especially in the duckery), girl-chat, many darting swifts, a goldfinch and a bunny
not drinking too much
no hangovers
'Don't big me up like that girl-I ain't that small.'
making all those delayed family phonecalls
Writing systems are quite interesting.... My favourite Arabic calligrapher, Hassan Massoudy uses mostly thuluth. I had liked postcards of his stuff for yoears but was impressed all over again when I saw his work within the British Museum exhibition,'Word into Art - Artists of the Modern Middle East', last June. This artist was also very impressive. Sadly the Museum seems to have taken down the web pages on this, although a book is available. As with all art in reproduction, much is lost without the texture of the paper and ink before you. شىفخىهش ةشىسثم-مخىل)ش ى ف خ ى ه ش ة ش ى س ث م - م خ ى ل) is the automatically generated spelling for my name, but not the phonetic one their linguist assistant used. You can try calligraphy online here. *Arbilli is an Iranian who is continuing his study in Islamic calligraphy ( Khatt ul-Yad خط اليد) - a lifetime commitment - and is currently based in London. He plans to open a workshop in Birmingham.
Later edit Having just read 'Verdigris Deep', it is very dark. I'd give it a primary-audience age-range of 8-13. Having said that, I remember a number of very good and much loved books spooking me as a child, from Alan Garner on, and a later read I think is a decent children's book is Clive Barker's 'The Thief of Always'. If you're a very protective parent you may want to read it and decide before you let anyone under 9 read it. Very rich imagery, even for Frances. I loved some of the insights, particularly the balloon image. ( I need to go back and find the other paragraph which jumped out at me as a stand-alone excerpt).
(The other one is dark too, but my housemate hasn't left a copy lying around yet and I'm waiting to accumulate a bulk Amazon order.)
