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| using my camera phone as an aid to my Swiss cheese memory |
| Tuesday, September 11, 2007 |
 So there I was in the bookshop on Saturday, spending money that I couldn't really afford. It's always like that when I walk into a bookshop - I vow to only buy one book and I walk out with three, after agonising for over a hour on which ones to buy. In the past, I tried to remember the other titles so I could add them to my ever-growing Amazon wishlist but my atrocious memory instantly forgot all the titles when I got home ("er....it was green with a man on the front....."). So on Saturday, I decided to try something new and use my mobile phone camera to take photos of the book covers.
Of course I got lots of weird looks from people. In fact the bookshop owner was downright hostile. She probably thought I was "stealing to order" but I wasn't doing anything illegal so I continued nevertheless. I ended up with nine photographs and when I got home, I looked at the photos and added the titles to my Amazon wishlist.
Such a simple idea but one that never occurred to me until recently. I even took a photo of the car parking space number so we would find the car again in the multi-storey garage which was just as well because later we forgot where we parked the car!
Who says mobile phone cameras are useless?
Labels: amazon, books, camera, mobile-phone |
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| Proofing at PG |
| Friday, August 24, 2007 |
 I've been pounding away the past few days at Project Gutenberg, getting books proofread, so much so that I am now in the top 800 proofreaders (which I'm very proud of). The last book was a real pain in the ass as the index was completely wrecked and I had to rebuild it from scratch - all 12 pages of it. The OCR scanner/ reader is basically a very good tool that does a highly accurate job of scanning the pages and turning them into typeable (is that a word??) text but nevertheless, it IS fallible. If the print quality is very bad, the OCR scanner makes an educated guess and half the time, it cacks it up. So that's where a proofreader like me comes in and corrects it manually. Extremely interesting work but also extremely detail-oriented and you have to be a real nit-picker. People often ask me how I gain enjoyment out of a voluntary job like this and I always reply that I believe in the ideals and aims of PG, plus you can't really cherry-pick what you want to do and not want to do. You either do the whole job properly or don't bother doing it at all. Indexes, contents, bibliographies and footnotes may not exactly be the sexiest parts of a book but they are still part of the book nonetheless. They can't be excluded just because they are a pain in the ass to check. Saying that though, I am hoping to find a good mystery novel to do next, something light on the mind. I was doing some Edgar Wallace recently which was extremely fun. So perhaps a murder mystery, detective story or even a western would be a good change of pace. Labels: books, gutenberg |
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| Alex sends me a photo..... |
| Friday, June 01, 2007 |
 I received a signed photo this morning from Alexander McCall Smith's publicist. McCall Smith is a Scottiah author who wrote the Scotland Street novels and also the Madam Ramotswe novels. Anyway, I emailed him through his website, asking if he would sign one of my Scotland Street novels and instead, I get a signed photo! Oh well.....another addition to my autograph collection. Maybe he didn't like my review of his latest book which was rather less than complimentary.....maybe he is laughing at me in the photo because he has way more money than me? You never know.... Labels: autographs, books |
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| A surprise in my inbox |
| Monday, April 30, 2007 |
I got a surprise when I checked my email recently. I wrote an Amazon review of "The Spanish Game" by Charles Cumming and when I checked my email in Edinburgh last week, I found an email from Mr Cumming himself, thanking me for my review. I suddenly felt guilty about criticising the endings of his last two books! We've exchanged another email since then and he seems to be a really nice guy. Very chatty and personable. I'm planning to send him my copy of The Spanish Game for his autograph. Isn't it nice when an author takes time out from their busy schedule to acknowledge their fans? Unlike Martin Cruz-Smith who rudely rebuked me when I emailed him and asked him for an autograph. His reply was "you want my photo? Buy one of my books then - my photo is on the back page!". Very condescending and rude. Since then, I haven't felt very inclined to read any of his books. His bad attitude left a sour taste in my mouth. But like Mr Cumming, some authors really make the effort to connect with their readers. I've had some very pleasant communication with Ken Follett and Frederick Forsyth. Jack Higgins was very charming at a book signing back in 1997. The now-deceased Spike Milligan was an absolute riot at a book signing in 1998. I think I might start trying to get in touch with some authors and see if they can be bothered to write back. I may start with John Connolly and Dan Brown. Labels: authors, books |
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| Presidential memoirs |
| Monday, August 28, 2006 |
At the moment, I am engrossed in former US President Ronald Reagan's memoirs, "An American Life". The book is very readable, very engaging and extremely interesting. After reading a few chapters, my mind started to wander to the question of presidential memoirs in general. How many presidents have done presidential memoirs, which one is considered the best, which one is considered the worst, is it a given that when a president leaves office he is basically obligated to write a memoir and so on.I turned to my trusty friend, Mr Google, and tried to find out. I found an extremely interesting and informative article on How Stuff Works which answered some of my questions. For a start, not all presidents have written memoirs, either because they didn't want to, perhaps it wasn't the fashion at the time to write memoirs and also because some presidents died in office so they never had the chance to write their memoirs (Roosevelt and Kennedy being the 20th century's two prime examples).
Some presidents decided not to bother, the best example being George H W Bush. He instead wrote a book based on his correspondence to people which gave a brief glimpse into the first Bush administration but it seems he didn't bother chronicling his entire presidency.
Plus reading this article made me realise today's trend for potential presidential candidates to write their memoirs. So we have memoirs by John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean and even one by George W Bush when he was Texas Governor and Presidential candidate. It could be argued however that these books are not really heart-felt memoirs but actually campaigning tools and if the person loses the election, their memoirs eventually fade into obscurity.
I am considering collecting US presidential memoirs. Maybe in years to come, they will become scarce and valuable and I might end up cornering the market. I can but try.
Labels: books, memoirs, president |
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