Tag: books

Layers within layers

I was reading Umberto Eco’s book On Literature the other day and his essay entitled “Intertextual Irony and Levels of Reading” caught my attention, particularly in light of Matthew David Surridge’s intriguing series of essays on Tolkien. (I haven’t commented upon them yet because they are sufficiently deep to require a second reading before opining, Matt, so my apologies for the tardiness.) Because the flip side of readers, presumably non-Ideal, who read things into the text that are not there are readers, definitely non-Ideal, who fail to recognize the deeper layers of the text that are, in fact, there.

Read more, including a minor revelation about one of my past novels, at the Black Gate.

A very good week in books

The Mises Institute released The Turgot Collection in both hardcover and epub format and I finally noticed that Umberto Eco’s latest novel, il cimitero di Praga, is in the bookstores.  (Spacebunny would like to point out that she informed me two months ago; I was under the impression it was a collection of newspaper columns in the mode of la bustina di Minerva.)  The best thing about having learned Italian is that I no longer have to wait a year for the English editions to be released.

Mainstream dodos

I have a feeling this sort of stunt is likely to backfire on Esquire:

In a stunning development one day after the release of Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President, by Dr. Jerome Corsi, World Net Daily Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah has announced plans to recall and pulp the entire 200,000 first printing run of the book, as well as announcing an offer to refund the purchase price to anyone who has already bought either a hard copy or electronic download of the book.

In an exclusive interview, a reflective Farah, who wrote the book’s foreword and also published Corsi’s earlier best-selling work, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak out Against John Kerry and Capricorn One: NASA, JFK, and the Great “Moon Landing” Cover-Up, said that after much serious reflection, he could not go forward with the project. “I believe with all my heart that Barack Obama is destroying this country, and I will continue to stand against his administration at every turn, but in light of recent events, this book has become problematic, and contains what I now believe to be factual inaccuracies,” he said this morning. “I cannot in good conscience publish it and expect anyone to believe it.”

Apparently producing wish-fantasies and simply making things up is now what passes for “satire” in the mainstream media. Corsi’s book is a best-seller, just as we all expected it would be from the start. The amusing thing is that most of the people who “didn’t get it” were Obama fans who were citing the Esquire article as proof that the forged birth certificate is real.

The OC is famous

There are books being written about him and everything! Seriously, there is now an Amazon Kindle book entitled Science Fiction and Bruce Bethke, which is described as follows: “Bruce Bethke is a computer programmer who would originate cyberpunk, a dark genre in science fiction. In this book, we will explore his life and science fiction.”

I wouldn’t recommend buying it, however. And I can only marvel at the indefatigable creativity of the con artist. It truly knows no bounds.

New ebook prices

After some lobbying of my publishers, I was able to convince them to lower the price of the Kindle versions of The Irrational Atheist and Summa Elvetica. In order to close the deal, I offered to remove the free and complete PDF versions from the blog, which is why they are no longer listed here. Note, however, that an abridged, 8-chapter version of TIA is still available for free download in PDF format; it contains all the chapters dedicated to the specific rebuttals of the various atheist arguments for those who are looking for them.

The Irrational Atheist is now $1.99 and Summa Elvetica is $0.99. So, if you haven’t picked up an ebook version yet, I would encourage you to do so. I also expect to have some further announcements in this vein in the near future. If nothing else, it would be amusing to see TIA claim the top spot in the Atheism category, which is eminently doable considering RGD’s performance in the Economic History category.

UPDTE: Well, that was certainly quick. TIA is already up to #3 in Atheism.

Riding Occam’s Razor

It’s not hard to understand why Jerome Corsi’s new book from WND Books is the #1 book on Amazon and will be the #1 New York Times bestseller upon its release. Although this has surprised even the likes of the normally perceptive Instapundit, the logic is inescapable. Obama is hiding his birth certificate and other personal records because he has something to hide.

And, based on what we know of his family history, it is unlikely that he is eligible for the office he presently holds. It is perfectly possible for him to have been born in Hawaii and still be ineligible as a citizen who was not natural-born. This entire episode has been a good lesson in the limits of media power, as the entire power structure of both parties as well as the mainstream and conservative medias have been lined up against a single Internet site that just keeps asking the obvious questions. But no amount of evidence-free assertions and appeals to authority have managed to trump Occam’s Razor, which is why Corsi’s book is such a smash hit already.

Consider the two primary logical possibilities:

A) Obama is eligible and is hiding the evidence of his eligibility because questioning his eligibility makes his opponents look bad.

B) Obama is not eligible and is hiding the evidence of it because it proves he is not eligible.

Which makes more logical sense, especially in light of the fact that questioning his eligibility has now produced a #1 best-selling book and propelled a celebrity to an early pole position in the Republican primary? The logic of (A) doesn’t stand because its foundation is flawed. Questioning his eligibility actually makes his opponents more successful and popular. Therefore, Obama is either wildly inept in not releasing the information or he simply cannot afford to release it as per (B).

It is amusing to see how a savvy individual like Donald Trump have used the issue to his benefit whereas foolish politicians like Michelle Bachmann are so tied to the old power structure that they dutifully submit to the pressure of the groupthink. I once said that if Hillary wanted to nail down the presidency, all she had to do was come out against immigration. She didn’t and she blew it. In like manner, all a Republican candidate has to do to win the nomination is to be the first “serious” candidate to openly align himself with the Tea Party and the birthers, although a strong anti-immigration position would help secure the deal.

Of course, it will be a lot easier for Republicans to win in 2012 if they don’t cave on the debt ceiling, but since they will, they’ll be under a lot of fire as the economy and the deficit continue to worsen.

Book review: The Married Man Sex Life Primer

I have posted a review of Athol Kay’s new book at Alpha Game. It’s well worth reading by men and women alike, regardless of whether one is actually married or not. For a different perspective, albeit a similar conclusion, the Hawaiian Libertarian has also posted a review of the book.

Those who have been following the saga of Alpha Game’s resident omega or simply doubt the efficacy of Game may also be interested to read the results of his first-ever successful date at the age of 28. And finally, I answer Susan Walsh’s questions regarding whether gender equality in the bedroom inhibits arousal and explain why feminists are not merely anti-sex, but downright anti-sexy.

The peril of the popular intellectual

No matter how copiously one cites the pertinent studies which purportedly prove your assertions, there is always the danger that someone might actually take your ideasthe ridiculous ideas of someone else you have popularized seriously enough to put them to an empirical test:

On his 30th birthday, June 27, 2009, Dan had decided to quit his job to become a professional golfer.

He had almost no experience and even less interest in the sport.

What he really wanted to do was test the 10,000-hour theory he read about in the Malcolm Gladwell bestseller Outliers. That, Gladwell wrote, is the amount of time it takes to get really good at anything — “the magic number of greatness.”…

The Dan Plan will take six hours a day, six days a week, for six years. He is keeping diligent records of his practice and progress. People who study expertise say no one has done quite what Dan is doing right now.

It’s not exactly a secret that the middlebrow Gladwell is completely full of it. His books appeal primarily to the half-educated, -1 to +1 SD intellects that soak up information insufficiently critically to notice the unsound foundation upon which most of his conclusions are based. Of course, Readers Digest created a small empire catering to the tastes of such readers, so there are not only a lot of them, but they tend to read more than the norm in search of that feeling of intellectual self-improvement that Gladwell sells so effectively.

It should be interesting to hear Gladwell attempt to explain away the inevitable failure of his thesis. Perhaps he’ll even get another best-selling book out of it.

Amazon and some publishing decisions

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve arranged to set up as an Amazon Associate, so if you order books from them in the future, doing it through here will contribute to the Publishing Fund. This is intended to be a means of funding more self-publishing through Kindle and eventually other forms of ebooks and perhaps hardcovers as well. So, if you’re thinking of ordering something through Amazon, consider doing it from here.

I’m still working on Summa Elvetica II, which will not be done for quite some time because I am attempting to make it a stronger and deeper book than its predecessor, which involves a good deal of research and world-building. That isn’t really relevant to the self-publishing project, however, since Marcher Lord will likely publish it. So, I’ve also been working on the non-fiction title Alpha Game, which I expect to finish and publish this summer; I’d proposed it to WND Books, but they found the subject to be out of their comfort zone and passed on it.

However, I’ve had a number of requests for publishing column collections, which never really struck me as being a proper book per se, but is apparently de rigueur among columnnists. I noticed that three of my George Will “books” are actually just column collections accompanied by some introductory commentary. So, I have two questions. First, is there any interest in a book or three of column collections? Second, would there be more interest in books that collect the columns by subject or by publication date? Just to be clear, I’d probably do the columns in annotated format in order to update them with regards to the mistakes I’d made or to note how subsequent events rendered them relevant or irrelevant. The ebooks would be sold for $2.99, as per Amazon’s new program.

I’m also going to be putting out Kindle versions of the three Eternal Warriors novels at the $2.99 price in case anyone is interested in them.

A Song vs The First Law

Like many George R.R. Martin fans, I have re-read A Game of Thrones in order to refresh my memory prior to the advent of the HBO television series. I actually wound up re-reading all four books, as you do, which should come in handy with the scheduled release of A Dance with Dragons later this summer. But since I’d so recently read four of Joe Abercrombie’s books, which have occasionally been compared with Martin’s series due to their similarly dark and violent nature, I thought it might be interesting to compare the similarities and differences between the two epic fantasy series.