A look at bloggers/forum posters that fake their own deaths: The death bloggers.
I’ve had a similar experience though it didn’t involve the poster’s death. This person was continuously the victim of drama. The details of her stories were very inconsistent and it became obvious that she wasn’t being truthful with members of the community. It pretty much drove the forum apart when some of us began to express skeptical opinions of her tales.
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Two unrelated “media” links:
The Geek Beat: Why Can’t Geek Girls Be … Girls? – Cinematical
Comparing the BBFC and the MPAA, and How Antichrist Illustrates The Differences | /Film
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A splash of science:
Report on Gene for Depression Is Now Faulted – NYTimes.com
Science at its best: “What we thought we knew might be wrong because the system is more complex than we expected and now we know more.” I’m not being sarcastic; this is the thing I love most about the scientific process. In general, more would get done in the world if people were willing to look at evidence and admit when they’re wrong.
Mixing memory with reality can bring pleasure to the routine: Scientific American Blog
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And the every-so-often ebook links of note:
SF Signal: eBook Readers, or, How To Miss The Point:
I want an eBook reader which not only lets me comfortably read my books – and by comfortably, I mean forgettably: right now, I cannot get immersed in something I’m reading in an eBook reader; I cannot forget I am reading it on an eBook reader – and I want something that also allows me to comfortably do other things.
I agree. I’ve always believe that if books went electronic, they should be better than *mere* books. But I’ve also noticed that I’ve become pretty comfortable reading on my laptop. Most of what I’m reading for FiestaCon is online or downloaded. The Davidson story is being offered as a pretty poor quality PDF. Jekyll & Hyde I read in text form with Notebook++. Format has become less important to me. But still, there are some interesting things you could do with electronic books. Texts can be linked and interlinked. They could even be non-linear without the confines of cover and pages. No one seems to be interested in doing those things either.
J.A. Konrath offers his opinions on where the ebook might take the publishing industry: A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: Should E-Books Be Cheap?
Seems that Konrath is making decent money by offering his books through Amazon for cheap. But he can do that. He’s an established author with a following. That’s not going to work as well for the publishing newbie. Still, as I’ve said before, this is an interesting time in publishing.
Simple Tricks & Nonsense 
Interesting – because I read with more attention on the Kindle than on paper. Is attention the right word? Probably not. But I am more forgiving, I’ll stick with the author through heavier-than-need-be descriptives, whereas on paper I am more likely to peruse past these same descriptives and pick up the story again. I seem to respect each word more on an e-reader than on the paper page.
I don’t like reading on my pc or laptop because of the backlight.
“different strokes for different folks” – who said that anyway?
That’s interesting. I had heard that many people were becoming less patient, or at least more willing to bail on a book, when using an e-reader because other materials to read are close at hand. That’s anecdotal, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is an exaggerated trend.
In general, the question of attention, not just to the text but to the format, is interesting. I wonder if all this will (eventually) substantially change the form of what we read.
I think so. We already prefer smaller chapters. We want the action to begin sooner,(I know, not format). I loved the ’26 Monkeys’ format – for short story – well, for *that* short story.
Usually I keep four books going at a time. On the Kindle, I’d had six or seven. I’ve forced myself to stop that. Access to an immediate library of ten or twenty books does make moving around easy. Because of that I’ve begun to archive more books with Amazon – not keep them on my Kindle home page. They’re ever available to me and listed as “archived books(26)” – so I can access them but they’re not quite in my face. But I haven’t enjoyed go there too.
As far as losing the reader, that’s all on the author, no matter what the reading apparatus may be. Not everyone likes the same kind of material. sometimes an author loses me because they just plain couldn’t hold me. Sometimes I’m not in a mood for that genre or style in that moment – but I will get back to it. China Mieville kept me fascinated with Perdido Street Station – I couldn’t put it down – I looked at nothing else on my Kindle as I read that. His book The Scar, set in the same fantasy world but with different characters, held me as well – but not so completely. I finished the book but took breaks in between for other novels and non-fiction. I read Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls straight through but I just set Olive Kittridge aside, knowing I’ll get back to it but in no mood right now for ‘family drama.’ It got replaced by The Strain, which I’m hoping will hold me. I think I have 50 books, read and unread on my Kindle now. The ones I have read and really enjoyed I keep on my shelf because seeing the title and author gives me pleasure and memories of a good read. I am a less merciful judge on my Kindle. Many books on my real book shelves would have been archived on the Kindle – no doubt about it.
So what does this mean for the writer? Same as it’s ever been. Write a great story and write it well. I move through genres based on mood, but books not written well will never hold a place on my Kindle – and it’s rare for me to bother looking in my archived books. It’s not an anticipatory shelf to sit on.
I believe paper books will go the way of records. There will be collectors, yes. But most of us will thin our shelves dramatically. If I read something on my Kindle that I want on my home shelves as well, I buy a paper copy.
Here’s the one bad news about e-book reading. You can’t share. I can’t say ‘you’ll LOVE this book. Here.’ Instead I have to forward them to the book store or the library. I am no longer a lending library of current books.
Yikes, this is what happens when I come online before my morning pages. Sorry for the length.
Heh. No worries!
According to weRead (a Facebook dealy-bob), I’ve marked 10 books as “Currently Reading.” Nine are in physical form, but not included are the re-read of Dracula though an RSS feed, the Hugo novellas and novelettes, and the chunks of David Copperfield that I’m reading in the chronologically delayed manner in which they were published. I’ve always had a good stack of “Oh, I’m reading that.” Now I just have more options. As reader and writer, I like that.