Chuck and the inexplicable longing

Thu 30 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, blind consumerism, Pop | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin

Chuck Taylor has inspired two feelings in me with their latest anniversary shoes: a weird blind consumerist lust as well as a mild case of self-loathing for feeling same. The shoes are either truly inspired or incredibly goofy. Wait, they’re both that and more (and less).

I’m discounting the leather pair because they are ugly but mostly because at this point in the decadent western world there is no reason to kill animals for clothing. “Fairies Wear Boots” is the nominal inspiration for the yucky strappy leathery shoes. It’s such a weird great happy song, I loved it as a kid—it is awesome (and I am awed) that I can watch it on YouFabbyTube now. Luckily everyone else at the office today enjoyed it (a couple of times), too.

Now the other two designs. First is really number four and features Ozzy from the cover of Sabbath’s fourth album, the brain shaker* and intellectually-titled Volume Four. If I wear these, will I be cool? No. I might wonder if Ozzy is going to climb up my trousers and bite my head off. So these are probably out. Unless they are under the xmas tree on Dec. 25th when I will dance into the snow with them on.

The third pair are even goofier. Demon logos (designed by…?) are cool but still: “Inspired by 1978 World Tour T-shirt featuring the demon logo, Distressed print on cotton to replicate vintage tour t-shirt”—which just says lazy designer to me. And the ‘78 tour (which I’d have loved to see but while my parents were ok on sending 8-year-old boys off to the beach they weren’t so much into sending us off to see stuff like this), well, it’s not exactly Sabbath at the top of their game is it? Ozzy’s almost able to stand but none of the rest can stand him and soon he’s out to be replaced by Mighty Mouse. (We still love you RJD!)

So: lust, self-loathing. Got to give props to a company who can create and exploit a need (Black Sabbath . . .  shoes!) from absolute zero. Giving into that blind lust? Hopefully not. But don’t hold me to that if they turn up in the Vegan Store.

Oops. Made a mistake. Googled “1978 black sabbath tour demon logo design” to see if I could find out whether it was designed for them or ripped off. Decided I should stop and go back to work (pitch, pitch!) but not before finding that teenagers of all ages can get as much Sabbath merch as their wallet and fashion sense (and spouse) will allow here.

*This is misleading. Sabbath sound so happy and occasionally even poppy now (especially AOR hymn-to-pubescence “Changes”) compared to all those Masters of Modern Metal Mayhem.

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Sitting down with terrorists

Thu 30 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

From the Huffington Report (and carried everywhere except our local paper) Apparently John McCain spent New Year 1986 on holiday in Chile—and managed to fit in meeting with the country’s dictator, Pinochet.

Classy.

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Surprises

Thu 30 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Art, bookshops, Pop | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

• Down in Greensboro, NC, the News-Record reports on a new bookshop we’re looking forward to visiting, Glenwood Community Bookshop—check out the pic of the owner (via Shelf Awareness).
• Great interview in the Twin Cities Daily Planet (what a great name!) with Allan Kornblum of Coffee House Press—a stand up guy who has helped us out in a jam more than once or twice.
• If you’re wondering what to get us for Christmas (or Halloween), one of these pieces by Eva_Rønnevig would be much appreciated (via the acknowledgements in Couch!). They are just fabulous and perhaps just out of our range. Oh well.
• William Smith, one of le fave bloggers, found “an interesting bit of NYC ephemera. This edition of Treasure Island was published by and given gratis to guests of Hotel Taft.” (We are very open to any hotels who want to do special editions of our books.)
• Just the other day listened to Terri Windling and Howard Gayton reading at the KGB Bar in June on Veronica Schanoes’s guest hosted Hour of the Wolf. (MP3 link)
• Very sad that the Christian Science Monitor has stopped its print edition (via everywhere). That there is a good paper that deserves a wide readership.
• Listening to Sam Phillips in concert on NPR, how lovely.

That Sam Phillips link reminded us to go check the All Songs Considered Podcast. Up until now there was one show in the list that had been downloaded: Jenny Lewis a while ago. Today, went to iTunes, chose Refresh after making sure the Preferences were to include all the missed shows. Rather than download them all, they all came up as a choice to download: plethora of riches! Right now being downloaded: Antony and the Johnsons, Byrne & Eno (should we go see them on December 2 here?), Tilly & the Wall, Circulatory Sustems, Thom Yorke’s guest dj spot (listening to a Radiohead concert, although it’s not on the auto-download list), Dengue Fever, Iron and Wine, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Rilo Kiley, Bjork, and a Few More.

Jens Leckman is doing a solo show at Northampton High School on Saturday November 1 as a fundraiser to help with costs not covered for a local teenager who was hit by a drunk driver.

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Joan Aiken Bio

Tue 28 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Authors | Leave a Comment| Posted by: intern

Joan Aiken (1924—2004) was born in Rye, Sussex, England, into a literary family: her father was the poet and writer Conrad Aiken and her siblings, the novelists Jane Aiken Hodge and John Aiken. After her parents’ divorce her mother married the popular English writer Martin Armstrong.

Aiken began writing at the age of five and her first collection of stories, All You’ve Ever Wanted (which included the first Armitage family stories), was published in 1953. After her first husband’s death, Aiken supported her family by copyediting at Argosy and working at an advertising agency before turning full time to writing fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Women’s Own, and many other magazines.

She wrote over a hundred books (including The Way to Write for Children) and was perhaps best known for the dozen novels in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction and in 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her contributions to children’s literature.

Author photo by Rod Delroy.

About Lizza Aiken

Born into a family of writers (grandfather Conrad Aiken, mother Joan Aiken) Lizza rebelled by becoming a mime and going to study in Paris with master teachers Etienne Decroux and Jacques LeCoq. She toured with fringe theatre groups appearing at International Theatre Festivals all over Europe in the 1970s and ’80s, performing with Hesitate and Demonstrate at London’s ICA Theatre and for Joseph Papp at the Public Theatre New York. Married to osteopath David Charlaff, and then mother of two she settled in Highgate, London and directed Youth Theatre groups and wrote screenplays for Children’s BBC TV based on Joan Aiken’s popular Arabel & Mortimer stories. Lizza is now curating the Joan Aiken literary estate and designing the official website for this much loved writer at www.joanaiken.com

About Andi Watson

Andi Watson (lj, Flickr) grew up in Yorkshire. He wanted to be a mechanic when he grew up but having no aptitude for anything practical, drew and drew and drew instead. He drew at school, at college and for his degree. Then he began drawing comics, which required even more drawing but with the added difficulty of writing.

When he isn’t drawing comics he’s drawing illustrations.

He likes to draw and lives with his wife and daughter in Worcester, England.

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The Serial Garden

Tue 28 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Big Mouth House, Books, Joan Aiken | 1 Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Big Mouth House | Hardcover | 320 pages | ISBN: 9781931520577

“Joan Aiken’s invention seemed inexhaustible, her high spirits a blessing, her sheer storytelling zest a phenomenon. She was a literary treasure, and her books will continue to delight for many years to come.”
—Philip Pullman

The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories is the first complete collection of Joan Aiken’s beloved Armitage stories — and it includes four new, unpublished stories.

After Mrs. Armitage makes a wish, the Armitage family has interesting and unusual experiences every Monday (and the occasional Tuesday). The Board of Incantation tries to take over their house to use as a school for young wizards; the Furies come to stay; and a cutout from a cereal box leads into a beautiful and tragic palace garden. Charming and magical, the uncommon lives of the Armitage family will thrill and delight readers young and old.

The Serial Garden includes Joan Aiken’s Prelude to the series from Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home, as well as introductions from Joan Aiken’s daughter, Lizza Aiken, and best-selling author Garth Nix, and is gloriously illustrated throughout by Andi Watson.

More about Joan Aiken, Liza Aiken, and Andi Watson.

Free Download: download a DRM-free PDF of an unpublished Armitage family story, “Don’t Go Fishing on Witches’ Day,” along with the introduction by Lizza Aiken or read it online.

The Serial Garden is the first title in our new imprint for readers of all ages: Big Mouth House.

Readers say:
“The eccentricities of magic are never more comically evident than in the late Joan Aiken’s work. Her The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories (Big Mouth House, 328 pages, $20, ages 5 to 11) is a spectacularly good treasury in the British tradition of practical magic…. You can’t do better than to get your fantasy-reading child hooked on Aiken’s playful, witty magic.”
—Parent Central.ca, The Toronto Star

“The wit is irrepressible, the invention wild…. Such delicious lightness, paradoxically, is the fiction’s raison d’être.”
—Ed Park, Los Angeles Times

“[Aiken's] most charming stories are the ones recently collected in The Serial Garden…. It’s best to savor them.”
—Adrienne Martini, Locus

“The Armitages’ wacky magic (usually a Monday occurrence) and that of their fantastical town, a place filled with witches and magical beings, rises from the pages when matters go slightly awry, in the manner of Edward Eager and E. Nesbit.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“One of the ingredients which add such a sense of playful wit to Aiken’s stories — and which make them so worth rereading — is her genius for wordplay, and this is perhaps most obvious in the fabulous names she gives characters, such as Miss Hooting, Mrs. Mildew, Admiral Lycanthrope, and Lady Nightwood. The title of “The Serial Garden” itself is a play on words, and it is the intelligence and the cleverness of Aiken’s prose which make these stories so suitable for readers of any age. “With the publication of The Serial Collection readers of all ages have the opportunity to enjoy some of the best writing by one of the most superb and timeless fantasy writers.”
—Green Man Review

“The Serial Garden is my happiest discovery this year.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Joan Aiken wrote Armitage Family stories her whole life, and they are a treat.”
—The Cultural Gutter

“The stories seem to spring from what was surely (given the sheer output and popularity of her books) an extremely active and creative mind, in all ways dedicated to the enjoyment of the reader.”
—The Short Review

“The Armitage’s world grows richer as it is extended. This is a collection of stories which allow — in fact demand — the reader joins in with their own imagination and remakes the story inside their own head.”
—January Magazine

“These are admirable stories for any age because they are dug from a delightful mind. Many will drop into their readers lives like those enriching stones which break the surfaces of still pools and leave rings long after their splash.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“Whether scary, satiric, or poetic, Aiken’s tales have strong settings, memorable characters, insight, and humor.”
—School Library Journal

“A consummate story-teller.”
— The Times

“A writer of wild humor and unrestrained imagination.”
—Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature

“With its fine-tuned combination of folklore and fun. . . . a good source of imaginative tales to read alone or aloud.” —Booklist

“The best kind of writer, strange and spooky and surprising, never sentimental or whimsical.” —Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters)

“Joan Aiken’s magic stories have the right mixture . . . distinguished and sometimes beautiful writing and always in a frame-work of logic.”
—Naomi Mitchison, New Statesman

“This year can boast one genuine small masterpiece. . . . The Wolves of Willoughby Chase . . . almost a copybook lesson in those virtues that a classic children’s book must possess.”
—Time Magazine

Table of Contents

Introduction by Lizza Aiken
Introduction by Garth Nix
Prelude by Joan Aiken
Yes, but Today Is Tuesday
Broomsticks and Sardines
The Frozen Cuckoo
Sweet Singeing in The Choir
The Ghostly Governess
Harriet’s Birthday Present
Dragon Monday
Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home (also known as “A Batch of Magic Wands”)
Rocket Full of Pie
Doll’s House to Let, Mod. Con.
Tea at Ravensburgh
The Land of Trees and Heroes
Harriet’s Hairloom
The Stolen Quince Tree
The Apple of Trouble
The Serial Garden
Mrs. Nutti’s Fireplace
The Looking-Glass Tree
Miss Hooting’s Legacy
Kitty Snickersnee
Goblin Mujsic
The Chinese Dragon
Don’t Go Fishing on Witches’ Day
Milo’s New Word

On the web:

• Joan Aiken
• ISFDB | Wikipedia | Library Thing | Goodreads
• A fan video of “The Serial Garden“
• Find The Serial Garden in a library near you.

Publication history

“Yes, but Today Is Tuesday,” “The Frozen Cuckoo,” “Sweet Singeing in The Choir,” “The Ghostly Governess,” “Harriet’s Birthday Present,” “Dragon Monday”
All You’ve Ever Wanted (1953)

“Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home,” “Rocket Full of Pie,” “Doll’s House to Let, Mod. Con.,” “Tea at Ravensburgh”
More Than You Bargained For (1957)

“The Land of Trees and Heroes,” “Harriet’s Hairloom,” “The Stolen Quince Tree,” “The Apple of Trouble,” “The Serial Garden”
Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home (1968)

“Broomsticks and Sardines”
A Small Pinch of Weather (1969)

“Mrs. Nutti’s Fireplace”
A Harp of Fishbones (1972)

“The Looking-Glass Tree”
The Faithless Lollybird (1977)

“Miss Hooting’s Legacy”
Up the Chimney Down (1984)

“Milo’s New Word”
Moon Cake and Other Stories (1998)
Reproduced by kind permission of Hodder and Stoughton Limited.

“Kitty Snickersnee,” “Goblin Music,” “The Chinese Dragon,” “Don’t Go Fishing on Witches’ Day”
The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories (2008)

Credits

• Cover art © Beth Adams.
  Download cover for print.
• Interior illustrations © by Andi Watson.
• Photo credit: Photo by Rod Delroy.
  Download for print.

Previously: A Celebration of the Armitage Family, Books of Wonder, Nov. 16th, with Michael Dirda, Charles Schlessiger, and Lizza Aiken.

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Mock the Week

Mon 27 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., YouTube | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Recommended by family in the UK this is not at all for anyone who does not enjoy sweary words. For those who don’t mind, a tea break (do not drink tea during this tea break if you are watching this clip):

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Unbelievable, yet

Mon 27 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books, Elizabeth Hand, YouTube | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Working at the satellite office (as compared to the 70 storey underground moonbase where everyone else is) in Easthampton today (it’s a somewhat easier commute). The old mill we work in is (see LA Times below) “a refurbished New England mill that looks like something out of Blake, surrounded by trees that burst into violent color in the fall.” True. What isn’t mentioned is that some of the refurbishment, well, it’s more simple and whoever did it took a colorful attitude to what really needed to be done. So for instance high up in the corners between this space and the next there are gaps in the drywall around the pipes which run through the building (which carry, er, who knows? The liquified algae being turned into biofuel on the floor below us?).

And one of our neighbors has left a window open. How do we know? Because this morning there was the too-familiar fluttering sound of tiny wings. Nope, not a fairy nor an angel. Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, we have a trapped birdie. No cameras here today (besides the ones on the Macs—we’ll keep trying with Photo Booth) so no pics yet….

Weekend review update:

Scott Timberg writes about Kelly in the LA Times and we have a new quote about Small Beer Press (thanks Scott!), we’re a “Hip house”!

Beam Me Up eats up The Ant King and Other Stories, “for me it was like the desert cart, each amazing bite building on what came before and promising so much more in the future.”

A summary of Geoff’s week at Omnivoracious.

Missed a review of The King’s Last Song which ran in the Washington DC City Paper in time for Gaylaxicon.

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Powell’s: redesigned

Mon 27 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Powell’s has a clean and spiffy redesign—although all those nice bright colors will be missed. We link to them and to IndieBound bookstores so that we can encourage readers to go try the pure variety and idiosyncrasy of local bookshops around the country—and so that we can get a tiny cut of the sales!

So what do people from our site buy at Powell’s? Recently there’s an odd lack of financial titles—maybe everyone is too broke to read about going broke?—it’s more usually fiction, a mix of our books (The Best of LCRW, Interfictions, Pretty Monsters, Generation Loss) and other titles: Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Before You She Was a Pit Bull, Poppy Brite’s Liquor. Thanks to everyone for clicking through!

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Signs of the depression

Sun 26 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Small Beer Press | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Eek! Scotland, say it cannot be so! “Sales of beer slump by 7% as recession takes hold.”

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Kelly and Holly Black in Albany on Sunday

Sat 25 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Kelly and Holly Black will be taking a late autumn trip out to Albany, NY, tomorrow to read at Flights of Fantasy Bookshop at 4 PM or so. This Kelly’s last reading for a bit—you can order signed copies of Pretty Monsters from Flights of Fantasy or here.

“The Specialist’s Hat” is up for discussion at A Curious Singularity and recent Pretty Monsters reviews include two gazettes: the Montreal Gazette (Claude Lalumiere likes the weirder stories) and the Oklahoma Gazette (says, as part of a Halloween roundup, “She’s a true original”). The Brooklyn Paper has a piece on Brooklyn girls (see the comments for those who take things a mite seriously) and what they read:

Books: When Brooklyn girls hit the books, they devour the surreal short stories of contemporary writers like Kelly Link — whose latest is “Pretty Monsters.” “Whenever people buy her book, they smile at the cash register like they are buying some delicious type of ice cream or something,” said Emily Vaughn of Community Bookstore in Park Slope.

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sparrow + chimney 4ever

Sat 25 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

The Saturday nap schedule was thrown out of whack when one after another three birds flew down our woodstove chimney today. We opened all the windows and the back door and then opened the stove top. The first bird took about an hour to get out the house—it flew from the top of one bookshelf to another before smacking itself dazedly into a window and crawling under a piece of furniture. At this point it could be picked up and set outside and after a bit it gathered itself together and flew away looking mostly ok. (Pictures of this one may at some point be uploaded.)

We don’t think that that bird came right back down another couple of times but straight after the first sparrow  flew away, a much more active one came down—luckily it was warm today and we didn’t have a fire on in the stove. (But hopefully they’re smart enough not to fly down into a fire!) Again with the windows and the doors but this time the bird flew immediately away. There was much celebration and wondering what was up with the silly birds and whether this was some rite of passage. After all, the chimney has a cap the birds aren’t meant to clamber through.

Then, the dreaded sound of little wings and claws coming down the chimney again. Damn! The actions from above were repeated and this bird, after one glancing bounce of a window, went out the back door. So then we went up to the roof and duct-taped a fringe-y thingymajig onto the chimney that should make it harder for all but the most skilled of sparrows to get in.

So far, so good.

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Liz Hand in the NYTimes

Sat 25 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elizabeth Hand | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

In the NYTimes, Terrance Rafferty’s horror column focuses on women writers beginning with the mother of the genre, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and going on to say “men — as is their wont — have coolly taken possession of the genre, as if by natural right, some immutable literary principle of primogeniture” and then that the modern populist streak of horror writing known as paranormal romance is “unreadable” for most males. (Not entirely true, there are many Laurel Hamilton fans.)

But rather than continue with these fighting words, he then takes a thoughtful look at a couple of prizewinners and novels from the literary end of the genre: Sara Gran’s Come Closer, Alexandra Sokoloff’s The Price, Sarah Langan’s Bram Stoker Award winner The Missing, and Liz Hand’s Generation Loss (on sale here)—which is listed as an Editor’s Choice—he describes as:

“Startling, unclassifiable. . . . There’s nothing supernatural in “Generation Loss,” but it’s full of mysteries — all originating in its characters’ troubled psyches — and full of terrors that can’t be explained.”

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Likes teaching, traveling.

Thu 23 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Geoff Ryman | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Geoff Ryman has been blogging, or so, through the magic of Jeff VanderMeer on Amazon’s Omnivoracious. “Or So” because Geoff isn’t sure about blogging. He wonders if it’s just self promotion — and inspired a great conversation between Gwenda and Ted about the thing itself — and says he’ll stay quiet until he has something to say.

Don’t miss his engrossing pieces on visiting Cambodia (”It gets in your blood, Cambodia, I say. It’s the stories, he says, everybody has a story.”) that partially inspired The King’s Last Song.

This semester Geoff is teaching at UC San Diego (lucky students!) and his latest essay (post?) is on arriving in San Diego (”A tall woman in jeans and fluttery print shirt walks my way, smiling. Her face says both You can’t fool me and Isn’t this fun? It is the face of my generation”) and finding it worryingly enjoyable.

Check out the book on Google Books.

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Bad blogger

Thu 23 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Books | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Must have been an awful bad blogger at Bookslut as now when I go there it says:

Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access / on this server.

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New Joan Aiken site

Thu 23 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Big Mouth House, Joan Aiken | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

Ooh, pretty!

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Don’t tell Ben P. + freebies

Wed 22 Oct 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Parzybok | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Small Beer Press

but we got copies of Couch. Yay! (Pics TK of course.) And we mailed Ben copies. It only seemed fair.

So now we have a quick blog giveaway: if you want a galley for review leave your name in the comments and we’ll contact the first 3 North American readers and send them along.

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