Redirection

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Well, we're movin' on up...

Happy September 1st (bunny bunny), and as I alluded to earlier in the week, today is moving day!

Planning big things over at Morrow Planet, including actual updated content (!), new book and music reviews, plus a gradual release of much of my own writing under a Creative Commons license. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, please take a moment to switch over your bookmarks, blogrolls, etc to the new site: http://www.morrowplanet.com

Or maybe you live inside Bloglines or other news aggregator? Just subscribe to the new RSS/Atom Feed and you're all set.

Thanks! See you there!

Giving

I'm writing today to mobilize the lit-blogging community to help our brothers and sisters throughout the Gulf states who have been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. We have more influence than we realize.

How much a month do you spend on books? On your broadband/net access? On your various web accounts?

What if we, the lit-blogging community, committed to donating the money we would spend on books, etc. in the month of September to Katrina relief? I know that my wife and I probably spend at least $100 on books every month. So in September, we plan on giving up new book purchases and donating that hundred bucks to the Red Cross.

How can you help? Donate to the Red Cross or your favorite relief organization today. No amount is too small. Then, tell your blog readers what you are doing and encourage them to do the same.

I hope you're not annoyed by this request, but we are facing a growing humanitarian crisis. If you are, I sincerely apologize. But here's the deal: every day I turn to blogs for a sense of community and conversation. Let's turn that community and conversation into a real movement to help people in need.


[Cross-posted to Morrow Planet]

I'm Back

Yes, the hiatus is over.

Life has been extremely analog of late, but I am ready to plug back into the metacortex that is our blogosphere. For those that I haven't spoken to recently, here's what's been going on:

• G learned how to walk and turned one, all seemingly in the space of about five minutes


• I took another step forward into my thirtysomethings


• Spent some long-overdue time in the fine city of St. Louis


• Finally admitted to myself (though not to Bud) that I probably won't finish Don Quixote

Most exciting of all is that this Spiral Arm has been slowly coalescing into a planetary disc, spinning and spinning 'round my mind. Very soon, it should be entirely reborn as a place called Morrow Planet, which will be a much more hospitable environment for this blog to evolve. Stay tuned and watch this space for details.

Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts and this space on your feedlists/blogrolls.

Accelerando: paper or pixels

In June, Charles Stross will make his eagerly anticipated novel Accelerando available from accelerando.org under a Creative Commons license. (From Monday's Locus online)

I truly believe that authors who do this are getting it in a way that the piracy paranoids don't. It shows a faith in the writing (and in their community of readers) that I find irresistable. I'll download the ebook. And if it's good, I will buy the treeware version. In fact, I'll probably buy the book anyway as a thank-you and show of support for the model.

Mr. Stross also has a fine blog.

On relief, sweet

We can all let out our collective, metaphorical breath now that the Lit-Blog Co-Op has announced it's Summer Read This! pick.

I'm particularly relieved, since I've already read (and enjoyed) Case Histories. All I needed was another book on the nightstand that I should be reading and posting on, but that only gathers dust and guilt.

Come to think of it, my nightstand would make for a lovely, Shatner-esque poem:

Godel, Escher, Bach...

Quixote...

The Algebraist...

Case Histories.

"The book is totally true...and totally false."

The Journalist was one of my favorite reads in the last few years. A different kind of journalist (John Strausbaugh) has a nice write-up today in the NYT about Harry Mathews in advance of Mathews' new book, My Life in CIA.

The article is mostly written around the fact/fiction/reliable narrator playfulness that Mathews does so well. Although Oulipo is mentioned, it is never explained, nor is it referenced with respect to how its constraints might or might not apply to his new book.

One more for the TBR stack.

See also: Reading Harry Mathews (essay by John Beer)