From my tech-writing agent, in an email message yesterday:
Did you want us to send you a check for the payment due, or did you want an electronic funds transfer to your bank acct?
It took 7½ years, but my last tech book finally brought in more for the publisher than the size of the advance.
(And no, [...]

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Okay, I know I’m at risk of exhausting your patience with all the recent round of congratulations, thanks, trophy-giving, and so on. I just want to point you in the direction of one more nice little feather in the cap of an RAMH regular. It’s especially nice to be able to do so via a [...]

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…which I’m not, I’d say that the author of this book currently advertised on eBay will see none of the proceeds:

Ha! And there are 5 available, even! Hahahahaha…!
Omigod, thank you. I needed a good laugh.

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You probably already know the movie A Christmas Story, released in 1983 and based on the stories (and featuring the voiceover narration) of Jean Shepherd.
And if you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you may also know of my own childhood Christmas memories — and if so, you’ll know I share what seems to [...]

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(hat tip to Janet Reid)

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…of the Be Careful What You Wish For Department:

We’re clearing some stuff out in preparation for a garage sale. Aside from that, we’ve got a lot of stuff in boxes which we’ve never been able to take out of boxes — because of all the stuff on our shelves, stuff which we once imagined might [...]

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Thomas Pynchon’s newest hit the bookstores a week ago. Penguin Press’s description:
Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon — private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog
It’s been awhile since Doc [...]

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I first read about this on Twitter last week, via Travis Erwin: the second annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week, sponsored by Amy Riley of the My Friend Amy blog. Among other details at the site are these raisons d’etre:
WHAT A week where we come together, celebrate the contribution and hard work of book [...]

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…badly made.
Which is why, recently presented with these two books for review, I will probably start with the latter:

How S*x Works, by Dr. Sharon Moalem. From the publisher [typos supplied by JES intentionally, to ward off The Wrong Sort of Internet traffic]:
Why are women biologically driven to find Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome?
Can more s*x [...]

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Like most writing and reading households, The Missus and mine has books way in excess of the available bookshelf space. We’ve lived in this house for more than eight years now, yet still — still! — somewhere around six or eight cartons and big plastic tubs of books take up space in our (mercifully dry) [...]

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