Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Fun things to read

Now playing on the iPod: "San Tropez" - Pink Floyd


I've found some entertaining things to read on Ye Olde Internet recently and thought I'd share them with you:

Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books explores the fun of trashy pulp novels dealing with crime, sex, and melodrama. It's worth reading just for the covers, but also provides reviews should you stumble on these books in a used bookstore.

Awful Library Books showcases inane, dated, or just plain bad books discovered in the deepest recesses of library shelves. I discovered this site when searching for Latawnya the Naughty Horse Learns To Say No To Drugs (if you must know more about this book, some kind soul has done a dramatic reading of it).

From the Shelf Awareness newsletter, a peek into what a bookstore owner has to deal with every day. The highlight/nadir of the customers was probably the man who told his kid they wouldn't go into the bookstore because "Reading is stupid." Or the person who asked, "Have you read all these books? When do you watch TV." Sigh.

Lastly, for some fun there's I Write Like - use this writing analysis tool to see how your writing (or someone else's) compares to famous writers. Sample of my fiction apparently resemble works by David Foster Wallace, Chuck Palahniuk, and Vladimir Nabokov, which is cool. I threw in samples of random movie review as well, and in addition to Wallace and Nabokov, got comparisons to William Gibson and H. P. Lovecraft. The weirdest thing about all this? I haven't read a thing by Wallace or Gibson. Go figure.

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