Congratulations to James Curcio, who’s novel Fallen Nation: has just been optioned by Invictus Films and SB Productions.

Announcement at Alterati

James will present an audio installation at Esozone this year.

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“Of all the places that should have comic books, I think libraries should be at the top of the list. Sadly some still haven’t caught on and I’m left not getting to read the stuff I want. So much for finding everything I want at my local library.

As a general rule of economics and pop culture, when comics become more popular the access to comics becomes easier. There are online comic stores, regular comics stores, and now digital comics available in electronic formats. As much as I enjoy this new access to comics, I’m not interested in buying everything I want to read. If there was a place to borrow books for free I’d use it for comics. Oh wait, there is, it’s a library. The only problem is that the libraries I visit only seem to stock comics sparingly.

I’m a working stiff. I’m not rolling in money or time. If I was I would buy the books I want to read and sell the ones I don’t enjoy. That involves money to buy all the books and time to setup online auctions, travel to the post office, confirming the buyer, etc; like I said, time and money are two things that I do not have in excess – even though I make an effort once a week to share my thoughts in this article once a week. Anyway, my local library should be able to help me in this situation. They should be able to provide access to comics and graphic novels for me to try. But they don’t. I’ve even tried libraries out of my neighborhood and out of state.”

(via Pop Syndicate)

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“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins. I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading pages someone long gone has called my attention to.” So wrote Helene Hanff, author of 84 Charing Cross Road, the definitive novel about the lure and grip of used books. Hanff knew the power of the musty book smell, the red-pen underlines, the bent-down pages that meant someone, somewhere marked that spot as the phone rang, the baby cried, or the clock ticked well past bedtime.

The secondhand book is more than merely a bargain for the book lover. It’s a cross-cultural, inter-generational link between readers. A torch-race, of sorts, with batons passed in all directions, from the collector to the student, the casual reader to the obsessive.

[..] In this PopMatters special feature section, eight writers—each their own unique breed of book-lover—step inside the world of secondhand books and demonstrate the diversity of the experiences it contains. Kirby Fields describes the small town store that went from temporary linger-spot to provider of his childhood education. Erika Nanes explains the careful process of date selection based on a man’s handling of his used texts. Diane Leach praises those flyleaf inscriptions, Deanne Sole dissects the world of the St. Vincent de Paul charity store, Justin Dimos reveres the famed Caveat Emptor, while Rob Horning, David Pullar, and Ian Mathers take business-like approaches to the subject, breaking down the secondhand bookstore’s fiscal concerns (among other things).”

(via Pop Matters)

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“The following commentary about Borders — the US uber-bookstore — came from our good friend Alan Beatts, who, along with Jude Feldman, owns and operates Borderlands Books, a truly fine specialist bookstore in San Francisco. Extracted from his monthly newsletter, it’s kinda long, but it’s crucial information for all who read and write books, and will have a major impact on how the latter will sell their work to the former.”

“First off, a quick disclaimer — I don’t like Borders. I like them better than Barnes & Noble but still, like any independent bookseller, I don’t like them. Despite my intention to be as objective as possible in the article, I’m sure that my bias is going to creep in here and there. But, if you were looking for objective, dispassionate news, you wouldn’t be reading this I’m going to start with what has been going on with Borders over the past year, then I’m going to talk about the implications, and I’ll finish off with the reasons that it matters to everyone who loves books.”

(via Doc 40)

(Original article via Borderland Books Newsletter)

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