Pixel Scroll 3/22/17 I Scroll The Pixel Electric

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(1) BATTERIES INCLUDED. The BBC reports plans for a short-distance electric passenger plane:

A new start-up says that it intends to offer an electric-powered commercial flight from London to Paris in 10 years.

Its plane, yet to go into development, would carry 150 people on journeys of less than 300 miles.

Wright Electric said by removing the need for jet fuel, the price of travel could drop dramatically.

British low-cost airline Easyjet has expressed its interest in the technology.

“Easyjet has had discussions with Wright Electric and is actively providing an airline operator’s perspective on the development of this exciting technology,” the airline told the BBC.

Chip Hitchcock adds: “Note the caveat of battery tech continuing to improve at its current rate. Reminds of the beginning of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, where the computer says there won’t be famine because matter transformation will be invented in a few years.”

(2) AND THEN I WROTE. In “Using Twine @TwineThreads”, Camestros Felapton gives a demonstration of the interactive story-writing software, amply illustrated by screencaps.

The software doesn’t present you with much: a simple screen with limited menu options. However, this really encourages you to jump straight in, start a story and start typing.

(3) FEWER BOOKS, MORE BOOZE. No, I’m not talking about Raymond Chandler. I’m reporting the observations by Barry Hoffman, publisher of Gauntlet Press, in his March 22 newsletter —

Late last year Barnes & Noble opened a new “superstore” in Eastchester, New York. The store features a full-service restaurant which serves alcohol. And, the store will be 20-25% smaller than its traditional superstores.

Normally, this news would be taken with a yawn (there are other such B&N superstores). But the sad fact is that B&N is responding to Amazon.com by adding a restaurant and cutting the number of books that it will carry. As it is B&N stores in Colorado Springs (where our offices are located) already devote a lot of space to other items besides books. The two stores in Colorado Springs have a Starbucks (a smart idea, in my opinion and it doesn’t take up all that much space), a large display for their Nook device, games, toys and other non-book related items. Since the price of these non-book related items are just as or more expensive than at nearby competitors such as Best Buy, Target, Walmart and Toys R Us it makes little sense to squeeze out books for them.

The B&N’s here used to sell CDs and DVDs but at a premium price which made no sense since there were competitors selling the same items at a greater discount. It seems that the B&N philosophy is to add these products and now large restaurants to their stores rather than come up with innovative approaches to selling books. To me this doesn’t seem the ideal approach to competing with Amazon.com.

(4) PAY THE WRITER. Lucy A. Snyder aired a grievance about MARCon, the annual Columbus, OH convention, in a public Facebook post.

Several people have asked me if I will be attending MARCon (Multiple Alternate Realities Convention) this year. I will not. As much as I would like to support one of the few remaining local Columbus conventions, I can no longer do so.

Last year, Marcon staff contacted me about leading a couple of writing workshops. We negotiated the same kind of deal as I had arranged for instructors at Context: they would charge for the workshops, and I would get half the fees with a minimum of $50 per workshop.

The convention completely failed to promote the workshops ahead of time, and didn’t even put an information page on their website so that I could promote them myself. They assured me that they would promote the workshops at the door and that I should plan to lead them, so I did my usual preparations.

Unsurprisingly, nobody signed up for my first workshop; I arrived at the expected time and then left when it was clear nobody was coming. They did sell several seats to the second workshop, and so I led that as expected. Aside from my time, my own costs to offer the workshops included $30 in parking garage fees, which I had expected to cover with the $50 for the workshop.

(I had expected a lot *more* than a net of $20, but I adjusted my expectations downward after I realized I wouldn’t be able to adequately promote my sessions. $20 was still better than nothing.)

A few months after the convention was over, I queried the staff who had recruited me to see when payment would be forthcoming, and received no reply.

Later, I forwarded the agreement to the programming email address with an inquiry, which also did not receive a reply.

Most recently, I forwarded the agreement to the convention chairs’ address; it’s been over a week and I haven’t gotten a reply.

So that’s three times I’ve emailed various staff, with zero replies from anyone. Not a “We’re working on it,” or a “The check’s in the mail,” or a “We’re kind of broke and need more time” or even a “Screw you, Snyder, we’re not paying you squat!” Nothing.

I’ve also talked to a Marcon volunteer who spent $120 on convention supplies and was promised reimbursement; so far, the convention has blown off her queries, too.

I would not be surprised to find out that other volunteers who were promised reimbursement of their registration fees have not received them.

The upshot is that Marcon appears to have become the kind of convention that won’t always honor its financial commitments.

There were other problems at last year’s convention that soured me on the experience, but failing to uphold business agreements and refusing to reply to communications is a definite deal breaker for me.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born March 22, 1931 – William Shatner

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY STARSHIP CAPTAIN

  • Born March 22, 2233 – James Tiberius Kirk.

(7) SCALZI INTERVIEW. The Verge asked the questions and got this answer: “Sci-fi author John Scalzi on the future of publishing: ‘I aspire to be a cockroach’”.

The author of Old Man’s War and The Collapsing Empire lays out his plan for his 10-year book contract, and the future of science fiction publishing….

With concerns about publishers dying off, it’s intriguing that Tor is making this long-term commitment.

I think there’s a number of things going on there. I do think it was signaling. It is Tor and Macmillan saying: “We’re going to stay in business, and we’re going to do a good job of it.” This is part of an overall thing going on with Tor. Tor recently reorganized; brought in Devi Pillai [from rival publisher Hachette]; moved Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who’s my editor, from senior editor to associate publisher; brought in some new editors and some other new folks; and Macmillan basically gave it a huge vote of confidence.

It’s been fun and fashionable to talk about the death of publishing, and certainly publishing has had “exciting times,” I think that’s the euphemism we want to use, over the last decade. But the people who are in it do feel optimistic that not only are they going to be around for the next 10 years, but that they are going to do what they have always done, which is to bring exciting stories and people into the market, to keep people engaged in the genre, and to be a presence….

Did you just describe yourself as a cockroach?

I am a cockroach. I aspire to be a cockroach. But in all honesty, what that means is that as a writer, you have to recognize that nothing lasts and things change, that there’s no one time in the history of publishing where everything was one way, and then all of a sudden there was change. It’s always changing. So we will definitely try new things to see if they work. And if they don’t, you don’t do them again, or you wait for the market to come around to them again, whatever. I’m totally open to that…

(8) BOOK HEAVEN. Real Simple lists the best bookstore in every state.

When you think of a great local bookstore, you probably single it out for its conscientious curation, enthralling events, and splendid staff. But what makes a bookstore go from great to one of the best in America? We partnered with Yelp to explore the best independent bookstores our country has to offer. There are no chains on this list. Using an algorithm that looks at the number of reviews and star rating for each business, Yelp singled out the top bookseller in each state.

In California, it’s Century Books in Pasadena.

(9) SAD PUPPY SADNESS. On Twitter, SF/F author Matthew W. Rossi thought Declan Finn was telling him that it’s not that big a deal he’s going blind. Apparently that’s not what Finn meant:

(10) INSIDE THE SHELL. Ghost in the Shell (2017) – “Creating The Shell” Featurette.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, rcade, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

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247 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/22/17 I Scroll The Pixel Electric”

  1. 8: Well, if they’re as accurate with every other state as they were with New Hampshire, the stores are probably worth checking out, but they aren’t “the best”.

    Gibsons in Concord NH takes that honor.

  2. I’m curious about this response to Finn’s first tweet:

    “Another fierce independent woman who crumbles at the first sign of not getting her way.”

    Has Matthew Rossi ever claimed to be a “fierce independent woman”?

  4. (3) / (8): Brookline Booksmith, rightfully praised by Real Simple and by @Chip Hitchcock, also devotes a substantial chunk of floor space to gifts and tchotchkes, although at least that section isn’t in the front of the store.

    O tempora! O mores!

  5. Of course, the current Tattered Cover is nothing like the glorious four floor building of my youth, so it’s understandable, but still.

    I lived in Denver in 1994-95. That four-story Tattered Cover was the greatest bookstore I’ve ever been in and a wonder of the world. A coworker and I used to go there from the Denver Tech Center for work lunches and spend two hours there. It’s a wonder we never got fired.

  6. @Lis Carey: Re. #8, the multi-page thing annoyed me; what annoyed me more was that the link at the top right to list all just showed pictures. (sigh) I did click through them all quickly to get to the handful of states I was curious about.

    @Stoic Cynic: Halfway through the list, I realized the thumbnails at the bottom may have hover text, and found they did. But by that point, I’d clicked through so many, that I just went through all of them. Also, I felt like the hover-to-discover game was kind more annoying in some ways. 😉 Anyway, clearly they just don’t want to make it easy for people, for the clicks, as Lis said; almost no one on the planet would care about seeing all 50 stores, and they know it. Oh well.

    @steve davidson: I was amused at “best per state,” as if the best store being hours away from me was really helpful. In a small state, or if it happens to be near me or in a city I visit – great! Otherwise, for me it was a game of “have I heard of it (curiosity) or is it near me.” I was hoping to find some nearby, hidden gem! That said, I may visit the Raleigh one next time I’m there. 🙂

  7. Lurkertype: If I understand the story of the SP group correctly, they said, quite openly, that they would not be targeting the Hugos this year, but would instead be running a recommendation process, with an eye on the Dragons, at least in that it would be geared to their categories. Since then, however, they have in fact done nothing.

    Whether this means they have given up entirely, or are just being slow, I am not sure: an open recommendation process may have less urgency to it than a slate, and the Dragons in any case have later deadlines. (Indeed, we haven’t reached the end of their eligibility period yet.)

  8. airboy on March 22, 2017 at 8:15 pm said:

    I also picked up Dwimmermount pdf which is an amazing D&D type supplement based on Appendix N.

    I didn’t know that James Malizewski had finally released Dwimmermount — I may have to pick it up. I enjoyed his blog a lot when he was doing it.

    It’s not really accurate to say that it’s “based on Appendix N,” though, because Malizewski’s reference point is original D&D, which pre-dates the DMG and all its appendices. Malizewski actually posted a list of his “Appendix N,” the works he was consciously drawing on when designing Dwimmermount, and while there are significant overlaps it’s not identical: http://grognardia.blogspot.ca/2009/05/my-appendix-n.html

    His Pulp Fantasy Library series is also a good examination of the many influences that went into the original D&D aesthetic, including and beyond those listed in Appendix N.

  9. SAD PUPPIES SAD: Setting aside the issue of cruel comments to someone losing his eyesight, I find it interesting that Matthew Rossi isn’t allowed to call himself broken and demoralized over what the puppies did.

    He’s supposed to be tougher than that, says Declan Finn.

    That’s kind of funny, coming from a group that has claimed so much personal hurt over the recipients of Hugo Awards and the pain they endured because those people were not (a) clones of Robert Heinlein or (b) them.

  10. @sean kirk
    I have always thought of Powell’s as the Stonehenge of the bookstore world.
    From Google Maps, it appears to sit on a street that runs East-West. Do its doors line up with the rising sun on the equinox?

  11. I didn’t know that James Malizewski had finally released Dwimmermount — I may have to pick it up. I enjoyed his blog a lot when he was doing it.

    I think the company Autarch finished and released that megadungeon, not Malizewski. He gafiated after Kickstarter backers ponied up $50,000 and it took years for them to finish the project and get the necessary permissions from him to release it.

    I miss Grognardia. I don’t know if Malizewski is writing anywhere these days, but there may not be a more talented writer to cover RPGs.

  12. @Darren Garrison: could be…but not because they haven’t used the File’s stories before.
    Up until very recently IO9 was in the bad habit of lifting stories from genre sites and presenting them without any attribution at all.
    Mike and I actually exchanged several emails on this subject several years ago when they were being particularly egregious about it. (They banned me from the site after I quoted chapter and verse to some higher-ups there. Apparently stealing traffic was part of their “business model”.)

  13. @Dareen – the io9 commentators are somewhat, er, direct in their opinions of VD. Short, obscene, and to the point in pretty much all cases.

  14. @Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: Yes, the Colfax store is still there; I visited just a couple of weeks ago.

  15. SFReading: I finished MJ-12: Inception by Michael J. Martinez (MAJESTIC #1) last night – great book! It starts right after WW II and throws superpowers into the cold war. The first half had a lot of setup, pulling together characters, etc. That’s not bad – and it was not boring – but at one point I wondered if it would’ve been better as a prequel novella than the first part of the first novel. But the spying and action started to pick up, and the second half is just what I expected. In retrospect, it’s a good combination, in fact. It was one of those books where the more I read, the more I wanted to read. I’m definitely looking forward to the sequel! BTW Martinez uses a nice method of revealing some information with “classified memos” here and there between some chapters. They’re generally short, and (at least in print) use typeface/formatting to look like “real” memos – cute layout, but also, effective way to add info and mix things up a little.

    Minor nit pick: The chapters all have dates; at one point, the date is wrong – it took place after the previous chapter, but had an older date. Also, I kept flipping back to see when the previous chapter took place. A second line like “2 days later” / “3 months later” etc. would’ve been nice. The date thing was spy-thriller-ish, maybe, but I don’t keep a calendar of book dates in my head, so I rarely remembered (unless it was just a continuation of the previous chapter) how long it was supposed to be without flipping back.

    Props to @Paul Weimer (blurb on back cover!), whose review over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog contributed to me picking up this book. 🙂 You were right – great book!

    Hmm, should I post this to the 2016 rec thread? I feel like maybe no one will look there for recs for 2016 books, now that Hugo noms are closed.

  16. I worked at a mall Barnes & Noble for a few months a couple of years ago. My experience pretty well confirmed that the corporate office believed that heavy readers weren’t a big enough market for them to focus on, or that the margin on books was too low to rely on, or both.

    The target customer was the one who came in looking for the hot book of the moment and picked up a couple of impulse buys from the display tables to go with it. And then bought a “membership”. The one metric that corporate cared about for the floor staff was the percentage of transactions that included selling a membership.

    At the time, that mall didn’t have a specialty store that sold CDs, DVDs, or toys, so B&N had a captive audience for those sidelines. And there were a decent number of regulars whose morning routine included buying a newspaper and reading it over breakfast in the in-store coffeeshop (which serves Starbucks coffee but is owned and run by B&N).

    (I didn’t expect this to be the subject that would get me to unlurk, but hey, why not?)

  17. 8) Dickson Street Books in Fayetteville, Arkansas…

    I tell you, with a Taco Bell moving in to the last place on Dickson Street that wasn’t Dickson Street Books, I fantasized last night about surrounding the place with tanks and artillery and just destroying everything around it, so as to have a clear field on which to defend a few thousand battered books.

    It’s probably not worth all that, yet, but it sure thrilled me no end to run into one owner when I was there last month and catch up. I’ve known them since the seventies and there aren’t better people or smarter booksellers. And I wish I could remember which of them I played and won my last decent hand of bridge against, forty years ago.

    I would add the caveat that it’s primarily a used book store. Only the occasional special interest local releases.

  18. @Matthew Johnson – I found out about Dwimmermount from reading Appendix N. Apologies if what I said was not clear.

    The Dwimmermount pdf (414 pages) is available for $10 at RPG Now for download.

  19. @Kendall Thanks. I talked with Mike a long while ago ( 2 years ago, I think) about his first series, told me privately about this idea in that conversation, and he went off and wrote a most excellent book (which he let me read barely-Beta early).

  20. @Anne Sheller et al re @4: I’ve had a few dealings with Columbus fandom recently and get the impression some of them have had a bad case of life over the last year-plus. (This is aside from the more recent news.) It’s possible the remaining people should have tried harder to pick up the pieces; it’s also possible those people were already paddling as fast as they could. If I were a past/present/potential Marcon attendee (I’m not due to distance and schedule issues), I would give them another try rather than assuming the issues with the last Marcon indicated some general moral failing.

  21. Well, THIS is a revolting development…

    I was browsing on Amazon half an hour ago and noticed that The Corroding Empire showed up in the mentions for the book I was looking at – so I clicked and took a look. I opened the preview and felt my red pen twitching at the very first line of the narrative, which is never a good sign. I not only did not proceed to purchase the book, but left a one-star review explaining why:

    The confused tenses in the very first sentence of the narrative (visible in the preview) tell me there’s no need to read more. It’s obvious to me that the editor/publisher spent more time and effort in ripping off the cover than he did getting the text right.

    A few minutes later, I was given a compelling reason to edit the review. I suspect it will be of interest to others…

    EDIT: How fascinating. Mere minutes after leaving the above review, I received a phone call from someone identifying himself as a Castalia House representative. That individual then proceeded to threaten to publicize my private information and stated that he was recording the telephone call – neither of which I had consented to.

    Buyer, beware! Stay FAR away from this company!

    Specifically, the caller read off a street address (which I did not confirm to be mine or not) and had obviously obtained my phone number, claiming Amazon had provided the data because I was a Castalia House customer. (Not true in any sense. Amazon doesn’t give ebook buyers any such information, and I hadn’t made the purchase.) That’s not the way to win friends and influence people, Teddy.

  22. Goof in last-minute edit: Meant to say Amazon doesn’t give that info to SELLERS.

  23. @Rev. Bob

    Whoa! That is seriously out of line.

    ETA: your review has a basic Amazon profile with your full name and city/state attached, and presumably you’re sufficiently unique that they found you via a directory. You might want to find out if that’s editable.

  24. I found File 770 because iO9 linked to the puppy coverage and I have been lurking here when time permits ever since. I didn’t much respect Gawker Media but I used to enjoy iO9 very much because of their great commentariat. With the sale and reorganization, the comment quality has gone down. Most of my favorite writers left, and they publish fewer stories. I visit weekly because I enjoy “Postal Apocalypse” very much. They used to publish snarky recaps of all the genre shows, and their feature FAQ, a snarky spoiler filled genre movie takedown was very funny. Since the majority of the contents are now simply aggregation of genre news, there isn’t much point. I still miss the old original content. I had no idea that they were taking any content from others without attribution, but that wasn’t what I was reading there.

    I will always be grateful to them for leading me here though. This is a great site with a wonderful commentariat. I always read all the comments, even though it cuts into my time for fiction reading.

  25. @Kendall — Thank you!! So glad you enjoyed it. And any posting to any threads are most welcome indeed. And of course, Paul’s voice in the genre is a very strong one; I know I’ve written a decent book if he likes it. 🙂

  26. @Rev Bob. Good grief, that’s so far over the line that I can’t see the line anymore.

  27. On the bookstore issue, Century Books isn’t even the best bookstore in Pasadena. That honor belongs to Vroman’s. And while I am nitpicking the article, Century Books is on Green Street in Old Pasadena. This is what it is called on all the signs, maps and the website. My guess is that Century Books does well with tourists. It’s a fun little area that still has some non-chain stores and restaurants.

    http://www.oldpasadena.org

    http://www.vromansbookstore.com

  29. World Weary on March 23, 2017 at 8:40 am said
    That’s certainly the store I expected to see, if it was going to be a Pasadena bookstore. (I usually end up at the teeny one in East Pasadena, as it’s handy when I have business in the area, rather than deal with the traffic in downtown Pasadena. I used to park on one of the lots behind the South Lake stores and walk.)

  30. Rev Bob-

    Hell I was just posting this in the other thread about the book:

    Specifically it’s a prohibited seller activity https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200414320

    Inappropriate email and phone communications:

    Unsolicited email and phone communications with Amazon users, email and phone communications other than as necessary for order fulfillment and related customer service, and emails and phone calls related to marketing communications of any kind (including within otherwise permitted communications) are prohibited.

    Direct email addresses:

    Buyers and sellers may communicate with one another via the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service, which assigns unique Amazon-generated email addresses to both parties

    Moron can’t help himself violate the policies of the very storefront he does his business on.

  31. @Rev Bob

    You may want to see This Post and subsequent over in the Corrosion thread. Sounds like a good case for contacting Amazon at the least.

  33. @Mark:

    What concerns me about that theory is that neither my street address nor my home phone number are listed under my name in public records. (My mother lives with me, so they’re in her name; at the time, calls were much more likely to be for her than me.)

  34. @Rev Bob

    ….yup, that’s worrying alright.

    At the risk of being alarmist, you could do worse than to make a report of this to your local police so that if anything more serious comes of it then the chain of events is clear.

  35. Rev. Bob:
    1] If your phone number is in the US Registry, you can file a Do Not Call complaint. This is a very quick and easy thing to do from the FTC website.
    2] You can also contact your State Attorney General.

    I read what you wrote and you started with:
    “Badly edited dreck from an ethically repugnant company” as a headline.

    I would be hesitant to label a company as “ethically repugnant” without stating a reason in the review itself – unless you changed the headline after the call you received. Then it makes sense.

  36. @airboy: I did indeed add to the headline during the edit. The original was simply “Badly edited dreck.”

  37. @airboy

    Ah yes, let’s examine whether the victim brought it upon themselves. That’s definitely the ethical course of action at this time.

  38. I make allowances for her, because she’s my mother, because she’s eighty-four next week, and because she has a degenerative brain disease. I’m pretty sure none of these things is true of Finn.

    Finn also seems to think, “Hey, if I can crank out seven unreadable piles of words in two months” (or whatever), “then that is the standard of achievement that matters, and as long as someone can do that, they have no complaints.”

    Perhaps Rossi thinks going blind will impact his life in ways that make both life in general and the process of writing good fiction that will attract audiences more difficult, but that’s just not the Finn yardstick. Wordcount uber alles.

    Now, certainly, there are writers who accomplished a great deal despite severe vision issues — James Thurber comes to mind — but I don’t think they’d respond to the news of someone losing their sight with “Your point being?”

  39. 4) That’s poor organization and poor communication. Something’s gone wrong with that concom.

    8) I’m sorry to see Book People in Austin lose out to some trendy joint in Dallas that appears to be more cafe than bookstore. OTOH, Powell’s!

    9) A simple apology would have gone a long way toward defusing that, but instead Finn chose to double down. And then they wonder why people don’t like them. CWAA.

    @ Lis: I clicked over, saw that it was a picture gallery instead of a list, and promptly back-paged and opened it in a new tab. That way when I was done, all I had to do was close that tab instead of having to back-page 50-odd pages to get back here.

  40. @ Rev. Bob, Mark: I wonder if that’s why the default for posting reviews now seems to be “Amazon Customer”.

    @ World Weary: I haven’t been to Century Books, but I have been to Vroman’s because I sometimes visit a friend in Pasadena who likes them. It seems as though every time I’ve been in there looking for a specific book (new release) they haven’t had it, and it also feels as though half their space is devoted to tchotchkes rather than books. Perhaps Century Books beat them out on the basis of being more likely to carry what you’re looking for. Or perhaps not — I couldn’t judge without shopping at both.

  41. Darren Garrison on March 23, 2017 at 6:22 am said:
    Is this the first time File770 has been referenced on Io9?

    Oh wow, there’s a whole other chapter of the Vox Day Appreciation Society in the comments section over there.

  42. @ Rev Bob. Assuming your mother’s name begins with a J, I was able to find your address and phone number with about three minutes on google. I don’t think you need to be concerned about hacking at any rate. I don’t know if they might try something else, but hopefully they were just trying to scare you into changing reviews..

  43. “Rev. Bob on March 23, 2017 at 10:27 am said:
    @airboy: I did indeed add to the headline during the edit. The original was simply “Badly edited dreck.””

    Then I would file a complaint with Amazon, the FTC (assuming you are on the Do Not Call List) and your State Attorney General.

    @Mark “Ah yes, let’s examine whether the victim brought it upon themselves. That’s definitely the ethical course of action at this time.”
    Well…………. I did provide specific suggestions for redress that are easy to take under US law for Rev. Bob. I do not think either suggestion I made had been brought up by anyone else. Your definition of “ethical course of action” is beyond me since I suggested almost painless means of potential redress.

    And Mark, making unsubstantiated claims of fraudulent business behavior is an actionable tort in the US in all 50 States. This has been adjudicated and tort claims by companies have held up on appeal. This has been adjudicated in the modern era for online reviews. Rev. Bob’s claim of poor editing is a rational opinion based on how he sees the facts. His adjusted headline is also reasonable based on getting a phone call.

    Since Vox Day’s past behavior has been to attack his perceived enemies, there is a reasonable fear that he could file a tort claim.

    People cannot make up false claims about a business and hide behind either the First Amendment or claims that it is “just an opinion” if the company takes action against them.

  44. This has been adjudicated and tort claims by companies have held up on appeal.

    Citations please. I’d like to read these decisions to see if they bear any resemblance to the situation being discussed here.

  45. @airboy

    I assumed it was obvious that I was referring to the second part of your post, in which you pondered on what Rev Bob had written in his review, rather than the advice in your first part, but next time I’ll assume you require clearer explanations.
    Anyway, your next post has now made it clearer that your motive was to establish whether Rev Bob had committed an “actionable tort”. The question then arises: why, when faced with the obviously reprehensible act of calling someone at home for the purposes of intimidation and/or petty revenge, did you immediately start examining what the target might have done wrong as well?

  46. @The other Nigel

    Powell’s should be wonderful, but for me it’s just too big. No, this isn’t a hipster whine about “I preferred it when it was smaller” (it’s never been smaller, as far as my memory goes). I love the idea of the massive selection, but actually picking my way through Avogadro’s Number of books makes me cranky. I get overstimulated and overwhelmed, like a child at Disneyland.

    Powell’s has expanded multiple times since they moved to that location (which originally was a former auto dealership, which is why they have the parking upstairs). The previous location (at 12th & Burnside) was even smaller.

    I can’t imagine thinking “Powell’s has too many books”, although Pterry did turn to me after a while when I took him there, and said “Please get me out of here!” (He was having a hard time resisting buying far too many books.)

  47. airboy: Rev. Bob’s claim of poor editing is a rational opinion based on how he sees the facts. His adjusted headline is also reasonable based on getting a phone call.

    That kind of skeeze may fly at Vox Popoli — not here. A word to the wise.

  48. I like Powell’s a lot. Generally, I don’t browse the whole store, though, just new books and whatever categories I’m interested in on that particular trip.

    So perhaps that keeps any overwhelmedness at bay.

    Or maybe I was trained up for it by shopping at the Harvard Coop in earlier years. Or spending so much time in my local library.

  49. Yes, Vroman’s has faded from its former glory, but so has every bookstore in the greater LA area. I don’t know of a single bookstore that doesn’t give over a lot of space to non-book items these days.

  50. Rev Bob, do whatever makes you feel safe. I would certainly report the call to Amazon if not the police. The police may actually help you.

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