Pixel Scroll 4/23/18 It Was Me Who Ate All The Cupcakes In The File770 Office IN SELF DEFENCE!

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(1) 100 LOVED BOOKS. PBS series The Great American Read premieres May 22. One hundred books, one winner:

THE GREAT AMERICAN READ is an eight-part series that explores and celebrates the power of reading, told through the prism of America’s 100 best-loved novels (as chosen in a national survey).  It investigates how and why writers create their fictional worlds, how we as readers are affected by these stories, and what these 100 different books have to say about our diverse nation and our shared human experience.

(2) AMAZING OPENS SUBMISSIONS WINDOW. Steve Davidson announced “General Submissions for Amazing Stories Opens Today”. See detailed guidelines at the link. Davidson had more to say on Facebook:

(3) COMPTON CROOK AWARD. Nicky Drayden announced on April 19 that her book Prey of Gods won the 2018 Compton Crook Award. [Via Locus Online.]

(4) RINGO’S WORLD. John Ringo’s April 16 Facebook post about his withdrawal as ConCarolinas special guest continues gathering moss, now with over 900 likes. Today Ringo showed everyone what they’ll be missing with a new comment that explains to his sycophants why ConCarolina’s Guest of Honor can’t compete with him.

No. Because nobody but people who pay close attention to the industry and awards has ever heard of her.

Her Amazon rankings are pretty low. Her bookscan ratings are low. That indicates she’s not particularly popular just heavily promoted and ‘popular’ with the ‘right crowd’. (Which is a very small crowd.)

James Patterson is a big name. JK Rowling is a big name. Hell, China Meville is a big name.

Seanan McGuire is not ‘a big name’.

I have no clue where we stand representationally in sales comparison to me but I suspect I sell more books. Just a suspicion, though, and it probably depends on the series.

Honestly, I suspect A Deeper Blue sold more books than all of hers combined.

(5) ENCHANTED MUSEUM. Atlas Obscura reveals the “Hidden Elves at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science”.

Back in the 1970s, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science hired artist Kent Pendleton to paint the backdrops for many of the museum’s wildlife dioramas. Little did it know that Pendleton’s penchant for hiding tiny mythical creatures in these paintings would add a whole new dimension to the museum experience.

It all began with eight elves—or gnomes, or leprechauns, depending who you ask—hidden in Pendleton’s wildlife dioramas. An elf hiding in the lowland river. An elf riding a dinosaur along a cretaceous creekbed. Another elf sat on a rock in the Great Smoky Mountains. And others, hard to spot but definitely there, in various backdrops throughout the museum.

In 2018, Pendleton told the Denverite: “It was just kind of my own little private joke. The first one was so small that hardly anyone could see it, but it sort of escalated over time, I guess. Some of the museum volunteers picked up on it and it developed a life of its own.”

(6) THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE. Kevin Standlee is running for office in his home town:

I’m Kevin Standlee, and I’m running for a seat on the Board of Directors of the North Lyon County Fire Protection District, which serves the city of Fernley, Nevada.

I grew up in a fire station. As the child of a US Forest Service officer, I lived a lot of my formative years on a series of fire outposts in the Sierra Nevada….

June 12 is Election Day.

(7) HISTORIC DUNES. ABC News tells about “Visiting the desert where ‘Star Wars’ was filmed”.

There’s a reason the original “Star Wars” movie was filmed in the deserts of southern Tunisia. This stark, remote landscape looks like another planet.

One of Tunisia’s vast desert regions is even called Tataouine (ta-TWEEN), like Luke Skywalker’s home planet, Tattoine.

And the underground home where Luke Skywalker first appeared living with his uncle and aunt is a real hotel in the town of Matmata, one of various desert locations used in the movies.

Masoud Berachad owns the Hotel Sidi Driss. He says visitors have dropped off since Tunisia’s democratic revolution in 2011 and attacks on tourists in 2015.

Still, devoted “Star Wars” fans keep the hotel in business….

(8) CURSED CHILD IN NEW YORK. David Rooney goes into great detail – perhaps too much – in his “‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’: Theater Review” for The Hollywood Reporter. Here’s a relatively spoiler-free excerpt:

…Pockets of racist outrage exploded online when it was first announced that a black actress had been cast as Hermione, which Rowling shot down in her no-nonsense style by pointing out that the character’s ethnicity was never mentioned in the books. In any case, only the most bigoted idiot could find fault with the brilliant Dumezweni’s performance, her haughtiness, quicksilver intellect and underlying warmth tracing a line way back to the precociously clever girl Harry first met on the train all those years ago.

Thornley’s Ron, too, is readily identifiable as the perennial joker of the trio. He’s acquired substance and a charming mellowness over the years, though a glimpse of him in a time-warped present tells a heartbreakingly different story. Miller takes the early indicators of Ginny’s strength and builds on them, shaping a smart, grounded woman capable of handling Harry’s complicated baggage. And Price’s Draco is still peevish and moody, his bitterness exploding in an entertaining clash of wands with Harry, but he’s found a softer side in maturity as well.

At the center of it all is Parker’s Harry, grown up and more confident but still pensive and troubled as ever, plagued by memories of the orphaned boy who slept under the stairs at his aunt and uncle’s home, and the reluctant hero he was forced to become. It’s a finely nuanced performance, with gravitas and heart, particularly as he wrestles with and eventually overcomes his struggles as a parent. Even with the sweet sentimentality of the closing scenes, what lingers most about Parker’s characterization is the stoical knowledge he carries with him that every moment of happiness contains the promise of more pain to come.

Of equal importance in the story are Albus and Scorpius, and while Clemmett is affecting in the more tortured role, at war with himself as much as his father, the discovery here is Boyle. His comic timing, nervous mannerisms and endearing awkwardness even in moments of triumph make him a quintessential Rowling character and a winning new addition. “My geekness is a-quivering,” he chirps at one point, probably echoing how half the audience is feeling. It’s stirring watching these two young outsiders conquer their self-doubt to find courage and fortitude….

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Daniel Dern doesn’t want Filers to miss xkcd’s cartoon “Misinterpretation.”
  • Lise Andreasen asks, “Things men weren’t meant to know?”

(10) GENESIS. In “How Stan Lee Became the Man Behind Marvel” Chris Yogerst of the LA Review of Books reviews Bob Batchelor’s biograpahy of the comics icon.

STAN LEE WAS FINISHED with comics. “We’re writing nonsense,” he once told his wife Joan. “It’s a stupid business for a grownup to be in.” After riding the early success of comic books, Lee was concerned about the future of the medium. He wanted to write more intelligent stories, something adults could connect to.

Following his wife’s advice, Lee decided to write one last story. With characters that were grounded in reality, stories that channeled Cold War tensions, and a narrative influenced by popular science fiction, Lee created the Fantastic Four. This was the type of story Lee would have wanted to read. If it was successful, maybe he would stick with comics a little longer.

Popular culture historian Bob Batchelor’s latest book turns a critical eye on the life of Lee, who ultimately became “the man behind Marvel.” Batchelor’s Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel focuses on where Lee came from, what influenced him, and how he became the immortal face of the comic book industry. In other words, to use the vernacular of the superhero genre, Batchelor gives us Lee’s origin story.

(11) AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #800.Here’s another variant cover for the upcoming milestone issue.

It’s all been building to this – the biggest Peter Parker and Norman Osborn story of all time, and the first Marvel comic EVER to hit 800 issues! In celebration of the 800th issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and the now historic run of Dan Slott, Marvel is excited to show a variant cover from legendary artist Frank Cho and colorist David Curiel!

Witness the culmination of the Red Goblin story as Slott is joined for his final issue by epic artists such as Stuart Immonen, Humberto Ramos, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Nick Bradshaw!

(12) SKYWATCH. Bill Gates among backers of proposed live-video-from-space satellite constellation called EarthNow:

EarthNow takes advantage of an upgraded version of the satellite platform, or “bus,” developed originally for the OneWeb communications service. Each satellite is equipped with an unprecedented amount of onboard processing power, including more CPU cores than all other commercial satellites combined. According to Greg Wyler, Founder and Executive Chairman of OneWeb, “We created the World’s first lowcost, high-performance satellites for mass-production to bridge the digital divide. These very same satellite features will enable EarthNow to help humanity understand and manage its impact on Earth.”

Use cases are said to include:

  • Catch illegal fishing ships in the act
  • Watch hurricanes and typhoons as they evolve
  • Detect forest fires the moment they start
  • Watch volcanoes the instant they start to erupt
  • Assist the media in telling stories from around the world
  • Track large whales as they migrate
  • Help “smart cities” become more efficient
  • Assess the health of crops on demand
  • Observe conflict zones and respond immediately when crises arise
  • Instantly create “living” 3D models of a town or city, even in remote locations
  • See your home as the astronauts see it—a stunning blue marble in space

(13) TODAY’S COPYEDITING TIP. From Cherie Priest:

(14) LOSING FACE. Motherboard says “This Is the Facial Recognition Tool at the Heart of a Class Action Suit Against Facebook”.

On Monday, a federal judge ruled that a class action lawsuit against Facebook can move forward, paving the way for what could turn out to be a costly legal battle for the company.

As Reuters reports, the lawsuit alleges that Facebook improperly collected and stored users’ biometric data. It was originally filed in 2015 by Facebook users in Illinois, which passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in 2008. The law regulates the collection and storage of biometric data, and requires that a company receive an individual’s consent before it obtains their information.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook ran afoul of BIPA when it began using a tool called Tag Suggestions, which was originally rolled out in 2011. Like many Facebook features, it’s designed to make your user experience better while also providing the company with your data—in this case, very specific facial features.

(15) KNOT OF THIS WORLD. Gizmodo’s Kristen V. Brown advises “Forget the Double Helix—Scientists Discovered a New DNA Structure Inside Human Cells”.

The double helix, though, is not the only form in which DNA exists. For the first time ever, scientists have identified the existence of a new DNA structure that looks more like a twisted, four-stranded knot than the double helix we all know from high school biology.

The newly identified structure, detailed Monday in the journal Nature Chemistry, could play a crucial role in how DNA is expressed.

Some research had previously suggested the existence of DNA in this tangled form, dubbed an i-motif, but it had never before been detected in living cells outside of the test tube. Researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia, though, found that not only does the structure exist in living human cells, but it is even quite common.

(16) ROCKET MAN. In his book What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, author David Hofstede ranked William Shatner’s 1978 performance of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” at #17 on the list. Details from the Wikipedia —

At the 5th Saturn Awards Ceremony, which aired as the Science Fiction Film Awards in January 1978, Taupin introduced William Shatner’s spoken word[29] interpretation of the song. It used chroma key video techniques to simultaneously portray three different images of Shatner, representing the different facets of the Rocket Man’s character….

How can you not want to watch it after a build-up like that?

(17) MAKING A BIGGER BANG. Wil Wheaton has been having fun —

Since last week, I’ve been working on the season finale of The Big Bang Theory, and today we shot Amy and Sheldon’s wedding.

It was an incredible day, and I am still in disbelief that I got to be in multiple scenes with Kathy Bates, Laurie Matcalf, Jerry O’Connell, Brian Posehn, Lauren Lapkus, Teller, Courtney Henggeler, and this guy, who is not only one of the kindest people I’ve ever worked with, but is also from a science fiction franchise, just like me!

[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus, JJ, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Carl Slaughter, Lise Andreasen, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]

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259 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/23/18 It Was Me Who Ate All The Cupcakes In The File770 Office IN SELF DEFENCE!”

  2. ….I only know who John Ringo is because OH JOHN RINGO NO! brought him to my attention. Nothing about that made me want to read a single one of his books. Ever. Astonishingly enough, bagging on the GoH for the con he flounced from does not inspire the desire to explore the exciting vistas of gun-humping misogyny he provides to his loyal readership, either.

    First? Dammit. Second.

  4. Quick drive-by Meredith Moment before I read the scroll:

    Emma Newman’s Between Two Thorns (Split Worlds #1) is 99 cents in the U.S. from Diversion Books (uses DRM) BTW I’m unfamiliar with Diversion Books; when I got my copy a few years ago, it was from Angry Robot. ::puzzled::

    Anyway, this five-book fantasy series, which ended last year, has been highly rec’d by some Filers! 🙂 Read the description at your fave ebookstore.

    ETA: Pre-fake-fifth! Always a fourther, never a fifth, or something like that.

  5. (8) CURSED CHILD IN NEW YORK.

    …Pockets of racist outrage exploded online when it was first announced that a black actress had been cast as Hermione, which Rowling shot down in her no-nonsense style by pointing out that the character’s ethnicity was never mentioned in the books.

    I’m glad Hermione is black in the play.

    But it’s disingenuous of Rowling to say her skin color wasn’t mentioned in the books. From Goblet of Fire:

    “Yes, he did,” said Hermione, the pink patches on her cheeks glowing more brightly. “So what?”

    “What happened — trying to get him to join spew, were you?”

    “No, I wasn’t! If you really want to know, he — he said he’d been coming up to the library every day to try and talk to me, but he hadn’t been able to pluck up the courage!”

    Hermione said this very quickly, and blushed so deeply that she was the same color as Parvati’s robes.

    Description of Parvati’s robes:

    Parvati was waiting for Harry at the foot of the stairs. She looked very pretty indeed, in robes of shocking pink,

  7. 1) 100 loved books – I scored 34, not that much higher than 31. I have to admit that I counted The Great Gatsby, which I read for high school English class three decades ago and remember nothing at all about.

    The list is a really peculiar mixture of the popular and the literary: A Song of Ice and Fire, The Da Vinci Code, and Twilight are cheek by jowl with Siddhartha, War and Peace, and The Pilgrim’s Progress. I mean really: are there actually people out there who read and love The Pilgrim’s Progress?

    (I will say that I enjoyed War and Peace, though “love” is a little strong.)

  8. Gosh, when John Ringo turns on his sparkling charm, one must shield one’s eyes or else be blinded by his dazzling wit. Clearly only his wholesome humility prevents him from outshining all stars in the firmament.

  9. Kendall: Emma Newman’s Between Two Thorns… I’m unfamiliar with Diversion Books; when I got my copy a few years ago, it was from Angry Robot.

    Angry Robot dropped the series after the 3rd book. They chose… poorly.

    Diversion picked up the series in 2016, republished the first 3 books, and put out the last 2 previously-unpublished novels in the series. They chose… wisely.

  10. Okay, Patterson and Rowling are Big Name Authors. By that standard, Ringo is not. Not even in 2419. (I’d put him in the 3rd tier at best. The books by him that I’ve read were sloppily written and his characters never learned – after three books, they were still making the same mistakes they had at the beginning.)

  12. (1) I scored 76 … unless you’re one of those mean grouches that insists “read” means continued all the way past the halfway mark up to and including the end, in which case, 53. (21 of which were read in self defense.)

  13. 1) I scored 32. But I think that’s not bad, given that I’m not reading the best-sellers that they have on that list. (I’ve read some big-name books they didn’t list, too.)

  14. (1) 100 loved books.

    I see books on there I haven’t read; books I tried reading and quit in exasperation, boredom, or bemusement; books I read thought were very overrated, and books I read and liked but wouldn’t describe as personal favorites.

    I do see 5 or 6 books on there which I love. I also see 7 or 8 that I loved as a kid or teen, but haven’t read since; maybe I should re-read and see what I think now.

    A number of these examples list an author who wrote a book (or books) that I much prefer to the title actually listed here:

    I am disappointed to see AND THEN THERE WERE NONE on there. I’m in the home stretch now of a years-long project of reading all of Christie’s novels, none of which I’d ever read before. I’ve really been enjoying it. But ATTWN is definitely in the “lowest 10%” of how I rank the ones I’ve read (including 2-3 that I quit without finishing). I don’t engage with any of the characters in that novel, and I find the plot utterly idiotic (and lacking any of the redeeming qualities that a book needs to work despite a bad plot). She wrote many books that were so much better than this one–which nonetheless always seems to be her most celebrated novel.

    Similarly, rather than Dumas’ COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, which I didn’t like, I would list THE THREE MUSKETEERS, which is not listed. And although I like Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS very much, I preferred LORD JIM, which is not on the list. Much as I enjoy PRIDE & PREJUDICE, I prefer EMMA. And I Du Maurier’s MY COUSIN RACHEL (not listed) much more compelling than REBECCA (which is listed).

  15. “James Patterson is a big name. JK Rowling is a big name. Hell, China Meville is a big name.”

    Before laughing at Ringo thinking himself bigger than Seanan McGuire, I wanted to crack up at this quote, which equates Meville to Patterson and Rowling – not that Meville’s writing is worse than the former two, but he’s clearly going in terms of popularity and well no one outside of the genre would know who Meville is, unlike Rowling and Patterson lol. It’s bizarre.

    Anyhow, it’s not like McGuire has had multiple Hugo and other award noms or has had two different series nominated for the new Best Series Hugo in the past two years – I know Ringo doesn’t recognize the Hugo Award, but if he’s going based upon popularity, you would think he’d at least give credit to its due.

    And no, I’d never heard of John Ringo before File 770, sooooo yeah. lol. What a poor guy, with such a sore pride.

  16. (4) “I’ve never heard of her, therefore nobody else has and I have heard of ME so I’M the bigger author”

    Just a note: I’m not particularly into McGuire’s writing either to be honest but this one-sided pissing match doesn’t really make Ringo look great. Not that he was looking particularly good before now.

  17. With regard to the Universal Fan Con going belly-up, an enterprising individual has set up a virtual Artists’ Alley for creators who had planned to display and sell at the con.

    There’s some amazing work on display; I recommend checking it out.

  18. (1) in honour of today’s scroll date, I got 23! Holy crap I was expecting a few more than that.

    Edit: in my self-defense I’m British, not American…

  19. garik16: it’s not like McGuire has had multiple Hugo and other award noms or has had two different series nominated for the new Best Series Hugo in the past two years – I know Ringo doesn’t recognize the Hugo Award, but if he’s going based upon popularity, you would think he’d at least give credit to its due.

    And a Nebula Award. And a Campbell Best New Writer Award. And Locus and Goodreads winners. And WFA and BFS and Stoker and PKD and Shirley Jackson finalists.

    Ah, but who the hell is she? Obviously she’s not as popular as John Ringo! He made it to like 14th and 16th on the GoodReads list a couple of years! 😆

  20. (1) 100 LOVED BOOKS.

    To anyone who might be feeling inadequate based on their count of these books read, please stop. This list — as with pretty much every iteration of I’ve seen of this sort of list — is a mishmash of old classics, new classics, used-to-be-but-no-longer-are-classics-for-good-reason, popular-but-unremarkable books, and wildly-popular crap.

  23. Meredith Moment:

    Tor.com has released their free Fearless Women Sampler: Excerpts of Fantasy and Science Fiction Novels by Fearless Women on Amazon US, (and most likely at other usual suspects).

    Includes novel samples from:
    The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton
    Death Doesn’t Bargain by Sherrilyn Kenyon
    By Fire Above by Robyn Bennis
    Vicious by V. E. Schwab
    Starless by Jacqueline Carey
    City of Lies by Sam Hawke
    The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

  25. I guess that while John Ringo likes China Miéville, he doesn’t like him enough to spell his name correctly.

  26. Oh, hey, the time machine is working again.

    Oh John Ringo No will probably outlast the dimmest memory of JR himself. Future generations will treat his meme to the same fate as Kleenex. Fitting.

    If I only count the ones I finished, I got 61. So, mostly a middlebrow list, I’d guess.

    I can’t say I liked Pilgrim’s Progress, but I did get through it. I don’t remember much, though.

  27. (4) RINGO’S WORLD. . . . and welcome to it. 😛 I’m not sure when/how/why it became (to him) about how much better he, as last-minute Special Guest, would’ve been compared to her, as Guest of Honor, due to relative sales. BTW does he even understand Amazon rankings?

    BTW #2, I’ve never heard of A Deeper Blue – clearly only a book heavily promoted and ‘popular’ with the ‘right[-wing] crowd.’ (Which is a very small crowd [in the real, not Ringo’s, world].)

    @JJ: OMG he won a Dragon Award. Phht. Who is she, in comparison to such majesty?! 😉

    BTW thanks for the additional info & especially video (heh) re. Newman’s series.

    (5) ENCHANTED MUSEUM. This is the Museum of Nature and Science, dude. Sigh.

    (9) COMICS SECTION. Hehehe, great stuff, both of them.

    (13) TODAY’S COPYEDITING TIP. ::snort:: . . . or maybe ::cough::

    (15) KNOT OF THIS WORLD. Wut. There’s a new freaking kind of DNA in my body, now?! Woah!

    (16) ROCKET MAN. It’s his cigarette that really clinches it.

  29. @JJ: “To anyone who might be feeling inadequate based on their count of these books read, please stop.”

    I don’t feel inadequate by my 26 score, but even though they’re usually weird or silly, I like checking out the latest list of whatever. Er, I may have cheated a bit -counting a few things I saw movies of but didn’t read. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few people voting in whatever-vote-made-this-list also counted movies as books, though. 😉

    Anyway, I don’t feel at all inadequate since I’m really, really not into classic literature and lit fic. But I have read – really read! – a few classics from that list (or most of some classics; I forget if I actually finished Siddhartha, blush), which probably would shock anyone who knows me and/or what I read (99% SFF).

    I didn’t pay attention to how many were books I loved. Probably very few a lot of those 26.

  30. @Tom Becker: LOL!

    @Anyone: Apparently Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. Who knew? (Rhetorical question.) I didn’t.

  31. I checked off 40 on the list. A couple were series that I hadn’t read all of (specifically Maupin and Jordan, and I’ve read well over half of the WoT). Agreed that the list is majority meh with a few great works but mostly popular material. Catch 22, however, is one of my all-time favorites, as is (obviously?) LotR.

  32. 1) I got 30 out of 100. The list is a curious mix out of classics most Americans (and those who study English language literature elsewhere) read in high school or college, highly regarded literary works that may eventually proceed to the first category, but aren’t quite there yet (and again, it also depends on age. I didn’t read The Giver in high school, because it came out the year I graduated, but I know many younger folks who did), beloved genre classics and huge bestsellers of the past approx. 15 years or so, which may well look quaint in another 15.

    Also, like Laura, I really don’t like And Then There Were None. Most filmic version are pretty good, though IMO the best were only very loosely based on the novel and just took the general concept and ran with it. The actual book, however, is unpleasant and was what turned me off Christie for good.

    4) Gee, and John Ringo wonders why people don’t want to be on panels with him.

    I was vaguely aware of John Ringo as “some dude who writes the sort of military SF I don’t care for”, but I’ve never seen his works in a single bookstore (due to Baen’s well known international distribution problem) and couldn’t tell you the title of a single book he has written without looking it up. On the other hand, I have been aware of Seanan McGuire and her pen name for many years now, have seen her books in bookstores and some of them and could easily name the titles of ten or so of her novels.

    He is nowhere near J.K. Rowling or James Patterson (whom I have heard of, though I’ve never read even a single one of his books). I wouldn’t even put him on the same level as Seanan McGuire or China Miéville. John Ringo is someone who is popular among a certain audience and in certain parts of the US, but nigh unknown elsewhere. Which is a common pattern with Baen authors.

    I’m not surprised that there isn’t much overlap between Seanan McGuire’s readership and John Ringo’s. However, Ringo makes the same mistake that many of his fellow Baen authors (including those like Eric Flint, who have nothing in common with him politically) make, namely assuming that just because their books are popular in certain parts of the US (the South and what I have been informed is called the Mountain West), they are equally popular everywhere. Even in the US, their popularity seems to be very regional and many European fans have never heard of any Baen authors except for maybe Lois McMaster Bujold and even her books have to be ordered via Amazon, because few stores carry them. “Gun porn” Baen authors, even popular ones like Ringo or Larry Correia, usually only elicit a “who the hell is this guy?” reaction in Europe. Once they act up, yelling how they are a really popular and totally New York Times bestselling (rank 32 out of 35 in a slow week) author and how all those other authors, the ones you’ve heard of, even though no one in Utah reads them, are nobodies, that reaction usually switches to “oh, that arsehole.”

  33. Book list: 40.5 (I’ve read some but not all of the ASOIF books). And there are a number of books there that I’m proud NOT to have read. And why Tom Sawyer and not Huckleberry Finn, a much, much better book IMHO.

    When did Lord of the Rings become a series? Was this list made by someone who saw the movies but didn’t actually read the booksingular?

  34. (5) One of the finest paintings was of unfortunate rhinos trapped in a flash flood. It was an accurate portrayal of the origins of a major fossil deposit. Well, accurate except for the elf up in a tree shouting “OH NO, JOHN RHINO, NO!”

  35. @JJ: “To anyone who might be feeling inadequate based on their count of these books read, please stop.”

    Thank you for that. I knew my score would be lower than most filers but 14 kinda surprised me. And believe it or not among my friends and family I’m the reader. I have always avoided Best Sellers and Classic Literature (even in school). In class I would have the assigned book open on my desk while I read my SF paperback.

  36. 1) Scored 25 books that I know I have read. There are a few more that I can’t remember if I read them whole or just excerpts and there are also some I tried to read and decided they were better for throwing at the wall.

  37. Sales, schmales. I’m taking Seanan to the Serpentarium when she’s in town, and Ringo only wishes he could have as much fun in a room full of venomous snakes as we will.

  38. John Ringo is one of those names I’ve seen on the shelves and associated with the likes of REMO – The Destroyer, Mack Bolan – The Executioner or Nick Carter – Killmaster. Cheap looking books with hideous covers. As I didn’t see them before I grew out of the other books of that type, I never read any of them.

    I saw them at a friends place some 5-10 years back and asked him if they were good and he looked ashamed and started to talk about something else.

  39. 1) I got 25 on the list. There are some more I’m not sure if I have read whole or only excerpts from and some I know I tried to read and threw into the wall instead. But I think there are only 5-10 of the others that I’m interested in reading.

  40. (1) 43, if you count only the things I finished. I tried 3 times to read War and Peace, largely because Ursula K. Le Guin was a big fan, each time quitting about p. 50, when I realized that I didn’t know who X Xevitch was and did not care. I am proud to say, however, that I have never opened a “book” by EL James. JJ is right, what a weird list.

    (4) Ringo is probably right to suspect. Evidence might challenge his prejudices.

  41. @JJ: “To anyone who might be feeling inadequate based on their count of these books read, please stop.”

    Thanks for that. I knew my score would be lower than most but 14 kinda surprised me. And among my friends and family I’m the reader. I have always avoided Best Sellers and Classic Literature. In school I would have the assigned reading open on my desk as I was reading an SF paperback.

  42. (10) GENESIS. In “How Stan Lee Became the Man Behind Marvel” Chris Yogerst of the LA Review of Books reviews Bob Batchelor’s biograpahy -> biography.

    Or is this one of them American spellings? Asking in self defen(c/s)e.

  43. Title is not only great in itself, but stands at the head of a long list of good comments.

    (1) I got about 40. If you left out things I had to read in school, I’d have about 30. And if you left out the SFF, hoo-boy.

    But who the hell reads “Pilgrim’s Progress” nowadays? Or even recentadays? I mean, sure, people voluntarily read LOTR and Da Vinci Code. Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye get assigned in school. But I’m gonna side-eye Pilgrim’s Progress, and some of the older stuff by Europeans.

    (4) Obnoxious AND uninformed. Just because his little clique doesn’t read things by girls where things don’t get shot every five minutes and women have mad amounts of agency doesn’t mean he’s right. You can’t even buy his books in most of the world in a bookstore, even supposing people in those countries read English. I doubt Baen gets a whole lot of

    And I bet more people have read one of Seanan’s books than one of Mieville’s in the US. China’s swell, but not a big name. Bigger than Ringo, though.

    Many people who read SF only know him from the OH NO meme.

    (5) I remember those little guys! Especially the one on the dinosaur. Of course, it was still called the Museum of Natural History back then.

    (9) Both good.

    (13) snicker.

    (16) Of all the things ever on TV, there have to be a lot more than 16 dumber than this. Also, very few people saw this at the time, it’s much more famous now. People mostly didn’t have VCRs back then, and copying tape gets bad fast.

    (17) Reminds me of the mock “feud” between (16) and (17.2) space twin who agreed that both SW and ST fans should call a truce to make fun of “Twilight” fans (of adult age).

    @Lin: LOTR is 3 books, which is kind of a series. It wasn’t sold as a singular book.

  44. I score 28, but I am sorry I read some of them.

    Like David Goldfarb, I last read Gatsby in school, and since my son read it in school this year, that was not today or yesterday.

    I seem to remember some sort of Jazz era love triangle in New England, doomed by being right on top of the eldritch, colossal West Egg, about to hatch and release something squamous and rugose to wreak havoc on the Eastern seaboard.

  45. 1) I got 35 on that list, not including my two aborted attempts at reading Catch-22, and the two WoT books I read ages ago before getting too intimidated by the number of other books to carry on. I guess I’ve read a fair bit of 50 Shades of Grey as well, mostly via the old Twilight fanfic version which I hoped would reach so-bad-it’s-good territory (alas it did not).

    There’s very little on there that made me go “oh yes, I should really get around to that someday”, though. Junot Diaz for sure, and I’d like to read the Giver someday, but otherwise I’ll leave the “universal must-reads” to people who don’t already have a personally curated 100+ book TBR on their Kindle alone.

    4) Standard fixation on “I am somebody and anyone I have not heard of, or who disagrees with me, is nobody” which we’ve come to know and… know… from the puppies and friends. This thread clearly also represents a huge rebuke to anyone who thinks Ringo is too much of a rude and unprofessional liability to make a suitable con guest!

  47. 4) Pissing on Seanan McGuire?
    Lovely lack of class you have there, Mr. Ringo.

    1) I agree with the above…is Pilgrim’s Progress “loved” at all, anymore? I mean, the map in the book is cool, but other than that…

  48. Seanan’s publisher thinks she’s a NY Times best seller, but what does that matter, given that Ringo has “no clue where we stand representationally [sic] in sales comparison to me” but suspects that he sells more books?

  49. @1 – 45.5 for me. I only got through about book six of Wheel of Time. Or maybe seven. It was the book that was some five hundred pages long and took place over about two days and the plot didn’t actually advance much. Whichever one that was. I decided that it was asymptotically approaching an end that it would never reach and gave up.

    Lots of double and triple posts today. Is the server hiccoughing?

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