There are some great books coming out soon. I can’t wait to read them, so I thought I would blog about them while I wait for their release.

It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy by Laurie Notaro
July 26

Yes, this book comes out tomorrow, but that’s still 24 hours away and who knows when the UPS man will show up to deliver it. Laurie Notaro is hilarious, one of the funniest writers i’ve ever read. I giggle when I read her books which is why I never take them on planes with me. The last time I saw her at Powell’s, I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. She’s written somewhere around eight books, two of which are fiction. She often writers about her life and the many, many awkward situations she manages to find herself in. Every time a new book of hers comes out I have to buy two copies; one for myself and one for my mom to prevent her from stealing my copy.

Machine Man by Max Barry
August 9th

Max Barry is one of my all time favorite authors. Machine Man is his fourth novel. MM actually started out as an online serial that ended up being picked up to be published. He has since gone back and smoothed out what he had originally written and made it more fitting for a book. I also recall that the movie rights had been sold and the director would be Darren Aronofsky. You may remember Darren from his most recent film Black Swan.

Abarat: Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker
September 27th

I speak of this book with a heavy sigh. I’ve been waiting for this book since 2004 after Days of Magic, Nights of War was released. Seven years is a long time to wait for the third book in the Abarat series. Just imagine if we had to wait seven years between Harry Potter books. Abarat is better than Harry Potter in my opinion. Maybe it’s because I read Abarat before Harry Potter and that created a bias. Maybe i’m just annoyed with the seven year wait. Who knows. The point is, i’m excited about this book. If you don’t know what Abarat is about here’s a brief recap: Abarat is a parellel world made up of 25 islands. Each island is a different hour of the day. One day, Candy Quackenbush manages to travel from her home in Minnesota and ends up in Abarat being pursed by Christopher Carrion, the villain. Barker does all the original artwork for the books, so if you do purchase a copy of either of the first two books, avoid the mass markets and get the quality paperback editions.

Since it’s been so long, I’ve committed to re-reading the first two books again before Absolute Midnight is released. I’ll post about both books when the time comes.

Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire
November 1st

I’ve decided to take the audiobook route with this series. I like the stories, but find them difficult to read. The audiobook of Son of a Witch that I finished a couple days ago was enjoyable enough. I’ll pick up the audiobook of A Lion Among Men for my next road trip and be caught up by the time this book comes out. I don’t know much about what is suppose to happen in this book. It’s the last one though, so I expect it to be more on the epic side.

Stumptown Trade Review has brought it to my attention that you can read the comic Bookhunter by Jason Shiga in its entirety here.

Coincidentally, last week I checked Bookhunter out from the library last week and will be posting a review about it tomorrow. Apparently I liked it or else I wouldn’t be telling you that you can read it for free right now.

Reading Frenzy is Portland’s specialty shop devoted to independent, small and self-published titles. With the IPRC located right upstairs, it’s in a perfect location in the heart of downtown Portland. But, as with all bookstores at the moment, it is struggling. Chances are you don’t live in Portland like I do. But believe me when I say that this is a nifty little shop especially for all the small press books and indie comics.

Needless to say they need some help at the moment in order to stay afloat. They have suggested a couple of ways in which you could help out either by stopping by or making a purchase from their site.

10 Ways to help Reading Frenzy

1. Visit the shop today at 921 SW Oak St or online and spend $20 on anything. Make a commitment to visiting us on a monthly basis and spending $5-$20.
2. Purchase our print No Book Ever Ends by Aaron Renier: $30
3. Purchase our print Reading Frenzy! by Carson Ellis: $40
4. Purchase a Reading Frenzy! t-shirt or tote by Carson Ellis: $18-$20
5. Purchase one of our Crap Hound prints – Hands, Heartsor Eyes by Sean Tejaratchi: $40
6. Purchase a Crap Hound t-shirt (currently not available online but we’re working on it): $20
7. Become a member of 500 Friends of Reading Frenzy and receive annual discounts and perks: $25
8. Purchase any issue of Crap Hound: $12-$40
9. Purchase a gift certificate for $10, $25, $50 or $100.
10. Promote Reading Frenzy on your website, blog, Facebook, etc. You can find us on FB here.

One of Portland’s best bookstores is Murder By The Book over on Hawthorne. It’s a small place packed full of mystery books. I like it there because they have all the books sorted in to different categories such as local mysteries, true mysteries, wacky mysteries, etc. Since the store is devoted to mystery book it’s allowed to categorize books in this fashion. Other stores like Borders or Powells may try but they have to consider all the other genres outside of mysteries as well.

With Borders announcing that even MORE stores are closing, I was wonder just how this little shop has managed to stay open in the face of bookstores being on the decline. Even Powells Bookstore had to lay off people recently.

What Murder By The Book does is not try to be good at everything (including music, DVDs, cards) but has picked one thing and has excelled at it. Whenever I am in the need for a mystery book, I go here because I know I will find something that sounds fantastic. This morning I went just to browse and walked out with two books that I did not know existed before today.

Then there is also the competition from the growing eBook market. This store has no way of directly competing against the Kindle or iPad. What MBTB offers instead of a de-personalized shopping experience is, well, personalization. The guy at the counter and I talked about other books in the Hard Case Crime line. He even brought up Money Shot which is a book I think very highly of. He suggested that I check out the author Megan Abbott. Fantastic! I love finding new authors.

Anyway, I love this bookstore. I hope you have a local bookstore that you love just as much.

Yes, while playing about on Amazon the other day I submitted The Book Pirate to be published on the Kindle.

That’s right, you can now pay $1.99 a month to read TBP on a Kindle.

Or you can read it for free on the internet. In face, I think it’s better that way for two reasons. First, free is good. Second, color. Glorious, glorious color.

Anyway, I’m not trying to turn this site in to something that makes a profit. If I wanted that there would would be Google Ads all over the place. Like this,

Ick, right? Not my style. (Okay, couldn’t get Google AdSense to show up… if I cared more I would fix it but for now just image some random ads in the black space above.)

I forgot where I was going with this post…

Kindle is getting pretty crazy. It seems you can publish anything on it. Is your blog published on the Kindle? What are your thoughts on ads?

William Gibson, of Neuromancer fame, has a new book coming out September 7th, 2010. Apparently Zero History is connected to two of his previous books Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. I really enjoyed Pattern Recognition when I read it a couple of years ago. I thought it was a smart thriller about advertisements and culture. Spook Country is a book I bought but never got around to reading.

I don’t really like the book trailer. The voice over (i.e. William Gibson) sounds under produced and could have just had its levels adjusted to make it sound like he wasn’t speaking so close to the microphone.

Okay, because someone thought that this needed to be done.

… I have a blog. I almost forgot. Been so wrapped up in school this term that reading for leisure is a rarity.

There are a few things I felt worth mentioning in this eclectic blog post.

First,

Christopher Moore has posted the first two chapters of his newest book Bite Me (due out April 1st, 2010). Bite Me is a follow up to Moore’s 1995 Bloodsucking Fiends and 2007′s You Suck. While I am getting tired of all the attentions vampires are getting, You Suck may stand as my favorite Christopher Moore book. Moreover, the protagonist of Bite Me is Abby Normal who was first introduced in A Dirty Job. Aren’t book crossovers fun? Anyway, the first two chapters of Bite Me are basically a summary of events from Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck. Really though, you should just go read both of those books.

Read the chapters at Moore’s blog here.

I still haven’t read Fool even though I purchased it the week it came out. I feel I may enjoy it more after I complete the Shakespeare class I am taking this term.

Secondly,

I had to read The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction for the Contemporary American Short Story class. It was already. As with all anthologies, some stories I liked while others were not as enjoyable. Now that we are done with this book, we’ve moved on to…

The Best American Short Stories 2009. I recognize ZERO of the authors featured in this anthology. Most of the stories are taken from the New Yorker it seems. I’ve noticed spelling errors in a couple stories which is distracting. Who do I blame for that? Alice Sebold?

Thirdly,

I don’t really have a thirdly, but I believe things are best done in groups of threes. Oh, Augustin Burroughs will have a reading at the Bagdad Theater next week hosted by Powells to promote his latest book You Better Not Cry. That will be fun. I saw him when he was touring for Possible Side Effects. More details here.