Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
First of all, a big hello to the latest subscriber. I'll do my best to keep you entertained and informed.
*** I haven't mentioned Ebay for a while, despite a plethora of news about that failing company. As of this writing the stock is trading around $11.65. It's 52 wk high is about $34. In other words, the stock has lost 2/3 of its value.
Now, John Donohoe can spin that any way he wants, he can blame the economy, he can blame the site itself, but the stock market has NOT lost 2/3 of its value in the last year. Ebay should be gaining strength in a bad economy as people sell stuff to makes ends meet, but instead it is sinking into the west. As in turns out Donohoe's strategy of insulting loyal customers and overcharging the ones who stay did not result in more people using the site. Who'd a thunk it?
Anyway, I'll post some nice general analysis articles as they appear, but none right now. Most of them are from financial talking heads who haven't really got a clue what's going on with ebay, but are reading press reports and financial statements, as if that says what people will do in the future. Ebay's problem is really very simple: the site thought that it could abuse its best customers and found out that it couldn't.
Okay, okay, I'll post ONE informed article from the financial sector. This one is from the Motley Fool, who have consistently shown a better understanding of the forces at work in ebay's demise.
What's that smell, ebay?
*** Live in Florida and love mysteries? If so, do yourself a favor and check out Mystery Florida in Sarasota, June of this year. Looks like great fun, some A-list authors are already on board, even your friendly neighborhood bookseller would like to be there for this one, if he did not already have a commitment for that time.
http://mysteryflorida.com/
Having attended a great number of cons in my life, I can tell you that if you've never been to one you don't know what you're missing. Very often you can sit with a favorite author and just shoot the breeze for hours on end, preferably over drinks in a bar. This would be an excellent in-country vacation for those living in the southeast.
*** Keeping with the con theme, another really nice looking book festival is the Southern Kentucky Festival of Books in April. Every year I think I would like to go, and every year I cannot, for one reason or another. This year's author lineup is really impressive.
http://www.sokybookfest.org/
*** With brothers like this, who needs enemies? Mark McGwire's younger brother, Jay, is shopping a book about his brother's alleged steroid use. A 58 page proposal, no less. How hard up for money is this guy, anyway? Jeez. Supposedly he claims that he shot Mark up with the drugs, which, of course, makes him equally liable in terms of criminality. (Not that either would ever be prosecuted.)
Jay McGwire willing to betray his brother for the right price
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Friday, January 23, 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
Baseball, World War II and other recipes
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
First, a request. If anyone has book related news, be it from authors, bookstores, websites, whatever, please send it to me. Thank you.
*** Why is the press always the last to cover a story? Here's a nice little recap about what we already know, that Ebay is flopping around like a catfish on a pier.
The Setting Ebay sun
*** Baseball and World War II. Seriously, if you were going to write a 'guy' book, especially for Baby Boomers, how could you go wrong with either subject? You couldn't. But you could combine the two, which is what authors Todd Anton & Bill Rowlin have done in their new book When Baseball Went to War published by Rounder Books. It's a sequel of sorts to Anton's 2007 publication No Greater Love: Life Stories from the Men Who Saved Baseball, also published by Rounder.
I haven't read this one, thus I take the linked review at face value. But baseball players did flock to defend the country and, while it's a story that has been told, I have no doubt there was plenty left for the authors to discover. For every Ted Williams there must have been two or three or four lesser players who fought (and died) without the limelight, doing their duty because it was the right thing to do. We owe them more than we can repay.
When Baseball Went to War
*** I recently wrote about the upcoming auction of some rare A.A.Milne-related material. A selection of original E.H. Shepard drawings for the books was going under the gavel. Could it bring the pre-auction estimates in the current economic climate? Well, yes, it could.
It seems they sold for about $2 million. One can only wonder if the artist ever had any idea his work could command such prices.
*** HarperVoyager has acquired the rights to two Janny Wurts novels, the final two volumes in the Wars of Light and Shadow series. This is meaningful to your friendly neighborhood bookseller because a couple of years ago he met Ms. Wurts at MidSouthCon. I had the chance to sit in the lobby and peruse her sketch book and she told me that some of the drawings would be in future books of the Wars of Light and Shadow. Now that is happening and I will most likely see the finished versions of those works in progress. A bit surreal.
*** Johnny Depp's brother has his debut novel out, a supposedly Elmore Leonard-esque romp in Hollywood. Daniel Depp certainly has a varied resume, from bookseller to screen-writer. Whether this translates into good fiction or not, I have no idea. I'll let you decide.
Daniel Depp takes the first step
*** Finally finishing Friday's filings, this bit of pompous fluff. It seems that pundits were asked what books they are reading and what they would recommend. After perusing the list, I can tell you that I don't believe any of them are actually reading what they proclaim, but listed what they think makes them sound more punditey. (And yes, I know that's not a word)
I mean, come on. If you want to whack us over the head with your punditness, get a blog.
Stuffed shirts puffed and fluffed
First, a request. If anyone has book related news, be it from authors, bookstores, websites, whatever, please send it to me. Thank you.
*** Why is the press always the last to cover a story? Here's a nice little recap about what we already know, that Ebay is flopping around like a catfish on a pier.
The Setting Ebay sun
*** Baseball and World War II. Seriously, if you were going to write a 'guy' book, especially for Baby Boomers, how could you go wrong with either subject? You couldn't. But you could combine the two, which is what authors Todd Anton & Bill Rowlin have done in their new book When Baseball Went to War published by Rounder Books. It's a sequel of sorts to Anton's 2007 publication No Greater Love: Life Stories from the Men Who Saved Baseball, also published by Rounder.
I haven't read this one, thus I take the linked review at face value. But baseball players did flock to defend the country and, while it's a story that has been told, I have no doubt there was plenty left for the authors to discover. For every Ted Williams there must have been two or three or four lesser players who fought (and died) without the limelight, doing their duty because it was the right thing to do. We owe them more than we can repay.
When Baseball Went to War
*** I recently wrote about the upcoming auction of some rare A.A.Milne-related material. A selection of original E.H. Shepard drawings for the books was going under the gavel. Could it bring the pre-auction estimates in the current economic climate? Well, yes, it could.
It seems they sold for about $2 million. One can only wonder if the artist ever had any idea his work could command such prices.
*** HarperVoyager has acquired the rights to two Janny Wurts novels, the final two volumes in the Wars of Light and Shadow series. This is meaningful to your friendly neighborhood bookseller because a couple of years ago he met Ms. Wurts at MidSouthCon. I had the chance to sit in the lobby and peruse her sketch book and she told me that some of the drawings would be in future books of the Wars of Light and Shadow. Now that is happening and I will most likely see the finished versions of those works in progress. A bit surreal.
*** Johnny Depp's brother has his debut novel out, a supposedly Elmore Leonard-esque romp in Hollywood. Daniel Depp certainly has a varied resume, from bookseller to screen-writer. Whether this translates into good fiction or not, I have no idea. I'll let you decide.
Daniel Depp takes the first step
*** Finally finishing Friday's filings, this bit of pompous fluff. It seems that pundits were asked what books they are reading and what they would recommend. After perusing the list, I can tell you that I don't believe any of them are actually reading what they proclaim, but listed what they think makes them sound more punditey. (And yes, I know that's not a word)
I mean, come on. If you want to whack us over the head with your punditness, get a blog.
Stuffed shirts puffed and fluffed
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Beginning the long fall into Fall
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news.
Today is gloomy, wet and chilly, the first cold day of this season here in West Tennessee, the type of weather that clogs the old blogging juices and channel's your friendly neighborhood bookseller's already sluggish brain into new culverts and drains, diverting it from its normal obsession with books. So today we start with a story on another obsession, autographs.
*** Dorothy Phillips lost her suit against the Avon & Somerset Police. It seems that her signed photograph of Adolf Hitler was seized in 2006 during a police raid (an illegal one, by the way. She was later award 7500 pounds in compensation) and she claims that it faded while in police custody and lost half its value. Well, maybe, maybe not. Certainly fading could cause that much harm, but without before and after photos how could you know? Anyway, I bring this up because I, too, am an autograph collector and this story brings up the old rule that autograph collectors must be non-political in their hobby. Hitler may have been in the handful of most evil men of the 20th century, but there is no denying his influence on history. To me, however, a much more interesting story would have been how Ms. Phillips came to have the autograph in the first place. Hitler signed photos have never been cheap.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1079707/Pensioner-sues-police-damage-signed-picture-Hitler.html
*** Since BBG is also a baseball fan from way back, he remembers Jose Canseco from his playing days. A big, strong home run hitter with a Barry Bonds complex. Yawn. So when Canseco wrote Juiced, accusing just about every baseball player within living memory of using steroids, it was unimpressive on several levels. First, coming from a washed-up under-achiever it seemed like sour grapes. Second, is sounded mostly untrue. Thirdly, who cared? (Yes, I know much of the world did care, just not me. However, writing about it gave me the chance to switch from third to first person in the same paragraph) Indeed, had the book not been so successful, it would not have made today's blog. But it was, it made huge changes to baseball, thus today's follow up.
So with Juiced a fading memory, the also fading Canseco needed to feed his ego some more and is now publicly regretting the effects of his book. Poor Jose seems to have been mis-understood by his fellow ball-players. Boo-hoo.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sportsprose/2008/10/jose_canseco_regrets_writing_j.html
*** In the season for book awards comes a new Canadian prize for historical writing, cut down to three entries. It goes almost without saying that one will be on Economics, although I like that it's Economics during the Dutch Golden Age (did you know there WAS a Dutch Golden Age?), and one must be about either WW2, Hitler or the Third Reich. In this case, the latter.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2008/10/22/cundill-shortlist.html
*** On the list of 'books-I've-never-heard-of-but-now-want-to-read' comes John Birmingham's Without Warning. The setup is fairly simple: on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a freak energy wave wipes out the United States homeland, but leaves the army intact in the Middle East. If this were the typical (and boring) 'it's-America's-fault' (what does 'it' mean? Fill in the blank) fantasy I would not be mentioning it. But that does not appear to be the case. The scenario sounds like fun in a brutal, end of the world sort of way.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24495166-5001986,00.html
Today is gloomy, wet and chilly, the first cold day of this season here in West Tennessee, the type of weather that clogs the old blogging juices and channel's your friendly neighborhood bookseller's already sluggish brain into new culverts and drains, diverting it from its normal obsession with books. So today we start with a story on another obsession, autographs.
*** Dorothy Phillips lost her suit against the Avon & Somerset Police. It seems that her signed photograph of Adolf Hitler was seized in 2006 during a police raid (an illegal one, by the way. She was later award 7500 pounds in compensation) and she claims that it faded while in police custody and lost half its value. Well, maybe, maybe not. Certainly fading could cause that much harm, but without before and after photos how could you know? Anyway, I bring this up because I, too, am an autograph collector and this story brings up the old rule that autograph collectors must be non-political in their hobby. Hitler may have been in the handful of most evil men of the 20th century, but there is no denying his influence on history. To me, however, a much more interesting story would have been how Ms. Phillips came to have the autograph in the first place. Hitler signed photos have never been cheap.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1079707/Pensioner-sues-police-damage-signed-picture-Hitler.html
*** Since BBG is also a baseball fan from way back, he remembers Jose Canseco from his playing days. A big, strong home run hitter with a Barry Bonds complex. Yawn. So when Canseco wrote Juiced, accusing just about every baseball player within living memory of using steroids, it was unimpressive on several levels. First, coming from a washed-up under-achiever it seemed like sour grapes. Second, is sounded mostly untrue. Thirdly, who cared? (Yes, I know much of the world did care, just not me. However, writing about it gave me the chance to switch from third to first person in the same paragraph) Indeed, had the book not been so successful, it would not have made today's blog. But it was, it made huge changes to baseball, thus today's follow up.
So with Juiced a fading memory, the also fading Canseco needed to feed his ego some more and is now publicly regretting the effects of his book. Poor Jose seems to have been mis-understood by his fellow ball-players. Boo-hoo.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sportsprose/2008/10/jose_canseco_regrets_writing_j.html
*** In the season for book awards comes a new Canadian prize for historical writing, cut down to three entries. It goes almost without saying that one will be on Economics, although I like that it's Economics during the Dutch Golden Age (did you know there WAS a Dutch Golden Age?), and one must be about either WW2, Hitler or the Third Reich. In this case, the latter.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2008/10/22/cundill-shortlist.html
*** On the list of 'books-I've-never-heard-of-but-now-want-to-read' comes John Birmingham's Without Warning. The setup is fairly simple: on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a freak energy wave wipes out the United States homeland, but leaves the army intact in the Middle East. If this were the typical (and boring) 'it's-America's-fault' (what does 'it' mean? Fill in the blank) fantasy I would not be mentioning it. But that does not appear to be the case. The scenario sounds like fun in a brutal, end of the world sort of way.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24495166-5001986,00.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
