In what’s apparently some sort of publicity scam in England, Penguin (the publisher, not the animal) has launched a campaign in which a “sexy model” will roam the streets, looking for men (> 16 years) who happen to be reading the book-of-the-month. This so-called “Good Booking Girl” (honestly) will reward the male reader with £1,000. […]
Sexing Up The Book Industry
Posted by Ben on June 19, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/sexing-up-the-book-industry/
Pinocchio: A Rude and Violent Piece of Living Wood?
The New York Review of Books has a surprisingly fascinating piece on the truth about Pinocchio. I can’t say I’ve ever given the story much thought, but, as it turns out, there is much thought to be given. For starters, I need to confess that I didn’t know—it never really occurred to me to wonder, […]
Posted by Ben on June 15, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/pinocchio/
The Geography of Nowhere
In The Geography of Nowhere, James Kunstler takes the subjects of urban planning, the American Dream, and cars, crafting from them a surprisingly witty, irreverent, and at times cantakerous assault on the state of place in modern society. These are topics, mind you, for which Kunstler is able to marshal no small amount of vitriol. […]
Posted by Ben on June 13, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/the-geography-of-nowhere/
Noplace
The road is now like television, violent and tawdry. The landscape it runs through is littered with cartoon buildings and commercial messages. We whiz by them at fifty-five miles an hour and forget them, because one convenience store looks like the next. They do not celebrate anything beyond their mechanistic ability to sell merchandise. We […]
Posted by Ben on June 10, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/noplace/
Massively Negligent Rundown
Stranger Danger. Wonder of all wonders, miracle of all miracles, children stay inside because they’re afraid of the outside world; I wonder how they got that way? Not only that, but (also unsurprisingly), most of their fears—and their parents’ fears—are based on “an unrealistic estimate assessment… of the risks of the outside world.” Writes Amelia […]
Posted by Ben on June 4, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/massively-negligent-rundown/
How to Try a Murder
How To Try A Murder (by Michael Kurland) is a lightning-quick overview of general courtroom conventions and the like. You got yer elements of th’ crime, yer arrest/indictment, yer trial preparations, and so on and so forth, on through to the verdict. Along the way you get general procedural info, neat anecdotal facts and historical […]
Posted by Ben on June 2, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/how-to-try-a-murder-review/
Invisible Monsters
Chuck Palahniuk’s work is really something of a canon. Don’t be confused by all the different character names and crazy plot twists that happen from one book to the next; it’s really all part of the same story. Just because they have different names and different problems and different scams (and they all have scams) […]
Posted by Ben on May 27, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/invisible-monsters/
The Dirty Nitty-Gritty Truth of The Policeman’s Beard
Earlier I mentioned a book allegedly written by a computer; that book is The Policeman’s Beard is Half-Constructed. In trying to find the title of the book, I inadvertently stumbled across the revelation (which I’ll admit isn’t exactly earth-shaking) that the book, contrary to the claims of its introduction, was probably not written entirely by […]
Posted by Ben on May 26, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/the-dirty-nitty-gritty-truth-of-the-policemans-beard/
Ruthless Reading
On Hotmail this morning (and possibly earlier), there’s a blurb in the one side-bar that says, How to be a Ruthless Reader. Curious, I investigated. Suffice it to say, the tips are far from helpful. Here are my own tips for Ruthless Reading. First, lull the book into a sense of complacency and false security […]
Posted by Ben on May 25, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/ruthless-reading/
The brilliance of robotic pharmacy solicitations
I almost deleted this comment that showed up on one of my posts without a second thought—it’s kind of the standard-issue blogspam that shows up from time to time—but then realized that, maybe, just maybe, it’s actually brilliant: and it’s not as if all that tramadol doesn’t corrected in the studio soma nowadays anyway! I’m […]
Posted by Ben on May 24, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/fioricet/