Three things on a Sunday afternoon

[dolorosa_12]

This is one of those posts about unrelated things, none of which I feel really warrants a post of its own.

I stumbled across this excellent post by Ada Palmer on her blog. On the surface of things, it's about the two recent TV series about the Borgias, but what it's really about is being a professional historian (or someone who has deep historical knowledge about specific time periods), and learning to switch off that part of the brain when engaging with historical fiction. I really love the way Palmer writes — I haven't seen either series, but this doesn't matter, as her writing draws you in, no matter what the subject.

I've hit a bit of a reading slump, and it hasn't helped that the book I was reading, The Library of the Unwritten by AJ Hackwith, sounded cool in terms of concept (a librarian who spends the afterlife preserving and collecting all unwritten books, for the library of Hell), but really didn't work for me in terms of execution. It's the sort of book about books, stories, authors and bookishness that I think I would have adored fifteen years ago, but with which I am swiftly losing patience — the literary equivalent of Oscar-baity films about Hollywood. (Other recent examples of this subgenre of fantasy novel which I also found tooth-gratingly irritating include The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow, and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (both of which were, indeed, pushed at me by Goodreads when I marked The Library of the Unwritten as 'read'.) I think it doesn't help that these types of stories have a tendency to be extremely twee — this wasn't as bad in that regard as Harrow's writing, but it was still too treacly for my tastes. I wanted more celestial and infernal politics, and less pontificating about the power of stories.

Talk to me about Yuletide! Who is planning to participate this year? What fandoms are you thinking of nominating? Nominations coordination in the comments is most welcome!

Comments

[lirazel]

Are you signed up for the Tor.com newsletter? Because I am 99% sure I got that particular ebook in one of their once-a-month-we-give-out-free-ebooks things. All the Tor.com novellas I've read have been through that free feature.

[dolorosa_12]

My understanding is that the free ebooks only work if you live in the US or Canada — certainly I've been tricked by that with Tor.com in the past. (Whenever they're releasing a free ebook, they scream about it on social media, but make no mention of the fact that it's limited to the US and Canada, so you click through the link all excited, and then see that it's regionally limited in the small print. It's one of the many things I find extremely irritating about Tor.com.)

[lirazel]

I feel like I am constantly discovering new reasons to be irritated with people who don't understand that national borders mean basically nothing anymore. That is stupid and I am sorry.

Would you be able to work around that with a VPN?

[dolorosa_12]

I think it's not so much national borders so much as how the rights to books are sold. Normally, if you sell a book to a publisher, the rights to sell the book in the US and Canada are one deal, and the rights to sell the book in the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth are a separate deal. (This is why you tend to get different US and UK editions of books.) Some authors are only successful in selling their books in one region.

But therefore, it's impossible to make ebooks free in the two different regions, because often they've been sold to a completely different publishing company than the one who publishes them in the other region. Does that make sense?

I suspect a VPN would get around that, but I've never tested it. As I say, my objection is less to the fact that there are region specific ebook giveaways, and more that Tor.com refuse to state this fact plainly when promoting it — it's all just 'free ebook of the month!', which leaves a very sour taste in the mouth of this non-American reader.

[lirazel]

Oh, yes, I get why it is the way that it is, and the whole rights-being-sold thing makes sense in a 20th century world. I just think it's insufficient for the moment now, and the changes in culture. When a new DW episode comes out, the fans in the US don't want to have to wait (a day or, worse, months) to be able to watch it. They want to be able to watch it while the UK people are watching it so they can be part of the discussion. Pop culture, especially, moves so very fast that I think there has to be a solution that takes global conversations into account.

[dolorosa_12]

I agree with you entirely! Part of what frustrates me so much is that publishers and media corporations seem to think that people pirate stuff due to cost, when it is really more due to immediacy, and wanting to participate in the global conversation. Most people who are fans of media that airs in another country would be quite happy to e.g. pay the equivalent of the UK license fee if it meant they could watch iPlayer outside the UK, etc.

[lirazel]

Absolutely! I have relied on pirated kdrama and subs for years because there was literally no other way to access them, but when Viki and Netflix started showing them legally, I immediately switched to using those services. It's all about access.