- Kudos to John Scalzi for providing free electronic editions of his book The Ghost Brigades to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He did the same last year with Old Man’s War (review here). By the way, this is a perfect time of year to once again go and read John’s Being Poor.
- Unrelated kudos to Clinton Fein for his honest and excellent analysis of what we now call “the n word.” As the great Lenny Bruce said in a routine based on the word, “it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.”
- Back to electronic versions of books, thanks to Stumble Upon, I stumbled across this PDF copy of the original of Abbie Hoffman’s iconoclastic Steal This Book.
- It appears Philip K. Dick is going to end up with at least one volume in The Library of America series.
- Bud Parr at MetaxuCafe provides a nice summary with linkage about what he terms another critic missing the point with book blogs.
- Premier magazine comes up with a list of the 20 most overrated movies of all time. While I agree with most of it, two (American Beauty and 2001 – A Space Odyssey) would be on my top 10 best movies list. I also struggle with Easy Rider and Mystic River making the list. (Via SF Signal.)
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon
