Comments on: Weekend Update #3

By: Sean Lindsay

Sean Lindsay — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:59:00 +0000

Thanks, jb. Point taken, post rephrased. To my knowledge, Miss Snark does not suck.

By: JB

JB — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:52:00 +0000

Quote: Literary agents Miriam Goderich explains why your query letter sucks, as does Miss Snark.

Miss Snark sucks?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:29:00 +0000

Crichton is a piece of shit, and I hope he gets sued over that. Naming a villain after a critic is all good fun, but talking about his rape of a 2 year old boy crosses the line in my book.

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:19:00 +0000

It really surprises me that Atlanta is so high on the list. Just goes to show that Georgia’s progressive capital city really ISN’T part of the south, just like we always suspected.

By: Paul Riddell

Paul Riddell — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 06:25:00 +0000

Oh, and I’m not surprised in the slightest as to the number of Texas cities at the absolute bottom of the list. Plano is literally a five-minute drive north of me, and Arlington is just due west, and they share with Dallas a general population that looks upon reading as something Wrong. Some of it is due to the Southern Baptist influence, where we’re still being told that knowledge is a tool of the Devil by smarmy pastors wanting to keep his marks stupid, and some of it is due to the general Dallas love of wilful ignorance. However, I will say that our lack of bookstores is generally due to an incredible amount of incompetence on the part of our local indie bookstores: almost all of our indie bookstores, including the Taylors chain, went into complete denial when the first Borders opened in town, and all of the generalist bookstores died within two years of that first Borders opening. Even the specialist stores (mystery, Western, children’s) died within eight years, and now all we have are the Borders/Barnes & Noble superstores, the Half Price Books chain, a few university bookstores that might carry books not required for classes, and the occasional used bookstore started by the stereotypical frumpy fiftysomething who wanted to start a bookstore so people would leave her alone.

The really sad part is the equal denial of those whose stores died: at the Borders closest to my house, at least three employees are ones whose stores shut down when their customers decided that they took less shit at Borders than at the indie stores, and they’re sticking with it because it’s not like they have any other skills. My ex-wife was a similar case: for nearly a year, she insisted upon working at a local used store, for minimum wage (she spent more money on gas getting to and from work than she made in a paycheck), crying each and every day because her boss was mean and her feet hurt from standing all day. However, when I’d ask her why she couldn’t get another job, she’d give me the same exact reason they would: “But I want to stay in the publishing business!”

By: Paul Riddell

Paul Riddell — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 06:10:00 +0000

Sounds like Chrichton's amping up the George Lucas Response: because he apparently responds to critical opinion the way he writes screenplays, he had nothing but mealymouthing about Pauline Kael's brilliant destructions of Star Wars, but "retaliated" by adding a villain named "General Kael" to Willow. Then there was the snotty stunt in Roland Emmerich's godawful Godzilla of naming the mayor and his aide after Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who had grand fun pointing out the idiocies in Independence Day. Sounds like Crichton learned from his Hollywood friends, all right...