Book to read: ‘Magic for Beginners’
I ran across a reccomendation by Cory over on BoingBoing to check out Kelly Link’s new book, ‘Magic for Beginners‘, and her previous work, ‘stranger things happen‘, so, like any good Doctorow-fan, I trundled off and checked it out. ’stranger things happen’ is available as a free Creative Commons-licensed download, so I snagged the HTML version, and started to read. Both books are short story collections, and, if sth is any indication, they’re brilliant. I’m really, really loving this so far, but then again, I’ve always been a sucker for magic realism and such. I liked it so much that after converting the HTML file to MobiPocket format so I could read it on Glitch, I sent it in to them so they could put it up, and they did (scroll down to ‘Bonus Conversions’)!
’stranger things happen’ was a Salon Book of the Year, and stories from it have won the Nebula, Tiptree, and World Fantasy Awards. ‘Magic for Beginners’ has been voted ‘Best of the Year’ in Time Magazine, Salon, Village Voice and the San Francisco Chronicle. Both collections are brilliant, and I plan to buy myself a copy of ‘Magic for Beginners’ very soon. I highly reccomend you check them out as well. Go and download one of the versions of ’stranger things happen’ and give it a read, won’t cost you a dime. 
Oh, and you can read the title story from ‘Magic for Beginners’ here for free as well!
Technorati Tags: Cory, Kelly Link, book, Magic for Beginners, stranger things happen, Creative Commons, magic realism, MobiPocket
February 8th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
I’ve read Kelly Link before, as I am a big fan of the Year’s best fanatsy and Horror collections, formerly edited by Ellen datlow and Terri Windling, now edited by Ellen Datlow, Gavin J. Grant and…guess who?…Kelly Link. The funny thing is, of the 2-3 stories by her I ahve read, one is among my all time favorites and another falls into that category of “Oh, one of THOSE stories” that I hate. I may well follow up on your recommendation, I could sue to get back into the redaing habit, haven’t been doing so well with it lately.
For some reason though, I have gotten it into my head that I want an e-ink display reader. Why do I think that? Makes no sense, but I’m blaming YOU.
February 9th, 2006 at 3:24 am
Hey, e-ink displays are teh s3xx0rz, so I can’t blame you.. plus, you know I will sing their praises at the drop of a hat, so I can’t say I don’t deserver the blame, either. But start pinching those pennies if you want one, for the foreseeable future, they’re gonna be very expensive.
If you want a cheap e-book reader, you can buy a Palm Z22, with a nice sharp color screen, for around ~$100. It’s a sweet little device, cheap, not too stingy on the memory, capable, color screen, and fairly rugged. However, the screen is a bit on the small size (well, what do you expect for $100?), so its use as an e-book reader depends on your tolerance for reading text on a small screen. They had one on display at CompUSA when I stopped by a couple of days ago, where you could check it out for yourself. I figure it’s probably still on display. I will say that, despite the size, the screen is nice and sharp, so with MobiPocket’s auto-scroll feature, I wouldn’t be adverse to reading a few books on it.