'Lives in Peril If Novelist's Lighthouse Is Turned Off'

File it under "They can't do that!" Or just read the book.

Observers and Other Stories by Eleanor Lerman

Looking for something to use those Fictionwise discounts on? Try "Observers" by Eleanor Lerman.

There's a relatively long excerpt, to give you a feel for her writing. Here are a few sentences to whet your appetite:

"Once, when I was about fifteen, June kissed me. She was just being playful, but though I had already dated lots of boys and had never thought about women in that way, I remember that the feeling I had when she kissed me was, Oh, well, that's OK too. Later, in the middle of dinner, which in my house meant my schizophrenic stepsister feeding cookies to Jesus and my stepmother weeping over frozen dinners she was about to burn, it suddenly occurred to me that No, I think that was actually better."

Only $3.79 for Buywise Club Members ($4.46 for everyone else)

Fictionwise "Thanks A Million" Contest

Fictionwise says: "Since we opened our virtual doors, 260,000 readers have registered at Fictionwise, 25,000 eBooks have been added, 220 billion words have been served, and -- TODAY -- we will sell our one millionth eBook (no kidding)!
To thank you all for your support, we've launched a special "Thanks a Million" contest. Simply buy an eBook* between now and June 2, and you will automatically be entered into a contest to win $500 in Micropay dollars, plus five additional second prizes for $100 in Micropay!"

Fictionwise 5th Anniversary Sale

Fictionwise will be five years old this June! To celebrate, from now through June 2, all MultiFormat titles are 25% off, and all Secure titles have a 25% Micropay Rebate.

Autumn by David Moody

OK, zombie fans. David Moody's "Autumn" is available as a free ebook download in multiple formats.

If you like it, you can buy the rest of the series at Fictionwise.

Patti Smith: 'Even as a child, I felt like an alien'

Jesus died for somebody's sins...
But not mine

However, I could easily live another 30 years without hearing that everything I like about Horses is wrong. Bummer.

Read it here. Then go listen again ...G-L-O-R-I-AAAAAAAAAA

The Closers by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly's latest Harry Bosch book is turning up at the usual way-too-high-for-an-ebook prices around the net, with a few incentives thrown in.

eReader has it for $14.54 (after the newsletter dicount)

Fictionwise, by contrast, is offering a 100% Micropay rebate (net cost = $0.00). They have it in Mobi, Adobe, and MS Reader formats (no eReader)

MobiPocket (Amazon's new best friend) offers it for $17.95 -- hint, Mobi version is free at Fictionwise...

Amazon, Ebooks and "Chump Change"

Amazon.com bought MobiPocket and BookSurge (a POD company). Here's an interesting take on what it means for ebooks.

The History of PDAs

Evan Koblentz has written a very interesting essay on the evolution of the PDA from 1975 to 1995. Including pictures! Read it here.

The New York Review of Books: The Secret Way to War

Bill Moyers recently said that "...news is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity."

That Newsweek's source says maybe he read the Koran story in a different report isn't news. That Bush was determined to invade Iraq by the summer of 2002 isn't exactly news in the sense of "I didn't know that!" news. But that there is a British government memo explicitly stating that Bush and Blair were "fixing" intelligence to support their war plans -- you'd think that would be newsworthy.

Mark Danner reprints the memo in his New York Review of Books article, in case you haven't had a chance to read it yet.

BBC Cult Television - Free Ebooks

The BBC's Cult TV is offering free ebooks, including:

Dr. Who : The Sands of Time
6 Vampire Stories
5 Sherlock Holmes Stories

All are offered in three versions: eReader, Microsoft reader, and Mobi Reader

More Dr Who stories are also available in on-line versions that you can download and format yourself

Just How Gay Is the Right? - Frank Rich in the New York Times

Frank Rich is always worth reading, never more so than today. At last, someone nails the motivation behind the Republicans' war on the judiciary:

"Today's judge-bashing firebrands often say that it isn't homosexuality per se that riles them, only the potential legalization of same-sex marriage by the courts. That's a sham. These people have been attacking gay people since well before Massachusetts judges took up the issue of marriage, Vermont legalized civil unions or Gavin Newsom was in grade school. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, characterizes the religious right's anti-gay campaign as a 30-year war, dating back to the late 1970's, when the Miss America runner-up Anita Bryant championed the overturning of an anti-discrimination law protecting gay men and lesbians in Dade County, Fla., and the Rev. Jerry Falwell's newly formed Moral Majority issued a "Declaration of War" against homosexuality...

"Which judges do these people admire? Their patron saint is the former Alabama chief justice Roy S. Moore, best known for his activism in displaying the Ten Commandments; in a ruling against a lesbian mother in a custody case, Mr. Moore deemed homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature" and suggested that the state had the power to prohibit homosexual "conduct" with penalties including "confinement and even execution." Another hero is William H. Pryor Jr., the former Alabama attorney general whose nomination to the federal bench was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. A Pryor brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Texas anti-sodomy law argued that decriminalized gay sex would lead to legalized necrophilia, bestiality and child pornography. It was Justice Anthony Kennedy's eloquent dismissal of such vitriol in his 2003 majority opinion striking down the Texas statute that has since made him the right's No. 1 judicial piñata.

"What adds a peculiar dynamic to this anti-gay juggernaut is the continued emergence of gay people within its ranks. ...[T]his has been a consistent pattern throughout the 30-year war. Terry Dolan, a closeted gay man, ran the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which as far back as 1980 was putting out fund-raising letters that said, 'Our nation's moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians).' (Dolan recanted and endorsed gay rights before he died of AIDS in 1986.) The latest boldface name to marry his same-sex partner in Massachusetts is Arthur Finkelstein, the political operative behind the electoral success of Jesse Helms, a senator so homophobic he voted in the minority of the 97-to-3 reauthorization of the Ryan White act for AIDS funding and treatment in 1995.

"But surely the most arresting recent case is James E. West, the powerful Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., whose double life has just been exposed by the local paper, The Spokesman-Review. Mr. West's long, successful political career has been distinguished by his attempts to ban gay men and lesbians from schools and day care centers, to fire gay state employees, to deny City Hall benefits to domestic partners and to stifle AIDS-prevention education. The Spokesman-Review caught him trolling gay Web sites for young men and trying to lure them with gifts and favors. (He has denied accusations of abusing boys when he was a Boy Scout leader some 25 years ago.) Not unlike the Roy Cohn of 'Angels in America' - who describes himself as 'a heterosexual man' who has sex 'with guys' - Mr. West has said he had 'relations with adult men' but doesn't 'characterize' himself as gay. This is more than hypocrisy - it's pathology."

Read the whole thing.

Michael Berube

Go read Michael Berube today