August 2007 Archives
I'm at AnimeFest this week, with copies of Summerworld in tow along with print copies of the four-chapter samplers.
In fact, I've already sold copies of the book and the sampler right as I was posting this!
(Check my main blog for further notes about the con itself!)
The new 6 x 9 edition of Summerworld is in stock!
However -- don't expect to be able to buy signed copies from me until after AnimeFest!
In the meantime, you can always get them direct...
The new 6 x 9 edition of Summerworld is available now for direct purchase!
We still have a couple of copies of the older 4 x 6 paperback -- grab one before they're gone forever!
My current printing of Summerworld is almost completely sold out once again. We have only two copies left in stock! What's more, when these copies are gone, this printing will be deleted forever.
That's right -- after this, we're going to be reissuing Summerworld in a new 6x9 form factor, with slightly bigger type ... and, unfortunately, a higher cover price ($15).
There's several reasons for this:
I'll also be offering the 6x9 version as the future edition for all of my public appearances with the book.
The total number of records I have in my collection that I can play straight through without skipping tracks, I could probably count on one hand. Godflesh’s Pure; maybe one of Keiji Haino’s live sets. Yoko Kanno’s Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex album. Roxy Music’s Avalon. The list is short for a good reason: it’s a sign of the elect.
Granted, some of that is due to the way the album format has become fractured and fractured again—first by the CD, which allowed tracks to be re-ordered at will or dropped entirely; then by digital music systems, which are more song- than album-oriented. But there’s also the fact that precious few albums hold together that well as a whole: sometimes there’s just not enough strong, sustained material in that particular vein to support a whole record (the last couple of Nine Inch Nails releases felt like this for me), and sometimes the artist in question just works best as a creator of singles rather than anything more ambitious. It’s hard work to come up with a batch of songs that hang together well as a whole and survive being cut apart and heard independently.
The Host is another great example of what I love most about Korean movies: it’s a creature-feature, a family drama, a snotty satire and a thrill ride, all at the same time. It’s hard enough to make a movie in any one of those tones, but somehow Bong Joon-ho (director of the equally-excellent Memories of Murder) manages to round all four bases without stumbling. He accomplishes the same trick that Steven Spielberg did with the original Jaws, but in a slightly broader and more comic way: he makes you care about the people onscreen, too, so when the monster appears it’s not just chasing human chum.
Host stars one of my favorite Korean actors, Kang-Ho Song (he of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, JSA, Shiri, and Memories of Murder itself) as Gang-du, a shiftless fellow who runs a snack stand with his father, daughter and sister on the banks of Seoul’s Han River. He’s not much of a worker—in fact, he’s not much of anything—but he dearly loves his daughter Hyun-seo and does little things for her like sock away spare change to buy her a new cellphone. (Never mind most of that money has been skimmed from the till.) His father, Hee-bong (Hie-bong Byeon), indulges all of them, especially his son, now that there’s no mother around to do that job for them.
Signed copies of Summerworld are in very limited supply! They have been going fast since they came back in stock.
Also, this is the last printing of the priced-down version. After this, I will be issuing a new trade paperback edition (6"x9" format), for $15. This is the next step towards creating the ISBN / barcode edition, which will be in that size.
I'll have copies of the new 6"x9" edition at AnimeFest when I go there later this month.
