Bleating Hearts

A lovely, lazy day today. Since Monday is a public holiday here in Victoria, one can slow down a little and smell the roses – or buy books. I’m quite please with today’s coup. I bought a couple of books by a writer I’ve been meaning to read for a long time – Holly Black. Many sing her praises, so when I saw a nice hardback copy of Ironside, I grabbed it. Then I found Valiant, and scooped it up too. Officially, I’m not buying new books this year, or at least not until the book table stops sagging under the weight of unread tomes, but in cases like this, well, you have to make an exception.

Last night, I went to St Kilda, my old stomping ground, and caught a movie at the George. It was just like ye olde tymes.

I was expecting The Men Who Stare at Goats to be an exposé of psychic charlatanism and a scathing indictment of army incompetence, full of cynicism and derision and soldierly pratfalls, and though the film did have much mocking of the military, I was surprised to find it at heart a rather affectionate tribute to a group of well-meaning men who just wanted to end wars and make the world a better place. That their methods were somewhat outlandish is beside the point. Ridicule is easy – any cooler than cool but essentially ineffectual numskull can bag oddballs and nonconformists. To recognize the Don Quixotes of the world and portray their lunacy sympathetically, that takes empathy and talent.

It was, however, rather disconcerting to hear Jedi jargon falling from the lips of a wild-eyed George Clooney and a spaced-out Jeff Bridges.

And now, this news from the Tangle Bank Press:

The ePub edition of The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, and Evolution has just been released on Lulu.com for only $4.99. For anyone who likes to read ebooks on their iPhone or iPod Touch, this is the version for you. The ePub edition includes all content from the PDF edition in flowing text format.
Want both ePub and PDF? No problem: purchase of any digital edition includes the other digital edition free of charge. Lulu.com doesn’t yet support single purchase of multiformat editions, but simply forward your proof of purchase of a digital edition to thetangledbank (AT) gmail.com and we’ll send you the book in your requested format.
If you’d like to read the anthology in other formats such as .LIT or .MOBI (not supported on Lulu), we recommend purchasing the ePub edition and using the free e-reader Calibre to convert to your preferred format.

* The print version will be available 31st March 2010. (Yoo-hooo)

Oh, and I got the final proofs for ‘A Sweet Story’ today, and a contract, so it looks like things are moving with Moonlight Tuber.