The Book Lab: Effects of Sub-Zero Temperatures on Sodden Books

Welcome to the Book Lab! Now, it is a well-known fact that academics are forever spilling things on paper. So it is fitting that an academic colleague told me a very interesting rumor she heard: that if you accidentally get a book wet (bath/shower/reading whilst washing the dishes – I don’t know how you do this, please let me know!) you can revitalise it by putting it in the freezer.

I scoffed at this quite profusely at first. It sounds, I’m sure you’ll agree, ludicrous.

My colleague was unable to recall whether one was supposed to put the book in a plastic bag tied tightly or not. But then I thought, let’s go all Myth Busters on this and perform a lovely experiment, complete with a control sample and everything. And hell, why not write it up as (well, an approximation of) an academic report on the matter?

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Lucky Numbers & Special Burgers: Stranded in the airport

Cultures all around the world have different “lucky” and “unlucky” numbers. That’s something I read a lot about when I was writing my post on luck for my finance blog, enrichmentality.com

In China and Japan, for example, the number four is considered unlucky, because it sounds like the word for death. In many Western countries, thirteen is the most commonly reported unlucky number – to the extent it has a recognised phobia associated with it – ‘triskaidekaphobia’.

Some people are so superstitious about these numbers it’s not uncommon to find buildings that skip the fourth or the thirteenth floor – or both!

When it comes to “lucky” numbers, again, there are differences around the world. While seven is considered lucky in many English-speaking places, the lucky number in Chinese-speaking circles tends to be one higher – eight.

But the name of my forthcoming satirical novel Number Eight Crispy Chicken (while I hope it enjoys good fortune!) has nothing to do with the lucky number eight. In fact, the title was inspired by (what I thought at the time) was a stroke of bad luck! Continue reading “Lucky Numbers & Special Burgers: Stranded in the airport” →

Frugal [and Effective!] Book Promotion: How to avoid the halfway home of books

Book promotion is important. Here’s why: For many years, I enjoyed book shopping at a big warehouse near my home. It was a kind of halfway house, in between the shelves of a bookstore (that we writers always dream of), and the great metal teeth of a book shredder (the stuff of nightmares).

I loved buying books from a warehouse for several reasons. Firstly, many of the titles weren’t there because they were bad, but because they hadn’t been promoted well. When the retail landscape was dominated by the big box stores, all pushing the same ten books, the warehouse offered a veritable treasure-trove of relatively unknown titles for me to discover.

Secondly, the price was right. As anyone who knows me, or who has read my finance-related blog Enrichmentality knows, I’m definitely a frugal person. And in Australia, where the recommended retail price for a new hardcover can be $39.99 or more, being able to buy books at approximately the same cost the rest of the world enjoys ($5 to $10 each) is an enormous boon.

Finally, I imagined that I was ‘rescuing’ some book from those great metal teeth. From becoming literal pulp fiction.

As it turns out, I wasn’t that far off the mark.

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Why You Should Join My Street Team TODAY :)

“Street teams” originated in the music industry. Volunteers would plaster the streets with posters, hand out flyers and CDs, inundate radio stations with requests, and even move an artist’s album to the front of the racks.

Today, the definition has broadened beyond the street to online promotion. Street teams can help out by giving feedback, sharing news about the book on social media, adding the book to ‘want to read’ lists, or taking book selfies and shelfies – little actions that take only a minute or two, but can make all the difference when it comes to what Michelle Raab rightly describes as the ‘power of word-of-mouth’.

Importantly for all of us book lovers, street teams aren’t limited to music these days, but now encompass books, too. (Jennifer Probst points out that they’re also called ‘reader groups’ and ‘fan clubs’).

Why should I join a street team?

The advantages for writers are obvious. What author wouldn’t want help promoting their book? But what about fans? Friends? Reviewers? Fellow writers?

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On Trigger Warnings [in books]

Warnings about content that may trigger the recall of a previous traumatic experience, known as ‘trigger warnings’, originated on feminist websites, before spreading to other areas, such as print media like books, and university courses. Consideration of trigger warnings in academia had only just begun when I left my position as a university lecturer, but it is a discussion I have followed with interest since.

It’s a debate sparked by intellectual and artistic considerations on one side, and emotional considerations on the other. But how can readers, writers and teachers navigate the field of trigger warnings, and make decisions that best support mental health, academic integrity, and creative freedom?

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In Defence of [Some] Bad Book Covers

Over the past year, I’ve read or referred to over eighty books about books and publishing. The vast majority single out a book’s cover as one of – if not its most – important features. In fact, some even go so far as to say that a bad cover will almost doom a book to failure. Others even suggest that if you have to choose between paying for editing or cover design, you should choose cover design. But why is this? And might there be some instances in which bad book covers are actually… good?

In How to Be a Writer, John Birmingham points to kindlecoverdisasters.tumblr.com as an example of some of the ‘bad’ covers that exist. And I can’t say after scrolling through several pages that I found any books I was tempted to find out more about, let alone pay money for and read.

But is that necessarily a bad thing?

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How to Read: A beginner’s guide

A few years back, I purchased a book called “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. It was originally published in 1940, and is described as a “living classic” on the blurb. Yet it fails in one key aspect – How does one learn how to read THIS book? Or, indeed, to select a book like “How to Read a Book” in the first place?

Clearly, this “classic guide to intelligent reading” is, just like the cookbook “How to Boil Water” I reviewed here some time ago, more advanced than it lets on.

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