My sig is too full of myself to make room for anybody else.

Just ordered some books for the summer/camping trip in a few weeks.

Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman - Stardust
NK Jemisin - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Dima Zales - Oasis
Marrissa Meyer - Cinder
Bill Willingham - Fables: Deluxe Edition Book One

I'd picked up The Trouser Press Guide to 90s Rock (5th Ed) at an antique shop but it's frankly over 800 wasted pages more of discography lists than anything else. Printed in 1997, a 3-second Google search will reveal far more useful information than anything from this mammoth text.

Far more inspiring was my return to my copy of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (2004). The book is a fantastic collection of music manifestos spanning the ages of Futurism to Minimalism to Free Jazz and on into Techno. Every featured paper is an exciting and satisfying read.

Oh, please don't get me wrong - In '97 it was an excellent handbook and referential text. I'm just saying that today it stands more as a historical piece than a useful object.

I was trolling BBSes in 1997. I know the deal :)

While researching potential publication avenues for my research paper on piracy I found myself exploring the citations from Wiki's page for the Free Culture Movement. This led me to R Polk Wagner's eye-opening paper, Information wants to be free: intellectual property and the mythologies of control (2003).

The citations are packed with this and other fantastic articles - essential reading for anyone interested in Free Culture.

Many of the papers on the subject made reference to Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture.

Lessig (for those unfamiliar) co-founded Creative Commons, was a board member of the Free Software Foundation, and briefly ran in the 2016 presidential election on a single-issue platform to pass The Citizen Equality Act. He has been a persistent figure in the fight for Fair Use and copyright reform for decades.

I'd downloaded copies of his books, Free Culture (2004) and Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008) three years ago but was quickly distracted by Siva Vaidhyanathan's book, The Anarchist in the Library and so his ebooks were unceremoniously "shelved".

A quick read of Free Culture's introduction and ToC instantly had me hooked and I knew that this (and likely his Remix book) deserved proper copies for my library.

In fewer than 60 seconds on Amazon, I purchased a clean 1st printing with dust jacket (for $4 frikkin dollars), from a small bookshop in a neighboring city which should arrive in only a few days. (I love the internet.)

I'm sincerely looking forward to some impassioned reading!

http://i.imgur.com/RHsba2F.jpg

I'm hoping to get to the library and read the Chronicles of Prydain series. You know, The Black Cauldron? I'm not sure whether that's one of my favorite movies or not, but I'm eager for the remake.

http://i.imgur.com/4sMT7lMl.jpg

Thanks for the reminder - I really need to pick up the complete set.

I am reading a book recently recommended by a friend called Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals by John LeFevre.

I got Prydain 1: The Book of Three. It's a great book! My only problem is that it takes too quickly to get th4ough the story. If it took its time a little, the book would probably be perfect. Loving Gwydion and Gurgi.