we get nice things in the mail
Mar. 27th, 2009 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacFirst, a package of Corflu Zed publications, including a big sheet full of "wish you were here" messages penned by various folks. Thanks; I appreciate the thoughts. Glad you all had a *sniff* good time.
Second, another package, full of dry sauce mixes from these folks, ordered online as they can't reliably be found in supermarkets any more.
Third, a book: Arda Reconstructed by Douglas Charles Kane. This is not a book I'm recommending to the casual reader, though most of my Tolkienist friends are announcing the arrival of their preordered copies, as well they should. It's a highly technical and detailed study of a rather recondite subject, tracing the chapters, paragraphs, and even the very phrases of The Silmarillion out of the edited and polished final text back to their original sources in Tolkien's unfinished papers.
I'm mentioning this more because there's a story behind it. I didn't order mine; this came through a rather more roundabout route. A couple years ago I got a query from this small university press publisher. Would I be willing to review a manuscript that had been submitted to them?
I said sure, and see how nice this is? I get to read the book, not once but twice, long before it's published. I get to say what I think of it, both times, and get paid for the privilege. I get a free copy of the finished book, and a nice acknowledgment from the author in its pages. And the world gets a better - or at least I think it is - organized, more concise and useful piece of scholarship than the form I originally saw it in.
Such a deal.
Second, another package, full of dry sauce mixes from these folks, ordered online as they can't reliably be found in supermarkets any more.
Third, a book: Arda Reconstructed by Douglas Charles Kane. This is not a book I'm recommending to the casual reader, though most of my Tolkienist friends are announcing the arrival of their preordered copies, as well they should. It's a highly technical and detailed study of a rather recondite subject, tracing the chapters, paragraphs, and even the very phrases of The Silmarillion out of the edited and polished final text back to their original sources in Tolkien's unfinished papers.
I'm mentioning this more because there's a story behind it. I didn't order mine; this came through a rather more roundabout route. A couple years ago I got a query from this small university press publisher. Would I be willing to review a manuscript that had been submitted to them?
I said sure, and see how nice this is? I get to read the book, not once but twice, long before it's published. I get to say what I think of it, both times, and get paid for the privilege. I get a free copy of the finished book, and a nice acknowledgment from the author in its pages. And the world gets a better - or at least I think it is - organized, more concise and useful piece of scholarship than the form I originally saw it in.
Such a deal.
