Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 302

Recent reading

Okay, I’ve read another couple of titles off my TBR pile. Plus I finally gave in and bought FIRE TOUCHED by Patricia Briggs, because I really, really wanted to read it and now I have. One disappointment, one implausibility, but basically a satisfying installment of the Mercy Thompson series.

But first, in reading order:

CORSAIR by James Cambias.

This took me a little while to get into, for a couple of reasons. It’s near-future SF, not my favorite type of setting, that’s one. Then I wanted to like David, AKA Captain Black the Space Pirate. David is our first pov protagonist and therefore feels like he should be the primary protagonist plus the good guy and the guy we root for. But he is such a total jerk. Honestly, he seems to have sociopathic tendencies – other people don’t seem to be quite real to him. Then our secondary protagonist, Elizabeth Santiago, an Air Force captain, is much more sympathetic but also . . . maybe a trifle boring? Or maybe the problem is that she is a bit ineffectual. She is trying to set things up to thwart David, but her (slightly illegal) plans get discovered and go nowhere. A third pov character, Anne, drifts along, tangential to the actual plot, and one wonders what the heck she has to do with anything.

Then the story takes off. The real bad guys appear, so it gets easier to root for David. Shortly after that, David gets shocked into noticing that other people are real after all and actually grows up a bit and becomes a lot more likeable. Anne gets pulled into the primary narrative. Elizabeth sorts out her priorities and goes for broke to stop the real bad guys, and I would say that she and David team up, except that it’s not exactly voluntary on David’s part. When Elizabeth gets going, she is pretty hard to say no to. The pace picks up and whoosh, straight through to the end. Plus an epilogue so we can get the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.

Overall a satisfying story, and though I hope Cambias goes back to designing alien species for this next book, I do think I’ll be willing to pick up whatever he writes next, even if it’s another near-future SF story.

Okay, so I sometimes don’t feel like starting another new-to-me book right after finishing one, so I picked up FER-DE-LANCE by Rex Stout instead of anything off my TBR pile. I’m sure I’ve read Fer-de-Lance before . . . it’s the very first Nero Wolfe mystery, and I’ve read all of them, but I didn’t actually remember it. Well, I read through the Nero Wolfe mysteries a long time ago. Rex Stout hasn’t quite settled all the elements of his characters and world down yet in Fer-de-Lance, but all the essentials are in place. Every now and then I miss a reference – it was written in 1934, after all – but that certainly does give that feeling of depth to the setting.

I liked this one, though not as much as later installments.

Do you realize that in twenty years, the Nero Wolfe series will be 100 years old? And I’m sure people will still be reading and enjoying these stories. Pretty amazing.

All right, after that I guiltily stepped away from my existing TBR pile, gave in, and bought FIRE TOUCHED by Patricia Briggs. What can I say? It’s been in the back of my mind since it came out and I finally decided I really, really wanted to read it, even though it was still more than ten bucks for the ebook.

The disappointment: I like Honey, I keep expecting Briggs to give her a somewhat more central role, but not in this one, either. Well, there are so many characters, it must be hard to pull any of the minor characters into the spotlight. Still, I was disappointed.

The yeah-sure moment: Wow, it sure was easy for Adam to sort out the problems between his pack and Mercy. Makes one wonder why he didn’t take care of that a long time ago. Yes, there was a nod toward I’ve-been-wanting-to-do-that, but I still found myself rolling my eyes.

The relief: I’d heard there was a death in this one, which turned out to be a trifle misleading, though not actually untrue. I’ll just add that nobody I particularly cared about died.

The story: Another fun installment. I’d have liked Bran to play a larger role, but I usually feel like that. I sort of wonder whether the trouble between the fae and the humans will be that easy to sort out, but on second thought, maybe it wasn’t actually all that easy – and there’s lots of room for continuing trouble.

Now reading: KINGFISHER by McKillip. I’m only halfway through it, though, because I’m also trying to (finally) finish this Black Dog short story. Well, novella. That’s why it’s taken so long; it keeps getting longer and more complicated. Just about got it today, though. I’ll finish it tomorrow.

What SFF title have you recently enjoyed, which you picked up on a whim?

Here’s an interesting “Mind Meld” post by Rob B at SFFWorld: Recent SF/F/H You’ve Read & Enjoyed About Which You Knew Little

Meaning SFF titles you picked up not because of a detailed review from a trusted blogger, but, as I say, basically on a whim.

This post caught my eye mainly because the first answer, from NE White, was: The Emperor’s Edge by Buroker. Oh, hey, yeah, I said when I saw that, and read the rest of White’s entry and then the rest of the post.

I remember I picked up Buroker’s book because of Sherwood Smith’s comments about it. That’s usually how I do wind up dropping a book — or at least a sample — on my TBR pile: someone I trust writes a review and there you go.

Anyway, Yanni Kuznia also mentions The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, which I’ve heard good things about; and The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, which ditto.

Let me see, let me see . . . I guess actually I just started a book about which I know nothing, in a sense. Kingfisher by McKillip. I mean, of course I know it’s a McKillip. But I specifically didn’t read any reviews or the back cover copy or anything. Does it count if you go into a book cold but know the author’s work really well?

This morning I read the first chapter and it is beautiful so far.

I guess back when I read The Thousand Names by Wexler, I didn’t know anything but that it was military fantasy and had a woman disguised as a man. It was the first book of Wexler’s I ever read, so I would say that’s going into it pretty cold. Loved it, of course. I’m trying to remember whether the 4th book, due out this summer, is the last? If so I will so much enjoy starting back at the beginning and reading the whole series.

How about you? Anything come to mind for books you love that you read cold rather than on the basis of a trusted friend or reviewer? I’m not sure that happens so often for me anymore, now that I live way out here and no longer browse in bookstores very much.

The qualities that define a writer

Here’s a post by Alma Alexander at Book View Cafe, in which she details a particularly brainless instance of plagiarism. It *is* funny, honestly, in an appalling way:

Author Cassie Edwards – who, after what appears to have been a steady stream of books and a sweet career in the romance field, should really know better – appears to be unable to tell the difference between research and out-and-out copycatting. In her book entitled “Shadow Bear”… Edwards commits the ultimate stupidity. She not only completely cut-and-paste plagiarizes something word for word, she takes what was a scholarly study on the black-footed ferret and tries to stuff the whole thing into (inappropriate) dialogue. What’s more, she uses a study whose author is still alive and kicking…

One does wonder, given this, whether Edwards’ career was actually ever based on her own writing. At least, I do. In fact, you might have heard of pretty serious allegations regarding Edwards’ work because all this really hit the internet back in 2008. I’d more or less forgotten, but Google reminds me that it was Smart Bitches Trashy Books that brought this into the spotlight, and shortly thereafter, says Wikipedia, Signet dropped Edwards, though I don’t know how that all worked out in the end.

While I certainly do not claim to know The Truth, I must say that the passages Alexander quotes in her post are hilariously bad.

Shiona then tells Shadow Bear how she once read about ferrets in a book she took from the study of her father. “I discovered they are related to minks and otters. It is said their closest relations are European ferrets and Siberian polecats,” she says. “Researchers theorize that polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska, to establish the New World population.”

Shadow Bear responds: “What I have observed of them, myself, is that these tiny animals breed in early spring when the males roam the night in search of females.” As the ferrets bound off into some distant bushes, he continues: “Mothers typically give birth to three kits in early summer and raise their young alone in abandoned prairie dog burrows.”

Wow, what romantic pillow talk. And I say that as someone who would be happy to explain to some hot romantic dude that of course ferrets belong to the Mustilidae family and are more closely related to dogs than to the mongooses they resemble.

Anyway, in this post Alma Alexander is making several different points, about believability, and about the importance of editors who are paying attention, and about how crucial research is and how different that is from plagiarism.

But here is the ultimate take-home message:

There are many lists of attributes that have been floating around as being necessary for, or defining, a writer. Perseverance. Faith in yourself and your work. Industriousness. Professionalism.

I would like to add one more, without which none of the others are worth much.

Integrity.

A writer’s life, in animal pictures

Oh, I’m glad I started checking in on Kill Zone Blog more often, because this is funny! Moments in a writer’s life, expressed in animal pictures.

This is my favorite:

How a writer feels after finishing Draft Five, just before starting Draft Six

Here’s one I’ll add:

How a writer feels after painting her protagonist into a corner, and before figuring out how to get him out again

Recent Reading

So, at this point I’ve read (or started and DNFed) four of the titles that had risen to the top of my TBR pile. Comments:

DOMINIONS by James Hetley.

Remember how much I loved POWERS, the first book in this duology? Yeah, well, this second book was also wonderful.

I think I enjoyed the first book a little more, because finding out what was actually going on was seriously cool. But the final resolution of the ongoing problem, as happened in this book, was also pretty great.

Also, about halfway through I thought I knew what was going to happen with Jess and I wasn’t happy with the outcome I saw coming. Only Hetley actually went in a completely different direction. I did see the actual resolution of Jess’s situation coming, but only a tiny bit in advance. It was a thoroughly satisfying resolution in several different ways.

Also, you know how so many books that include a romance starts with the principals at odds and then they come to know each other and finally wind up together at the end? Well, we got that arc in the first book, so in the second book, it was quite satisfying seeing the relationship between Al and Mel start off solid, continue solid, and wind up even more solid. No extra relationship complications thrown in there just to up the tension. Yay for that! There was plenty of tension having to do with surviving and saving the world and stuff, without adding in misunderstandings and hurt feelings and all that kind of thing.

So, yep, a great duology and one that’s going to wind up high high high on my top ten list at the end of the year, I bet.

UN LUN DUN by China Mieville.

I know some of you commented that you liked this one of his even though his books don’t always do it for you. Well, I’m sorry to say that this wasn’t the case for me. I really liked The City and the City and I was okay with Embassytown, but Un Lun Dun just did not do it for me.

It was a little too screwy for me, maybe. It’s kind of like The Phantom Tollbooth and kind of like The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and kind of like A Face Like Glass, but I preferred all three of those. I just could not connect to the main characters and could not get into the book, and I set it aside when I was about a third of the way through.

I think I know someone who might like it much better than I did, though, so I will pass it along to him. Meanwhile, maybe I will move RAILSEA to near the top of my TBR pile and see if that one works better for me.

ASH AND BRAMBLE by Sarah Prineas

Okay, so, checking out the Goodreads reviews, I see that this Cinderella-infused story does not work for everyone. But it totally worked for me and now I’m really looking forward to the sequel, Rose and Thorn, which is due out shortly.

Whoever would have thought of making the Godmother the villain? That was brilliant.

How did Prineas come up with the idea of zapping everybody’s memory, occasionally multiple times, so that no one in the book knows their own histories or names? By the second half of the book, the main protagonist doesn’t even remember the first half of the story. That was brilliant.

What a great notion, making so many of the secondary characters who might have been bad guys into sympathetic characters – the stepsisters especially; even the stepmother by the end. So clever to show how these fundamentally decent people are being misshapen into petty tyrants by the way they’re all trapped in the Cinderella story. And Prineas pulled this off with just a line here and a line there. That was brilliant.

What an interesting stylistic choice, making Pin’s pov chapters first person present and Shoe’s pov chapters third person present. That actually worked for me – I didn’t even notice the shifts between first and third until I was halfway through the book.

Now I’m totally looking forward to the sequel. Which is based on Sleeping Beauty, evidently. I’m not aware of a lot of Sleeping Beauty retellings, but I’m fascinated to see what Sarah Prineas will do with this.

THE IMPROBABLE THEORY OF ANA AND ZAK by Brian Katcher

Very different from the previous book of Katcher’s that I’ve read (Almost Perfect) – this is a light, quick read; in fact, I read the whole thing in one sitting, which is very rare for me. I normally enjoy a book more if I stretch it out over at least two days, but in this case I honestly didn’t notice how fast I was whooshing through it until I was practically at the end and then I was too into it to put it aside.

I very much enjoyed Zak, who is a total geek – into gaming and conventions and stuff, but confident, extroverted, and not bad-looking. Katcher adroitly steps in circles around the standard geek cliché. He also manages to write a YA romance without making either the guy or the girl super-hot. I thought that was against the rules or something. AND he makes the relationship between Zak and Ana central to the story, without making it angsty. More like this, please!

I loved Ana, so rigid and unhappy and for such a good reason. The family relationships are sketched in and then subverted – I figured Zak’s relationship with his stepfather would be sorted out by the end, and in fact I really loved Roger when he finally appeared as a real character, but I honestly did not see the thing with Ana’s mother coming. I took Ana’s understanding about what had happened with her older sister at face value, so at the end Ana and I discovered together that it wasn’t quite that simple.

I loved that Ana’s family is Catholic and yet Katcher has *totally avoided* the Evil Religious Fanatic trope. Not even though Ana’s family is so unhappy; the reasons for that have to do with misunderstandings that are not related to their religion. They’re just Catholic as part of their background, without dwelling on it. I can’t remember the last time I saw that. Maybe never. Of course I don’t read a whole lot of contemporary YA, but still. Can we please have more like this?

All right, now, the actual setting: Most of the action takes place at a comic convention, but we are not supposed to take the over-the-top convention stuff too seriously, I’m pretty sure; nor the intrusion of the . . . um, “more realistic” plotline that develops. All I can say is, the conventions I attend seem a little . . . calmer. Though it’s true that I am not up in the wee hours when the craziness might be taking place. This story has deeper layers, all having to do with family relationships, but up front it’s a total comedy, especially once we’re at the convention. Zak gets most of the best lines:

“Lots of words really fast,” I tell her. “That’s the secret to a good lie. They’re not sure what you said, and blame themselves when they confused.”

He looks at me with intense dislike. I smile, trying to look macho and possessive of Ana, without coming off as a jerk and not too overboard, because I really do need [him to give me] a shirt. Luckily, I’ve practiced that look a zillion times.

Just a delightful story, and it’s a bit difficult to decide where to go next. I don’t at all feel like following An Improbable Theory with something like Rose Under Fire, I’d prefer something I expect to be a little less intense. Choices, choices . . .

Profanity in fiction

Here is a good, thoughtful post at Kill Zone Blog about the use of blue language in fiction. Note this *is* Kill Zone Blog, which is mainly focused on mysteries and thrillers and so on.

There are different reasons why readers dislike profanity in their fiction. It can colored by religious conviction, personal morals or just plain old taste. Authors are guided by the same impulses. Mark Henshaw, a Mormon crime writer, wrote a blog “Why I Don’t Use Profanity,” saying, “My short answer to the question is: because my mother reads my books. My long answer is a bit more involved.”

Yeah, you all have no idea how much of a fuss my mother made because I included just a half dozen or so cuss words in Black Dog. Sorry, Mom! That’s the way this character talks, especially when he’s upset!

I don’t find it limiting to leave out the cusswords when writing secondary world fantasy. I *have* found it somewhat confining to try to write secondary world fantasy with no swearing at all — not even Gods! or anything like that. (Can you recall which book was written with no swearing, even in secondary world terms? Did you notice at the time?)

It *is* more difficult to try to leave out ALL cusswords from any kind of fiction set in a contemporary or contemporary-ish world. Of course it can be done, and in such a way that the reader doesn’t notice. It takes artistry, but after all, skill with words is kind of what we are hoping for from a writer, yes?

We get everything from no expletives to made-up expletives to the use of expletives under extreme circumstances to a massive heap o’ expletives, and any of those can work depending on the book and the author. I think Tanya Huff pulled off a fake swear word pretty well in her Valor series. Tough to manage military SF without cusswords, but made-up words can look so silly. As I say, I thought she made it work.

I do occasionally wonder whether authors who pour f-bombs into all their stories realize that probably many readers hesitate to buy those books as gifts for their mothers? Of course if the author is okay with limiting their potential readership, that’s fine, but do they realize it? I just wonder. If you hang out mainly with people who exclaim Fuck! every time they drop a spoon on the floor, you probably stop hearing it. But a whole lot of potential readers are going to dislike that in your character’s mouth.

Anyway, this blog post ends with a quote:

Take it away, Kathryn Schultz, in your essay “Ode To a Four-Letter Word:”

Do we need…a justification, beyond the one a writer might mount for any word, i.e., that it works? There is, after all, no such thing as an intrinsically bad, boring, or lazy word. There is only how it is deployed, and one of the pleasures of profanity is how diversely you can deploy it. Writers don’t use expletives out of laziness or the puerile desire to shock or because we mislaid the thesaurus. We use them because, sometimes, the four-letter word is the better word—indeed, the best one.

And I would like to disagree with Schultz just a bit. SOME writers DO employ expletives out of laziness or the puerile desire to shock — or, while we can’t see into their heads, their writing certainly gives that impression. I would like, rather cautiously, to offer an example:

All of Stephen King’s characters sound almost exactly the same, at least in his later books. And one reason they all sound the same is — you can see this coming — because they all cuss the same way, with the same words, under the same circumstances. His bad guys in particular all cuss like Stephen King baddies, but the same is basically true for the good guys as well. And once you, as a reader, notice this, it is grating.

Or at least it was for me, when I noticed it.

Classic Female Fantasy Authors

Always happy to see a list that focuses like a laser on the exact authors who were so important to me when I was growing up.

This is a post at Grey Dog Tales: TEN CLASSIC FEMALE FANTASY AUTHORS.

I bet you could guess most of the authors on this list, especially if you know my taste. Here they are:

Andre Norton

Susan Cooper

Katherine Kurtz

Joy Chant

Patricia Wrightson

CJ Cherryh

Patricia McKillip

DWJ

Barbara Hambly

Sheri Tepper

The one that didn’t age as well for me: Andre Norton — but I would still suggest them for younger readers. I know, I KNOW, the ending of The Dark Is Rising series is iffy. Still a great series. Joy Chant didn’t write a lot, of course, but I’m sure we all loved Red Moon and Black Mountain, right?

I’m particularly pleased because this post specifically points to The Power of Three, one of Diana Wynne Jones’ books that I think doesn’t get enough attention.

The only author here I didn’t much care for (and didn’t read much of) was Sheri Tepper. Maybe I should give her books another try.

The only author here I’ve never heard of is Patricia Wrightson. Given the company she’s keeping here, I should *definitely* give her books a try!

Popular plotlines

This is not super-current, it’s based on 2011 titles, but still, an interesting look at popular plotlines for novels that won the Booker Prize.

I see there are 13 books listed here. Are there normally 13 winners of the Booker Prize? That’s kind of funny, if so.

Given that it’s the Booker Prize, it won’t surprise you that DEATH comes up in all the titles, so that’s the universal trope. LOVE came up six times — interesting it wasn’t more!

My favorite of the less-common tropes is the escaped tiger — of course!

Ten books that have risen to the top of my TBR pile

While it’s true I’m working my way through copy edits for The White Road of the Moon, which are due back to my editor this coming Wednesday, it is also true that copy edits don’t require anything like the sustained attention required by revision. So I am casting thoughtful glances over my TBR pile, planning to winnow that down a bit over the next couple of weeks. In fact, the main reason I haven’t opened any of the titles below just yet is that I’m still working my way through a nonfiction book: Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival, by Laurence Gonzales.

Any of you remember Flight 232? It crashed in 1989, at the Sioux City airport. I was in college at the time, but it was July, so I was home for the summer. I remember watching news coverage of the crash with my family. We were all so amazed that the pilot *almost* managed to get that plane down safely. In simulations, other pilots that tried to handle the same situation – complete loss of all hydraulics – couldn’t get the plane down at all. Nearly 300 people were aboard and about 2/3 of them survived. The plane came in way too fast, and though it looked briefly like everybody would walk away from it, at the last minute the plane dipped a wing, dug that wing into the ground, rose up onto its nose, bounced and pirouetted, and came apart.

It’s a tremendously compelling book. Gonzales interviewed practically everyone – the survivors, the air traffic controllers, the people who ran the on-site morgue, the hospital staff, everyone. He intersperses brief sections about the engineering and how the accident happened with all the stories of the people. It’s tough to put the book down, and fiction is just going to have to wait till I finish it.

But that doesn’t stop me from making a list of the fiction I most want to get to. So, a Top Ten list – five paper books from the physical TBR shelves, and five ebooks. Sometimes I am mostly trying to get books off the TBR shelves, so I specifically select books I suspect I might not like particularly, in the hope of thinning the pile quickly – taking ebooks off my Kindle or giving away physical books.

But not this time. This time, I am selecting books I very much want to read and hope to love.

So, the list, in no particular order:

Ebooks:

Dominions by Hetley. The first book in this duology, Powers was wonderful and I immediately picked up about four more titles by the author, including Dominions. I will definitely read this one first of all the books on this list, and then decide what to pick up second.

The Steerswoman by Kirstein. This has been talked up a good deal, I’ve had it on my virtual TBR pile for a good long time, and it’s time to read it.

The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak by Katcher. I heard a reading of a snippet of this book about three years ago, well before it came out, and it was delightful. It’s a contemporary YA and should serve nicely as a foil for all the fantasy on this list.

Stained Glass Monsters by Höst. I think it is about time I read this. I am not eager to catch up with Höst’s titles because then I will have to wait for her to write something else. But I am definitely in the mood to read a new-to-me book Höst book, so I pulled this one out of the Andrea K Höst folder on my Kindle and moved it to the top of my TBR pile. After this, I’ll have to decide whether to read Pyramids of London before or after the whole series is complete. Tough decision!

Corsair by Cambias. I was thinking of his debut novel The Darkling Sea recently and that made me remember this near-future SF novel. I rather liked the beginning of it, so I moved it up to the top of my TBR pile, too.

Paper:

Ash and Bramble Sarah Prineas. I have wanted to read this since before it quite hit the shelves, and now the sequel is practically out and I still haven’t. It’s a fairy tale retelling, or perhaps more a fairy tale deconstruction – Cinderella. It sounds wonderful and I am just *going* to find the time to read it this month, I swear.

California Bones by van Eekhout. This is supposed to be a fantasy heist novel. I have only read one other book by van Eekhout, a MG story that turned out to be too young for me, but I have very high hopes for California Bones, which is an adult novel. It’s the first book of a trilogy, but the whole trilogy is out, so about time I read this one.

Rose Under Fire by Wein The stars had to align just right for me to pull this off my TBR pile. I love Wein’s work, but her books are intense. I needed time to read a very absorbing book, and I had to be in the *mood* for a very absorbing book. At the moment, both seem to be true.

Un Lun Dun by Miéville. I found the beginning catchy, but Miéville is the kind of author who often makes you work pretty hard. I had to be in the mood. I think I am now.

Kingfisher by McKillip. Mmmm. I need a lot of really good chocolate and a rainy day and I will just sink into this book.

So, let’s see. That’s two secondary world fantasies, four fantasies set more or less in our world, a fairy tale retelling, a contemporary YA, a historical, and an SF novel. A pretty decent selection. Not sure I will read all these in May . . . the odds are probably somewhat against it . . . but they’re definitely all on the top of my TBR pile and I’m sure I will read some of them this month – hopefully a lot of them.

Mental note: never subscribe to any Apple Service

Well, this is really quite disturbing: Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.

I don’t subscribe to all that many things, because my internet connection is rather poor at the best of times (bright sunny winter mornings) and absolutely terrible at other times (all summer).

And I have generally not worried too much about, say, Amazon stealing my Kindle books, because I figure the public outcry would stop them if they tried.

But listen to this:

“The software is functioning as intended,” said Amber.

“Wait,” I asked, “so it’s supposed to delete my personal files from my internal hard drive without asking my permission?”

“Yes,” she replied.

….

When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted.

This is exactly as horrible as you would expect. This composer found that Apple had deleted his own music and destroyed those files completely. It converted his WAV files to Mp3 files and destroyed the original files.

This guy had backed up his files, so he’s okay. I guess that’s the equivalent of putting your Kindle books on your hard drive via Calibre. Of course, this problem concerns Apple reaching into your computer and deleting files off your actual hard drive.

Unbelievable. Appalling.

People can’t sue because of the terms of use for Apple Music.

For about ten years, I’ve been warning people, “Hang onto your media. One day, you won’t buy a movie. You’ll buy the right to watch a movie, and that movie will be served to you. If the companies serving the movie don’t want you to see it, or they want to change something, they will have the power to do so. They can alter history, and they can make you keep paying for things that you formerly could have bought. Information will be a utility rather than a possession. Even information that you yourself have created will require unending, recurring payments just to access.”

I would have thought this guy was a little too paranoid. But this Apple Music thing makes me reassess my optimism.

So if any of you are using this Apple Music thing, well, you really may want to click through and read the whole post.

I know I’ll be keeping a closer eye on this kind of issue than I have in the past. And I resent having to. I sure hope that some kind of legal protection is put in place to utterly forbid corporations from playing fast and loose with people’s property the way Apple Music is doing.