of blogs and ebooks
I mentioned in the comments the other night that I’d been having an interesting email conversation with a lurker–whose user name is Ithilien–about the purposes and validity of blogs and ebooks. I egged her on, I’m afraid, or possibly she found my cluelessness irresistible, and the end result is that she wrote me an essay. I found it entirely fascinating and asked if I might be allowed to post it. She said, post away, but that most of you would be bored to tears. Well, perhaps, because most of you more or less by definition are more clued in than I am. But not all of you. And while the stuff about ways to defend my books against piracy is probably more riveting to me than to anyone who does not write books for a living, much of the rest of it interests me more as a reader and book-buyer and -consumer than as a writer. So I think you might find it worth a look, and possibly thought- and/or comment-provoking.
(I’m also assuming that WordPress can cope: it’s pretty long. But it seems to have cut and pasted okay.)
1. Despite what the publishers say, I think blogs are useful.* IMHO,
blogging (apart from the diary kind) is about building a community.
This generates awareness and goodwill and fun distractions and
publicity for upcoming books. But it takes a lot of work to be a good
host, enforce rules, and encourage a community of people who like your
books (and thus talk about them and buy them later). Alas, blogging
won’t magically promote an author’s books to bestseller lists.
2. The thing about e-books is that they have different properties to
paper books. So they’re generally an additional market rather than
a substitute for paper books. A small additional market.
Unfortunately, piracy of e-books is a problem because it’s easy to
make copies. But piracy is a problem even if you sell only paper books
(because paper books can easily be converted to e-books due to the
existence of sharp knives and good scanners), so refusing to enter the
e-book market isn’t reducing your vulnerability to piracy. The ways to
reduce piracy are to make things easier for legitimate users when they
want to buy your e-books, encourage people to become legitimate users
through moral and legal persuasion, make things harder for pirates
through reinforcing social norms against piracy, and take appropriate
search and destroy action.
Essays may be found below. Feel free to point out gaping holes or
unfounded assumptions (if you can be bothered, of course). These are
things I feel passionately enthusiastic about, so it’s always good to
patch the holes before the next debate.
* Not necessarily in the way that they meant them to be useful, but still.
*Essay 1 - The Benefits of Blogs*
========================
Robin wrote: “Zowie. Okay. Well, I like the idea that this blog is
FINALLY GOOD FOR SOMETHING. I told you, didn’t I, that the *current*
publishing thinking is that blogs are NOT worthwhile as stirring the
zeitgeist toward a given author? Sigh.”
—-
You mean, they made you do all that work and now they don’t think it’s
makes a difference? Gah. *glares at publishers* Although I can’t
complain on my own behalf. I’m very glad that you have a blog.
More seriously, I think they’re probably doing it wrong. The problem
with publishers tends to be that they treat blogging as just another
corporate marketing exercise. For an awful example, see the EOS blog
(http://outofthiseos.typepad.com/blog/). It’s the blog of an imprint.
An imprint isn’t a person. It can’t share its interests or ideas or
amusing thoughts about the world. So all you have is a list of
vaguely-related marketing announcements. And frankly, that’s just
boring. Try the new Tor.com blog (http://www.tor.com). Tor has picked
a great group of hosts/moderators for their blog. Well-regarded,
entertaining hosts like John Scalzi, Jo Walton, Charles Stross,
Patrick Nielsen Hayden (PNH) who (are paid reasonable rates to)
publish entries about about diverse and fascinating topics related to
SFF. There are free short stories that reinforce interest in existing
books/series, as well as articles about the world of science, book
reviews, convention reports, etc. It’s just great content.
Of course, the best blogs aren’t just an entertaining newsletter from
SFF dignitaries. A good blog is a bit like a party or a convention.
You have a venue and a host and rules about what’s appropriate or not.
And gossip and serious discussion on interesting conversation topics
(nominated by the host in consultation with the guests). As you may
have noticed, half the value of a blog is the positive feedback loops
- the discussion with hosts and guests. So you end up building a
community of people who may never have met each other, but share
recipes and cool links and so on. (EOS has utterly failed here - there
appear to be no moderators, no regular commentors, no authors nor
editors who can be bothered to spend time there. I’ve commented a
couple of times with questions or problems and no one from EOS has
answered. So why would anyone go there?)
So why bother with all this work? Well, there are a few reasons. (Some
people had their publisher force them to do it.) Some people are
looking for human contact, particularly those who might not otherwise
see many people during their daily life. There’s a certain fulfillment
in sharing the stories of one’s life, both sorrows and amusements,
with others who can sympathise and give advice and sometimes offer
help. There’s the pleasure of spreading neat stuff amongst one’s
friends - like Dr Horrible and Blue Horse Matinee and new recipes and
so on. Some people want make their opinions public, to change the
world through persuasion or education. Others are trying to publicise
their work or gain income through advertising links. Some people want
to provide supplementary material to their books. Some people make
their blogs into books, e.g. (http://www.anonymouslawfirm.com). John
Scalzi has just published a second book featuring the best of his blog
over the last ten years.++ Often, some of these purposes get mixed up
in a single blog.
Most of the authors’ blogs that I see are a mix of the above things.
But personally, I think the best part of their blogs is those little
titbits of information that don’t justify a media release by their
publishers. Like sneak previews of their next book or little details
about what didn’t make it into the book itself.+++ It builds
anticipation as we watch the wordcount go up on the next book of a
series (e.g. Elizabeth Bear’s CHILL) and sympathise with the Author as
he/she slogs through the hard bits in the middle of the book. It gets
the early word out for release dates - people will spread this news
because they adore your books. It lets your devoted fans run to their
friends and family and independent booksellers and scream excitedly
“CHALICE! CHALICE! September! Order 50 copies now!” Or tell other fans
that long-awaited books are coming. (CYTEEN 2! C J Cherryh has finally
written CYTEEN 2!!!). It keeps interest in a series or a world or an
author alive in the long stretch between books.++++ It’s hard to buy
something that you didn’t know existed. Last night at dinner, I was
holding ROSE DAUGHTER and asked my friend if she’d read it. She said
“I had no idea she wrote books other than BEAUTY!”
If it comforts you, I think you’re doing brilliantly with your blog.
Thank you! :)
You’re gathering a group of dedicated people WHO WANT TO READ THINGS
THAT YOU WRITE, from tiny snippets about roses, to recipes, to stories
about the hellhounds, to the very latest of your novels. And I can
guarantee that they’re talking about them. Because it’s human to share
good things with those you love. And sometimes random strangers in
bookstores. + I’m particularly resentful that their free giveaway e-books require
registration and then don’t work. And I’m a fairly tech-savvy reader.
I bet they’re going to claim no one is interested in e-books when they
look at the download stats.
++ Your Hate Mail Will be Graded
(http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SP&Product_Code=scalzi07)
+++ Hint, hint: what happens next to Sunshine???
++++ This is not aimed at you. None of my favourite writers write fast enough.
*Essay 2 - The Piracy of E-books*
========================
Robin wrote: “If you have the time and patience, I’d be very
interested in what else you can tell me about all this. **Sigh.** This
is the sort of mixed blessing that the blog is too: all this stuff is
so much more in my face than it used to be.”
—-
Okay. Back to the thing you actually asked about. Some of this is
pretty basic, but I’m not sure where you’re starting from.
Almost all the copyright violations (piracy) that people are currently
interested in discussing are digital in form. Impecunious readers
could borrow your books from the library and photocopy them, but it’s
just too much work. Plus the photocopying costs more than most books.
So we’re talking about e-books.
*What’s an e-book?*
—————————–
E-books are basically computer files that contain the text and
pictures of books. They come in a number of formats, including plain
text files, Word documents, Microsoft reader files, Mobipocket files,
and an assortment of others. There are lots of formats. The format
that you have may affect the presentation of the book - Terry
Pratchett’s Discworld books, for example, don’t work as well in e-book
format because it stuffs up the proper placement of the footnotes.
More ordinarily, plain text files won’t have pictures, italics, bold,
etc, which may significantly affect the meaning of the text.# Some
formats are easy to access - they don’t require anything more than
what you would already have on your computer. Some are harder - you
need to download stuff, get it to connect to its home base over the
internet, authenticate yourself, etc. Some are so hard that you need
to buy a new reading device to read them.
The major benefits of e-books are that you can obtain them instantly,
from anywhere with an Internet connection (well, almost) and that
they’re relatively small so that you can store lots and lots of them
on your computer or PDA or thumb drive or memory card rather than
needing to buy a giant house with floor to ceiling bookshelves or
(*gasp*) getting rid of some books. This property is also useful for
long plane flights and military deployments and holidays (and when
you’re moving house and can’t remember which box you packed the
particular book that you’re craving). They’re also great for authors
and booksellers - your backlist is never out of stock and you don’t
have to buy a new warehouse to store it in. It’s also a lot cheaper to
make a new copy of an e-book than to do a new print run. But all this
portability has a dark side - it makes it easier for people to send
copies to others and download copies over the internet.
The downsides to e-books are basically linked to usability. There’s a
reason that the majority of people prefer to read on paper. Reading
devices for e-books are mostly backlit, which is hard on the eyes.
There’s a new technology called ePaper that is easier to read for long
periods, but it’s expensive and won’t be widely used for some time
(particularly since it’s only available in greyscale). It’s common
that people will refuse to read long-form works in electronic form
because they get headaches or back problems or feel nauseated. (This
is one of the reasons that I have two copies of all Lois McMaster
Bujold’s Vorkosigen books. The Webscriptions versions were the ones that I bought
in college, where I could not afford the space in my student room. The
mass market paperbacks are the copies that I bought so that my husband
could read them.)
E-books just aren’t as user-friendly as paper books. You can’t just
buy the e-book from your regular bookseller and take it home and read
it. Your regular bookseller might not have a contract to offer that
book for sale. The only bookseller who does have that book for sale
might look too dodgy for you to entrust them with your credit card
details. The book might only be available in certain formats, which
you can’t read because you don’t have the right reading device or
software. The right reading device or software might only be
configured for right handed people or people with large/small hands or
people who read faster than the battery drains. The download process
might go horribly wrong and give you a garbled book (or even worse,
half a book). As a result, the e-book market is currently small. It
might get bigger as better screen technologies develop, but most of
your readers are going to buy paper. And those who treasure the
hardcovers now are still going to want those, most likely in addition
to their e-books. Our society, for better or worse, is deeply fond of
paper. This is one reason that e-book piracy is not as big a problem
as it might seem.
*So how can we discourage piracy of e-books?*
——————————————————————–
I should add here that I’m looking at this holistically. I don’t think
there’s any point in holding a legal and moral high ground if it
doesn’t work in practice. I do understand that some authors find it
deeply offensive that people would make unauthorised copies of their
books. Elizabeth Moon has said publicly that she doesn’t understand
why she should have to spend her time and effort enforcing her
copyrights. There’s a whole range of responses: from those authors who
absolutely refuse to have any of their work published in e-book form
in order to avoid piracy, through those who don’t care because they
think it’s great free advertising and that people will buy their books
anyway, to people like Cory Doctorow, who reserves the electronic
rights for every book that he writes and publishes it on the web for
free under a Creative Commons licence.
The way I look at it is that there’s a spectrum of potential
downloaders. At one end, there are the people who will always pay for
e-books. At the other end, there are people who will never pay. Most
people will fall somewhere along the spectrum. The trick is to use as
many strategies as possible to lure, persuade and shove people towards
the paying end.
So let’s look at the people who pay. Since most people don’t give
money away randomly, it’s probably for one or more of the following
reasons. First, it’s illegal to download those copies. Second, most
people would say that making copies of copyrighted works is wrong,
because it hurts the author/publisher/editor/cover artist/etc
financially. Third, as with the photocopies of paper books, it’s
easier to buy a legal copy than go through the hassle of copying the
thing. Fourth, there may be prestige or other value in legal copies.
*I don’t do it because it’s illegal*
———————————————-
Okay, let’s start with illegality, since it’s the easiest one.
(Please note that none of this is legal advice. Of any sort. It’s all a friendly exposition.) As you know, authors and publishers
have the ability to sue anyone who makes an unauthorised copy of their
work. But frankly, this is unlikely to happen in relation to e-book
piracy unless the person is a commercial pirate - making multiple
copies and selling them or making content available for free downloads
in order to get advertising revenue or other income.### So most people
know that they won’t suffer legal consequences. They obey the law
because they want to do what’s right, not because they fear the
penalties.
That said, I recommend vigilance. If piracy concerns you (and it may
not), I would get someone to set up regular Google searches for your
books in electronic form on the internet, as well as searches of the
more popular pirate locations. (This can also tell you interesting
things about the popularity of your books.) If you do find someone
offering your books for download, you can take a range of actions to
stop it. You can contact the offender and ask them to stop or, if it’s
on a website, ask the host of the material to take it down. You can
also request their ISP to issue warnings that might lead them to
losing their internet access. If you want to be more formal, you can
use statutory notices in some countries to make them take the content
down. (But you’ll need to get legal advice on the proper words for
things like that, e.g. DMCA notices in the USA. There was a big
kerfluffle about this with the SFWA in the last year or so.)
If they’re really recalcitrant you might consider suing them, but it’s
really a last resort. Suing people when it’s not necessary is
dangerous for a couple of reasons. First, it’s bad press. Lawsuits are
always public and there’s rarely anything positive about the press
coverage. Nothing says Faceless Evil Corporation like a lawsuit
against a 12 year old. (No really, do a search for “RIAA sues 12 year
old”.) And publicising that pirate copies of your books are available
tends to make people go and look for them. It’s one of those perverse
effects about the whole business. Second, unless the person is a
commercial pirate, you’re suing someone who loves your work so much
that they wanted to share it with others (albeit in an exceptionally
ill-judged fashion). You might succeed in enforcing your legal rights,
but lose the battle for moral righteousness (see below).
*I don’t do it because it’s wrong*
——————————————–
Next, the morality argument. This links back to the fact that most
people do what’s right. Or they’d prefer to think that they do, for a
given value of “right”.
Over the last few hundred years since the development of copyright,
it’s been generally agreed in the developed world^ that we should
reward authors (and also publishers, editors, cover artists, etc) for
their work by paying them for it. Although the exact rights (and thus
rewards) associated with copyright have varied over that time, e.g.
extensions of terms, new types of creative products, moral rights, the
general pattern was increased protection for authors. In the last ten
years, the widespread availability of the internet has challenged that
pattern and started some culture wars.
I think one of the biggest problems facing the content industry today
is that changes in technology have made copying content of all sorts
socially acceptable. For example, it has always been perfectly
acceptable, both in law and morality, to lend a good book to one’s
friends. This fits well with the social imperative to share things in
a household/group of friends/community (and thereby build up one’s
social capital). But it’s almost impossible to lend an e-book to a
friend without making a copy. And with the internet, you have many
more “friends” in communities all over the world. In addition, with
the increased production of user-generated content that is put online
purely to be shared with others for free, online culture has shifted
towards endorsement of free copying.
At the same time, copyright law is failing as a normative influence.
Let’s take the ubiquitous iPod. Until fairly recently, it was illegal
in Australia to copy the music that you had legally purchased on CD
onto your iPod. iTunes Australia hadn’t opened yet. So we had the
fantastic situation where 80% of Australian citizens had iPods, but
couldn’t legally load any music onto them.^^ This led to a certain
lack of respect for copyright law, because it was in complete
opposition to common sense. The law in respect to this particular
insanity adapted eventually (sort of), but it took time. But it wasn’t
the only problematic provision. There is also the problem that there
are varying laws in different countries. The USA has fair use.
Australia doesn’t. Canada has what looks like a statutory licence
scheme, where copyright holders get a share of the revenues from blank
media sales. And these are three relatively similar countries. Due to
these differences, what’s “right” in one country is not necessarily
the same as in another. And again, the internet crosses national
borders.
Finally, we’ve seen the Robin Hood effect. With the consolidation of
content ownership into megacorporations and the fame and wealth of
superstars, there’s a certain section of the community that justifies
copyright infringement by saying that they’re robbing from the rich to
make content available to the poor folk who otherwise wouldn’t be able
to access these cultural riches. The line of thought goes something
like: “After all, it’s not truly going to make much difference to
Metallica whether or not I pay $0.99 for this single and they get
their 10 cents. And record companies take all the profits and are evil
exploiters of artists anyway.” Basically, the justification is that
it’s not hurting anyone. At least, not anyone who doesn’t deserve it.
In relation to e-books, this last point is linked to the fact that
publishers are selling (or requiring retailers to sell) e-books at the
same RRP as paper books. This is presumably working on the theory that
they’re equivalent products. This is patently untrue. An e-book, even
if it’s released at the same time, is not the same product as a
gorgeous bound hardcover with a slip cover on acid-free paper. It
doesn’t include the same experience of tactile pleasure and ease of
reading; it doesn’t include the same rights of re-sale or return (e.g.
if it’s defective). And it clearly doesn’t cost the publisher as much
to produce this additional version, since there’s no need to pay for
printing costs or a distribution centre^^^ or allow for returns. As a
result, there’s a strong sense of injustice amongst readers about the
cost of e-books. It’s even more offensive when you could buy that
beautiful hardcover at a substantial discount to RRP at Walmart or
Target or Amazon.
In short, not everyone believes that copying an e-book is morally
wrong. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to change this singlehandedly.
The record industry has thrown billions at the problem using DRM (see
below) and litigation and has failed. That’s why it’s important to
reinforce the concept that authors are _people_, who both need and
deserve to get paid for their work (i.e. your blog/website), and to
build communities where there is clear social disapproval of such
behaviour from other people who love your books (blog). Online places
like Baen’s Bar where a person who asks for an illegal copy is told to
get stuffed and go buy their own copy,% because the people in this
community support their authors. For the people who hang out with an
author on Baen’s Bar and at cons and so on, it’s a personal insult to
suggest that they would help someone steal that author’s books,
particularly when it was both simple and cheap to buy them.%%
You can also do little things like watermarking e-books, so that every
page of every copy says “This e-book was sold to [insert name]. Please
don’t make unauthorised copies. Buy your own copy at [website] and
help feed my hellhounds.” Guilt is a powerful thing, particularly if
it’s a personal appeal by you (rather than your publisher, who I’m
sure is very nice but probably looks like a faceless company for
liability purposes). And the name of the purchaser will help you and
your vigilantes (remember that community of people who love your
books?) track down the offender and ask/make them stop spreading
copies. (You can build the watermark or other identification in more
subtly so that they can’t identify and remove it.)
*I don’t do it because it’s easier to just buy a copy*
———————————————————————–
Please note that I said _buy_. While I admire Cory Doctorow’s
dedication to spreading information on the internet, most people are
fundamentally lazy. If it’s easier to read a free copy (authorised or
unauthorised) than to buy the book, they’ll most likely go for the
free one. (Despite the best of intentions, I have yet to buy a copy of
Cory’s book LITTLE BROTHER after reading it online at his website.)
Contrast that to Dr Horrible, which was free for a limited time, but
requires purchase now. Believe me that I will be obtaining a copy as
soon as the DVD comes out.
We want to make it easy for people to buy e-books and hard for them to
steal e-books. Remember all those complicated problems with buying and
using e-books legally? Well, your publisher could fix a good number of
them, if they were sufficiently motivated.
The first thing is availability. Your e-book should be available at
every single (legal) retail e-book seller that you can find online.
(Or at least all the most popular ones.) Could you imagine only
selling your books through one chain of bookstores? Well, that’s the
position for many e-books at the moment. There’s just one store that
sells them. And in order to buy one of those e-books, I have to become
a member of this store, which involves a whole registration process.
And then there’s a new username/password set that I have to remember.
And it’s another point at which my credit card details might be
stolen. As you can imagine, if I have a number of accounts already, I
would have to want to read your book quite a LOT in order to sign up
to a new store. (Flooding the internet with places to buy your book is
also generally a good thing, since it makes it easy to find a copy to
buy, rather than a copy to steal.) On the other hand, if it’s a store
that I use already, I can just log in and hand over my credit card.
But wait! That book isn’t sold in [insert my format of choice]. What
am I going to do? Many of the problems stem from the fact that most
publishers only put out e-books in certain formats. (Pirates, by
contrast, will happily provide you with e-books in whatever formats
you like, or at least tell you what tools to use to get there.) There
are number of stores on the web that only sell Mobipocket books. Or
locked PDF. Or Microsoft Reader. But I don’t have a device that will
run that software. So I don’t buy the book. (I may or may not go and
look for a pirate copy or reserve it at the library, depending on how
much I want to read it.) Or I buy it in that nasty format and then I
have to go and find software to get it out of that format. Which puts
me in the position of breaking the law, so I might as well be hung for
a sheep as a lamb and not pay for the thing at all.
Why would someone limit their audience like that? In most cases, it’s
because the publishers are paranoid about piracy, so they provide
limited formats and plague customers with Digital Rights Management
(DRM) software, which is supposed to stop people from copying e-books.
DRM generally has a couple of parts. First, there’s the e-book, which
is just a file sitting on the retailer’s website. Then there’s the
software on your computer/reading device, which includes a name/number
that uniquely identifies you. There’s also a company somewhere (like
Microsoft), who controls the software. They limit the software to a
certain number of installations to ensure that you aren’t downloading
the book to fifteen million computers. When you buy the e-book, all
these bits have to talk together to authenticate that you are who you
say you are. Otherwise, they won’t let you download the book. (Yes,
the book that you’ve already paid for.) Let’s just say that you’re
lucky if this works every time. (One of the reasons that I’m reluctant
to try new e-book stores is that this is a tricky process and I prefer
to use a store that I know has got it right before.)
The problem with DRM is that it only makes life harder for your
legitimate users. All of them are subjected to this ridiculous
authentication hurdle when they buy your book. On the other hand, it’s
hardly a bump in the road for the pirates. As soon as a single copy of
an e-book has its DRM stripped off, they spread the clean copy and
avoid the whole issue. And stripping the DRM off to produce a clean
copy will never be that hard (because e-book software has to be able
to do it for legitimate readers). Also, remember those paper books?
They don’t have DRM. Scanning in a copy for pirate use takes a couple
of hours with a sharp knife and a fast scanner.
DRM also has other side-effects, like making you read the e-book on
whatever device you had it authenticated for. So you might be able to
read on your PC at home, but not be able to put the book on a portable
device to read on the train. Or print it out. Or have the book read
aloud to you by computer software if you’re visually impaired. Oh, and
don’t make alterations to certain parts of your computer (because that
will make the software think that you’re trying to circumvent it and
lock up all your books). And heaven help you if the DRM software
company goes out of business, because all those books you bought? You
might not be able to read them any more. You certainly won’t be able
to download your backup copy from the store (which is a pretty
standard feature, due to the general fragility of digital data).
My recommendation, if you have the choice, would be to get your
publishers to sell e-books in as many formats as possible,
particularly DRM-free ones, through any stores that you can find. Make
it so easy (and preferably reasonably priced) to buy your books that
it’s easier to do so than expend the time required to find a pirate
copy. Make it risk-free to buy your books by offering sample chapters
to prospective buyers so they know that it’s worth the hassle before
they put their credit cards on the line.%%%
Of course, at the same time as you make it easier to buy your e-book,
you should make it more difficult to find a pirate copy by exercising
legal/moral influence as discussed earlier. Or by flooding the pirate
networks with incomplete copies. (Something horrible and suspenseful
like three-quarters of the book, perhaps. Followed by an exhortation
to be fair to you (not authors generally) and go buy the book at
[insert name of website].) Or flood them with a free copy of one of
your short stories and then include an advertisement for CHALICE at
the end.
*I don’t do it because there’s prestige or other value in the legal copy*
—————————————————————————————————-
This is the bit where you wave exciting stuff at your readers. Have a
legal copy? Come and read this extra short story or find out exciting
stuff or go into a draw to have a personalised signed paper copy.
Enter the e-mail address that you used to buy your copy and we’ll give
you access to these neat things on our website.
Or make them pay a premium for an e-ARC. Be among the first to read
this exciting new book - direct from the author’s computer - three
months before it hits the press! (Plus you get bragging rights and you
can taunt your friends about knowing what happens next…) It’s the
oddest thing, but it appears that people value the exclusivity of
being first to read a new book. (Well, perhaps not. Hardcovers exist,
after all.) And if they pay for it, they’re less likely to pass it
around.
* Final words *
——————-
Most people are going to buy paper books. Of the relatively small
percentage that want e-books, many will obtain them in addition to a
paper copy because they serve different purposes. Of those that buy
e-books, most people are honest and will buy a copy if they can do so
easily and for a fair price. For those who don’t, you can ignore them
(as you probably ignore libraries and people who lend books to their
friends and second hand bookshops) or use a variety of strategies to
discourage them.
# I cannot imagine reading certain favourite books as e-books.
### Authors and publishers just don’t have time to track down and sue
everyone who makes a copy of their copyrighted works. And it’s not
really worth it for the cost of a single book. You could go down the
RIAA route and try to make a few examples of people that you do find.
But lawyers are awfully expensive. And litigation takes a long time.
And you might need to sue people in different jurisdictions all over
the world.
^ There has never been as much emphasis on copyright as morally
“right” in some countries. South-east Asia, for example, has been
notorious for its lax position on software piracy for decades. But
failing to provide your parents with financial support, that will get
you put in jail in Singapore. Because that’s not right.
^^ Interestingly, Apple never did get sued for encouraging copyright
infringement.
^^^ There are electronic distribution costs, but they’re orders of
magnitude less than the costs of physical distribution.
% Baen has an extensive free library and giveaway programs for
e-books. People value that kind of thing and want it to succeed. So it
was a pretty stupid person who asked the Bar for an unauthorised copy.
%% Mind you, Baen’s Webscriptions service is a model for fairness. The
authors get higher royalties. The readers get cheap books or early
access to ARCs for a higher price. And according to industry reports,
Baen has the only profitable e-book program around. The piracy rates
are also remarkably low.
%%% Baen gives you a few chapters of the book, enough time to get
solidly caught in the story. And then “Bam”, you need to buy to go any
further. And there’s a lovely big “buy here” button. And the process
is fast and instant and you can just keep reading. It’s hard to
resist
A Library Thing
I present you with yet another overachieving heroine! I don’t think I’ve posted that someone was creating a librarything catalogue for us (have I?), from all those lovely book recs back on the old livejournal blog and since then here on Pollyanna–so now we’ll be able to FIND them, the way the PWYF heroines have made it possible to find all the recipes everyone has posted. I have just been writing to our book OH!* that when I first agreed to do a blog I had small wistful thoughts about something booky, but I was sure no one else would be interested because there are so many booky things out there on the web already. When recipes as entries and comments became popular I followed almost exactly the same train of thought: gee, wouldn’t it be great to have . . . nah, the web has millions of cooking and recipe sites already. . . . So I am at this moment feeling very happy and satisfied.**
Maren sent me the following email yesterday, and I promptly wrote to her asking if rather than trying to translate it somehow–and inevitably bungling it–might I just post it as an entry? Today she replied:
That’s fine–if they have any questions, they can ask me in the comments or even email me.
viventlesfees@gmail.com
So here we go:
As of last night, I have added to the LibraryThing account all readers’ recommendations through the end of this post: http://robinmckinley.livejournal.com/59882.html
(I’m going to go back and add yours from the main posts all at once.) We are now at 406 books/21 pages! I was thinking that was about the last book-recommending post on LJ and I could get on with Pollyanna, but it looks like there are a few stragglers on the next post. Anyway, I’m more or less done with the LJ comments, but considering that Pollyanna is now at 312 comments and most of those contain multiple titles, I think you might as well make a general announcement about LibraryThing now so people can amuse themselves with that while I continue adding. Also, I have been keeping a collection of recommendations about which I have questions over here: http://del.icio.us/finette/librarythingrobin
Most of them are recommendations for authors in general, and I’m asking if they could provide a few particular favorites as we discussed before. The rest are comments that are somehow unclear, and a few from anonymous commenters whom I ask to provide a username. Those who are not anonymous can just click their usernames in the tags at right, then click on the link(s) that come up to see the comment I’m asking about. The anonymous comments are tagged anonymous1 through anonymous5 (thus far…I noticed there’s a spate of them right at the beginning of Pollyanna too), so if anyone recognizes their comment in there they can tell me which anon they were and I will add their name to that record. Responses to my queries can be posted to Pollyanna–it would be helpful if they would include a link back to the original comment I asked about, but if they are html-challenged that’s fine because I can find them by their username (as long as it’s still the same as it was on LJ).
Speaking of which…anyone like myself who changed usernames from LJ to the new blog can tell me who they were on LJ, who they are now, and which one they prefer to have on LibraryThing. I’ve tagged myself as mwillia9/maren (old name/new name) and I can do it that way for others too if they want. For those who didn’t/don’t have accounts but sign their comments with multiple-word names (Susan from Athens, Manda in Redditch…), I had to make the tags all one word (susanfromathens) because otherwise it would have recognized each word as a separate tag. If these individuals would prefer something else (just the name without the geographic identifier or whatever), I can easily edit all their tags at once.
As for navigating LibraryThing itself: I suggest people first read the profile page at http://www.librarything.com/profile/robinmckinleysblog
which has explanations of my comments and tags system, and what I did with series. Then they can check out the library itself at http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=robinmckinleysblog
I think it will be pretty intuitive for most. In order to get rid of the rating column, they’ll need to click at the top where it says “robinmckinleysblog has a suggested style for viewing this library” (if you’re logged in you won’t see that, but people who don’t have a LT account will). Then they can click on any column header to sort by that column, or click on anyone’s tag to see all of that person’s recommended books, or on the series tag to see only series books. Clicking on a title or author will take them to a new page with more information about that book/person. They can also search within our library in the box at upper right. Those who already have LibraryThing accounts can choose to friend robinmckinleysblog or add it to ‘interesting libraries’–thus far I’m its oooonly friend, but a couple of other people think it’s interesting. As far as I can tell, the difference is that anyone can see the account’s friends on the profile page (near the bottom, under Member Connections) and click on their names to see their libraries, while the ‘interesting libraries’ thing is more like a bookmark–those people can easily find us again and probably see when we add new books, but we don’t know who they are.
There’s lots of other fun stuff to play around with, and I am planning to do a more in-depth tutorial later, but for now I think I’ll leave it at that and let people explore. Let me know if there’s anything glaringly obvious that I’ve left out!
Maren
* * *
*Heh. I like OH as an acronym. OH! An overachieving heroine really should have an exclamation mark.
** Not to say smug. No, no, never smug. Well, rarely smug. It’s pretty damn hard to get to ‘smug’ when you have to look at your words on a page every day. All that aaaaaaaaughing keeps you humble.
Let them eat cake
I read (or fall asleep) in the bath. Peter commits satire.
This is a bit out of date. I’ve told you before that I’m a slow writer.
I was lying in my bath last Monday morning listening to the news on the radio. The chap who’d introduced the programme had mentioned that it was Bastille Day, and the first news item was the spokesman for some ministry telling us that an apparently inane remark by his minister had been misrepresented by the wicked media. The two items resonated, and I decided that the time had come to tell the world of what was revealed to me by hooded officials of the Bourbon Society among the secret files of the Ancien Regime Press department of the Versailles press office.
The usual story is that Queen Marie Antoinette heard an uproar from the forecourt of the palace and asked what the trouble was. She was told that Paris was in turmoil because of the shortage of bread. “Well, let them eat cake,” she is reported to have replied.
That much is true, and the words have gone down in history as a typical example of the frivolous and irresponsible attitude of the court of Versailles to the sufferings of the common people. This, according to the papers I was given, is a complete fabrication. The words were not a silly quip but a royal command. The order was conveyed to the palace kitchens, and that immense and sophisticated culinary machine trundled into action. Never was such baking. Wagons of flour, barges laded with raisins, nuts, sugar-cherries, butter, sugar and brandy flowed towards Versailles. The palace hens laid overtime. A series of gigantic cakes began to pour from the ovens. The odour of them wafted through the streets. Royal agents worked their way through the crowds, telling them of them of the feast that was being prepared for them. The tumult stilled in expectation.
This was not at all to the liking of the revolutionary hotheads who had first engineered an unnecessary bread-shortage and then brought the crowd to the palace gates. They reacted by calling the secretly unionised waiters and waitresses out on strike with a demand for “dirty money”, on the grounds that it was a long understood condition their employment that they should be required to wait only on the nobility, and that to wait on the rabble in the streets would be demeaning, and should be compensated for by a hefty pay-rise.
The production line halted. The cakes cooled. The odour of baking faded from eager nostrils. And the revolutionaries spread the rumour that the cake was after all being withheld and had been taken to be stored in the Bastille. So on the fourteenth of July 1789 the crowd roared off and stormed the ancient fortress. The history books record that the only prisoners found there were a few old men whom everyone had forgotten about. No mention, of course, is made of an absence of cake. So, famously or infamously, depending on one’s point of view, began the French Revolution.
That, however, was not the end of the matter. The queen’s would-be generosity had two further effects. It has often been remarked how astonishing it was that the ragged, ill-trained, ill-equipped and near-starving armies of the Republic were able to repel the professional armies of the other European nations when they invaded to restore the Bourbons to their throne. Three of those adjectives may be justified, the fourth is certainly not. The regiments that marched towards the frontier were closely followed by wagon-trains loaded with life-sustaining cake, rich in protein, fat and carbohydrates, as fresh as ever thanks to the preservative quality of pre-Napoleon* brandy, in effect the equivalent of several hundred thousand energy bars. No wonder the armies of the republic fought like tigers and the pride of European soldiery were sent reeling.
The second effect was less world-changing but in its way even more remarkable. The royal bakers were incapable of baking a plain cake, so the ones they made in response to the royal command were lavishly iced (frosted) in the usual manner. When the time came to send them to the front it was recognised that these masterpieces of the patissier’s art ought to be preserved, so they were stored in a back room at the Louvre. There they remained until an engineering student, researching the structural properties of icing-sugar for his doctoral thesis, rediscovered them. He is said to have gazed at the most majestic of them entranced, and exclaimed “Voila! C’est ça que demande Paris!”
The only pity is that the most familiar object on the Parisian sky-line should take its name from an obscure provincial engineer and not from a great and generous queen.
* * *
*Napoleon himself was of course much too young to have a brandy distilled, let alone matured enough, to commemorate his reign as emperor. The usurper did, however, already have a very different drink named after him. At his birth his mother, as was the custom, handed him over to a wet-nurse to feed. This woman, however, was only able to apply for the job as she had recently given birth to triplets, so she needed the money and concealed the fact. Naturally enough she preferred to feed her own offspring first, and didn’t produce enough milk for four. With the help of her aunt, a skilled herbalist, she devised a formula of cow’s milk laced with herbs which appeared to do the trick, and could even be dried and stored. What effect this double rejection, both by his natural mother and her surrogate, may have had on the infant emperor’s psyche can only be surmised. His short stature, pallid complexion and general ill-health may also be the consequence of diet deficient in important nutrients at an early stage in his life.
When his parents discovered the deception his mother was of course outraged. His father, on the other hand, with typically Corsican entrepreneurial flair, saw a business opportunity, and built a plant to manufacture the formula, and then marketed it under the name of Lait Bébé Napoleon. In his early career Napoleon used to deny any connection with the stuff, though the profits from its sale had helped to put his though military college, and as soon as he had the power he suppressed its manufacture and sale.
At the same time he obliterated, as far as he could, all true record of his early years, and substituted the fictitious account of his early years that can be found in all subsequent biographies. He was, however, unable to reach the only veridical documentation of his early years which the Bourbon Society had smuggled out of Paris and with the connivance of the Dean and Chapter, stored in a secret vault beneath Westminster Abbey.
All that now remains is for somebody to make a blockbuster film of these events, though perhaps the Bourbon Society doesn’t carry quite the resonance as the Order of the Knights Templar of St John of the Cross, or whatever they’re called.
Ice Heroine
. . . Because ‘Sorbet Heroine’ somehow doesn’t have quite the right ring to it. Or even ‘Granita Heroine.’ But all of those of you who don’t read comments, look at what arrived last night. And for those of you who do read comments, myself included, I want to read it again. Carefully.
Which I’m going to do right now, leaning back with my feet up, and a bowl of something chilly at hand. It’s been a heavy, sticky day–Connie and I this morning were rolling Sisyphus’ boulder uphill for our lesson, and the hellhounds permitted me to get on with work after only a token post-lunch riot*–and definitely a perfect moment for a dissertation on sorbet.
Anette, the Great Dane |
Dear Robin
This is a bit big for a comment and not on topic anyway, but perhaps you can use it as a blog.
Note: Yes, thank you very much, I will.
NON-DAIRY ICE-CREAM 101
If you freeze a cup of still, pure water, you get a big, hard ice cube, and the purpose of making ice-cream is actually to break that cube into something edible. Flavor is usually added as well, but that is not the main purpose (see Medieval Ice-cream).
In a household kitchen the breaking is normally done by adding fat, sugar, alcohol, fibers, or air. Commercial ice-cream makers have a few extra options, but let us stick to food and leave chemistry out of the kitchen.
Fat in ice-cream usually means cream, but egg yolks can serve the same purpose (see Sabayon Ice-cream). Oils are best used only for greasing any moulds used to shape the ice-cream, and while I have tried making ice-cream involving avocado, the result frankly wasn’t good enough for me to post a recipe. Coconut cream is a possibility, if you like the flavor, but I think it works more because of the fibers than because of the fat (see Coconut Ice-cream with Lime syrup).
Sugar of some kind is added to most ice-creams, but if you have an especially nice honey or maple syrup, it is entirely possible to make a sorbet just with this. The proportions are about 1 part sweet-stuff to 4 or 5 parts water (volume and weight comes out about the same), but taste before adding all the water, and remember that it becomes less sweet when frozen. If you are one of us barbarians, who occasionally add things to wine, then a dollop of Rose-Honey Ice-cream isn’t bad in a glass of slightly sour wine.
Alcohol is very useful in any non-dairy ice-cream not intended for children. Cordials are the obvious choice, and I tend to use them in approximately the same proportions as the sweet-stuff above (see Coffee Ice-cream/Granita and Chocolate Ice-cream). The strong, non-sweet alcohols I tend to use only in the shape of a splash of brandy in a Strawberry Ice-cream or rum in Peach Ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), but Vodka Sorbet works well in both mixed drinks and in cold tomato soup. The once so popular Champagne or Red Wine sorbets have never worked very well for me, but try taking a look at the recipe for Punch Ice.
Fiber in the shape of a fruit pulp makes what is probably the best base for non-dairy ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), and I cannot think of any fruit that would not work. Tofu must be the silk type, and - while I’ve never been quite satisfied with my results - it isn’t bad in the Tiramisu-mousse Ice-cream. Coconut I have already mentioned, but chestnut puree works as well - I just don’t like it very much.
Air is what you add to your ice-cream by churning it while it freezes, and you can enhance the effect by adding stiffly beaten egg whites to your ice-cream mix (see Punch Ice-cream, a.o.). It is, however, also possible to use beaten egg whites to make ice-cream without churning (see Chocolate Chinchilla Ice-cream a.o.).
MEDIEVAL ICE-CREAM:
In a way it’s silly to make so much work out of serving people, what is basically a cup of water, but it does look pretty, and if your guests have various allergies or diets, it’s a fairly useful dessert.
Ice-cold or even frozen whole fruits used to be considered a luxury (the ice-swans filled with fruit on buffets are a remnant of that), and from that there’s only a brief step to re-freeze shaved ice in the shape of fruits.
Ingredients:
Boiled water,
Egg white (optional),
Syrup, essence or cordial.
Start by chilling the boiled water, and prepare as many individuals moulds as you want by either greasing them with almond oil or lining them with kitchen film/saran wrap. Be careful to get the film smooth on the mould, so it doesn’t get frozen into the ice. Churn the water in an ice-cream maker, spoon the slush into the moulds, and freeze. If your guests don’t include vegans or people allergic to egg, you can get a softer set by adding a stiffly beaten egg white per pint (2 cups/500 ml) to the water before churning. When serving remove the moulds and drip a few drops or spoonfuls of your chosen flavor to the centre of your ice, from where it’ll spread through the shape and puddle around the base. I’m partial to Cherry Cordial, but Crème de Menthe (Mint Cordial) or Limoncello (Italian Lemon Cordial) are nice too.
SABAYON ICE-CREAM
I don’t know if everybody is familiar with the Italian dessert, Sabayon, which is made by whipping egg yolks, sugar and wine or fortified wine together over a low heat until you have something resembling a very fluffy custard. You can freeze a normal Sabayon to an ice-cream without any churning, but I think the result is better with churning and a few tweaks to the recipe. It’s also less work, because with churning it becomes unnecessary to heat the mix.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
4 tablespoon sugar,
Ca. 150-250 ml (0.5 - 1 cup) marsala (sweet fortified wine), sherry, white wine, rum, etc.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they are thick and almost white. Add the liquid, beat again, and taste to see if it needs more, then freeze while churning. This is a fairly small amount of ice-cream, and if you serve it on its own you might want to double the recipe for four persons. It is, however, a very intense ice-cream, and I usually serve it along with fruit. The marsala version is good with grapes in wine jelly, the rum with baked banana, etc.
COCONUT ICE-CREAM WITH LIME SYRUP
Coconut cream/milk varies a lot from brand to brand, and you might want to dilute it with 0.5 - 1 can of water.
Ingredients:
1 can of coconut cream or milk,
Sugar,
Water,
2 limes,
0.5 vanilla pod.
Pour the coconut cream/milk into a bowl, and sweeten it to taste - you need to stir until the sugar is completely dissolved - then freeze while churning.
While the ice-cream is churning grate the zest of the limes, and squeeze out the juice. In a small pot mix the juice and zest with approximately the same amount of water and at least 4 tablespoons of sugar - you might want a lot more sugar - then heat gently while stirring. It should take only a few minutes at a low simmer before this small amount thickens and becomes syrupy.
Serve the Coconut Ice-cream with the Lime Syrup dripped on top and perhaps a sprinkling of chopped chocolate.
ROSE-HONEY ICE-CREAM
Ingredients:
Honey,
Water,
Fresh leaves of fragrant roses or rose water,
A clove or a few whole cardamom pods (optional).
Gently heat the honey with twice its volume in water and the whole spices. Remove from the heat, and dilute with more water until you have the sweetness you want (again remember that freezing “steals” some sweetness). Add the roseleaves (I like the color that dark red ones gives the ice), and let it steep all day or overnight. Sieve and freeze while churning.
I plan to try this with edible gold or silver added after the sieving
VODKA SORBET
Pure vodka doesn’t normally freeze, so you’ll need to dilute it. Water will do the trick, but I find the recipe below more useful.
Ingredients:
1 part vodka,
4 parts 7-up (stirred to remove some of the fizz),
Lemon juice to taste.
Mix and freeze while churning. Serve in a glass and pour over for example orange juice, spicy tomato juice, Blue Curacao, Crème de Cassis, Ginger ale or Dry Martini.
All the ice-cream recipes so far have been of the sorbet/sherbet type, but where sorbets are supposed to be smooth and with ice crystals as fine as possible, a granita consists of coarse crystals of flavored ice and cannot be made in an ice-cream maker.
How to make Granita:
Pour your flavored liquid into a shallow, lidded freezing container and freeze for about one hour. Stir the ice along the sides into the liquid in the middle with a coarse fork and freeze again. Repeat 3 or 4 times until it’s all frozen. The granita is now ready to serve, but if you need to keep it frozen for a while, you can just scrape it up in free crystals again when serving.
COFFEE ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
This is basically just frozen very strong and sweet coffee with - or without - a big splash of coffee cordial, but it’s very good as both sorbet and granita.
Ingredients:
8 tablespoon grinded coffee,
4 tablespoon sugar,
2 pints (4 cups) boiling water,
Coffee cordial to taste.
Let water, coffee and sugar simmer together for 30 min, then cool, sieve, add the cordial, and freeze.
TEA ICE-CREAM/GRANITA WITH LIMONCELLO
Just as with the coffee this works equally well as a sorbet and as a granite.
Ingredients:
3 bag of your favorite tea,
1.5 pints (3 cups) boiling water,
0.5 cup sugar,
Limoncello to taste.
Pour the hot water over the tea, and let it steep for 5 min before removing the bags and adding the sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, and let it cool. Add the cordial, and freeze.
If you prefer it, you can use other fruit cordials such as peach or apple instead of the Limoncello or you can just omit it.
LEMON ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
I find this a bit boring on its own, but very nice in a glass of ice-tea.
Ingredients:
150 ml (ca. 0.75 cup) lemon juice,
The grated zest of a lemon,
150 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml boiling water.
Dissolve the sugar in the water, add the other ingredients, cool, and freeze either as a sorbet or a granite.
FRUIT ICE-CREAM
You can sieve a mush of for example strawberries or passion fruit and make a granita, but fruits still with their fibers are also ideal for sorbet.
Here’s a series of different fruit ice-creams all intended for sorbets:
Peach:
1 can of peaches with liquid.
Blitz in a blender or food processor until smooth, then freeze while churning.
This is the easiest of all ice-creams, and other canned fruits such as apricots and pineapple can be treated the same way.
Passion fruit:
The pulp of 8 or more ripe (wrinkled) passion fruits,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it steep for 1 hour. Sieve and freeze while churning.
Watermelon:
1.5 pound watermelon meat without pips,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Juice of half a lemon,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and blitz together in a blender or food processor until smooth. Freeze while churning.
Other ripe melons can be treated the same way, as can pineapple.
Strawberry:
I am so fortunate as to have a very superior old type of strawberries growing in my garden. Most of the crop is eaten fresh and straight from the plants, but in bumper-crop years I sometimes want to preserve some for later as an ice-cream. Commercially grown strawberries are types where things like stiff stalks, high yields, and tough skin are more important than flavor, so I really think you need different recipes for different types of strawberries.
Ingredients I:
1 pound full-flavored strawberries,
2 tablespoons of sugar.
Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
Ingredients II:
1 pound fresh strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
100-150 g (0.5 cup sugar),
75 ml (0.25 cup) water.
Boil the water and sugar together for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar, and let it cool. Blitz and sieve the strawberries, add the other ingredients, taste, and freeze.
Ingredients III:
1 pound frozen strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
0.5 split vanilla pod,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Mix all the ingredients in a pot, and let it stand until the strawberries have thawed and produced some liquid. Boil together at low heat, and let it cool. Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
TIRAMISU- MOUSSE ICE-CREAM
Just replacing mascarpone with tofu in a Tiramisu doesn’t work unless you adjust the other ingredients. Once that is done, it’s actually better frozen, and if you are going to freeze it anyway you don’t really need the tofu to dilute the taste.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
1 packet silk tofu (that’s 125-150 g (5-6 oz)) (optional),
4 egg whites,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
Instant espresso or coffee powder,
4 tablespoon dark rum,
Good quality dark chocolate.
Beat the egg yolks very thick and pale with the first portion of sugar. Cream the tofu until smooth. Whip the egg whites to a stiff meringue with the second portion of sugar. Dissolve enough coffee in the rum to get a pronounced coffee flavor. Chop the chocolate. If you want to make this in an ice-cream maker, mix everything except the chocolate, which should be sprinkled over after freezing. If you have a very cold freezer, there’s no need for churning, and you just mix everything and freeze it in a container. Serve with cookies, but try finding some more interesting than Lady Fingers. I like Cat Tongues and Florentines.
PUNCH ICE
It quite possible to make an ice-cream just by freezing ordinary punch (lemon, sugar, rum and water), but this recipe started life as a Jewish version of the Victorian party-dessert Ice-Punch. The texture is supposed to be very slushy, so that you can almost drink it.
Ingredients:
0.5 bottle of champagne or sweet white wine,
Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges,
75 g (0.33 cup) cane sugar,
4 tablespoon rum,
4 egg whites,
150-200 g (ca. 1.5 cup) powdered/confectioner sugar.
Mix wine, juice, zest, cane sugar and rum, and let it stand until the sugar has dissolved (over-night is fine). Freeze while churning until you have a thick slush. This you can store in the freezer for a few hours, but if you leave it longer, you’ll probably need to break it up with an electric whisk. Shortly before serving beat the egg whites to a meringue with the powdered sugar, and fold this into the slush ice. Serve immediately in glasses or small bowls.
CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM
It is entirely possible to make a non-dairy chocolate ice-cream. The simplest ways are:
Version 1: Replace the wine in the Sabayon Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial.
Version 2: Replace the vodka in the Vodka Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial and the lemon with vanilla extract.
Version 3: Replace the coffee in the Tiramisu with good pure cocoa (not the sweet instant) powder, but add it to the eggs as it might lump in the cold liquid.
My favorite non-dairy chocolate ice is however something entirely different:
FROZEN CHOCOLATE CHINCHILLA
Now, before anyone start accusing me of covering small animals with chocolate, I better explain that a chinchilla can be both - though not normally at the same time - a small fur-bearing animal and a soft cake made almost entirely of beaten egg whites.
Ingredients:
6 egg whites,
125 g (5 oz) grated dark chocolate or 4 tablespoons pure cocoa and 5 tablespoons sugar,
2 tablespoons chopped nuts,
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon or coffee powder (not instant).
Beat the egg whites very stiff, fold in the other ingredients, and bake (medium heat) or steam for about 1 hour. A chinchilla is normally eaten warm or tepid, but I like to eat it slightly frozen/partly thawed.
Anette, the Great Dane
* Involving plastic rings, tennis balls, tug of war ropes, etc
Hello folks
Hello folks, Robin’s second American guest here.
Robin was kind enough to pick me up at the station despite my having called her Tuesday night to say I’d be in at 3:30….. then again today to tell her I’d missed my train from Bangor and the subsequent re-routing of my ticket would result in my arriving at 5:30, not 3:30….then AGAIN from the platform in London to say I’d managed to catch a slightly earlier train on the last leg and I’d be arriving at 5. I wouldn’t have blamed her a bit if she’d just left me on the platform awaiting a return train. But she did pick me up, and didn’t throw me out of the car in retribution for all the time changes, and I’ve arrived more or less intact.*
As it happened, the late arrival meant that I’m in turn staying longer than originally planned. This led to two consequences; one you’re reading right now–I get to guest blog. Huzzah! And two, I got to go to Wednesday bell practice.
Do you play bridge? Because I don’t, and yet I sometimes read the bridge column in the paper for my own amusement just because it’s such complete gibberish–dummies and ruffles and clubbing your spades and all that kind of thing. Trying to follow what was going on in change ringing, beyond “Hmm, these people appear to be ringing some bells,” is similarly utterly indecipherable to the unindoctrinated. The ringing master keeps shouting out what seem like completely random words and phrases, and despite my best efforts to pay attention I only had a slightly better grasp of what he was talking about after than I did before. I did know, from reading Robin’s blog, that the ringers follow one another, and that who they follow relates to what pattern they’re ringing. So I decided to watch the fellow across from where I was sitting and see where he was looking. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated, as that particular fellow had a slight cast in one eye and I couldn’t for the life of me tell who he was actually looking at. So that was a wash. But the extreme high point was getting to climb up into the tower and see the bells themselves (you can’t from where they’re ringing, the ropes go right up into the ceiling) and then having a go at pulling a rope myself. Wild Robert was kind enough to run me through the basic parts of ringing a huge-ass bell, and it was pretty fabulous if I do say so. Next time I’ll have to show up for sacred home tower practice on a Friday. Though next time I might just have to abandon the train and hire a car….**
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* This is the POLITE version. I got this email from her like ten days ago saying, hi, I’m coming to England this week, want to meet up? And I’m: yo, woman, you couldn’t have given me WARNING? Naah. Warning wasn’t in the plan.^ Blah. Phooey. So, she says she wants to experience some bell ringing. We can do this. She’s going to be in this area on Wednesday, and I ring bells every Wednesday at the same tower, so they have to be glad to see me and be nice to anyone I bring even if my visitor lives four thousand miles away and is never going to be anyone they can ask to ring that wedding when all the local band are in Bermuda. So I say, great, stay over Wednesday night, I’ll take you to practise. But noooooo. She doesn’t have time to stay overnight . . . grrrrrr . . . let it be known that I do not take it well when I am teased about bell ringing. So, okay, she’s going to be here about four hours, we’ll have tea, hang out, whatever. And then I’ll put her back on the train and make rude gestures as it pulls out of the station. And then I’ll go bell ringing.
I got back from walking the hellhounds this morning to a message on my phone machine that she’d missed her train and er um not only is she getting in late but she’s going to have been on a train for a very long time–apparently the rerouting was via Edinburgh–and er um was that offer of a bed overnight still good? Er um.
At this point I looked vacantly into the middle distance for a moment with a grisly little smile and contemplated my options. After running through a few of the more extreme ones I decided the one that appealed to me the most was to say suuuuuure, I’ll give you a bed for the night (I might even throw in supper if you behave) but (a) you have to come to bell practise with me and (b) you have to GUEST BLOG. After all, the new rule is that anyone who stays overnight has to guest blog. Mwa ha ha ha ha.
^ Plan? There was a plan?
** Next time you’d better give me BETTER WARNING or there will be SERIOUS TROUBLE.