No I haven’t got a bloody ARC of Matter, alright?
Some blogs - the big, first division guys with things like regularly updated content and actual posts about things and, oh I don’t know, audiences - are today doing a mixture of chest-puffing and preening at the arrival on their doorsteps of advance copies of the new Iain M Banks novel Matter.
I’m not.
Not because I’ve got too much class to rub my readers nose in the fact that I’m more important than you and own things plebs like you could never possess. I don’t have that much class. If I could rub your noses in anything, dear reader, I would.
I’m not boasting or showing off because no one at Orbit considers me important enough to send juicy freebies.
I realise highlighting this fact risks revealing to my few (my happy few) readers that this blog is strictly Blue Square Conference North territory - but hey, let’s face it no one out there was deluding themselves any different, right?
I have to buy my own books.
But don’t think this is one of those posts where the nobody outsider attacks reviewers for taking free stuff and “selling out to the man, man”. It’s not. I’d love to have people send me free things
So no, I don’t have bloody copy of the new Iain M Banks novel.
Yes, I am jealous.
And maybe a little bit angry.
But I still have my dignity. (It’s not like I considered offering to both review the book and to pose naked in publicity stills with the book to promote the review.)
It’s not even that I really, really want to read the book (though I do).
It’s that I want to be sent it free. In advance. Before everyone else. So I can boast too.
Is that really too much to ask? Really?
I don’t have a copy of Matter either, and I’d like to read it as well.
You say that but there are real downsides to it too. I live in a one bedroom flat and if I’m not careful, it’s very easy indeed to wake up one morning and find oneself knee-deep in books. It’s also quite dispiriting as most of the books I get sent, I can’t possibly cover. Either because I don’t have the time or because the shattered and fly-blown remnants of my sanity simply could not withstand another forced route-march through 500 pages of epic fantasy. That makes me feel slightly guilty… if book publishers weren’t all ultimately owned by huge multinational corporations I’d be angst-ridden by my appalling books received to books reviewed ratio.
I’m sorry that my post came across as “chest-puffing” I’d rather classify it as “dizzy amazement”, because I still can’t get used to the fact that people send me free stuff.
Surely you need a copy so that you can write an article about the writing style in Focus? (Worth a try anyway.)
I feel your pain.
I get overwhelmed at receiving free copies of small press magazines. I don’t think I could cope with the excitement of receiving a book!
James - I was only kidding. Like I say - if I had been fortunate enough to get a copy, I’d certainly have put up the most unbearably smug post yet seen in blogdom (and that’s saying something!)
Jonathan M - I live in a three bedroom/three reception room house and there are whole rooms of the thing I’ve had to bar my daughter from because the risk of her getting crushed under the tumbling of precariously stacked piles of books is too dangerous! It’s not that I need the book… I just want it! Although now you mention it, if getting Matter free and early also meant having people sending me fantasy doorstops… then maybe I am better off in the Conference North!
Gareth D - I promise, if I ever publish a book, I’ll send you a free one!
[…] In addition to a glut of fantasy doorsteps and vampire-detective-sex marathons, yesterday’s arrival of Matter, Iain M Banks’ new Culture novel, has made me the envy of a number of fellow sfnal blogospherists. […]