{"id":1452,"date":"2011-12-05T18:07:05","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T18:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/?p=1452"},"modified":"2011-12-05T18:07:10","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T18:07:10","slug":"in-which-i-long-to-curl-up-with-a-good-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2011\/12\/05\/in-which-i-long-to-curl-up-with-a-good-book\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I long to curl up with a good book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Tis the season when colleagues start discreetly disappearing from the lab, only to return a few hours later laden with shopping bags from Oxford Street. There is a run on discarded boxes and packing peanuts in the store room, and colorful envelopes from biological supply companies begin to clutter up the pigeon-holes. Starting from this week, alcohol dehydrogenase levels will slowly build up while last-minute experiments are frantically completed around a complex festive social schedule. The London air will smell like snow, yet will produce only a chill drizzle.<\/p>\n

For me, the upcoming Christmas break means time to do all the things I now struggle to make time for \u2013 in particular, reading. If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019ll want to sink into a lovely novel or two or twenty. So there is no better time to announce that my lovely publishers, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press<\/a>, have decided to slash the price of the Kindle versions of my two science novels, Experimental<\/a> Heart<\/a> and The Honest<\/a> Look<\/a> \u2013 to \u00a33.56 (or $5.72, or suitable equivalents in other currencies). Both received great reviews from all<\/a> the<\/a> life<\/a> science<\/a> journals<\/a> that have steadfastly refused to publish my finest work over the years, so what\u2019s not to like?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember, Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press is a non-profit organization whose income helps fund the great science that goes on nearby. So do consider getting yourself a copy!<\/p>\n

I confess to having mixed feelings about ebooks. I tend to buy both print and electronic versions now, depending on price and availability, and while I enjoy using my Sony Reader, the paperback still exerts a bit of a pull on me. For October\u2019s Fiction Lab<\/a>, I read John Banville\u2019s Kepler on the Reader, but there was something compelling about the look and feel of this month\u2019s selection<\/a> bought in paperback, John Steinbeck\u2019s Cannery Row, that seemed to draw me in. I don’t like to imagine my once-dynamic bookshelves becoming static museum exhibitions, slowly gathering dust and trapped in time as my purchases tend increasingly towards the electronic. <\/p>\n

Will I really one day throw away my books as I recently did my CDs, VHS and audio cassette tapes? I feel the answer must be a vehement ‘no \u2013 but I have the sneaking suspicion that I’ll be proven wrong in my lifetime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Tis the season when colleagues start discreetly disappearing from the lab, only to return a few hours later laden with shopping bags from Oxford Street. There is a run on discarded boxes and packing peanuts in the store room, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lablit","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}