I love the hive mind!! Thank you flea, Kate P, and Micole for the titles on Anna to the Infinite Power (that was definitely the one) and House of Stairs. I will have to find those again, as they were definitely not at my parents house when I just went through all my old books at Christmas.

I remember House of Stairs too...I think it gave me nightmares!

Atkins breakfast bars:

And now that I know the title I did a little searching and it was as I remember, there was a movie made of Anna to the Infinite Power in 1984 starring Martha Byrne, who IMDB says has been in As the World Turns for a long time.

I would read anything with the supernatural in it (distinctly remember "The Girl With the Silver Eyes" as a favorite)

Aww, I remember that one! And then she found people! That was my favorite.

I just reread that one last year, when I was at my parents’ house recovering from surgery. I reread a lot of GREAT stuff. I always wanted a sequel to that book.

I'm literally just coming off a discussion on how books read at different ages can be seen entirely differently. The ones that genuinely amaze me are the ones that held m

I remember rereading the Wrinkle in Time series. The writing held up beautifully (I hate it when I reread a childhood favorite, and it’s not as good as I remember), but I remember thinking that Meg and co. were so young, while the first time I read it, at 8 or so, they seemed like adults.

I'd like to see reasonably-sized advances spread among (between?) more good writers, but the market is the market, and if the books don't sell, things get adjusted. C'est la guerre.

She started publishing sf and fantasy during a boom in the 80s -- which didn't exactly collapse in the 90s, but saw a big drop in volumes of books published and sold. People tend to blame this on a Supreme Court case which changed the treatment of inventory for accounting purposes, making it more expensive for publishers to keep backlist books in warehouses, but I suspect that the consolidation of markets -- both bookstores and other retail sellers which used to stock books -- had as much to do with it. The upshot is, although the number of books being published continued to increase, the print runs decreased.

There was a lot of talk in SF circles starting about 12 years or so ago about the "disappearance of the mid-list" and about how it was increasingly harder for even established writers like Spider Robinson to get books published. It was mainly blamed at the time on the big box retailers and their power over the distributors and the new inventorying trends/technology. I'm not sure if that overall situation is better. It seems to have stabilized. I see lots of what I would think would be "mid-list" types of SF books around. The small, independent bookstore continues to disappear (alas), but that seems more an effect of overall big-boxing and margins.

I am sharing a mind with Micole on this, which is very good, because it's a hell of a good mind to be sharing.

That Court decision was brutal - another drop in the "let's turn books into commodities for tax purposes, and reduce authors to manufacturing status" bucket of slop. And I think you're absolutely right, about Lee getting caught in big shifts without knowing it - SF followed a traditional pattern, swell-glut-tighten, and horror did the same. At the moment, it's cozy mysteries; the market is glutted and unless you've got something completely off the beaten path, or a very good voice, mostly publishers aren't buying them. Eventually, I imagine that will right itself as well, as the chaff shakes free of the wheat, but in the meantime, I give thanks every day for my editor.

But I'm still very cross about how the industry - because it is one - handles available funds and promotions. A little help for the newbies and esoteric and plain old midlist writers would be good. Tom Clancy and Bil O'Reilly don't need their tours paid for, damnit. And they don't need ten-foot ads on the sides of buses.

The problem for genre writers wasn't so much the death of small independents (except for speciality stores, they tended to do poorly by genre), but the loss of large outlets like supermarkets, etc.

I think that the problem with Spider Robinson was the continuing decline of his writing rather than the market in general, but then I'm mean. And lots of midlist writers I do like had and continue to have problems getting books published.

Mildred Ames! Anna to the Infinite Power and The Silver Link, The Silken Tie deeply creeped me out as a kid, even though I now have no memory of the latter's plot. Huh, and the Amazon description doesn't help. Anna's expensive, too, though it looks like I can refresh my memory of the other one for under five bucks.

[Tries very hard to convince self that I've spent enough on books this month.]

I remember The Girl with the Silver Eyes, although I remember better that Roberts did a lot of "issue" novels, some of which were so manipulatively tear-jerking they make me cringe to this day. But my adult skim of Silver Eyes says sometimes she still holds up.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, now. She holds up nicely.

I'm about 9 chapters into Mieville's Perdido Street Station, and I just can't make myself go any further for now. I will have another go at it shortly.

My brother! I've been stalled in the same place for a while. It's all the effort required in decoding the I-am-so-grungy London-ness of everything. I'll get around to it eventually, but in some ways it feels like homework.

I tell you what, when the book starts feeling like homework, I move on.

Too many books. Too little time.

I think that the problem with Spider Robinson was the continuing decline of his writing rather than the market in general, but then I'm mean.

Huh. We really do appear to share a brain at times.