Read to Survive

Best books are always being read again

2011-10-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

I saw a Tweet the other day asking “What was the best bookyou read in school?”

My flip response was “I could name one best teacher, maybe,but best book, no way.” It isn’t justthe snobbery of having become an overeducated English Major (forgive theredundancy) that makes it hard for me.

What was “best” when I was 10 (Prince Tom) had beensurpassed by many, many others only a few years later. But that fact did not diminish in any way the bestnessof that story about an adopted Cocker Spaniel.

There are also books that I once disliked and yet came toreconsider and promote to “best.” Lord Jim was one. As I only understood decades later, whatspooked me was the guilt Jim feels for not protecting the passengers from theCaptain who abandons ship. The book was telling me a story I was not ready, at age 12, toface. I did not want to know thatsometimes people who get drunk, even people you know, can be mean andstupid. And you can’t stop them.

It is in this way that a book which I thought of as my worstreading experience, one made more depressing because I didn’t know why it mademe so sad, became “best” book, when I re-read it as an adult.

I do not believethere could ever be one best book in my life.

Best books are always plural, and always ones that I haveread several times, will re-read again, and can’t imagine having lived without readingmore than once.

That’s why I am working with a start-up company,Gluejar, which wants to make sure anyone’s “best” book can be reread at anytime. We want to make sure no reader will see that book “out ofprint” and lose the opportunity to remember the joy felt the first time shecalled that book the “best book I’ve ever read.

Watch for more about Gluejar and our fundraising webstie, Unglue.it.

Backlist discoveries: Make New Friends, but Keep the Old:

2011-08-31T06:21:00.000-07:00

I have to admit a weakness for nostalgic childhood songs. As my mother and I say, “we sing off- key, but we remember all the words.”

One of my favorites is this round:

Make new friends, but keep the old.

One is silver but the other gold.

All my life I have taken pleasure in adding to my friends far more often than subtracting any, and in introducing new friends to old. And I think the same rule should apply to reading – and rereading – good books.

This applies especially non-fiction that may have been published in those decades between college and middle-age when you’ve been too busy raising a family and building a career to read as much for pleasure as you did when you were that history major turned law student.

For some suggestions, Time Magazine has just issued a list of 100 top “non-fiction” books (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2088856,00.html).

These “influential books” include many gems you may not have read in school, (if you are too old or were not an English major), from Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land (a memoir of growing up in Harlem before the drug epidemic, the only reason the author survived.) to Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a less pretentious window on Americans in France in the early 20th Century than Hemmingway, especially if you liked Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

I like the new writers and books as much as anyone. Far be it for me to stop repeatedly checking Google, as well as browsing all the best book reviewers (NYT, Wash Post, NYRB, Atlantic, New Yorker) in the few places who still employ staff writers

If you are interested in reading more than just the things that make new news every 15 minutes on social media, I hope you’ll check out Unglue.it, where our Team is building a new way to get more ebooks reprinted, into more public libraries, and read by more people -- all over the world.

What’s your favorite book that isn’t yet available as an ebook? Go to www.Unglue.it and let us know, or email me at: amanda@gluejar.com.

On Twitter You can also follow #gluejar or @AMREADERTOO

P.S. (FYI, if you like me sang a lot of rounds at camp or in scouts, my other favorite song is “one bottle top, two bottle top…. But that’s another story.)

Open Access is not Unlimited or "Free" Use

2011-06-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education just reported that Yale University is suing a Chinese University Press for having transcribed and published in a book -- without permission -- material that Yale posts online as "Open Access" video curriculum courses (http://oyc.yale.edu/)

Chronicle of Higher Education article

The Chinese book used translations of the lectures and turned them into an written anthology.

The copyright issue here is whether anyone can redistribute for profit or create a "derivative" work based on such "Open Access" posting. Under the "Terms of License" on the Yale site, no one may do so with these courses. Any use other than "Non-Commercial Share Alike" -- that is the exact same kind of video display, without editing -- is prohibited under the Creative Commons license Yale is using. You can't adapt or transcribe the video without additional, specific permission for such use.

"Most of the lectures and other course material within Open Yale Courses are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us). Course material under copyright held by a third party may be subject to additional intellectual property notices, information or restrictions."

I suspect that this is not an intentional violation of digital copyright, but a misunderstanding. Even in the US, people often confuse "Open Access" to mean "not copyrighted." In fact, the Creative Commons licenses were developed precisely to make the distinction clear and to protect both copyright holders and the audiences they want to reach. Chinese publishers have been made huge strides over the last 25 years in obeying International copyright laws. In fact, licenses from US and UK publishers for translation into "Simplified Chinese," the written format for printed works in the People's Republic, have become very profitable for commercial and scholarly publishers alike. Many Chinese publishers negotiate directly with the US.

We should expect this mistake to be quickly rectified.

Another reason to like ebooks

2011-06-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

I came out to Seattle to visit my sister and attend her oldest's high school graduation. Being the resident Reader-Geek in the extended family (otherwise full of engineers or math whizzes who are also serious athletes), and knowing she liked math and science, I asked if she had ever read an novel about a scientist? She couldn't think of one, but I remembered Flatland, Edwin Abbots' quirky, 1880 novella subtitled "A Romance in many dimensions," the story of a two-dimensional world. I instantly downloaded the 99 cent classic to her mother's Kindle.

Now, I know there's not necessarily any better chance that she will read the book (after finals) than if I had mailed a print copy to her, but at least she knows it's at hand while she may still remember our conversation. I did think it was hopeful that when I described the story, she immediately asked, "How do they pass each other in only 2 dimensions?" I had probably read it more for the romance than the geometry, and the question would never occur to me.

Do you have favorite novels about science, math, and non-English major subjects you would recommend to a 16-year old? Let me know.

Summer Begins and so does my summer reading list

2011-05-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading an interesting Project Gutenberg Edith Wharton story from the Atlantic, The Bunner Sisters. Harrowing tale of spinster poverty in late 19th Century lower Manhattan.

As usual, alternating fiction and non-fiction:

I have begun James Gleick's THE INFORMATION: A HISTORY, A THEORY, A FLOOD hoping to refresh my "geek" credentials. I had just reached the page introducing Alan Turing and at the same time (while pausing to read Google News), I saw that the UK Museum dedicated to breaking the Nazi Enigma Code has just rebuilt a "Turing Machine," the computer that helped win the war.

For someone who has trouble with crosswords and math and can't decipher simple substitution codes, I am addicted to books about codebreaking. I like reading about people who do what I can't, like mountain climbing. Can't wait to visit the Bletchly Park Museum when I get to go back to England.

Also beginning CALEB'S CROSSING by Geraldine Brooks, about the first Native American to graduate from Harvard in 1665. Six miles from my house in Northwestern Connecticut, in the early 19th Century there was a missionary school for young men from Hawaii and other Native Americans. It was disbanded in 1826 when a local (white) woman married a Cherokee graduate, and the mixed-marriage upset the town. Marriage Equality and Affirmative Action have always been prickly subjects

Have a Happy Memorial Day! I am off to Seattle to see my niece graduate from High School (and then head to Penn as an engineer-to-be) and to congratulate my nephew on finishing college (UC Berkeley) and getting a job as the first software engineer in our family's youngest generation -- which also includes our first Turkish and Arab speaking journalist (an American University graduate who is off to the Middle East as a State Dept. Language Fellow). These young people give me infinite hope for a future with fewer and fewer wreaths to be laid at fresh graves on Memorial Day.

Watch this space....

2011-05-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Ask you local library about ebook loans. An easy way to keep a reading "budget" while playing with your new Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony or Kobo reader.

From Library Journal reporting on BEA -- annual Book Industry Convention

Growth in demand just beginning
All four panelists described an exponential upward demand for ebooks. For example, Michael Colford, the Boston Public Library's director of resource services and information technology, said he expects the library's ebook budget to triple next year (FY12) from its current total of $105,000 (about 5 percent of the library's materials budget).

Current Events in depth

2011-03-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

I love being able to get the right book (in most cases) instantly on my iPad when I have need background about current events, such as the current crisis in Japan.

I realized I knew Japanese history only vaguely, and very little about how they had gone from isolation to being an economic powerhouse so quickly. I found a wonderful overview, from pre-history to the present, in James Huffman's JAPAN IN WORLD HISTORY (Oxford University Press). Another book I have sampled but not read yet is Mary Mycio's WORMWOOD FOREST, about her many return journeys to Chernobyl after the disaster there.

By the way, if you have never read Ishiguro's ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD, his short first novel about an aging artist in Hiroshima after the war, it is still my favorite of his many good books, even though it's not an ebook yet. I keep pushing that "I want to read this on a Kindle/Nook" button for backlist books by favorite authors, and I hope we'll see more and more of them reissued.

I've been snow shoeing to survive lately.....

2011-02-04T14:44:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the hiatus. But I will be back soon with a lot of books to recommend.

Meanwhile, given this winter weather, you might want to go back to the best account of Scott and Amundsen's race to the South Pole, THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH by Roland Huntford. And ask Random House to release an eBook, while you're ordering the paperback.

Reprint more e-Books

2010-10-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

You don't have to read industry publications to realize eBooks are booming, but Publisher's Weekly has a timely story today (see below) that makes it obvious that publishers should release as many new and backlist books as eBooks as possible -- just as trade paperback reprints exploded in the 1980s.

Although there are high upfront costs to making eBooks from books older than 10-15 years (because the original printing was from film and must be converted to digital files not just to a Kindle or Nook format), it is penny wise and pound foolish not to reissue eBooks, especially of authors who have new books just out, whether they are popular novelists or important scholars.

Where necessary eBook prices could be higher than the average for the initial releases, and Foundations should subsidize academic eBook reissues from non-profits, especially University Presses. If Apple is serious about reaching out to the education market, they should also make it as easy as possible for non-profits to put their books into the iBookstore, regardless of commercial "agency" model issues. Reader on the iPad and iPod Touch will be more than a cool trend ONLY if the iBookstore increases it's inventory. Likewise, Kindle and Nook should discount university press conversions, so that every eBook can be bought from any online eBook retailer that sells the printed book, whether B&N or Amazon.

Readers need a choice of formats and, yes, they don't want to wait a long time for the eBook in order to be "forced" to buy an exclusive hardcover. That's a way to lose readers not gain profits in today's fast moving eBook world.

link to PW here

E-book Sales Jump 172% in August
While sales in the print trade segments shrank in August, e-book sales had another strong month, jumping 172.4%, to $39 million, according to the 14 publishers that report sales to the AAP's monthly sales estimates. For the year-to-date, e-book sales were up 192.9%, to $263 million. AAP said that of the approximately 19 publishers that report trade sales, revenue in the January to August period was $2.91 billion, making the $263 million e-book sales 9.0% of trade sales. At the end of 2009, e-book sales comprised 3.3% of trade sales. The mass market segment, where sales were down 14.3% in the first eight months of 2009, represented 15.1% of trade sales through August. more... link to PW here

Remembering The Blitz in fiction

2010-09-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

As you may remember, last Spring I had highly recommended Connie Willis' BLACKOUT, about 21st-century time travelers stuck in London during The Blitz; the sequel, ALL CLEAR, is due out from Bantam in October.

Also just published and highly praised is Jessica Francis Kane's novel, THE REPORT (Graywolf), which alternates between interviews for a 1972 documentary and flashbacks about the worst civilian disaster in war-time, when a London Tube air raid shelter panic led to 170+ deaths in seconds, just like the crowds crushed in at the German music festival this year.

If you are interested in more about the "home front" aspect of WW II, in England and America, you will want to read 109 EAST PALACE: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant, The author, whose grandfather ran the Manhattan Project in Chicago, describes the tremendous effort required to create from scratch the town that housed the scientists who invented the atomic bomb, largely through the memoirs of a Santa Fe widow, Dorothy McKibbin, who single-handedly made the place liveable for researchers and their wives and children alike.

It's the software, the page on the screen that matters

2010-09-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

Ebooked

Since I have been reading on my iPad, I am very happy with the hardware, but the software makes me want better, better page design, better search and note talking options

As a reader, I want more choices, more mixed media, and more cross-indexing. I want to be able to have list of all my eBooks in one file; I want to be able to sort titles on the "shelf" by subject or keywords. Searching as list is not the same as browsing book jackets. At least until the printed book dies, I want that metaphor on my iPad in all the ways it can really replicate a library.

I love reading on my iPad. Even with the glare from too close reading lamps or outside sunshine is a small inconvenience. With an eBook reader I could only buy from one bookstore, and I couldn't compare page layouts. The iPad also gives me gorgeous black-and-white photographs in any reader,and great color in the iBookstore, although there are few books with any color that aren't Apps.

The true interactive, mixed-media potential of the iPad, the chance to combine audio, animation, video, and web links with text, exists in even fewer Apps than those with color. THE ELEMENTS remains the most imaginative book available, because it has 3D photography (and the Tom Leher song), but the scientific calculations exist only through links to the developer's web site, which, of course, you can access without an iPad.

That said, if I were reading only on a Kindle or a Nook, I would have no option for color or video. Likewise, if I bought only from the iBookstore, I would have a much smaller library of titles to choose from, since several major publishers and most small ones have not yet agreed to Apple's sales' model which is a consignment model unlike the way normal print books are paid for at wholesale prices. The iPad works for me only because it doesn't tie me to one retailer. I can buy from the store with the best inventory. I can also decide which software I like best for reading, which page layout, search function, highlighting and not taking is most convenient.

This software -- not the hardware -- I am convinced, is what readers should focus on now that we have choices, at different price points and with different inventories of books to buy and read electronically

Next blog: the words on the page are what we read.

After the world as we know it ends in new ficiton

2010-08-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

I’ve discovered two recent apocalyptic novels which I highly recommend: FAR NORTH by Marcel Theroux and THE GONE AWAY WORLD by Nick Harkaway. These are not dark, dystopic fantasies; they are more like Margaret Atwood’s books than Mad Max.

Theroux’s novel is very much like Russell Hoban’s RIDLEY WALKER, in that it is a first person account by a survivor who is focused on staying alive, yet who still wonders if it is safe to hope for more. This novel is set in a near-future Siberian Arctic desert where only one woman, Makepeace, still lives in the small town her Quaker parents had founded when they migrated from Alaska to avoid the world’s drought-baked famine. Her English is conventional (unlike Ridley’s phonetic, pidgin voice in Hoban’s superb novel), her trials and tribulations tough but surmountable, and I felt I traveled back and forth along the Tundra in a world that was all too easy to imagine could be real in a few decades.

Harkaway (a screenwriter and the youngest son of John Le Carre) is a very original story teller. His protagonist knows exactly what Armageddon was like and how lucky he is to have survived. Along the way, there are intricate layers of lyrical descriptions of the horrors which technology has wrought and Taoist mysteries which survive to fight them. The plot often doubles back on itself with confusing (and fantastical) digressions, but in the end, Harkaway makes believable that human beings can reinvent themselves as much more than predator and prey.

Transitioning ebook discussions to new blog

2010-07-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

Please watch this space for a new blog which will be devoted solely to eBooks and digital publishing issues. READ TO SURVIVE will remain my book review blog, and I will be trying to introduce indexing for the books discussed in archive posts.

Amanda

AMeckeCo website

Michael Pertschuk, a writer for optimistic liberals

2010-07-07T07:37:00.001-07:00

A coalition builder's lesson for progressives
By Katrina vanden Heuvel;

Read today’s Washington Post recommending

Michael Pertschuk’s new book:

THE DeMARCO FACTOR:
TRANSFORMING PUBLIC WILL INTO POLITICAL POWER
(Vanderbilt University Press, paperback)

Mike has been a friend since I worked with him on REVOLT AGAINST REGULATION, which he wrote while standing firm as Liberal on Regan’s FTC.

He has been a life-long anti-smoking advocate, someone dedicated more to improving public health and saving lives rather than scoring ideological points, but he has no illusions about the obstacles to common sense changes that progressives continue to face.

You cannot learn from a better consumer advocate who walks the walk as well as talking the talk, and one of his heroes is Maryland’s Vincent DeMarco.

The best book news in Ages

2010-06-30T06:49:00.001-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30books.html?th&emc=th

In the NYT today a great story about how Google eBooks will help independent bookstores compete with the Chains:

Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.

The partnership could help beloved bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.; Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif.; and St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York. To court the growing audience of people who prefer reading on screens rather than paper, these small stores have until now been forced to compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Sony.

iPad books I've bought

2010-06-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

I thought I should make a list of the eBooks I’ve bought and read, excluding gratis classics, since I got my iPad at the beginning of April 2010.

I think I am probably reading at twice my usual rate. I also own more books now, since I don’t have to worry about investing in more bookshelves. (I can’t yet download my public library eBooks onto the iPad; so I can’t test if I’d borrow rather than won a percentage of these books.)

Most eBooks are ones I would own. I purchased several heavily illustrated books not available in eBooks during this time. I downloaded Paul Harding’s novel, TINKER as soon as the eBook was released after it won the Pulitzer, and bought a paperback as a gift.

iPad Apps

Alpha Wolfram, App Developer and Thomas Gray, photographer, THE ELEMENTS -- The most innovative, authoritative and interactive iBook on the iPad. It makes me wish I'd been awake in Chemistry class!

Bill Clark, ACADIA: The Story Behind the Scenery (Just screen shots of pages with text and color, but good for planning a trip.)

Benjamin Vu, Michael Kingerly, Stephanie Olesh, TRUCKS! (If they add spelling the letters of the word on each page to the drawings of single trucks -- audio is really good for "Monster Truck" -- I'd pay for the upgrade for my great-nephew the kindergartner.)

I have, of course, also bought print editions during this time at my normal rate.

Many of these eBooks are ones I probably would have postponed purchasing in print, since I do not have a bookstore within 15 miles of my house, and it is easy to browse through “sampling” on the bookstore Apps, easier than the Amazon online store. I also find it easier to read books on related subjects simultaneously (such as Wood and Rakov, who each write about early American politics).

Kindle, B&N, iBookstore, and Kobo eBooks

Paul Davies, THE EERIE SILENCE

Fyodor Dostoevsky, THE DOUBLE AND THE GAMBLER, Translated by Richard Pavear and Larissa Volkhonskey

Jack Rakov, THE REVOLUTIONARIES

Mark Lila, THE STILLBORN GOD

Gordon Wood, EMPIRE OF LIBERTY

Kathryn Schultz, BEING WRONG

Laura Skandera Twombley, MARK TWAIN’S OTHER WOMEN

Gavin Harper, SOLAR ENERGY PROJECTS FOR THE EVIL GENIUS

Laurie King, THE GOD OF THE HIVE

J.A. Konrath, THE NEWBIE’S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING EVERYTHING A WRITER NEEDS TO KNOW

Stefanie Pintoff, THE SHADOW OF GOTHAM

Steig Larsson, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS NEST and

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Virginia Woolf, MRS. DALLOWAY

Timothy Ferris, THE SCIENCE OF LIBERTY

Otto Penzler, Ed., THE LINEUP

Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, THE PHYSICS OF NASCAR

Stephen Prothero, GOD IS NOT ONE

Paul Harding, TINKERS

Connie Willis, FIRE WATCH

There's a book for that!

2010-06-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day, from Nina Ayoub's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Authors should ask themselves: "What do you want to happen after the reader has finished your book?" Bill Germano, Dean and Professor of English, Cooper Union College.

Not the metrics, not the pixels, not the typeface only. It's the words that matter.

Who lives long enough to retire later?

2010-06-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

Check this article out at CJR.org, Web site of the Columbia Journalism Review:

Whose Longer Life? In a recent CNBC Squawk Box segment about Social Security and the possibility of raising the retirement age, Alice Rivlin tossed out the assertion that "people are living longer" so such a hike wouldn't hurt terribly. But who, exactly, is living longer? The wealthy, points out CJR's Trudy Lieberman, and the press should question the blithe assertion that everyone is.

The mobile office Redeux

2010-06-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

This is a blog entry that began almost a week ago, when I was taking Amtrak’s Acela to DC from New Haven, Connecticut.

I boarded the train with a suitcase I knew I didn’t have to open, and my iPad carried lightly in my purse. I was equally pleased with my carbon footprint (despite the hour drive to the nearest station) and the efficiency with which I was prepared to read manuscripts, send email, and maybe even download a new book to read in the 4 hours it would take to arrive in Washington, where I was looking forward to a visit with my oldest friend and a conference which I always find invigorating.

For those of you outside the Northeast, Acela is the business-class train from Boston to our nation's capital. It is more expensive, depending on the time of day. All cars have free WiFi. That's why I was looking forward to being online even though my iPad has no 3G, and I don’t try to type on my Blackberry.

What Acela doesn’t have is any better track bed than the regular Amtrak trains, which is why it is not what any European or Japanese would call a “fast” train, and it only saves you time (30 minutes from New York to DC) because of fewer stops.

The first hour and a half of my trip I was a very happy camper.

I browsed the NY Times, efficiently read and sorted email, mostly newsletters that early in the morning, and enjoyed being in “The Quiet Car.” The Times had a great review of a new book that sounded very interesting, and I opened the iBookstore App, where, not surprisingly, the book wasn't on sale, since only about 20 percent of eBooks are so far. Barnes and Noble didn't have the eBook yet either, but the Kindle edition was already online. Seconds later the book was on my iPad and I was glad to find it as interesting as the review predicted.

Feeling happy as a Nerd in Bits, I proceeded to start writing a blog entry about my digital success. Not wanting to bother cutting and pasting, through my iPad Pages program, I went online opened my Google blog and began writing.

I was in the middle of waxing eloquent, when the Acela WiFi connection broke. And, of course, my draft disappeared, and I cursed my stupidity for not writing off line. My bad. We had just pulled into New York's Penn Station. I thought going underground might be the problem, and I bravely vowed to rewrite from scratch and post when we had passed through Newark.

Unfortunately, for the next three and a half my iPad network recognized and let me connect to the Acela WiFi -- only to drop me anytime I wanted to download or refresh an App. I was so preoccupied with trying again and again to get the WiFi working, I didn’t spend time recreating my enthusiastic endorsement of the new mobile office.
I didn't want to hassle the conductors for tech advice, because the car was crowded. I could read, and because of the iPad, I could choose from over 25 books I had downloaded since April, some of them well worth rereading already.

Of course, I had to reward my one success with WiFi by opening the new book. The best part of train travel for me is enough time to read (unlike planes) and no highway motion sickness. I was dozing comfortably in minutes. When I woke around Baltimore, I thought I would just plug in headphones and wait until later in the day to go back online.

Then I remembered that my host had said she only had email at work. Suddenly I knew my poet friend probably would not have WiFi. To add to my consternation, I had not done a new synch with my Blackberry with all the DC contact info I needed; I had not researched the DC WiFi hotspots or downloaded a Metro transit map or street guide. I have often been a tourist and business traveler in DC, but not often enough to avoid getting lost while I try to adjust to a city unlike the easy grid of Manhattan and. Subway system with variable fares and lines with no obvious way to tell “uptown” from “downtown.”

I had to resort tom calling home so my spouse could read me the right phone number off my left-behind-because-too-heavy laptop.

Who failed whom? Do I regret depending on the iPad? Not at all. Do I think I know how to use the electronics I have already bought? No way.

Do I wish that Amtrak trains got to DC faster than they did 40 years ago when I took the first “Metroliner” on a High School trip?

You betcha!

To be continued

Reading and writing on Train

2010-06-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

First, I thought it would be really cool to blog about using the Acela amtrak (thank you VP BIden) wifi network to read the NY
Times online, see a book review, and download the ebook -- which I just 30 minutes ago.

But I forgot to hit "save" before there was a bug in the server as we entered Penn Station and so I have to start all over again. More after I save this.

iPad cover for book lovers

2010-05-05T07:35:00.001-07:00

There is a great article about iPad covers on ZDNet, recommending this aggregator site for a lot of independent designs: http://ipadcasefinder.com/

I found the most appealing to be: http://www.dodocase.com/, which is bound like a book in faux leather and bamboo, and doubles as a stand.

Still reading books

2010-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

I was kind of relieved that I enjoyed reading a print book again so much last night. I had ordered Paul Harding’s TINKER, the Pulitzer Prize winning-novel, which is published by a small press. I wasn’t surprised that the ebook had not been released when the Pulitzer was announced a few weeks ago, but it has been now.

I guess I was afraid that the convenience and the “gadget” appeal of my iPad might have ruined books for me. Silly me; a printed page is a beautiful thing to touch and read, although I have to tell you a perfect bound, small format paperback like this, which is stiff and hard to hold open with one hand, has it’s limitations for reading in bed too. I saw a note in our local library newsletter and volunteered to show the librarian my iPad. I’ll be interested to hear what she thinks the client demand for ebooks will be in our bookstore-less town.

I still find few of the books which I look for in ebook format in the iBookstore, which surprises me only because I know a lot of ebook distributors who convert and transmit books for smaller publishers as a middleman are working out deals with Apple. So far only 5 large commercial houses (minus Random House) have direct deals with the iBookstore. Clearly the agency model* demand of Apple is slowing things down, but that isn’t really affecting consumers yet because Amazon or Kobo can pick up the slack. (When will B&N release their iPad App? The iPhone version is unreadable in the 2x format!)

Meanwhile, from non-fiction to novels, I am happy to have my current reading list instantly at my fingertips without having all my side-tables covered with stacked books. It hasn’t stopped me wanting to run my hands over my library shelves.

And I don’t want to mislead you that I only read books on the iPad. I read news (easier on the eyes than my lap top), manuscripts, but I also watch YouTube, Netflix, listen to new music, and test out a few games.

The instant Video is distracting but I have yet to see “enhanced” ebooks that are truly multi-media. Even the fabulous Elements App is so far above my science and math head that I can’t figure out how to do much more than watch the enhancements! A glossary (probably aimed at middle-schoolers) would save me going back and forth to Safari to find out what a quadratic equation is. I’m still working on that – and what relevance it has to a chemical compound.

*for more about the new business model, which is arcane, check out Publishers Weekly on line.

iPad jokes and Web research tools

2010-04-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

It is harder than I thought it would be to keep up with notes on the iPad and ebook readers, but meanwhile, here is a very funny piece from the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/04/26/100426ta_talk_kimball

FYI, I do find the page turning more satisfactory in the iBook reader than the Kindle App, but I am still finding fewer books in the iBookstore.

If you find yourself overwhelmed when researching on Google or even within Google Books or Scholars, check out this new subscription service from Oxford University Press, as reviewed in Ars Technica:

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/04/oxford-university-press-launches-the-anti-google.ars

The OBO tool is essentially a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines. Users can drill down to a specific bibliographic entry, which contains some descriptive text and a list of references that link to either Google Books or to a subscribing library's own catalog entries, by either browsing or searching. Each entry is written by a scholar working in the relevant field and vetted by a peer review process. The idea is to alleviate the twin problems of Google-induced data overload, on the one hand, and Wikipedia-driven GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), on the other.

Nook wifi only versions to come

2010-04-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

If you don't need the iPad video or color display, and you're intrigued ebook readers, keep an eye out for some "lite" versions of existing black-and-white ebook readers. This Wi Fi only Nook from Barnes and Noble may cost only $200. Keep watching for more such less expensive competition to be released by other vendors, including, we hope, Amazon Kindle.

Ever wonder if anyone else is "out there" in the Universe?

2010-04-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

I’m reading a wonderful new science book on my iPad (via the Kindle App), Paul Davies’ THE EERIE SILENCE. He’s a long-time SETI researcher (looking for signals of life on other planets), a Templeton prize-winner (an award for reconciling science and faith ecumenically).

The book explains the basic physics, biology, chemistry, and geology needed to even evaluate the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. The review I read mentioned that Davies is arguing for a much broader kind of search for radio transmissions than SETI has used so far, but the book is much less technical and policy oriented than it might seem from such a goal.

If you need to be reminded about why life needs water and why amino acids are not sufficient alone to create life, this book will help you ease yourself back into memoires of your younger self, when wondering about and testing hypotheses were equally fun.

A practical note: This ebook was not yet in the iBookstore, and even if it had been, there would have been little difference in the reading experience whether I had bought the Apple vs. the Amazon format. It is all text. Furthermore, the iBookstore has very little information about the books (although the sampling feature is helpful.) You can get a lot of detail from the Amazon pages for the printed book. Making a decision about a book you’ve only read one review of is much easier on Amazon.

It’s not likely that iTunes will start adding a lot of retail promotional copy to their offerings, but I do hope books get a little more attention as books, since they are bought and sold very differently, I think than music or TV shows. Being able to zero in on Pulitzer or Booker Prize winners, NY Times and USA Today bestsellers, for example, would be nice, but that will have to wait until more of them are released as ebooks. Of course by showing publishers that people are looking for books they can’t find in the iBookstore, Apple would have leverage to get more companies to want to stock their books everywhere.

New book review site on law and justice

2010-04-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Publishers Weekly makes note of a new site for book reviews, excerpts and author interviews about law and justice, from the NYT Law School’s Brennan Center. This is a welcome supplement to dwindling mass media book reviews:

On the site, *Just Books is described as “a new, first-of-its-kind book site about justice, books and ideas. The inaugural posts include contributions from David Remnick, Garry Wills, Eric Alterman, Gretchen Rubin, Dahlia Lithwick, Jeff Shesol, Hon. Mickey Edwards, Theodore Marmor, suggested reading from Michael Mukasey, Robert M. Morgenthau, Bill Clinton and more.”

*http://www.brennancenter.org/content/pages/JustBooks

iPad is great for books, dowloaded movies

2010-04-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

I'm still getting a few kinks worked out in using my iPad (mostly involving problems with my Windows lap top and syncing through iTunes, which is probably my HP hardware problem.)

Nevertheless, the Amazon Kindle App is a great reader, and it was easy to bring my Kindle books over.

I haven't ordered new books through on Kindle yet, because of having to go through the bowser. The iBook store has the "one click" advantage here, but is not as good a shopping experience -- they really send you to the few, top books in every category, and as I said before, they don't have much metadata as a real bookstore does.

I will be glad to try the B&N reader too, since I've liked that very much on my PC. I'm finishing War and Peace on Kindle and started Moby Dick (free version) on iBook. You do really have to watch your budget when you don't even see your order total unless you look for it.

I wish I could search across my several different ebook reader libraries. I can go back, of course, to Google Books to build a single list, which gives me a reason to explore Google's Library feature.

The Netflix App is fantastic for watching videos on-line. The small screen is perfect for watching in bed (bluetooth headphones will make it even better). I'm not sure if I would ever use iTunes for videos, even "rent to own," and I don't know how my 16g memory will feel if I do. Flying or a long train trip, where I won't be in a WiFi spot, is the only reason I would need to keep the video I think.

Did you see that game?

2010-04-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

I'm a person who only watches a few sports games on TV, usually championships, more often a sport I grew up playing (tennis, baseball), but I don't think I've ever seen a more exciting basketball game than last nights Duke Butler contest.

It's more fun than watching NBA players (almost all of whom seem 7 feet these days) dunk and hang on the basket.

Although Butler lost, the game was awesome, and I love reading how likely another great 2011 season will be. It may change March Madness forever for me.

IPad

2010-04-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

I have had my iPad for two days now. As an ebook reader it's
Wonderful. The iBook store is simple is simple to use, but very short on meta data about the books. Sampling is much more limited than Amazon print info which is so easily accessible from The Kindle store. You need to know the book you want.

But reading is wonderful in iBook formats. More to come soon on Kobo, Kindle, and barnes and Noble apps.

As you can see, still getting used to keypad.

Mass Media and Science writing

2010-03-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in how science is reported in the media, I can recommend two books I've just read:

PHYSICS FOR FUTURE PRESIDENTS: The Science behind the Headlines by Richard A. Muller (Norton paperback)

AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR? A Scientist's Guide to talking to the Public by Cornelia Dean (Harvard University Press)

The first is based on the author's UC Berkeley class, and it explores what's the media and the public usually get wrong about the risks and benefits of science and technology.

The second is by a former NYT columnist and argues that scientists must reach out more to journalists and must learn to describe their work in accessible language themselves.

Tea Baggers verbally assault John Lewis, Barney Frank

2010-03-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

I don't understand why The Kansas City Star and Fox News are the only US news sites which have reported this story about racial slurs directed at Black Congressmen, including John Lewis, by Tea Baggers yesterday (and gay slurs against Frank).

Update: The Washington Post has just put up an article.

Other US sources on Google are only blogs. The International papers are picking it up.

Fox News is also the only one to report any repudiation by Republicans, in their case Michael Steele.

As disturbing is the comment on the NYT blog which argues that this is justifiable anger against liberals who don't listen to their constiuents.

Congressmen are abused by protesters at DC demonstration against health care bill
Kansas City Star - William Douglas - ‎11 hours ago‎
W ASHINGTON | Demonstrators outside the US Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted obscenities at members of the ...

Re-reading history

2010-03-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

THE WAR THAT KILLED ACHILLES by Caroline Alexander

You'll want to reread Homer after reading this, but you'll also probably find yourself reading first-hand accounts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan too.

THE ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH by Melvyn Bragg.

I been listening to the audiobook, which I highly recommend because this history of the way English developed is strongest in it's explanation of how the "word hoard" grew and the changes in pronunciation are as interesting as the way English conquered by constantly changing.

BATTLE OF WITS: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II
by Stephen Budiansky

Ever since I worked on William Stephenson's book about the secret history of Enigma and Ultra in WWII when the Official Secrets Act was first lifted, I have been fascinated by books on the subject. Every decade brings new revelations, and this book (unfortunately out of print but available used) is a marvelous overview of both American and British, Japanese and German codebreaking.

The math is complex (frankly, I skim these parts, since I only understand how hard the problem is, not how it is solved), but the individuals profiled are even more interesting.The section about the pre-war efforts of Poles to break Nazi codes and Enigma machines is far more heroic -- and vital to winning the war -- as told here than any I have read before.

The complete story of events on both sides of the Atlantic is simply amazing. It required an extraordinary combination of ingenuity, courage, innovation, physical and mental endurance, patriotism, and sheer luck in the face of a formidable military enemy and the usual bureacratic resistance to change.

The false promise of "Big Idea" education reform

2010-03-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

In the LA Times today Diane Ravitch has a good companion piece to Bill Maher in my previous post.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ravitch14-2010mar14,0,2024751.story

Ravitch warns:

Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.

Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.

No child left behind at home

2010-03-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

I often find Bill Maher's liberal libertarian impulses too smug, but I think he really nails it with a new HuffingtonPost piece on education when he says:

The number one predictor of a child's academic success is parental involvement...It's also been proven that just having books in the house makes a huge difference in a child's development.

He also points out that typical American animosity toward teachers has its roots in very personal revenge fantasies, not in sound educational theory:

Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It's just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers' lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass. We all remember high school - canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy. Take that, Mrs. Crabtree! And guess what? We're chewing gum and no, we didn't bring enough for everybody

It is very upsetting to me that President Obama seems to add punishment for not meeting higher standards to No Child Left Behind without adding any Federal help for teachers or parents. Given his mother's early morning tutoring, surely he must know that learning doesn't take place only in school or without "homework helpers."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-dont-fire-the-te_b_497554.htm

Tibet, Homer and heroes

2010-03-13T08:20:00.000-08:00

I recently got added TIVO to my cable TV set up, and I have found the instant downloads from Netflix delightful, especially for documentaries. I strongly recommend Blindsight, a film about a school for the blind in Lhasa Tibet which was founded by two Germans, and an expedition trekking in the Himalayas led by an American man who was the first blind person to summit Mt. Everest. You can see more about the sponsoring group at the web site for Braille without Borders. Not the least interesting part of the story is how these foreigners were allowed to build a school within Communist Tibet, where the culture still treats the blind as lepers, people who have been punished for the bad karma of their previous lives.

My other new gadget is an iPod Nano. I downloaded several new non-fiction audiobooks, including The War that Killed Achilles, which provides a fascinating new perspective on the anti-war themes in Homer’s reworking of the classic “heroic” epic, including evidence from new excavations at Troy and new scholarship about the Indo-European roots of early Greek mythology. The author, Caroline Alexander, has written before about Ernest Shackleton and the story of how Captain Bligh survived the mutiny on the Bounty.

Novel of the WWII London Blitz

2010-03-11T06:01:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite writers, Connie Willis, has just published a new novel, BLACKOUT, and if you like WWII stories, historical fiction, science fiction (rather than fantastic) time-travel, and social comedy, you can't do better than drop everything and read this next. I listened to the audiobook which was particularly mesmerizing.

Michael Dirda has a wonderful review in today's Washington Post, which does more justice than I can. (I can fault him only for not mentioning my all time favorite Connie Wills story, the novela Bellweather).

Reading through the ages at Harvard

2010-03-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Library Journal magazine, I just learned about a fabulous new site which features Harvard's historical library collections about the science of reading and textbooks teaching reading. Check it out:

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/

Hiroshima book sources discredited

2010-03-02T05:30:00.000-08:00

The publisher has cancelled their contract with Charles Pellegrino for THE LAST TRAIN FROM HIROSHIMA because one of his sources has been proved to have lied and others are uncertain.

In today's paper:

Iffy sourcing brings down 'Hiroshima'
Henry Holt is dropping publication of "The Last Train From Hiroshima" after the author, Charles Pellegrino, failed to adequately answer questions about a source in the book and the revocation of his PhD more than 25 years ago.
(By Steven Levingston, The Washington Post)

Garrison Keillor goes for Gold

2010-02-25T05:09:00.001-08:00

Keillor's Op Ed piece in today's NYT is brilliant satire, especially the part about conservatives being like people who drive a car into a swamp and then start throwing mud balls at the tow truck.

Stupid is as Stupid does

2010-02-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

If America's the "best country in the world" why are so many Americans so angry that they think it's "understandable" to fly a plane into a building to protest taxes?

Why do Tea Baggers think that if a family can't afford to pay 20% of their income for private health insurance, they should just go bankrupt if someone gets cancer, but if you don't pay your taxes so you can own a Cessna you have a right to feel homicidal?

Isaac Newton's detective work

2010-02-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

I have just caught up with the new book from Tom Levenson NEWTON AND THE COUNTERFEITER (Houghton/Harcourt). The premise alone is very intriguing, and I love Tom's approach to history.

I worked with Tom, who runs the MIT Masters Program in science writing, when he published EINSTEIN IN BERLIN, and he is one of the very best history of science writers around. He also has a background as a NOVA producer.

I'm experimenting with listening on audio and reading the Kindle version on my laptop (you can do that with the free KindleforPC software on Amazon). More to come on how that works for me.

New book on Hiroshima and Nagsaki

2010-02-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

Salinger continued

2010-01-30T10:11:00.001-08:00

There have been many interesting essays and discussions about Salinger, but among the best on his work is Louis Menard's essay on the 50th anniversary of CATCHER IN THE RYE, which you can find on the New Yorker site:

The New Yorker’s website has Louis Menand’s 2001 essay “Holden at Fifty.” They’re also offering links to thirteen stories by Salinger (subscription required).

Tom Ashbrook's radio show "On Point" (WNPR) also had an interesting discussion with two scholars and links, including the above.

RIP JD Salinger

2010-01-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

Catcher in the Rye was my mother's favorite book. It came out the year I was born, and whenever she was feeling blue, she would take a long bath and reread an often soggy paperback. I don't remember when I first read it myself, and that may be because I thought I had inherited it imbedded in my memory since birth, rather than having acquired it like other books.

The book of his that became my solace, in college, was Franny and Zooey. I treasured every sentence of Nine Stories; I was moved by the finality of Seymour, An Introduction, but above all I loved -- and still do -- Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, probably because its about a Manhattan much like the post-war city in which my parents had met. Adding to that patina of false nostolgia, I learned for the first time from his obituaries today, that Salinger had landed on Utah Beach at D-Day, where my mother's only brother had come ashore in the first wave. I always knew that I probably wouldn't have known Uncle Frank if it had been Omaha instead. Now I imagine (with a mind's eye totally saturated by "Saving Private Ryan") the Captain and the Sergeant passing like ships in the night on the battlefield.

What is also ironic -- but not surprising -- is what I just read in the NYT today about how Harcourt (the company where I first worked in publishing) rejected Catcher in the Rye. For proof of "the more things change the more they remain the same," check out the David Itzkoff's blog:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/how-the-catcher-in-the-rye-eluded-one-editor/?scp=1&sq=giroux&st=cse

Lots of e-book reader hardware to come

2010-01-05T08:18:00.000-08:00

You will be reading more and more hype about e-books this month, in part because of the Consumer Electronics Show and the Apple Tablet, but keep in mind a very interesting (and possible cheaper than Apple) solution: new dual black and white and color screens, such as The Alex Reader, from Spring Designs.

The advantage of a dual-screen reader over the Nook or Kindle is that you can browse the internet or follow URL links at the same time you are reading in black-and-white, which is better for text. You can also have imbedded links to color illustrations, which is essential for professional books.

Merry Holidays

2009-12-27T07:05:00.000-08:00

My sister gave us a wonderful present this year, the DVD of Young At Heart: You're Never Too Old to Rock, a documentary about the Northhampton, Mass. chorus with an average age of 80 which has toured the world singing classic and new rock songs, from "Forever Young" to "Schizophrenia."

And check out Karen Armstrong's article about the original message of Matthew and Luke's birth of Jesus story in the LA Times. (Just like Amahl and the Night Visitors!)

Holiday Reading (and listening)

2009-12-23T09:46:00.000-08:00

If you grew up watching Amahl and the Night Visitors on NBC (as I did), and you long nostogically for a Christmas more about giving than buying, you should be aware that several CD's of the opera are available, including the original 1951 cast album. If you like Operettas, you can't do much better than "This is my box."

I picked up some biographies for reading over the holidays, among them Jay Parnini's William Faulkner, and like all the best such books, it is making me want to go back and reread my favorite novels, and to catch up on the ones I only knew from movies, like his autobiographica, final novel, The Reviers.

I also didn't know that the 23-26 yr old Faulkner ran the Ole Miss campus postoffice very incompetentl (because he spent most days shut in his office writing), and you have to wonder if his fellow Missisippian Eudora Welty might not have had an inside joke in mind when she wrote "Why I live at the PO."

Last minute holiday book reviews

2009-12-17T05:36:00.000-08:00

The Guardian newspaper just released a list by English editors and agents of some of the best unread books of the last decade.

It is full of interesting suggestions -- fiction and memoirs -- by American and British writers. A real treat for the avid reader who doesn't just want to read what everyone else is reading.

Check it out:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/16/decade-best-unread-books

Incredible Afghanistan battlefield photos

2009-12-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

This photo essay posted on the Denver Post Blog provides incredible insight into the harsh conditions under which Marines fight the Taliban. Pictures were taken by AP photographer David Guttenfleder over several years. He returned to the US this July.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/10/30/photographer-collection-david-guttenfelder-in-afghanistan/

Buy more to be able to read more

2009-11-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

Let's be clear, if you read books and worry about how the industry that publishes them will survive, there is only one thing you can do:

Buy more books.

It doesn't matter where, what kind or in whether electronic or print.

Here's the proof, as reported in the industry web site, www.publishersmarketplace.com, today.

None of The National Book Award nominees for fiction -- novels who have been voted the best of the year by a panel of other writers and critics -- have sold more than 18,000 copies so far, and most well under that.

We may not agree these are the best novels above all others that we would read ourselves, but I doubt any of us would think that any aren't worth reading -- especially in a world where Sara Palin is earning millions of dollars.

We need to vote for quality with our pocket books.

Don't forget to read science to survive

2009-11-05T09:13:00.001-08:00

A wonderful video about why women like science:

http://scienceblogs.com/sunclipse/2009/11/no_i_havent_entirely_forgotten.php?utm_source=ScienceBlogs+Weekly+Recap&utm_campaign=ff9ce31e91-Sb_Weekly_Recap_10_29_11_04_2009&utm_medium=email

I laughed so much I cried

2009-10-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already, check out Ellis Weiner's Shouts and Murmurs piece in the 10/19 New Yorker, "Subject: Our Marketing Plan."

Yes, it's about book publishing. And I am afraid it's all too true.

More books on the Web

2009-10-06T06:40:00.001-07:00

The industry newsletter "I Want Media" mentions the Huffington Post's new book section (partnering with the New York Review of Books). Thank goodness digital media is making up for the book pages being dropped every day in print media.

Check it out:

HuffPost to Expand Into Oprah's Territory Mediaweek The Huffington Post is launching a books section anchored by an Oprah-esque book club led by CEO Arianna Huffington -- dubbed "Arianna's Reading." The section also features advance reviews from the New York Review of Books as part of a content-sharing deal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/books/

POETRY VIDEOS

2009-09-25T10:18:00.001-07:00

I had no idea that the Poetry Foundation sponsored video adaptations of poetry on U Tube until I read about it on http://womensvoicesforchange.org/.

Check out the link there to Heather McHugh's annimated poem, "Above the Space Bar," which is delightful!

E book readers

2009-09-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Publishers Weekly (The book industry trade magazine) has announced the wireless e-book reader linked to Barnes & Noble will be for sale at Best Buy next month.

It is a European model using the Verizon 3G network, and unlike Amazon's Kindle, it will read multiple e-book formats, just as the Sony Reader does.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/eNewsletter/CA6698442/2286.html

IREX Unveils New Wireless Digital Reading Device
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 9/23/2009 7:20:00 AMIREX, a European developer of digital reading devices, will today release the details about the new digital reading device it plans to launch in the U.S. market that will allow consumers to wirelessly download e-books as well as newspaper content through a partnership with Barnes & Noble. The device will be unveiled at a roundtable discussion in New York City featuring IREX CEO Hans Broder, B&N.com president William Lynch, Penguin CEO David Shanks and others (including this reporter). The new device has a 8.1” black & white e-ink touchscreen; offers wireless 3G connectivity through the Verizon network and will cost $399. The IREX DR800SG and will be available for sale through Best Buy chain by next month. The new device has been developed to compete directly with the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader devices. Better known in Europe than in the U.S., IREX is entering the U.S. market a bit late. But the company hopes to overcome that disadvantage through its partnership with B&N, the unique size and quality of the touchscreen device and a long history of developing and enhancing e-ink technology. The device will also offer wireless access to more than a 1,000 newspapers through the NewspaperDirect service. The new IREX device has another advantage: it has a Qualcomm Gobi chipset that allows the device to use wireless networks outside of the U.S.—unlike the Kindle or the Sony Reader. IREX is also reportedly planning to offer an affordable color-screen—current color e-ink devices can cost nearly $1,000-- as early as 2011.

READING TO LEARN

2009-09-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

I must admit I’ve been a little taken aback by two articles I read recently about the trend for teachers to encourage “free reading” instead of even some books on a recommended reading list, especially in middle school. One article discussed the new metrics which a private company has developed in order to encourage kids to compete for points. One Harry Potter is worth three To Kill a Mockingbird.

I do believe that reading anything with pleasure has to precede learning to love reading. Stories come before novels; comics are good stories, so are movies and even some video games, just as songs come before poetry.

Nevertheless, why there should be any “all or nothing.” “classics or bestsellers,” in a classroom I have no idea. And giving 50 points to the child who reads three long bestsellers but fewer to a student who reads three short books by Jane Austen, Ernest Hemmingway, or J.D. Salinger makes no sense.

I don’t believe that we all have to read in lock step the same “classics” in order to be educated Americans. I do, however, think that John Grisham is more interesting when you have already read Harper Lee. Twilight should not replace The Telltale Heart. Lots of romance readers would agree having read Pride and Prejudice makes Sex in the City funnier.

Most importantly, I think that teachers should encourage students to read the books they find hard to read as well as the ones they read for fun. Thinking is often hard.

I taught Mrs. Dalloway twice to when I was a Freshman Comp Teaching Assistant at UCLA. I know that very few kids came away even liking Virginia Woolf as a result. But everyone of them was pleased with having learned to read a “hard” writer, and by virtue of having learned that, they were better writers too.

Learning that reading and writing require work but that hard work is also rewarded is the lesson that makes sitting in a classroom interesting, worthwhile, and valuable.

That tackling challenges is part of going to school, that’s what I’m afraid we may be losing. I know most people will not be “English majors,” much less professors, editors, or even teachers. Some will be watch more movies in a year than they read books in a decade. Some will spend more time coaching basketball or being volunteer EMS medics than they will reading.

But everyone needs to be able to tackle a challenge, and a good lesson in hw to do that is reading a book you do not know you will like; reading a book because people you like (assuming you don't hate all your teachers) tell you it’s a good book; reading a book because stories written in another time and place help us learn to live better in the here and now.

That's what I don't want to lose.

Thriller writer of the decade

2009-08-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

If you are not already hooked on Steig Larsson's THE GIRL WHO.... series of thrillers, you should be.

I haven't read anything as good as THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO (now in paperback) or THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (just out in hardcover from Knopf) since I discovered Smiley and John Le Carre or Adam Dalgliesh and P.D. James.

Sony E-Reader competiton good for book publishers

2009-08-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

Ordering an e-book instantly from Kindle may be fun,

But being able to re-read that e-book on any device is priceless.

Sony’s recent e-book and e-book Reader announcements are the single best news book publishing has had in years. As the NYT article reports below, more books in more formats from more sources is the key to making e-books a viable format in an industry that can still afford to pay writers for writing books:

New York Times 8-13-09
Sony Plans to Adopt Common Format for E-Books By BRAD STONE
To counter Amazon.com, Sony and other device makers as well as several publishers will use the same technology, called ePub, for digital book sales.

…..
“If the business terms and conditions end up being dictated to publishers by one bookseller who has a chokehold over the value chain, publishers are going to have a hard time staying profitable,” said Bill McCoy, general manager for Adobe’s digital publishing business.

2009-07-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me the other day that our vocabulary is all wrong in this debate over e-books – in the same way it’s misleading to talk as if America actually had “healthcare, when we really only have very expensive sickcare.

We don’t read e-books or hardcovers. We read what people write.

Books – whether print or digital, whether downloaded or mailed, whether new or old – are just one way that writing reaches the people who want to read it. Books are just one way that people get paid for their writing.

Books are not what I read; they are where I read things that interest me. I find writing in books interesting, because I like writing that reflect the author’s authentic research, originality, and talent. I like the sentences and paragraphs they choose to combine to make a book; I like the way their long story begins and ends.

I think if books are to survive we have to stop thinking about books as a “consumer product.” Format usually follow price, but the quality of what’s inside a book does not.

We need to start thinking about books as a place where writers write and readers find them. If printed books morph into e-books, that’s really not a lot of change.

If we don’t want to lose writing that’s long, and thoughtful, writing that requires time to create – if we want writing we such as we find in War and Peace, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dreams From My Father, or A Room of One’s Own -- we have to find a way to subsidize the places readers can read what such writers write.

I submit that we could learn how to live without books. It’s reading and writing we can’t live without.

And the possibility of that impending loss is what we should talk about.

2009-05-06T07:15:00.001-07:00

For a very interesting essay about how a book differs from a Web search, see this article in Foreign Policy:

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Why We Don't Need To Reinvent The Book For The Web Age
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The book format may have already evolved (along with the web) far beyond what we would have ever expected
http://www.booktrade.info/i.php/21076

2009-04-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

If you like historical fiction, I think you'll enjoy Ursula LeGuin's Lavinia, which gives voice to the silent Italian wife of Aeneas in Vergil's poem. For any reader who wants to go beyond the faux mythology of Twilight, this novel captures a young woman's emotional daring beautifully. The story has gore, sex and life after death, but also love, honor, and real poetry.

(One of my favorite pieces of literary trivia is that LeGuin is the daughter of the anthropolgist who wrote Ishi the Last Yahi, and all her fantasy and science ficiton novels are grounded in an exquisite and authentic detailed speculation about how other cultures might live and worship.)

I've loved Biblical archeology stories ever since I first read about the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is strange (as Susan Gubar points out in her new literary biography of Judas), that so few of us raised within Christian churches were ever taught to see Jesus as a Jew before the Scrolls raised those issue.

Whether you think the historical Jesus was a Rabbi who disliked the Temple hierarchy, a secret Essene, a Jewish Zealot, or the divine founder of Christianity, the debates over the scanty historical evidence are fascinating.

An entertaining, non-academic contribution is Nina Burleigh's new book, UNHOLY BUSINESS, which explores the Israeli legal case for forgery against the antiquities dealer behind two of the most important finds of 21st century: a unique engraved stone which purported to be contractor's list for the First Temple (Solomon's); and a stone ossuary dated to 60 CE and inscribed in Aramaic as belonging to "James, son of Joseph and brother of Jesus."

Long before the trial, both the finds were political footballs, the one validating the Western Wall as part of the Temple Mount beneath the Muslim Dome of the Rock; and the other proving Jesus lived and (equally divisively) that he had a "brother" -- the Protestant view -- not a "cousin" -- the Catholic view. Burleigh gives a clear idea of both the theological and criminological issues, with very likable Israeli detectives as central figures.

If you’ve been to Israel, Burleigh will help you relive some of the archeological highlights; if you haven’t, you’ll want to go.

(There's a lovely quote in the book from a minister who, although he volunteers on archeological digs every summer, says, in the end, faith is faith precisely because there is no proof; he doesn't worry that his faith can be disproved by science, and therefore, I gather, science can't be his enemy.)

2009-04-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

There's a wonderful piece in today's Chronicle of Higher Education about teaching literature by Mark Edmundson, Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

He argues that the critic's role is not to apply a particular critical framework (e.g. a Marxian view of Blake) but to lead a reader to understand a Blakean view of Blake, an Emersonian view of Emerson:

I said that transformation was the highest goal of literary education. The best purpose of all art is to inspire, said Emerson, and that seems right to me. But that does not mean that literary study can't have other beneficial effects. It can help people learn to read more sensitively; help them learn to express themselves; it can teach them more about the world at large. But the proper business of teaching is change — for the teacher (who is herself a work in progress) and (pre-eminently) for the student.

2009-04-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

There's a second article about Google News in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/technology/internet/08google.html?th&emc=th

No one would use on any search engine, whether Yahoo or Ask.com, at all if there weren't News to read on the web; don't the web sites people click through to read deserve credit from for bringing people to the search engine, where they read ads?

Search engines need content; search engines make more money from ads than web sites do; therefore serach engines should share ad income with content providers.

Why doesn't a newspaper deserve royalties for a click through to their site? It's as easy to do as it is for Google Books to pay authors.

2009-04-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

I've long thought that it's backwards to pay more for your internet access than for what you read on the internet. I believe paying for news will make it more valuable. Cheap is often worth less. Why should Google make all the money when no one would go to Google News if there weren't good news stories to read?

See today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/business/media/08pay.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

2009-04-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

I just caught up with two new paperback reprints, Drew Gilpin Faust's THE REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: Death and The American Civil War and Germaine Greer's SHAKESPEARE'S WIFE.

From the Drew Gilpin Faust I learned that not until the tremendous losses of Union soldiers in the Civil War did public care for the returned bodies of soldiers become ritualized. The post-war effort of major figures, such as Walt Whitman, to find and return home the remains buried in battlefields created ceremonial respect for the "fallen" unlike any civilian displays hitherto.

This fact was all the more moving for me, because I live in a house built circa 1750. Three young men from the family living there during the Civil War -- two brothers and a son-in-law -- fought for the Union. Only one survived, and they are commemorated twice in graveyards: once, in the large cemetery, among memorial stones for each soldier from this Connecticut Town who died; and again, in the small family burial ground two miles from this house, with mother, father, grandfather, and sisters. I don't know if their bodies were returned.

From Germaine Greer's imaginative historical "biography" of the much-maligned Ann Hathaway Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon, I learned:

Ø how little evidence there is for any "facts" about William Shakespeare's life and his feelings his wife;
Ø how even the "second-best bed" legacy in his will may not be the insult critics have always said it was;
Ø it is as likely a supposition that they married for love as the idea William Shakespeare hated his wife;
Ø it is plausible that Ann raised and supported his children as a faithful and financially savvy spouse, letting him make a career in London that would have been impossible anywhere else in England.

Just turning Shakespearean legends on their heads and learning how many Elizabethan women did more than just survive hardship (and their lot was harder) is worth the read. Whether or not you accept any of Greer's more fanciful ideas -- that Ann Hathaway was the subject of some of the sonnets or that she helped finance the publication of the First Folios out of the estate -- you will want to reread all the plays in a new light. Especially, I think, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

2009-03-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

I enjoy comparing novels and their film adaptations -- even when I don't think the film an improvement. So after being one of the last people to get to see SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE before it left theaters, I ordered the novel by Vikas Swarup, originally entitled Q&A. The novel is very different, both more sentimental and more realistic.

Paradoxically, you appreciate how the film improves the story's cinematic and thematic cohesiveness, even though the Bollywood and Hollywood elements are clichés. The novels White Tiger and Sacred Games seem to me to be much more original and complicated novelistic portraits of India's class and gender wars. Sacred Games is particularly well written.

FYI, I think one of the best film adaptations is THE PLAYER (directed by Robert Altman, starring Tim Robbins), which Michael Tolkin adapted from his own novel of the same name. The novel is a better novel and the film a better film precisely because of the differences between them. One of the things that amused me is the fact that the cell phone conversations which are so important to the movie didn't take place in the novel because it was written before they became ubiquitous.

2009-03-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

Something most of us probably knew: reading -- even for six minutes -- is a better way to relax your heart than listening to music or playing a video game, drinking tea or taking a walk.

http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/20466

Dr Lewis, who conducted the test, said: "Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation."

Synchronicity and speculation in fiction

2009-03-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

William Gibson is one of the founders of "cyberpunk" science fiction. His new $10 paperback (and a bargain at that price), Spook Country, is probably one of his most optimistic novels in the genre. He prides himself on writing about the "near future," one in which the technology he describes already exists in proto-type (like the bicycle made out of paper in Virtual Light).

In Spook Country, the background technology is virtual reality, "locative art," but the dangerous uses to which such art is put -- by the media, the government, terrorists and organized crime -- requires non-violent intervention from self-appointed guardians of our civil rights.

On a minor note of synchronicity, I had just heard a piece on NPR about the popularity of a new cuisine Vietnamese Pho noodles, when I proceeded to read a chapter in which characters comment on the quality of the "pho" they are eating. As usual, Gibson's book (first published in 2007) is well ahead of the curve. Bouncing from lower Manhattan (with a fantastically realistic chase amid the Union Square farmer's market) to Sunset Boulevard and the Vancouver waterfront, Gibson opens a window on a new kind of outlaw gypsy family, one with Chinese-Russian-Cuban roots and the protection of vodoo gods, martial arts, and iPods.

2009-03-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

For more about how professional news writing (if not conventional newspapers) can survive into the next decade, see this excellent article in The American:

http://american.com/archive/2009/february-2009/preparing-the-obituary

A day without writers, a web without "content"

2009-03-07T09:25:00.000-08:00

As I have mentioned before I am perturbed by the illogic of those who say they don’t read “newspapers” because they get only their news on the “Internet.” The issue is not where we read news but what news we read. To prove it, I urge all network TV and print media to go dark for one day and show us what we would be missing.

Click through on a Google News item, and chances are you are reading news from a news media with salaried reporters, whether NPR, Associated Press, NY Times, Washington Post, or ABC and MSNBC. Even the Wall Street Journal lets you get some content for “free.” We may not pay directly by subscription and we may ignore the advertising, but we certainly “borrow” news someone else has paid for.

Why don’t we pay a cent to news sources, but we are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars a month in phone, cable, and cell fees? Those subscriptions come with absolutely no guarantee of Internet content. Why should Google get all its content for free? Wouldn’t you benefit from insisting that some of that money go to the people who make it worthwhile to use the technology you pay for?

Stop arguing over whether most of us read on paper or on a computer screen. Start asking what news we are willing to pay for. Google pays no one who its users want to “search.” It shares no advertising income with the most popular web sites which attract its customers. We pay millions of dollars a year to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cablevision, Dish Network, ATT, Verizon, Apple, iTunes, Samsung, Blackberry. Wouldn’t we all benefit from insisting that some of that money go to the people who make it worthwhile to use the technology we pay so much for?

The logic of paying for content was proved by Google’s recent settlement with the Author’s Guild, in which Google has agreed to pay royalties to the copyright holders of books that can be searched in their Reader.

We need to have a day when all news websites supported by non-internet business models go off-line. For one day, we would not be able to read free on the Internet news that is paid for by print and broadcast media. Make us go out and buy a newspaper (if we can find one). Make us wait until the “News Hour” on broadcast TV to find out what happened in Congress or on the stock market today.

If all those non-Internet news sources were to disappear, we would notice. People in Denver are already noticing the blank pages on their local internet, headlines The Rocky Mountain News used to provide Imagine how much international news we wouldn’t be able to read if the NY Times and ABC, NBC, and NPR News web sites went down?

Nothing is truer in American than “you get what you pay for.” If we don’t pay for our news on the web, what kind of news will we get? What do we lose by demanding our subscription or advertising fees being shared with the people who write the words we read on the Internet?

Showalter's new literary history of American women writers

2009-03-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

Elaine Showalter has a new book out, A JURY OF HER PEERS: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. It is a comprehensive, chronological overview of American novelists and poets, more documentary than literary criticism, but some of the sections on well-known writers like Alcott, Stowe, and Wharton are particularly excellent.

Unlike Showalter's first -- and revolutionary -- book on British women novelists, A Literature of Their Own, this volume does not fundamentally alter the way you will read every book discussed, but it is a delight for the "lost" writers who are rediscovered and its portraits of women's friendships.

In start contrast to their Victorian and Edwardian sisters across the Atlantic, many American women did manage to earn a living (at least for a while) as writers and to also become mothers. But it was at quite a cost, including the deaths of children or of the mother in childbirth, or a precarious widowhood. Too many ended their lives in poverty and silence. Without Jane Austen's well-connected brothers or Virginia Woolf's 500 pounds a year income, these women lived through the difficult political and economic times and bitter racial unrest of a young nation -- and they did it all without birth control.

Anthropologist Blaffer-Hrdy and the mothers of us all

2009-03-03T05:38:00.000-08:00

I have always read an equal amount of non-fiction and fiction, academic and popular, frontlist and backlist. I find it hard to read a new book without wanting to explore what the author has written before or what others have written on the same subject. To me the ability to range across an entire library is what appeals about e-books, much more than portability alone.

If you read this way, you will want to read anthropologist Sarah Blaffer-Hrdy's forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, as well as her first two. I can't make a better argument than Natalie Angier in today's NY Times article, In a Helpless Baby, the Roots of Our Social Glue (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/science/03angi.html?th&emc=th).

2009-02-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

I am intrigued by the number of people who answer the question "What do you read?" with: "I don't read [newspapers] [magazines] [books]. I get my news on the Internet."

If the question were "what do you read on paper"? that would be an answer.

This is, by the way, apparently, Sarah Pallin's excuse for why she couldn't answer Katie Couric's question about what magazines and newspapers she read. Mail delivery to Alaska is slow; so she has to read stories on her computer.

But the question really has nothing to do with whether you read a paper page or on a screen. The question is What not Where do you read.

You are really being asked: "What sources for news do you trust"?

If you get your news on the Web, do you click through on Google News headlines to articles from the Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, NYTimes, National Review, Atlantic Monthly, ABCNews, NPR?

If you do, then you are reading magazines and newspapers, and you even "read" TV news on their web sites.

And if you read news "free" on the Web, who pays the people who write it?

2009-02-18T07:12:00.001-08:00

I strongly urge people to listen to the podcast of NPR's Connecticut program, "Where We Live" today, which was a discussion of the future of the book in a world of electronic media: http://www.cpbn.org/program/episode/wwl-future-book

2009-02-17T20:06:00.001-08:00

The movie of Virginia Woolf's novel MRS. DALLOWAY is an amazing translation of book to film. British actor Eileen Atkins wrote a screenplay which uses the camera to follow the characters exactly as Woolf used her "stream of consciousness" method to describe one day in London. Probably the only significant difference in the adaptation is that Septimus is clearly shown to have PTSD flashbacks of combat, while in the novel he merely has paranoid delusions that he is “pock-marked with vice.” If you have read MRS. DALLOWAY and never quite understood why Septimus is ill, the movie will make that clear.

The parallels between shell-shocked WWI soldier Septimus Warren Smith and society hostess Clarissa Dalloway are intentionally subtle in both book and movie. There is no universal symbolism behind it all. They are a simple example of synchronicity, a random proximity between people or things that exists only because an outside observer notices the similarities. There is no deep, preordained reason these people meet, as there is the entire backdrop of the history of Ireland, the myth of the Wandering Jew, and the evolution of Catholic liturgy, when Joyce’s Stephen meets Bloom.

MRS. DALLOWAY is simply the story of one day in London when several old friends happen to reunite – and to reconcile -- after long separations. They end up together at a dinner party, where their hostess overhears a self-important doctor complain that he was late because an inconsiderate patient killed himself, and only we readers know the man was Septimus. As readers, we even know why he did, and we credit Clarissa for guessing why Dr. Bradshaw might drive a man to prefer suicide to treatment.

When I taught MRS. DALLOWAY to sophomores, the women would often ask how Clarissa could possibly be happy to have chosen Richard over Peter. They couldn’t imagine not preferring a romantic failure. They rarely noticed Clarissa had been at least as much in love with Sally. There are no meaningful coincidences as in a Dickens novel; Septimus is not revealed to be the son of the woodcutter who accidently killed Clarissa's sister, who was actually their bastard brother. Unlike a 21st-Century fantasy novel, Clarissa wasn't Septimus's lover in a previous life. Richard is not a secret Death Eater. Nor does Peter actually live in an alternate universe where Clarissa married him, and Septimus is the son they never had.

Sometimes the best plot is life as we live it.

2009-02-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

I heard a piece on NPR's "Morning Edition" today about poverty among the Navajo nation and their hopes for using "stimulus" infrastructure money to improve roads, provide clean, in-door water, and construction jobs to reduce the 50% unemployment rate which is sure to rise in this recession.

It made me think of Tony Hillerman, whose mysteries remain for me my most vivid portrait of the landscape and culture of the indigenous Southwest. Like many mystery writers, Hillerman had a devoted following but no bestselling success until many books into his series. When SKINWALKER got a New Yorker review (at the time a rare place to praise genre fiction), I was working for a university press, exclusively on non-fiction, and mysteries had become the fiction I read for pleasure.

I was delighted to discover a contemporary writer whose books were set in the rural West, as opposed to post-industrial inner-cities or evil-sheriff controlled small southern towns. I worked with a woman who knew a lot about Native American cultures, and she gave me an enthusiastic endorsement for the way Hillerman's books describe ancient Navajo and Hopi rituals and every day 20th-Century reality.

I was hooked. When the pollution from uranium mines became headline news, I already knew about its devastating affect on Navajo miners. When I met an artist and filmmaker who made remarkable discoveries about astroarcheology at Chaco Canyon, I knew why the original theories about what destroy had Anazasi civilization were being turned on their heads. I learned the public health lesson -- listen to your elders -- from how the Navajo told doctors that the Hantavirus became epidemic any winter after a bumper crop of acorns. I heard about code talkers well before Hollywood honored them in a movie.

Most of all I came to respect the enormous diversity and continuity of the many Southwestern tribes, the Hopi, Apache, Pueblo, and Dene (as the Navajo call themselves). While Sergeant Jim Chee learned the "Blessing Way," I learned about a culture of herders who survived without warfare and whose poeple understood why one had to keep trying to keep nature and humans "in balance" before "Earth Day."

When Tony Hillerman died in 2008, I was sad there would be no more books, but I know of few writers who have left behind a legacy which documented so well a way of life through such enjoyable storytelling.

I believe his stories will last well into the the 2100s as a history of this part of America during the last few decades of the 1900s. His mysteries will have more to tell us about our past than Agatha Christie does about rural English villages or Dashiell Hammet about corrupt Hollywood police.

2009-02-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

I learned how to make friends and get over enemies from books.

If someone takes advantage of you when you thought you were doing them a kindness, you may just have to chalk that up to "paying rent to your ideals," as Margaret says in E.M. Forester's Howard's End.

It is sometimes "the tender pain of unfulfilled possibilities" which binds friends together, as Anna says in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook.

And sometimes, as Virginia Woolf says in The Waves, "When we sit together close, we make an unsubstantial territory."

How I read to survive.

2009-02-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

I have been addicted to books since I first read "Look, look Dick. See Jane run." I took a book to my first elementary school "slumber party," and my high school yearbook tag was "Have you read?" If you've never asked that question at parties or you wouldn't think to answer it while watching the Super Bowl, you probably won't want to read my blog.

If you already know of something you have read which you'd love to tell me about, let's blog. I'll be talking more my favorite books (listed below) next week, beginning with Virginia Woolf's MRS. DALLOWAY, which also has one of the best movie-versions of a novel I've ever seen. (No, the movie is not THE HOURS, as good as that and the book it is based on are .)