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.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
It's the software, the page on the screen that matters
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
After the world as we know it ends in new ficiton
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.
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.
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