Bookshelf staircase: I want one

From Book Bench.

What Should I Read Next?

I typed that into Google a little while ago, because, well, I was wondering, and found these sites: What Should I Read Next and Which Book. The sliders at Whichbook are fun, and both sites really do work, that is, come up with likely suggestions. Even if the books at Whichbook are often by U.K. writers who are not (yet) as available in the U.S.

And, here is an idea I'd like to see catch on, personal book consultants:

It’s called a Reading Spa and for £55 a person gets an hour of undivided attention from one of their extremely nice and knowledgeable booksellers. You sit and have tea and cake and talk about what you like, what you don’t like; they talk about what’s come out recently, what’s selling well. Based on this, they then go away and come back with a pile of books. £40 of that £55 goes towards these books, plus of course any extra you want to spend.

At the Penguin blog.

John Daido Loori, roshi

1931-2009

"Zen is not Japanese and it's not Chinese.... It didn't come from Asia; it has always been here. It is a way of using your mind and living your life and doing it with other people. Unfortunately nobody can supply a rule book to go by because what it is about can't be spoken of, and that which can be spoken of is not it. So we need to go deep in ourselves to find the foundation of it. Zen is a practice that has to do with liberation, not some kind of easy certainty. The wisdom of that liberation not only affects our lives but all those whom we come in contact with, all that we know, and all that we do."

Photo from Zen Mountain Monastery photo archive. Quote from Shambhala Sun archives.

Do Books Have a (Branded) Future?

Brick and mortar bookstores are much better for (un-directed) browsing than online stores. This is probably mostly a function of bandwidth, i.e. I can see so much more in a bookstore than I can on my 2D screen. This will change as the web and its attendant hardware/software develops over time, but my guess is that a satisfying browsing experience of the order i can get in a great bookstore is many, many years away from practical. On the other hand if you know what you're looking for, online shopping excels at simplifying the process of making the transaction. In fact, in every sense except immediate transfer to the buyer of the object they've purchased, online buying is vastly more efficient. When the bulk of our book purchases are in electronic form, and therefore delivered instantly, the significant advantages left to the bookstore will be the superior browsing experience, the help desk and the cafe.

Ah, the cafe. I have loved browsing in cafe-less bookstores, particularly the formal old-style ones, with books separated by publisher. Tho I've only rarely browsed books because I liked a publisher's other books, it could certainly be engineered to happen more -- see If:book. Penguin, of course, brands their paperbacks using their signature design and people expect a level of quality from them. Gallimard in France also. If branding were design-based, it would give bookstores a reason to shelve books together -- visually arresting displays. Barnes & Noble does this with its classics section and did it for awhile with its miniature classics, and I have spent some time at those displays for the sheer fun of handling the books, and then bought a few because once they are in my hand they are half sold. Making an equivalent, clean, well-lighted space in cyberspace is an interesting challenge.

More.

Margaret Atwood Scares Herself

It's only fair. Oryx and Crake gave me nightmares about blue people. Now, the second book in the series is out (of three projected), Year of the Flood. It's waiting for me at my post office because for some reason they would not leave it at the door. (Who do you complain to when the world is ending? Okay, it's not that bad...yet.)

"What is scary, Ms. Atwood said, is that her futuristic tales — she calls them speculative fiction — showcase scenarios that spring from current realities: the creep of corporations into many aspects of society, environmental decay, high-tech reproduction, the widening cleavage between haves and have-nots."

“We’ve just opened the biggest toy box in the world, which is the genetic code."

At the NY Times. This is the third review I've seen there for Year of the Flood. The page provides links to the earlier ones.

Not sure why this is funny

From "Facts, Errors and the Kindle."

Book publishers mostly rely on their authors to ensure accuracy; dedicated fact-checking departments now rarely exist except at some magazines. The New Yorker’s checkers are justly renowned for their tenacious scepticism, but even they err sometimes. One reader was annoyed to find himself described as dead, and requested a correction in the next issue. Unfortunately, by the time the correction appeared, he really had died, thus compounding the error.

Or making the correction a little more complicated. The article somehow goes on to include a mention of Amazon's deletion of certain books from Kindles earlier this year. "...would anyone object if electronic copies were replaced, by remote control, with corrected versions?" As if stealing something that you have paid for is the same as correcting it. I haz grone fonde of dose mizpellings.

What NYC reads

Thirty-five people reading Infinite Jest? 24 reading Anna Karenina? Where is this happening? On the NYC subway. That's unexpected, although My Life in France, not so. And there is the group of campers who follow the rule that whoever finds a seat must read. Good rule, I think. I remember hoping to find a seat so I could read more easily. I also remember spotting other people's books and being inspired to read them, and other people jotting down the titles of mine.

What the "human panini" are reading.

The carbon footprint of...books?

Amazon's Kindle claims that a single Kindle displaces the purchase of 22.5 books each year for an estimated carbon savings of 168 kg of CO2. If the full storage capacity of the Kindle is used, the device prevents the equivalent of almost 11,185 kg of CO2 from being released.

article

Also, "shipped books are still twice as carbon efficient as books bought in the mall or the local bookstore."

I think books should be given a CO2 pass.

Impact of Low Impact

Colin Beavan chronicles his year of no electricity, no toilet paper and a ninth-floor walkup, in "No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $25). New Yorker review.

Colbert raves: “like ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ only completely implausible.”

Not bad for a man "whose environmental activism began over lunch with his agent."

There might be a category for these experiments -- stunt publishing? Julie Powell's interest in Julia Child began simultaneously with the thought that it might make a commercially viable book if she blogged about trying all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We at least got a good movie out of that. And Julia got a bestseller, finally.

Somehow the movie concept of a year with a lot of stairs and no Kleenex doesn't sound as interesting.

Grounds for revolution

No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users, from the Wall Street Journal.

Laptop users have no outlet.

Immortal Words

But still subject to change? I have to agree with A.E. Hotchner here, that Hemingway's grandson had no right to rewrite his masterpiece, A Moveable Feast. I'd ask, What is Scribner's thinking, but it's obvious what they're thinking: $$$

One good thing about the controversy. It got me to pick up my old copy of A Moveable Feast, wedged as it was between Salinger's Nine Stories and Morrison's Sula, all in pocket size. (I love good, pocket-sized paperbacks.) I hope it has that effect on other readers, but I also can't help hoping readers will stick with the original, as the author wanted it. Hotchner puts the lie to all justifications made by the grandson.

Missing anything?

Amazon has the ability to delete from your Kindle books that you have purchased.

Consider the legal difference between purchasing a physical book and buying one for your Kindle. When you walk into your local Barnes & Noble to pick up a paperback of Animal Farm, the store doesn't force you to sign a contract limiting your rights. If the Barnes & Noble later realizes that it accidentally sold you a bootlegged copy, it can't compel you to give up the book—after all, it's your property. The rules are completely different online. When you buy a Kindle a book, you're implicitly agreeing to Amazon's Kindle terms of service. The contract gives the company "the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service at any time, and Amazon will not be liable to you should it exercise such right." In Amazon's view, the books you buy aren't your property—they're part of a "service," and Amazon maintains complete control of that service at all times. Amazon has similar terms covering downloadable movies and TV shows, as does Apple for stuff you buy from iTunes.

The power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely is a power no one should have. Here's one way around this: Don't buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it.

article

Ironically, George Orwell's 1984 was one of the books deleted.

I find this scary. It's not so far-fetched, either, or something that might happen in some dark version of the future. Imagine going to China with your Kindle and the government insists Amazon delete all copies of prohibited books on all Kindles in China. Zap.

What weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases?

George Orwell essay, How the Poor Die.

And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots.

That could seem contradictory -- Orwell saying in this essay that it is better to die a violent death than a natural one of suffering -- it doesn't ameliorate war's cruelty that it allows people to "die in their boots."

Juvenile Delinquents of the Sea

Pulling at masks, yanking hoses and lights. Carnivorous calamari.

This was too good to pass up, a bunch of So. Cal soft-shell thugs.