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.

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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.

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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.

Trying to lift a CRT from one desk to another

Here is sci fi writer John Scalzi on the dinosaurish habit of not accepting email submissions. He's talking about the big three sci fi magazines.

In our office, it’s very inconvenient to pass around an electronic submission from one reader to another. Why? Because you’re trying to lift a CRT from one desk to another? Put the submissions you want others to see into an online collaboration space, like, oh, Google Docs, which is free and dead simple to use. Heck, several people can look at the same submission at the same time that way, which is actually easier than passing around a paper version.

Y'know, there are so many literary magazines accepting e-subs now, maybe what we need is an outreach.

Zen Meditation Alleviates Pain

of creativity...? Apparently it alleviates other kinds of pain, so why not?

"We know that people who consistently meditate have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behavior," said Eileen Luders, lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. Article here.

And, meditation helps you return to what you were doing after you were distracted, according to another article on the Science Daily site.

Now back to whatever I was doing when I was distracted by the first sunny, warm weather of the summer.

Why Do They Think Teens Read?

This article from Nashua, NH, about four stories being pulled from the high school curriculum because cocaine use, cannibalism, homosexuality and abortion are not "age-appropriate" subjects for teens. Imagine that. Are these kids allowed to watch the news?

Recently, I was going through some old poetry books, cleaning out my shelf, and I came across an anthology with Anne Sexton's For My Lover Returning to His Wife. I mean, how could poetry not be thrilling for a teenager? All that taboo stuff! I love poetry to this day!

Books -- poetry, novels, stories -- were how I found out about life, and how to think about morals and ethics. Because my parents were tolerant, I was able to read whatever I wanted, including, in college, I think, Hills Like White Elephants, the famous Hemingway story in which abortion, the subject, is never mentioned.