24 December 2009

Riding along in my automobile...

It appears that both the year and the decade are coming to a close. This comes as something of a surprise to those of us who just assumed our calendars would never run out of pages.

The short days and longish nights bring on a kind of Scandinavian melancholy, even here in optimistic California.

You get to a certain age and you start losing things. Parents depart, then some of your friends begin to go, and damn it, where are those keys and why don’t they make floppy disk drives any more and will the sun return to the sky if we burn these sacred logs in our sacred air-tight fireplace?

This afternoon, speeding along in our automobile, my baby beside me at the wheel, we watched two different individuals walking the Coast highway on the day before Christmas, carrying their worldly possessions in a sack.

If that makes you slow down and think, you might also ponder the local distance between the well-fed and barely fed. In Mendocino County, approximately 22 per cent of children live in families whose income is below the federal poverty threshold. At the time of the most recent survey the poverty line for a five-person family with three children under 18 was $19,992 a year. Could you raise three children on $1,666 a month, plus buy shoes, toys and trips to the dentist?

The percentage of children living in poverty in Lake and Humboldt counties is a bit higher, 23 per cent; the state average is a bit lower, 19.5 per cent. In other words, one child in five in California lives in a state of statistical poverty, and it’s not getting better soon.

These numbers change depending on which survey you study, but they don’t change much.

A friend in England writes, “This is just to wish you a happy Christmas and New Year. Here in much of the UK it looks as if we might actually get the (in)famous `white Christmas'. We have about five inches of the stuff, frozen hard owing to the sub-zero temperatures. It looks nice enough, but isn't that nice when you have to go outside. Can't say I like the cold. Not my sort of weather at all, in fact.

On the subject of the Kindle and other electronic readers, discussed here the past two weeks he says, “...I don't have the Sony version, and I don't have the other version, either. Not out of conservatism, so much as from mortal fear of the face my wife would pull if I were to buy one! Anyway, would I be able to get the books on it that I want to read, should read? And can I grouse and snort in the margins? If not, pah! No good.”

The night before Christmas it was fairly silent in our house, except for the pounding diesel of a late-arriving UPS truck.

Among the packages was a copy of David Ledbetter’s definitive and highly readable “Unaccompanied Bach; Performing the Solo Works.” This book will be of interest to at least a dozen people, thus its publication by Yale University Press rather than some larger publisher. I am exaggerating, but only a smidge. No doubt thousands of performing artists and their counterparts in conservatories and universities will avidly study this wonderful work of research and synthesis.

Take the famous Six Suites for Solo Cello written by Johann Sebastian Bach in the mid 18th century. These compelling works have been a lifelong study for me, as they have been for generations of cellists. Ledbetter puts them into context, historically, and as part of a fast-changing musical tradition that encompassed the Italian, French and German baroque styles.

He writes, “Nowadays, Bach’s cello Suites are regarded as the foundation repertory of the instrument. Then, they were at the cutting edge of developments, forward-looking and innovative in technique, style, and scope.”

Ledbetter’s holiday gift to musicians is to consider together all of Bach’s compositions for unaccompanied instruments. “Bach was a connoisseur among connoisseurs of every nuance of style and genre... a performer emoting at large over the music in disregard of the composer’s mind can only seem false to those who at least have an inkling of it... instrumentalists generally are too narrowly fixed on the repertory of their own instrument and need to broaden their horizons.”

We watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” on TV Christmas eve, and it made us cry, as it always does. Maybe there is hope, as there was in 1946.

All the best to you and yours, and may the world be a better place because you are in it.


NOTES:

“Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works” by David Ledbetter. Yale University Press hard cover $45. ISBN 9780300141511. Thanks to Yale sales representative Patricia Nelson for providing my copy.

A Mendocino county profile

And another

17 December 2009

Electronic Books, Thoughts About, Part Two

Last week we were talking about the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony Reader. We could have added the Kobo, the iPhone, the BlackBerry, the fabled Apple Tablet, and more... All of these small machines will let you read a book not on paper, but in happy little electrons appearing on a screen that resembles the pages in a book.

There will be more developments soon: Color, easier navigation, more books to read, sharper text, perhaps useful illustrations. Students will find some text books not only available on e-readers, but ONLY available on e-readers.

Clearly, something is changing in our comfortable, comfortably old-fashioned, world of books. There always will be physical books to read in the usual way – on lap, in bathtub, commuting to work, sitting in the library, standing on your head at the beach. Millions of used books aren’t going anywhere. Every newly published book, in whatever format you find it, floats on an immense sea of books previously published and forever available to you.

A number of listeners to and readers of this program wrote to express their thoughts about this new landscape, and I read some of them last week. Here are a few more:

John Coate, manager of KZYX&Z commented: “Tony, there are a few concerns about the Kindle screen and it should be pointed out that it is an entirely different technology than you find in a laptop which makes it a far more pleasing experience than you can get from an lcd screen. When I was at the Chronicle we were sponsors of the MIT Media Lab when they developed that basic technology - I was there for the meeting where Jeff Bezos of Amazon attended and saw what it could do.”

From Donna Bettencourt in Grand Junction, Colorado: “From a library perspective, it's entirely different in that we pay the licensing fee from two vendors... and must take selections the vendors offer in their packages... The patron can download selections for free from a computer station in the library... if a patron already has downloaded ‘The Lost Symbol,’ (for example) then no one else can ‘borrow’ it until that person's time has expired... When you download these items, you have a time limit, just like a check-out period on a real book. Too bad if you haven't finished listening to something humongous like ‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle’ or ‘Moby Dick.’

“I actually got a request from a patron who obviously doesn't understand the concept of a Kindle. She wanted us to purchase content for her... Evidently she had run into the problem (of)... Amazon sucking you in with low prices but hidden costs. This patron was hoping to get her Kindle content through the library for free. Hmm. Maybe that's next.”

From Paul Takushi, bookseller at UC Davis: (You can) report me to the Kindle police. I don't have one. I get so many... comps that I never have to buy books anyway... I don't commute far or travel very much for extended vacations so this is not an issue... I don’t crack open the spine and smell the binding. I don't go ape over first editions... I like the feel of books, but sometimes hardbacks are a pain in the neck, literally, when I'm not reading at a table or desk. Would I get one if I wasn't in the biz? ... I think (not) ... because I don't live the Kindle lifestyle.”

The Kindle lifestyle, whatever that is. The Wall Street Journal cautioned its readers “Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment.”

A sampling of recent international stories: “In praise of the e-book,” “Seven reasons why e-book readers make lousy gifts this year,” “Should e-books be copy protected?” “Growing e-book industry discusses challenges at MediaBistro event,” “U.S. e-book content revenue will top $500 million next year” and so forth.

We will continue to follow this interesting phenomenon in the new year. Meanwhile, the one-person writing staff here at Words on Books wants to wish you and yours a most happy holiday season. And for those of you who still believe in Santa Claus, a hearty Ho Ho Ho.

NOTES:

An interesting note from Andrea Sharp about the Kindle as used on her iphone, too long to use on air, but not too long to reprint. If it reads a bit broken up, it’s not her prose, but the fact she was answering a string of questions I had posed:

I am using the Kindle reader for the iphone.  I think I have been using it for about a year.  I absolutely love it. The way I use it is to always have one book I am reading on it. Right now it is the John Irving book, ‘Last Night in Twisted River.’ I also read other books, in the normal way, at the same time. I usually am reading at least two books at the same time. Prior to starting to use the Kindle on the iphone, I would mostly get my books from the library, borrow some from friends and only occasionally buy new ones. Once I started with the iphone, I decided that I would indulge in always having a book on it that I am reading.

I always have a book to read, since I always have my phone with me. I can take it out anywhere, anytime.   I can read in any light since the pages are back lit. I can read a book in a hotel room in bed with my husband sleeping next to me and it won't disturb him with either a light or the noise of turning pages. I find it very comfortable to hold and actually easier to read on then books. Especially hard backs. I can buy new release books for a discounted price that normally I would be waiting for at the library or having to get another way.

I always love to share my books or pass them on, and you can't do that (at least yet) with this medium. I think that might be the biggest drawback. I find it very easy to read on my iphone, and not as easy to read articles on my computer. You can sit anywhere, or lie down, when you are reading on the iphone. Harder to be comfortable reading on your computer.

I don't think I would buy a separate reader, but I am so happy reading on the iphone that it seems irrelevant to have a whole separate device. (It is) very easy to download and use. Books take just seconds to download onto the iphone. What a great feeling to know that you can literally have almost any book within moments. I am very happy with the small iphone screen. Very easy to flick through the pages. I like the short lines.

I am amazed at how skeptical people are about this medium. I love books and I love this way of reading. I don't know that I would give up reading "real" books if I could afford to, but I really enjoy the option of having this available to me.

Andrea

 .... and more ...

Should e-books be copy protected?

Growing e-book industry discusses challenges at MediaBistro event

U.S. e-book content revenue will top $500 million next year

10 December 2009

Electronic Books, Thoughts About, Part One

Many people are pondering the new devices called e-readers, some for gifts, some to own and use themselves. They cost a couple of hundred dollars each, plus the cost of electronic books to read on them.

Some readers sense a serious threat to paper-and-ink. Others believe electronic book reading devices are not very important; simply one more format in a long line of formats, from mud to papyrus, vellum to paper, now electrons encased in plastic.

In other words, The book is dead – long live the book... Again!

My brother bought an Amazon Kindle for his wife’s birthday last month. “I love it, I absolutely love it,” she told me over the Thanksgiving table. Aha, I thought, how do other readers feel about these things? I sent out a set of questions and received back a veritable torrent of responses.

Questions and responses were sent and read electronically. Already we read and write in electrons and hardly notice it anymore.

One of the most informed responses came from Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. She wrote, “As for the Kindle, I have only one problem with it: amazon.com. Amazon is the Wal-Mart of the internet -- and I mean that in the worst possible sense. The relentless downward pressure on prices (for books, for woks, for everything) has brought a slew of hidden costs to the public. Amazon is selling e-books at well below cost in order to capture the audience, and once you buy a Kindle you are well and truly captured, since you can't get your content anywhere else. It costs between $3 and $4 to print and ship a hardcover book, and that should be the price difference. If publishers allow Amazon to establish the market for e-books at $9.99, they simply won't be able to afford to publish. Who wins?”

Two major publishers did announce this week they plan to withhold electronic versions of new books for four months after publication in hard cover. This is a first attempt to separate in customer’s minds the printed book from its electronic version.

Christy continued, “I expect that some of our customers will want to read e-books some of the time, and I'd like to be able to meet that need while keeping a gorgeous selection of paper books in the store. So as a bookseller, I don't have a problem with e-readers. The Sony Reader is a nice gadget ... and I may use mine some day. I can visualize the e-book as a helpful addition to the already-successful formats offered on paper: hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, e-book. The digital version should be priced almost like a hardcover upon release, then be reduced to the trade paper cost, then the mass market. This system would keep the markets for paper books and e-books healthy.”

Deb Kvaka wrote, “Just like with newspapers, there is something gratifying about holding the printed paper in my hands to read. I do not have Kindle, nor have I ever tried it; I really don't even want to. I do use a computer, an internet radio, and other new-fangled contraptions. ...Browsing in the bookmobile or a small bookstore is one of the true pleasures in life. Carrying an engaging book with me to read in those spare moments, or cuddling up in front of the woodstove with a cup of tea and a good book......ahhhh.”

Tess Albin Smith: “I can't fathom reading a book on the computer, or watching TV on the computer either, for that matter. I use the computer
for too many other things... What I do with current technology is rent (audio books) free from the online county library, download them to my mp3 player, and play them for my walks and long drives. It gets me out of the house for lots of exercise, since I can't wait for the next installment. I still read 'real' books too once in awhile.”

Susan Lowery: “I have a Kindle, and admit to being somewhat ambivalent about it... It's nice to be able to change the type size when it feels too small – or large, for that matter. Not so great on illustrations, but then, one doesn't think of Kindle for art books or coffee table books. I use the Kindle for travel. It's far more portable than a stack of books, and I like to travel as light as I can. The built-in dictionary is really nice, as is the ability to make notes, highlight, etc. I love the battery life, weight, size, all that stuff.”

Jill Hannum: “I haven't used Kindle, or even seen it. If it's like the computer screen, it's toast in my pantheon (is that mixing a metaphor?). Paper, print -- good. Glare, electronics -- pretty hard to endure for more than an hour... Good books are everywhere -- in friends' (homes), at the library, flea market, second hand store. I've paid virtually nothing for that two-foot stack of really good reads. Remind me why I'd spend good money to buy a new device to access good words... Does Kindle automatically power off if you fall asleep on the couch while reading?”

(MUSIC) There is much more to say about the future of books, electronic or otherwise, yet no more time. We’ll continue this discussion next week. In the meantime, if you have an opinion, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I also enjoy reading your comments there.

NOTES:

USA Today has a good recent article on the e-reader question... And if you search you’ll find many, many more articles from numerous sources.



How do you like your e-reader?

Questions for a new Kindle user...

1.      Are you happy with the thing?
2.      How are you using it in real life and what are you reading now?
3.      Best thing(s) about it?
4.      Aspect(s) you don't like?
5.      Are you concerned about going obsolete?
6.      Some report a drawback not being able to share Kindle books with
friends. What do you think?
7.      Have you tried reading a book on a computer? How was the experience
compared to an e-reader?
8.      How & why did you pick Kindle over other e-readers? Have you been
able to compare with other e-readers?
9.      Are you comfortable with the tech features and how to use them?
11.     Is the screen too small? Big? Just right? Howabout the font(s)?
Happy with black and white?
14.     Anything else you'd want me to know?

03 December 2009

It all started with the first book my mother suggested: One look at “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and I was hooked.

Were these goats all gruff, or did they each HAVE a gruff? Why were all three named Billy? What’s a gruff? Mom read the book to me, over and over and over again, she once sadly said, because I kept asking and I couldn’t read it myself. And over again.

In first grade I was frustrated when Miss Cooney handed out copies of “Dick & Jane.” By then I was way beyond Look! Look! See! See! with its exclamation points and capitalized words. I had mastered the Billy goats. I was reading “The Ballad of Stewey Stinker” and I chafed having to wait for my classmates to tweeze out what S-P-O-T spelled.

By fifth grade, girls had become impossibly smart, with their straight A report cards and all, and the boys had gotten correspondingly dumber, with our kick ball and our running and our general moping around. They read Nancy Drew. We traded Uncle Scrooge for two Little Lulus and thought we were in heaven.

One boring summer I must have stumbled into the public library because I discovered the adventure books of Howard Pease. His now-forgotten heroes were all named Todd and worked second mate on tramp steamers. Then came the adventures of Dr Doolittle, a total gas.

Dr Doolittle of course set me up for “Freddy the Pig” which in turn prepared me for the assigned books of private high school English, such as “Fortitude” by Horace Walpole. “Fortitude” was so old-fashioned we laughed at it, and at Madam Ovary, I mean “Madame Bovary.” We struggled with Somerset Maugham, skipped through Voltaire’s “Candide,” read the non-technical chapters of “Moby Dick” and finally grew old enough for the smutty sections of “The Catcher in the Rye.”

Years went by and then I bought a bookstore in Mendocino and I was soon asked for book recommendations but of course I never had time to read, which was OK because I learned to say, “Well, I haven’t read that one yet, but a lot of people have said they liked it” which was often true.

As recipient of a pre-Prop 13, shallow-as-a-rain-puddle liberal arts education, I had learned many useless bits of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, perfect for my role as bookseller. In any given half-hour I might discuss Diderot and Voltaire, compare Robert Heinlein to Frank Herbert, and recommend “Mushrooms Demystified” over the Audubon Guide. No one ever did ask my opinion on Billy goats, or “Fortitude,” and I doubt I ever sold a book by Somerset Maugham.

Now I’m on the far side of the bookselling adventure, in a good place where the alarm clock rarely rings. Friends once again feel free to suggest books. Sometimes I pay cash for a book someone mentioned, and sometimes that book turns up in review here.

The other lunchtime I was finishing up a Thai burrito when the café owner, Meredith Smith, paused for a chat. She had a book to recommend.

She was excited about Extremely Something & Incredibly Something Else by Jonathan Safran Foer, how great it was, how I’d like it even if I don’t read much fiction. I walked across town trying to remember the title: Extremely Something And Very Close, Very Loud and Extremely Close, Very (something) and Incredible (something else)...

A friend/employee at the bookstore told me I wanted “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by the author of “Everything Is Illuminated” and we have one copy in the fiction section, and by the way, Meredith over at the café  recommends this book to everyone.

That’s OK. I’m enjoying the book, and you’ll read about it here one day. And I could use some more suggestions.

NOTES:           

“The Three Billy Goats Gruff” is out of print currently in the Golden Books edition I remember. You can find it used for very little, however. It was originally a Norwegian fairy tale, who knew. Wikipedia: “De tre bukkene Bruse” is a famous Norwegian fairy tale in which three goats cross a bridge, under which is a fearsome troll who wants to eat them. The fairy tale was collected by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr. It has an ‘eat-me-when-I'm-fatter’ plot (Aarne-Thompson type 122E).”

“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer. Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin paperback $13.95. ISBN 0618711651.