We lose money on every sale but we make it up on volume

I was walking across the town of Mendocino recently. Sandwiched between two paperbacks I had purchased at my local independent bookstore was a fresh copy of the San Francisco Chronicle.

It occurred to me, and not for the first time, that I was lugging around dinosaurs. Books printed on paper? See: Kindle and Ebooks. The Chron? Losing a million dollars a month, and still cutting back, so far back that soon there may be no newspaper at all.

Headline: “Chronicle faces cuts in staff, expenses.”

I worked for the Chron once, when I was still in high school, back in the previous century. I played Copy Boy. I never did see a Copy Girl. Copy Boys responded to shouts of “Boy!” from reporters out of paper and carbons (Remember carbons? Remember paper?) or copy editors (Remember copy editors?) who needed galleys taken somewhere, or columnists who wanted a fresh cup of coffee.

Late at night we gathered up icky sticky paste pots and cleaned them and refilled them in the bathroom. Then we cleaned the bathroom. We were the lowest of the low on the city room floor. But we could see everyone, hear everything, and best of all we were completely invisible.

We Copy Boys had a table all to ourselves. Stationed just behind us was Entertainment Editor Judy Stone, sister or daughter, I don’t remember, of the famous lefty writer “Izzy” I. F. Stone.

We could feel the city down there on 5th and Mission, across from the old Mint, at the edge of skid row and the Tenderloin. Sam Spade had just left the building, and you could smell his cologne in the elevator. Upstairs were the linotype machines, dinosaurs even then. Downstairs was a huge printing plant, and you could smell that, too. There were no computers, no cell phones, none of that.

In those days the De Young family owned the Chron, and Hearst ran The Examiner over on 3rd and Market, an afternoon rag, not a worthy competitor. As each edition of the EX hit the streets copies were delivered to Chronicle editors who scrutinized it for leads.

Ink, paper, sweat, a lot of running around, and a lot of energy. To a high school kid it felt like heaven in the real world. The memories still are sweet.

These days the already greatly-reduced Chronicle spends ten dollars on each copy of the Sunday paper and sells it for four. The Chron runs a great free web site but online it’s darned hard to figure out how to subscribe to the paper. Might as well read it for free online. Does anyone else remember the days when newsboys stood on corners selling papers to passing commuters or pedestrians? Get-chur pay-per...!!!

By the way, John Coate, the current General Manager of KZYX&Z had a lot to do with inventing the Chron’s online presence. And he did a great job.

The most important issue for newspapers is how to pay for reporters and the infrastructure that supports them. Subscriptions don’t cover it, class ads don’t cover it, and the web provides only a trickle of income.

I still love reading the paper even though I also read it online. Herb Caen is long gone, but now I read everything Jon Carroll writes, and Sports, and the editorials, and the geeky page, and other stuff, too.

I still get a big kick from headlines such as “Lincecum’s goal: doing even better this season” or “Toxics lurk beneath bay.” I think of Dashiell Hammett when I come across a headline like this: “Decomposed body found in deserted home.” “Wind farm blows into the delta” must have made some editor smile.

I have a message for Hearst, now owner of the Chron: Don’t give up. Don’t let it go. Too many memories, too many laughs, too many good things to just go away. Fix it. That’s right. Just fix it.

Now I’m going to pour a second cup of coffee and read the obituaries. Good times.

NOTES:

I don’t know Bill Roddy, but his America Hurrah web site is full of memories and photos. For one thing, he remembers being a Copy Boy on the 1941 Examiner.

Another Copy Boy memory, from an interview with journalist Tom Tugend:

"After I was discharged (from service in the Korean War), I got a job as a copy boy on the San Francisco Chronicle. That was one of the few ways to get in [to journalism]. If you made it, they made you a reporter. I was a copy boy for nine months. Herb Caen was there. Pierre Salinger. Other copy boys included a former philosophy professor and a socialite lawyer from New York. All odd balls. The most intelligent group of people I've known putting carbon sheets between sheets of paper and getting coffee for the reporters.

The entire interview

Like Not Totally Depressing

Book news from all over, not all of it totally depressing:

If you ran a prison library in, say, Erlestoke near Devizes, Wiltshire, England. If you ran that library, would you include books in there on how to escape from prison? Inmates at Her Majesty's Prison can read "Escape" by David McMillan, which describes how the author once broke out of Thailand's so-called 'Bangkok Hilton' prison.

Or they can check out a book about great escapes during World War II. And it's not just escapes. There are plenty of books on famous criminals, including "Pretty Boy" about an armed robber who among other things assaulted prison guards while jailed.

It's the Conservatives in England who have compiled this list of books to keep out of the hands of prisoners, and boy, are the New Labours in power going to get in trouble over this one.

Really, why allow prisoners to have books at all? They just hide blades in them, and learn about Parisian existentialism. It encourages them to think. That can't be good, can it? Luckily, inmates watch a lot of TV, where jail breaks are unknown and all crime is punished.

Same goes for school children and members of Congress. If they read, they won't get their homework done or show up to vote. Better off not reading at all.

In other news, online every-thing seller Amazon is about to release version two of its electronic book reader machine, the Kindle. You didn't know there was a version one? It's the coming thing: books on screens. You can take the Kindle camping, traveling, read it on the subway, at lunch, pretty much anywhere but in the shower and they're working on that. If you have fast Internet access, and who doesn't these days, you also can read newspapers and magazines on your Kindle.

Or you can take a book to all those places, no batteries are required. The Kindle sells for $359, order now. You can hold it in one hand! It's in black and white! One nice thing: It can read the text out loud to you in your choice of male or female voices.

This prediction from a bookselling friend of mine: "Within seven years something big is going to happen on the tech front of Ereaders making them wildly popular and chic. Ebooks will be easy to access and easy to purchase. The (book) chains will dump all of their storefronts and shift completely and exclusively to the Web. The number of brick-n-mortar bookstores will go down to 1/4 or 1/5 of the number of stores that exist today. Either that or the independent stores will no longer resemble bookstores. They'll be boutiques and books will comprise about 1/3 to ½ of the merchandise."

That's if publishers and booksellers survive that long. Retail sales at bookstores in December came in at one thousand fifty-one million dollars. That's huge! People are still buying books! However, that grand sales total reflects almost a five per cent drop in sales from two years ago.

For the year, yearly bookstore sales were down only one half of one percent from two years ago. That is actually very good news in light of recent economic and electronic developments.

The news from publishers is grim: HarperCollins has killed off the Collins part of the company and laid off a lot of people. Canadian booksellers have canceled, probably forever, their annual convention. Oxford University Press laid off 60 people and they all work for Cambridge University Press now, just kidding.

Down the highway in Sebastopol, tech books publisher O'Reilly laid off 30 workers. There's a pay freeze at Penguin, but that's OK, because they're penguins.

And while all this was going on, an early edition of Grimms' Fairy Tales sold for $11,000, and a first edition, probably signed, of "Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban" went for a cool $12,874.

I wonder how much my copy is worth?

NOTES:

Prison chiefs criticized for choice of books

"Escape: The True Story Of The Only Westerner Ever To Break Out Of Thailand's Bangkok Hilton" by David McMillan is available used and out of print in the range of approximately $8 to $67 from various international booksellers. Go to Addall books and search.

"Pretty Boy" by Roy Shaw. John Blake Publisher paperback $14.99. ISBN1857825519. Published in the UK and may not be easy to find in the USA. From the publisher: Roy Shaw is the ultimate hardman. He has cult status and commands a respect that few, even in the violent world he moves in, can equal. To him, violence is simply an accepted part of his profession. He doesn't exaggerate it, he can't excuse it and he refuses to apologize for it. His name may mean nothing to you--he's no actor, no showman, no wannabe celebrity. He does, however, live by a merciless code, and though he may not have cloven hooves and a tail, if he goes after someone, all hell comes with him.

Don't forget to tip...

Tipping, or more precisely, how much to tip, is a source of constant controversy among those Americans who actually can afford to eat in a restaurant once in a while.

When the check arrives I take a look at the total and figure out ten percent, double it, and if that feels too small, throw in another dollar or two. Or I don't. I am definitely inconsistent when it comes to tipping. I used to bartend, and I still remember how bad it felt to be shorted on a tip.

Other people will inspect the receipt, line by line. Subtract the sales tax and invoke The Eisenhower Rule: It was 10 per cent then and it's ten per cent now.

Taken all together, tips even out. Some diners over-tip, some under. Some tip out of guilt, others to show off. A few people hang on to cash like it was their own blood. All together, an average night in an average restaurant.

Wait staff has their opinions, too, and you'll certainly hear them in "Waiter Rant." Waiter Rant is the name of a new book by The Waiter. That's his name. He's anonymous because he's still working.

The rest of the title is "Thanks for the Tip – Confessions of a Cynical Waiter" and it's a great read, enlightening for anyone eating out and just as useful, probably, for someone considering entering the food trade.

Not long ago both of us here at home read another book on the trade, "Service Included: Four Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter" by Phoebe Damrosch. We learned a lot about tipping and about everything else it takes to run, or simply to eat in, a good restaurant. We started telling Damrosch stories to our friends.

Ms. Damrosch worked at Per Se in New York, sister restaurant to Napa Valley's French Laundry. Per Se is a fancy place, as high-level as they come. The waiters take dance lessons to learn how to stand gracefully, attend seminars on sea salts and virgin oils, learn to juggle complicated sets of plates and silver, and best of all, study the names of all features in Central Park visible from the restaurant's tables. In case a customer asks, and they never do.

The Waiter is a different kind of cat. Before he worked as a waiter he had a job restraining rich mental patients in a clinic for drug abusers. This prepared him for restaurant work.

At Amici's in New York, before his first shift, the headwaiter announced two waiters had suddenly quit.

"You mean there are only four of us taking care of two hundred people?" The Waiter asked.

"This place is a meat grinder, kid. You're meat. Get used to it."

He did, and The Waiter continues to work, anonymously, and collect stories.

The Waiter rants. Phoebe Damrosch explains. The closest she comes to a rant is naming two customers Mr and Mrs Bichalot. "Service Included" is a revelation. It takes way more moxie than I could muster to successfully set up a new multi-starred restaurant in the big city. The whole thing is rather amazing.

Some passages cover the same territory as Elizabeth Gilbert in her best-selling memoir, "Eat, Pray, Love." Damrosch's slow-developing love affair with a fellow worker is the weakest part of an otherwise enthralling book, although certainly the most heart-felt. The best parts are when she's working a busy weekend at the restaurant. Caviar is flying off the frozen mother-of-pearl spoons, the roasted turbot cheek is plating, and half of Table Four just went outside to check their Blackberrys.

Both of these writers have a lot to say about people who take advantage of all that service and skill but don't know how to act or how to tip. These two books provide a major service to diners: After all, getting along well with the people who feed us is a life-enhancing skill.

Both books are unstoppable entertainments. You may never willfully ignore, abuse, or undertip a waiter again. Never. Unless they deserve it. Or you're Mrs Bichalot, or the guy who... well, you'll have to read the books.

NOTES:

Oh, how I wish I had an hour-long show on this subject. There's so much more meat in these books than I can indicate here. Restaurants are to good stories as frogs are to ponds. They just naturally go together.

"Waiter Rant" by The Waiter. Ecco/HarperCollins hardcover $24.95. ISBN 9780061256684.

"Service Included" by Phoebe Damrosch. HarperCollins paperback $13.95. ISBN 9780061228155.

Eat, Pray, Love

Have you read "Waiting" by Debra Ginsberg, or "Turning the Tables" by Steven A. Shaw? More here

And now a word from another abused segment of the working class, the airline stewards.

A TIP (from "Service Included"): If you want to change the majority of the components in a dish, you might consider choosing something else.

ANOTHER TIP (from "Waiter Rant"): If you can't afford to leave a tip, you can't afford to eat in the restaurant. Stay home.

Mashing the Banana

Michelle Obama's brother is writing a book. Laura Bush is writing a book. The guy renting a cottage in Mendocino has published the story of his life. Raise your hand if you have a book in you, maybe two.

Last fall, three employees of my former bookstore celebrated a booksigning together. Each of them has published a book. It's catching, being around books, reading them, reshelving them, tripping over them.

Before you got teeth your mother fed you mashed bananas. At some point you tried to mash your own banana. You made a mess the first time, but that didn't stop you. You wrote your book. You mashed the banana.

Getting published is getting easier. When you've finally got the banana thing down you can find places on the Internet to convert your words into a book, for a fair price.

The more difficult task is to find someone not in your immediate family or immediate circle of friends to read your book. Even harder, find someone to pay money for your book. It helps if your book turns out to be very good, but of course books that are not very good get published all the time.

Apparently, I am the official book reviewer for this radio station. Books drift in from publishers as big as Random House, as small as Lost Coast Press in Fort Bragg, and from tiny ones, too: Sawmill Ballroom Publishing in Eugene, Oregon, for example.

Sawmill Ballroom is owned, managed, chief executized, and otherwise run by Joseph Emil Blum and his wife, Nancy. They so far have published two books, both by Joseph Emil Blum: "Bedtime Stories," a novel; and "The Sawmill Ballroom Lavender Farm Guide to Growing Lavender."

The name Sawmill Ballroom reminds me of The Band, and bluegrass, and thousand-plant lavender farms in the Willamette Valley.

Mr Blum wrote me a note the other day. He wanted me to know that my former bookstore in Mendocino provided "the memory for the setting on page 53 of the book."

That's odd, because as far as I can remember, we never showed movies there, and the bookstore doesn't smell like anchovies. But sure enough, just as in the novel, "each time the... doors open, a gust of cold ocean air carries the plaintive barking of scores of sea lions hauled out on the rocks below... the wooden plank sign is weather worn from years of salt laden Pacific air..." and "inside... (the store) is redolent with the fading smell of anchovy as if the stolid rustic beams, impregnated with decades of the once-numerous fish, are breathing."

Blum tells the story of how he came to mash his own banana: "After a period of trying to secure an agent, it became apparent that publishing the book on my own was going to be the best option. Agents were either polite or not, but of the 150 contacted only two actually read the book... What seemed like a problem, was, in the end, a relief because it allowed me to make the book exactly as originally envisioned.

"Writing a book is a deeply personal process. You spend a lot of time alone and there are great moments of satisfaction and challenge. One of the great ironies of that process is that by the time the book is released you're probably on to something else.

"The story that lived in your head for years is now displaced by something else just when the people you wrote the book for are holding it in their hand for the first time."

NOTES:

"The Sawmill Ballroom Lavender Farm Guide to Growing Lavender, Second Edition: Practical Guidelines for the Successful Cultivation, Propagation, and Utilization of Lavender" by Joseph Emil Blum. Sawmill Ballroom Publishing paperback $20. ISBN 097998161.

"Bedtime Stories, A Novel of Cinematic Wanderlust" by Joseph Emil Blum. Sawmill Ballroom Publishing hardcover $26. ISBN 9780979981609.

Both books available at your local bookstore or directly from the author/publisher: http://josephemilblum.com/index.htm

The Gallery Bookshop event "The Women Authors of Gallery Bookshop: Johanna Bedford, Jeanette Boyer & Katy Tahja" took place in November, 2008. Here's the link:
http://www.gallerybooks.com/bookevents/bookeventsalumni.2008.html#wbn

Lexicon Redux

Originally, huge Harry Potter fan Steve Vander Ark wrote a fan's guide to all things Harry Potter. It was titled "The Harry Potter Lexicon."

J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, popped Vander Ark's balloon (and his reputation with many HP fans) by suing him and his publisher for copyright infringement: using excerpts from Rowling's books too freely. Rowling got a New York court to enjoin publication, ruling her rights would be infringed by the proposed book.

Judge Patterson limited his decision, however. Books based on the Harry Potter novels would be OK as long as they comply with some basic rules. Most importantly, such books would have to include "substantial original commentary."

He wrote, "While the 'Lexicon,' in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon's purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled."

Vander Ark writes, "After the trial in April 2008 I worked to create a new, different book with a new focus and purpose, mindful of the guidelines of the court. That's the book I am proud to be placing in your hands now."

Last week, RDR Books published his book, re-edited, rewritten and renamed "The Lexicon," subtitled "An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials."

You'd imagine a book that undertakes to cover every last character, from "Grindylow" to "Erumpent" and "Spungen," even characters that didn't make it into the books, to explain "dungbomb" and "portable swamp," list magic spells such as "Entrail-Expelling Curse" and "Dissendium," lay out the Quidditch teams and maneuvers such as the Porskoff Ploy, and so forth, might run to multiple volumes. But no, the entire paperback is a nice, compact 345 pages with a rather steep price: $24.95.

It clearly has been compiled by experts. Vander Ark runs one of the top Harry Potter fan sites, and he had help with this book from three listed editors, plus a legion of volunteers.

Even for someone who read the first Harry Potter novel out loud to a classroom of third graders but never finished reading the series, even for a person such as myself this new "Lexicon" is fun to browse.

If J. K. Rowling utters an inconsistency, Vander Ark and friends catch it.

For example: "Michael Corner was listed as a Hufflepuff on J.K. Rowling's list of students in Harry's year (see Harry Potter and Me, a BBC Christmas Special, December 2001) but became a Ravenclaw in the books."

The Lexicon is saved from excessive pedantry because the overall subject is so much fun. After all, in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" students hurled the Conjunctivitis Curse at each other. When everyone's walking around with magical red eye, how serious can you be?

J.K. Rowling, while not approving the new book, has let it be known she's relieved and happy that the lawsuit is settled and her rights protected. Vander Ark has said at various book signings he also is happy it's over, and happy to have his book finally published.

As for the core audience of serious Harry Potter fans, the reaction is mixed. Some readers thought no one should make J.K. unhappy for any reason. Others are grateful to have a complete guide to the books.

One fan calling herself I Love Harry Potter wrote, "I don't think that they have the right to do this it is so stupid how could they do this to jk rowling."

Adeline posted "JK Rowling is writing an encyclopedia including additional material that is not available anywhere. I’ll save my money and buy the book written by the person who created the world."

Other readers posted statements like this: "Oh give it a break! I love that this book is finally getting its day! I can’t wait to buy it! All the rules have been followed and there is no reason to deny that this work is a wonderful compilation of Steve’s work!

"Go Lexicon!"

NOTES:

"The Lexicon, An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials" by Steve Vander Ark. RDR Books paperback $24.95. ISBN 9781571431745.

Steve Vander Ark's original fan site: http://www.hp-lexicon.org/

Visit RDR Books and publisher Roger Rappoport at www.rdrbooks.com

Fan comments above were posted at the Christian Science Monitor, here: http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/01/02/harry-potter-encyclopedia-finally-goes-on-sale/

I wrote a column about the trial in April, 2008: http://www.gallerybookshop.com/bkm/wob080420.html

Why We Travel

Here's my latest Words on Books radio script...

WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 10:55 am & Wednesday, Jan 21 at 1 pm

(MUSIC UP) This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books.

I found a copy of "Dark Star Safari" on a friend's bookshelf. She had returned from safari in Africa and read the book before departing.

We were about to safari to a completely different place, but "Dark Star" turned out to be the perfect book to read while sailing the blue Caribbean.

Author of more than a dozen books of travel, the highly intelligent Paul Theroux has earned a reputation as foul-tempered and cranky. He is drawn to dangerous and smelly places. In "Dark Star Safari" he sets out to travel overland across Africa, Cairo to Cape Town.

"All news out of Africa is bad," he begins. "It made me want to go there."

Writing in 2003, a year after completing the trip, he explained his journey as "a lesson in self-preservation," in being out of touch. "The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. As Huck put it, lighting out for the territory."

Theroux set off in his best traveling mood: "Hoping for the picturesque, expecting misery, braced for the appalling. Happiness was unthinkable, for although happiness is desirable, it is a banal subject for travel."

Traveling by foot, by rickety train, overcrowded bus and overcrowded pickup, by lake steamer and dugout canoe, the overland progress took him many months, and sure enough, he was "delayed, shot at, howled at and robbed" but not disappointed. He revisited people and places he knew from the Peace Corps decades earlier. He met displaced white farmers and black politicians, arrogant aid workers and barely subsisting villagers. The reader who travels with Theroux learns a lot about the world, and is deeply entertained.

A number of writers have ruminated about the very idea of travel. Eric Newby, late author of the delightful "A Small Place in Italy" "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" and "Love and War in the Apennines" told an interviewer, "One of the most terrifying things about being a travel writer is that moment when, as you trundle into Belgrade or wherever, you suddenly realise that you've got to write about this place - and as if you've known about it for years."

A friend of mine in Texas, married to an Italian, wrote an essay called "Why We Travel." He says, "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves."

Myself, I'm one of those endowed with a burning urge to travel, and I really don't understand why I crave faraway places. I'm perfectly happy where I live. Where I live the full moon sets early in the pine trees. The back yard is graced by the occasional hawk. People are interesting, the environment is gorgeous. The air is clean, beaches unpopulated.

Still, I travel to the Caribbean at the first sign of a deep discount, scheme for months to enable a few weeks in Europe, happily drive two hours for lunch or five hours for Fiesta.

Why do we travel? My Texan friend writes, "We travel... to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more."

He quotes George Santayana: "We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life..."

In Uganda Theroux "was just an anonymous man in old clothes on a corner seat in a chicken bus, reading about (post-election violence) in the local newspaper... I did not want to be the classic bore, the reminiscing geezer, yet I now knew: the old are not as frail as you think... in our hearts we are youthful, and we are insulted to be treated as old men and burdens, for we have come to know that the years have made us more powerful and streetwise. Years are not an affliction."

(MUSIC UP) Take that, whippersnappers.

NOTES:

(Eric Newby) Although it amused him and sated his curiosity, he found the job had its difficulties: "It's what Cyril Connolly called the angoisse de gare."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/721690/Eric-Newby-At-the-frontiers-of-the-language.html

My Texan friend is Ermanno Genovase, and you can read his travel essay on Facebook.

At least they know their Plaice...

Once, a long time ago, my weekly essay on books was named "Bookmark."

Antonia Lamb, then editor of the Mendocino Art Center's publication Arts & Entertainment, thought it up. Neither of us could think of a better name, until eventually the much more poetic "Words on Books" finally came to mind.

So, what is it about bookmarks? What are bookmarks, anyway?

Where do they come from, and where do they go?

I have used toilet tissue squares as bookmarks, and expensive metallic clip-on gizmos, and cardboard lozenges with pictures of cats and a tassel, and more. Where are these bookmarks today?

Sometimes you find them on the floor, stepped upon. Sometimes you find them in used books, with the name of some long-gone bookstore. Sometimes you find them for sale, in glassine envelopes. Have you ever paid good money for a set of bookmarks only to see them drift away with books you loan to friends, or get lost at the back of a drawer, unused?

Wherever they keep those lost socks, that's where they keep those lost bookmarks.

When reading in high winds the bookmark tends to fly away, especially at page-turn time. Now that I think about it, you don't really need a bookmark when you are busy reading, only before and after. I'm in the habit of placing the bookmark somewhere else in the book, like way in the back where I haven't read to yet. When it's time to find the bookmark I shake the book to make the bookmark appear. The bookmark flies out, then I drop the book and then I really lose my place, and my patience with this whole reading experience, and I still don't know where to put the bookmark once I've retrieved it.

So I have to guess, and usually I'm wrong, and the bookmark is one page away from where I stopped reading.

Why do we need bookmarks in the first place? After all, if readers really are all that smart we could remember a page number. Why else do pages have numbers on them? I've tried this method, by the way, but it just doesn't work for me.

Once, aboard a ship at sea, far from professionally designed bookmarks, I used my very last, small, rectangular, pink, sticky Post-it Note to mark my place in a large book. I used that bookmark more often than most, interrupted as I was by the shifting position of the sun, or the deck, or both at the same time. Also by lifeboat drills, calls to lunch or, later, to tea, passersby asking what I was reading, and the occasional tropical zephyr which wanted to lift the book out of my hand and waft it overboard.

I repositioned the pink Post-it dozens of times, until it had so little stickiness left I had to tuck it in the middle where eventually it died, lost between the margins of chapters quickly read and just as quickly forgotten.

When I was a bookseller we used to give away a bookmark with every book purchased. Some enthusiastic booksellers gave away a handful each time. I always wondered what happened to them, not the booksellers, the extra, unneeded, place holders.

I have a theory. These bookmarks blew away overboard. Even now there are fish in the sea keeping their places with a Mendocino bookstore bookmark. I envy these fish. At least they know their place.

NOTE: I love the word or words "passersby"... Dictionaries report it is possible to write the plural of "passerby" as "passers-by" or "passersby." Maybe "passers by" would be acceptable as well. The lack of precision here, of course, reflects the general deterioration of the English language. The lack of precision here, of course, reflects the wonderful adaptability of English.

Learning Italian from a Calendar

This essay is posted here while I'm away on winter vacation...

Top book picks for the season

My friends at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino CA put together a quick list of "top gift picks" and presented it in person to shoppers the other night, along with timed 30-second presentations about each book. The list follows, and if you search the comments, you may find some of those 30 second recommendations here, too. Buona Festa!


GALLERY BOOKSHOP’S TOP GIFT PICKS

FOR BROTHERS & HUSBANDS
The Backyard Birdsong Guide by Donald Kroodsma
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Cobra in the Barn by Tom Cotter


FOR SISTERS & WIVES
Vet Tails by Charlie Freed
Red Bird by Mary Oliver
Not Yet Drown’d by Peg Kingman
Beautiful Engagements Calendars from Paperblanks
Testimony by Anita Shreve


FOR MOMS & DADS
The Early Mendocino Coast by Katy Tahja
Mendocino by Janet Ashford
River of Doubt by Candice Millard
The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay


FOR IN-LAWS & COLLEAGUES
How To Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons
Everyday Survival or Deep Survival
by Laurence Gonzales
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick


FOR KIDS & TEENS
Gallop and Swing by Rufus Butler Seder
It’s Time to Sleep My Love by Nancy Tillman
There Are Cats in This Book by Viviane Schwarz
The Babymouse Series by Jennifer Holm
The 39 Clues series by Rick Riordan et al
The Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Slam by Nick Hornby

Superdove, or Columba livia

I've been reading about pigeons this week. I don't think we have them here. I don't remember seeing any in Mendocino, Caspar, Fort Bragg. Maybe they prefer Ukiah. Mourning doves, yes, fat city pigeons, no.

I'm thinking pigeon because "Superdove, How the Pigeon Took Manhattan... And the World" flew across my desk recently. Science writer Courtney Humphries spent time with pigeon fanciers, scientists, collectors, hunters, historians and other assorted folk in order to bring us this story of the ubiquitous bird.

As other monographs on salt, gunpowder, scurvy, coal, rats, what-have-you demonstrate, we are fascinated by things common and yet unknown.

Pigeons are rock doves, Columba livia, meaning "dove the color of lead." Long before they starred in Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" they originated on cliffs near the sea. To this day they live on coastal rocks in obscure locations such as Capo Caccia on the island of Sardinia in Italy.

Whether fed on purpose or not, pigeons thrive in the urban scene. They eat our garbage and our discards. They nest on poles, window sills, arches, and any other convenient architectural refuges. Hawks and falcons, cats and raccoons, bother them very little.

When pigeons are regularly fed by hand they will begin to "structure their lives –where they nest, where they forage, and how often they reproduce – around their feeding schedule." As Humphries points out, they become dependent, and that's the first step to domestication. It's wrong, she says, to feed these urban birds without also giving them housing and cleaning up their mess.

The pigeon is so adaptable and so fertile that wiping out an entire airport or building of pigeons makes hardly a dent in the overall population. Food always is lying around, plus intrepid human life support from their surprisingly vocal fans.

"We create and destroy habitat," Humphries writes. "We shape genomes, we aid the worldwide movement of other species. And yet we seem disappointed and horrified when those plants and animals respond by adapting to our changes and thriving in them."

It was humans who cared for and spread pigeons to every continent but Antarctica. "Often they were brought for food, but not always. Decorative breeds of pigeons were swapped among breeders in different countries."

When settlers encountered America's vast flocks of native passenger pigeons, the birds were soon wiped out for food and sport. Passengers went extinct but the rock pigeons flourished. We cut down the forests in which the passengers lived and built great cities for the rock pigeons.

The merest glance through newspapers and the blogosphere turns up dozens of articles and comments on pigeons. They are not ignored, but neither have we come to terms with their presence.

In TV footage covering the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks you could see flocks of pigeons winging their way to and from the burning Taj Mahal Hotel. News reports ignored the plight of non-human creatures such as stray dogs and birds during the fighting. These comments from a Mumbai veterinarian:

"Ultimately, it is an ecosystem," said Dr. Khanna. "Everyone is connected to each other. If animals are not there, we are not there. So one must care for living creatures whether it is an animal or a human being."

The news continued, "By the end of the siege, the pigeons at the Taj (Hotel) had all but disappeared, adding to the anguish of many who saw them as a blessing. In India, pigeons are a symbol of peace. Within three days after the attack ended, they had returned.... hopeful signs for many here that Mumbai is returning to normal."

You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@mcn.org.

NOTES:

"Superdove, How the Pigeon Took Manhattan... and the World" by Courtney Humphries. Smithsonian Books hardcover $24.95. ISBN 9780061259166.

Capo Caccia translates to something like "Cape of the Hunter" or "Cape Hunter" in Italian. In other words, a good place to go shooting birds, except it's a protected park these days with fences and 9-5 visiting hours.

The Mumbai pigeons: http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-12-10-voa40.cfm

Group Seeks to Preserve IDF Pigeons' Dovecote from 1948
by Noah Kosharek, Israel News
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1045636.html
It's been 60 years since Shaul Sapir, 81, and Aharon Landsman, 73, met. Sapir served during the War of Independence in a Negev unit and established the carrier pigeon unit of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish militia. Landsman, in his early teens at the time, trained the pigeons, delivered by Sapir, in the Haganah's dovecote at Kibbutz Givat Brenner and later served in the Israel Defense Forces' carrier pigeon unit. Yesterday, the men met again at the kibbutz, to work toward conservation of the kibbutz's IDF carrier pigeon dovecote...

Pigeon Show Is a Coup for Pickering
http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/news/3968330.Pigeon_show_is_a_coup_for_Pickering/
Hundreds of Britain’s top pigeons flew into Ryedale at the weekend when the British Pigeon Show Society staged its annual exhibition at the Pickering Showfield. The society, which also hosted the National Pigeon Society Show, attracted 2,000 pigeons.

Pigeon Control Efforts Increase
By Tom Schneider Current-Argus Staff Writer
http://www.currentargus.com/ci_11180695
Carlsbad Municipal Schools is stepping up efforts to control the harmful pigeon population on district campuses with help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
CMS operations director Erich Francke said that despite the district's best efforts, the birds have become increasingly difficult to manage...

There are laws against pigeon netting/poaching: http://www.peopleforpigeons.com:

Pigeon poaching: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/a-tip-off-a-reward-an-arrest-for-pigeon-poaching/

And another thing or two...

Life is rich and good out here on the Pacific coast. This morning the feral cats out my office window were eating their breakfast (provided in little plastic dishes by the lovely Joselyn) while at the same time a herd of wild turkeys was about 15 feet away, watched over by a large Tom with extra wattles. Plus ravens (a neighbor feeds them) and a couple of other wild cats, some song birds, a squirrel or two, and probably deer peeking out Bambi-like from the foliage. It's a jungle out there....

Yesterday I drove to the Peter Temple sound studio in Albion CA and spent some time recording a cello part to add to Jim Thompson's song in progress "Bald Eagle." I was amazed not to sound too bad. Recordings are notorious for exposing intonation that's a bit off, or vibrato that's too fast, too wide, or not wide enough. I'm listening to the cut now, and smiling, so I have to admit I've got a nice tone and I'm not embarrassed. Mp3 version may be posted here when Jim gives his permission...

...it's fine with Jim, but I can't figure out how to post an Mp3 file here... can anyone help me figure this out?

Learning Italian from the Calendar

(written in 1999; now updated for modern minds)....

I've been studying my Italian Word Each Day Vocabulary Enrichment Calendar, Advanced Level. I'm going to Italy next Spring and I want to talk to Italians.

So far, I've been taught the meaning of acclimate, riservato, assoggetabile, amichevole, amoroso, ammortizzare, anemico and analogo, not even to mention l'apatia, stupefacente, and furbo. I like furbo. In English it means astute. Or sly. Or cunning. Pick one. My voccabulario is growing fast-o.

In this particular calendar Italian words for January start with the letter "A." If February is "B" and so on, by the time we get to Italy I'll have mastered the Italian language all the way up to "G." For some reason, this reminds me of those A-Z mystery novels by Sue Grafton. You know, "A" is for "Alibi," "B is for Burglary," down to "Z is for Ze End."

Most of the words in my Italian calendar have no earthly use for Americans traveling in Italy. What am I going to do with acclimatize, aloof, amenable, amicable, amorous -- OK, I KNOW what to do with that word -- amortize, anemic, analogous, apathy, astute, or atrocious? For whom are these words intended? Bankers with love on their minds?

I need the words for "no" and "way" as in NO WAY I'm getting in that gondola.

I admit I'm having more fun planning this trip than I could possibly have being there. Since I was last in Europe everything has changed, friends tell me, and not for the better. Italy in May will be like Mendocino in May -- crowded with tourists all seeking the same thing -- ice cream. We plan to travel off the beaten track -- there's a new idea -- to places even travel book author Rick Steves wouldn't go -- places so ugly, so dirty, so dangerous that we'll have them all to ourselves -- just us and the 27 other Americans who arrived on the same bus.

In Mendocino in May you visit the miles-long beach at MacKerricher State Park north of Fort Bragg to get away from crowds. Or walk among the stately redwoods in Montgomery Woods State Reserve on the way to Ukiah. Or visit Ukiah. In these places you won't see many other tourists. Especially in Ukiah.

Don't misunderstand me -- there's nothing wrong with Ukiah. It's just that Ukiah does not register in a single California guidebook that I can find. It just is not there. I'm hoping to find places like Ukiah in Italy. Places that, spelled backward, mean "short meaningless poem in Japanese."

I have my own special way to figure out which guide books are the most accurate. I look up Ukiah. Since most don't mention Ukiah, I look up Mendocino. Most descriptions of my adopted home town are glib and brief. The most thoughtful is in Kim Weir's Northern California Handbook from Moon Publications. The most original is Mark William's Northern California Off the Beaten Path. Williams writes, "The town of Mendocino is quaint indeed and does a thriving tourist trade. But while every one talks about how it looks 'just like' a New England fishing village, it really does not. The streets are too wide and straight, and the houses are set too far apart and don't have shutters."

So there.

A travel book round up article by David Butwin in Publishers Weekly points out that most guides to Europe take for granted that all the great sights are -- just great. Butwin finds one exception. The Rough Guide to Florence allows that "after registering these marvelous sights, it's hard to stave off a sense of disappointment, for much of Florence is a city of ... dour, fortress-like houses, of unfinished buildings and characterless squares." We need more honest writing like that in our guide books.

Last week I praised the Eyewitness Travel Guides published by DK Publishing in Great Britain. A friend wrote to remind me about the Insight Guides distributed by Langenscheidt Publishing Group. The Insight Guides are very good. So filled with color photographs and printed on excellent, heavy paper that you might want to leave the book home when you go. Insight Guides are about the same size as other guide books, but they weigh too much to carry around. Publishers Weekly figures the "Insight Guide to Italy" comes in at "just three ounces under two pounds."

The weight and size of guidebooks becomes a packing problem. Some people copy pages they need and leave the books at home. Others tear their books apart as they travel and burn the pages to keep warm. There goes Spain, up in flames. There goes Portugal. When you get home what you have left is the cover, the index, and a custom out-of-date guide to the places you didn't visit.

I guess you could travel without all this guidance, but that would be like trying to learn Italian from a calendar. If you don't plan-plan-plan you might walk right by an important museum or miss another ancient cathedral. Come to think of it, who needs another museum? And if you've seen one ancient cathedral....

WOB covers everything

It's Pearl Harbor Day December 7, and that means nothing to most people under 67 years of age. So in the spirit of these more modern times, let's troll through the latest news on books.

It may be more interesting than reviewing "Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan... and the World." I'll get around to The Pigeons Who Ate Manhattan next week.

In The Cleveland Scene, Cleveland's News Arts & Entertainment Weekly, this rant: "The existence of a book called 'Spliffigami' is evidence that it's too easy these days to lay out books and print them on dead trees. Author Chris Stone (really?) doesn't even seem to be attempting humor with his manual on how to roll joints using multiple papers, twisting and folding them into elaborate shapes including, but not limited to, forks and flowers."

In Cleveland that's a putdown. In Mendocino, it's your invitation to buy a book with dope money.

Publisher Simon & Schuster bled with bad news this week. First, they eliminated 2% of their workforce. They also announced they will publish two books on Ted Kennedy. His terminal brain cancer will sell a lot of books for the company next spring. S&S also has a book on Obama in the works. It will tell the story of Obama's first 100 Days, which haven't happened yet. S&S is the publisher that got started during the last depression. Their innovation was to sell crossword puzzle books with a pencil attached.

The day before Simon & Schuster's announcement, Random House reorganized, not a happy word if you are employed there. They knocked off 54 jobs and disbanded Doubleday Publishing Group.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books. Not you. The editors. You keep on buying books, hear? Of course, with no manuscripts coming in they will eventually stop publishing. Houghton has a great plan to save money: Go out of business!

Houghton has the Curious George franchise. Will those execs take along the Man in the Yellow Hat when they plead for a Washington bailout?

To be clear, they're only temporarily stopping buying books. Maybe they'll start up again when the clouds of depression lift.

At the chain bookstores Borders Books & Music reported sales down by ten per cent. Barnes & Noble is down 7.4% and Books-a-Million by 9.9%. One of the largest book distributors, Baker & Taylor, laid off 80 workers.

Other straws in the hurricane: Random House will not attend Canada's biggest book show, but at the same time they are expanding their E-book offerings. That's electronic books, not ink on paper books with pages you have to turn. The Random House sales force already gets their catalogs and advance reading copies on E-readers, so why not you, too?

These publishers are drops in the financial bucket for the corporations that own them. Simon & Schuster is owned by Viacom. Random House is owned by Bertelsmann. Houghton Mifflin is owned by Vivendi International. Baker & Taylor is owned (formerly owned; see Comment below) by the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is cutting 100 jobs, or ten per cent of its staff. Reuters calls the move "the first significant cuts made by a large U.S. private equity firm since the global economic crisis hit." The Carlyle Group also invests heavily in war related industries, and features George Bush senior, James Baker, and John Major as top consultants.

In happier news: Penguin Group financially assisted the United Nations Refugee Agency and author Khaled Hosseini to open a new school for young children in Arababshirali, 150 miles from Kabul in Afghanistan. The school serves 270 local children. Khaled Hosseini is the author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns."

Finally, evidence that the bookstore fantasy lives on: "Defying the economic downturn in order to live out their dream of having a bookstore, Liz Garo and business partner Claudia Colodro hosted the grand opening of Stories Books and Café in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles on Saturday, November 15."

Next Week: Pigeons. I promise.

(MUSIC) You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@mcn.org. Those of you receiving Words on Books by email will find links to additional information.

NOTES:

"Spliffigami" by Chris Stone. Ten Speed Press paperback $12.95. ISBN 1580089372. Great cover. And yes, that is his real name. From the publisher: "Chris Stone has written several humorous trivia books on cricket and football, as well as edited or coauthored titles on various aspects of cannabis culture and golf fitness. He lives in London."