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E: eBooks

I love books. 

That’s not exactly an earthshattering statement on a writer’s blog.  I’ve entered kind of a Renaissance over the past year-and-a-half in reading.  I hadn’t read a lot over the course of my mid-thirties for whatever reason, but now I’ve taken up the page again and have managed to always stay in the midst of some book or another.  I’ve read quite a few paper books in recently, but the majority of my reading has come from the artificial soul of my little friend, the Sony Reader.

There seems to be a lot of animosity in the blog world about eBooks (even as there’s excitement about the potential of ePublishing – which seems contradictory).  This post in no way is an attempt to “sell” anyone on eBooks or convince them that eBooks are better than paper books.  I certainly don’t want to suggest that paper books are on there way out.  I hope not, because I love paper books.  I still go to the library, for crying out loud.

The only point I want to make in this post is this:

I love my eReader.

I mean, I really, really love it. 

When I first saw the readers come out, my impression was generally, meh.  I’ll take my paper books, thank you.  Then wife decided to get me one for Christmas, and since my wife can keep a secret the way a politician can keep a campaign promise, she told me.  Because she told me, I was able to research, and anticipate.  By the time I opened the package, I couldn’t wait to fill its empty shell with the contents of human knowledge.  Or the part of it I could afford anyway.

My Sony Reader is awesome.  I have just under a hundred books on it, and room for lots more.  I can read in line at the DMV, or in a hospital waiting room, or anywhere  want, since it fits in my pocket.  If I’m going away somewhere, I don’t have to decide what books to bring; I just bring the Reader and decide what I want to read.

I’m freer to try new things now, since a lot of self-published works are only 99 cents.  Why not give something knew a try at that price? 

Anyway, I understand the love of the paper book.  I have it, too.  It’ll be a sad world when all the books and bookstores and libraries are gone.  That’s one thing that makes me feel good about being older: I’ll probably be gone before that happens.  On the other had, I read a lot more now because of the Reader.  If this technology can help increase reading, make people who wouldn’t think about picking up a paper book read an eBook, if it in any way increases interest in reading, then I’m all for that.

Leave it to Neil Gaiman to Make You Feel Better

I just finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which is a fantastic book, by the way.  I haven’t had time yet to read the online journals he kept, but I did discover something from an outside source that in a tiny way brightened my day.  Apparently his original idea for the book involved a different god for each day of the week.  He’d put some research and effort into it before he had to scrap it because someone else had already written a book with that exact concept.  Gaiman shelved the idea and came up with what became the final version of American Gods.  I don’t remember where I read this, so I can’t verify the truth of it, but we’ll say it’s true.

Why does this story make me smile?  Do I take delight in the minor inconveniencing of the Sandman’s creator?  No, it’s because now I don’t feel so bad.  Last fall when I was putting together my NaNo project, I shared the idea, which I thought was just so original and so awesome, with a friend.  She promptly told this was just like something she’d seen two years ago.  More on that story here.  That’s something that’s happened a lot to me over the years.  At least now, with the internet, it’s easier to discover early if someone stole your idea, then traveled back in time two or three or fifty years to publish it themselves (that’s what happens, right?).

Knowing that kind of thing happens even to established writers takes some of the sting away when I discover the MS I’ve been slaving over for weeks is actually sitting down the street at the library in a slightly altered form.  So no offense, Neil (I call him Neil), but you made feel a little better.

Top Ten Tuesday: Of Blogs and Books

This week’s triple T, brought to as always by the good folks at the Broke and the Bookish, is all about resolutions, but not just any old resolution.  We’re not interested in you quest to lose weight, or become financially independent the Tony Robbins way, or to finally work up the nerve to ask out JoBeth in accounting (actually we do care about all those things – we hope it works out with you and JoBeth, we really do – this just isn’t the place for that).  No, these resolutions are strictly bloggish and bookish.

And here are mine:

1. Blog more often and more regularly – I’ve been blogging more this year; this will be my seventh post, putting me on pace for twenty-one this month, roughly five a week.  But I also want to be more consistent, maybe have certain days of the week in which I blog about specific topics.
2. Comment more – I read a lot of posts.  I try to read all the posts of all the blogs I follow, or at least most of them.  The problem is I don’t comment a lot.  I’ve already made a few friends blogging by starting conversations that began with noting more than a blog comment.  Besides, I love comments, and I know others do, too.
3. Post more stand alone content – Once you take out blogfests, challenges, and Top Ten memes, there’s not a lot of stuff left, really.  I’d like to start a series on how to improve your writing: Description, character, that kind of thing.  I’m just looking for an original take, so I’m not treading over trampled ground.
4. EMS more – I made a choice when I started this blog to leave work out of it, but I think the occasional medical article, the what-to-do-if, post wouldn’t hurt and might actually convey some useful information.
5. Blogfest – It’s not unreasonable to expect I’ll hit 100 followers sometime in the next few months or so.  I want to mark the number with a blogfest.  I actually had a great idea for one, but I forgot it, of course.
6. Get my Library card – This one’s done.  I moved to Illinois a year and a half ago, but for multiple reasons I hadn’t gotten a library card for my new home town library.  That’s fixed, and now I have it.
7. Read better – I want to not just read more, I want to read more efficiently, more diversely.  I want to read as a writer as well as a book lover.  If I’m going to call myself a serious writer, reading is no longer just a casual pastime I get to when I can.  It’s now part of the job, too.
8. Help out my local libraries and promote reading – I love my local library, I really do.  In fact, I live in a cluster of small towns, so I've got quite a few around me.  The thing is, though, they’re small, and worse, they’re underfunded.  I figure now that between the blog and the newspaper, I’ve got something of a platform, though it’s really more like a bathmat than a platform at this point, and maybe I could do something to help.  Books drives, fundraisers, literacy drives.  Don’t know how I’d go about it, but it’s certainly worth looking into.
9. Read all the book on my eReader. – I acquired a ton of ebooks during the first year owning an eReader.  Didn’t read a lot of them.  I plan to rectify that.  For more details on this one, click here.  Because I know you’re dying to know.
10. Start a reading group – Believe it or not, I’ve actually found people around me lately who read.  You know, books and things.  Something besides Facebook status updates, I mean.  Posting my favorites books of 2010 list and my want to read in 2011 list made made me realize two things: one, I love discussing books with people, and two, it’s been years since I’ve been able to do that consistently.

Top Ten Tuesday: I Can’t Promise to Try, but I’ll Try to Try

For my Eye Candy entry, click here.

For my 100 Words entry, click here.

For my Show Me Yours entry click here.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, as always hosted by the Broke and the Bookish, involves books I resolve to read in 2011.  Most of these are books I’ve owned for years and have sat ignored while other things came up.  Even without a reading list, 2011 eleven promises to be the busiest year of my life.  But I’m one of those weird people who actually seems to get more accomplished when he’s too busy to breathe then when he has loads of downtime.  So who knows?

These aren’t in any particular order, although I’m most eager for number ten, and I’m currently working on number four.

 

1.  Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally – Yes, I know it was originally titled Schindler’s Ark, but this is the title of my copy.  I was assigned this book in a college history class two years before the movie came out but never touched it.  If the adage of the book being better than the movie holds true, I could be in trouble; that movie stayed with me a long, long time.  Just typing this, I can hear Itzhak Pearlman’s haunting violin in the background. 

 

2.  Moby Dick by Herman Melville – Not much to say about this one.  Arguably the greatest American novel ever written, this massive guide to deep-sea fishing has managed, like the titular mammal, to evade my grasp for decades.  Unlike Captain Ahab, though, I haven’t obsessed about it (yet).  I just hope I can read about Starbuck without getting distracted by images of Katie Sackoff in a tank top.*

 

3.  The Motions of the Heavenly Bodies by Nicolai Copernicus/Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei/Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton/Relativity by Albert Einstein – These are also collected in a Stephen Hawking-edited compendium entitled On the Shoulders of Giants, but since I already have all but one of them, I’ve listed them individually.  I chose these not as a science nerd, but as a history nerd.  These four books, particularly Copernicus and Galileo, changed the world with their observations. 

4.  All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein – I was fascinated by the Watergate Scandal when I was a kid and wanted to learn as much as possible about it.  Somehow I managed to not only not read this book, but I’ve also never seen the movie.  I want to rectify that on both counts, especially now that I’m dabbling in journalism myself.

 

 

5.  Lolita by Vladimir Nobakov – I know very little about this book except that Lolita’s a young girl and Humbert Humbert’s the creep obsessed with her.  Thinking about this book is like thinking about the mysterious room at the end of the upstairs hall at Grandma’s house that you’re not supposed to go into: you don’t know if you’ll frightened by what’s inside, but you know you have to look.

 

 

6. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu – This intriguing work of prose fiction – hence, a novel - was written in Japan in the eleventh century, beating Don Quixote by 600 years. 

 

 

 

 

 

7.  Memoirs of the Second World War by Winston Churchill – Churchill is probably one of the most underrated authors in history, simply because his political overshadows his writing career.  I read his four volume History of the English Speaking Peoples, and it was one best history books I’ve ever read.  He could have eschewed politics for the pen, and still he would have been a household name.

 

 

8. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling – being a Science Fiction and Fantasy writer with a bent toward YA and never having read any of the Harry Potter series is kind of like being a filmmaker who’s never seen the Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and Casablanca.

 

 

 

9.  The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen – I read a review of this book recently that essentially described it as 600 pages of people thinking about things (my words, not his), but he meant that in a good way: a thoughtful, thought-provoking piece about what happens when life doesn’t work out how you wanted.  Also, there’s something about this book that’s been pulling me towards it since I discovered it.  It could be an enjoyable read (and judging by the first few pages, I believe it will be), it could be an “important” work of literature and the latest Great American Novel.  Or it could be something I put on top of my lizard’s cage to keep the cat from jumping on it.  Hopefully, this is the year I find out.

 

10. The Histories by Herodotus – You know that kid Justin Bieber, or whatever his name is?  You know how some teenage girls just freak out at the mere sight of him?  Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about this book, which is why I’m waiting until my next stay-at-home vacation to read it, so I can give it the undivided attention it deserves.  And so no one can hear me scream.  Don’t judge me.

 

Honorable Mention:

• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
• Beowulf
• John Adams by David McCullough
• Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

*Or better yet: Katie Sackoff in a tank top holding a venti mochaccino.

Top Ten Tuesday - (My) Top Ten Books of 2010

I’ve always been a sucker for end-of-year lists: books, movies, news items, whatever.  It’s fun, and probably healthy, to take the time to reflect on the things that made the past year what it was.  I’ve read exactly one book released on 2010, so my list is of the books I actually read this past year (more or less – see the caveat below) as opposed to those with a 2010 copyright.

A few caveats:

• A few of these I actually read at the tail end of 2009.  I don’t remember which, so I made all the books over the past eighteen months or so fair game.
• Most of these are non-fiction.  I didn’t read a lot of fiction this past year (numbers eight, six, five, and one), but some of the non-fiction works actually read like fiction (numbers four, three, and two).
• This is probably the least pretentious book list you’ll ever see.  If you’re looking for art (whatever that is) or avant-garde, keep looking.
• I didn’t read a ton of books this past year, so consider this the NFC West of book lists, although I truly love every book on here.
• Yes, I am a nerd (numbers ten, nine and six).

These are actually in order, so I’m counting down instead of up.  I know; I can feel your excitement.

Here goes:

10/9. (Tie) The Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku and The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios – I couldn’t decide between the two so I included them both.  The concepts are similar: a potentially dry, confusing subject unraveled with a fresh perspective.  Kaku takes several science fiction staples such as force fields, teleportation, and faster-than-light travel and ranks the plausibility of each while explain the underlying science in language any non-physicist can understand.  The chapter on teleportation blew my mind.  Kakalios is a university professor who teaches a course entitled The Physics of Superheroes.  This is the book version of that class.  Instead of fulcrums and weights and page-long equations, his teaching tools are Superman, Magneto, the Flash, and a whole host of heroes and villains from my comic book days and before.  The isn’t just a comics-are-cool book, either; you’ll learn a lot as he takes you from basic kinetics all the way to advanced quantum theory, while both celebrating and gently mocking the medium of grown men and women in brightly colored tights.  Yay!  Nerd fun!

8.    My Name is Will  by Jess Winfield – This fun, trippy little book is about Willie Shakespeare Greenberg, a doctoral student in 1980’s California who spends his time (and his daddy’s money) tossing out Shakespeare quotes like candy and doing drugs while ostensibly working on his Shakespeare thesis, and Will Shakespeare, a tanner’s son in 1580’s Stratford who spends his days pining over a girl named Rosaline and hiding his (and his family’s) Catholicism from the brutal Anti-Catholic authorities.  Eventually, the two Will’s paths merge in a wacky, mind-bending mash-up of sorts.  This book is filled with crude (and effective) humor and more than its fair share of slapstick, but don’t let the levity and debauchery fool you: he knows his Shakespeare.  This is a must for all Shakespeare lovers, even if one doesn’t agree with Winfield’s conclusion that Shakespeare’s secret Catholicism influenced his greatest works, one can appreciate this believable peek into the young mind that would go on to have such an influence on western thought for centuries to come.  

7.    How the States got Their Shapes by Mark Stein – Why is the Upper Peninsula part of Michigan and not Wisconsin?  Why does Oklahoma have a panhandle?  Why does Maryland look like someone took a bite out of a larger state?  Stein’s book is exactly what the title says: a breakdown of every interstate border and the logic (or, more often, the lack thereof) behind the mapping.  This is not a dry, people-sitting-behind-a-desk-making-decisions book.  It’s a lively, often humorous hidden history of these fifty states.  Did you know Ohio and Michigan nearly went to war over their border, or that Florida’s border looks like is does because someone got lost?  Each state has it’s own chapter broken down into individual borders (east, west, etc.) so if you don’t care why Colorado looks like a rectangle but have always wondered why Long Island looks like New York’s genitalia instead of being a part of the closer New Jersey, you can flip right to it.  Yay! More nerd fun!

6.   Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – Calliope is a normal girl growing up in what she thinks is a normal family in Detroit of the 60’s and 70’s until she reaches her teens and discovers she is neither normal or a girl.  Middlesex is a story of the American Dream told through eyes of a family that’s anything but typical.  Calliope’s (or Cal, as he goes by in adulthood) Greek grandparents escape the war and chaos of their home and emigrate to America, carrying with them a secret that will lie dormant and hidden until it manifests itself inside Cal(liope)’s genetic code.  Euginides’ Pulitzer Prize winner is about more than a hermaphrodite and his bizarre family tree, it’s about the promises of the American Century and the failure of a society to deliver on that promise.  We witness the boom and bust of Detroit, once a vibrant metropolis feeding hungrily off the giddy heyday of the automotive industry, and we see that same city broken and abandoned, betrayed by the very principles of capitalism that once made it great.  It’s also a touching, heartwarming coming of age/coming of gender tale, and Cal is easily the most interesting and endearing protagonist I’ve read in a long time – well, human protagonist (see number one).

5.    Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir – Lady Jane Grey was a teenager growing up in Tudor England who wanted nothing more more than to be left alone with her books and her unwavering Protestantism.  Unfortunately, Jane had the dual misfortunes of being the great-niece of Henry VIII and the daughter of fiercely ambitious parents.  When Henry’s only legitimate son, Edward VI, dies without an heir, leaving the Catholic Mary Tudor next in line, Jane’s parents and the Lord Protector of England launch a dangerous scheme to place Jane on the throne instead.  The plan goes awry, with disastrous consequences for all involved, particularly Jane.  Weir is a historian, and her debut novel reflects that with its meticulous accuracy of daily life and customs, intimate insights into the major players of the day (including Mary Tudor, Henry’s last wife Catherine Parr, and the future Elizabeth I), and familiarity with subject matter that drives the confidence of the narrative.  When Weir isn’t pulling directly from history, her inventions feel as real as fact.  And if you’re looking for a truly frightening villain, look no further than John Dudley, the ruthless Duke of Northumberland.

4.    A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson – Bill Bryson decided to walk the Appalachian Trail, an approximately 2200 mile deep woods hiking trail stretching from Georgia to Maine along the Appalachian Mountains, and wrote about it.  Bill Bryson could write about reading the phone book and I’d read it.  Not only is it a whimsical and sometimes exciting narrative about two middle-aged men trying to conquer an iron-man level feat, but Bryson also manages to find fascinating tidbits about the history of not only the trail itself, but the towns and regions that surround it.  I was going to write “It’s Americana as only Bryson can deliver,” but I thought that was kind of cheesy.

3.    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson – A walk through a different kind of woods.  On its surface, it’s a frenetic narrative about two grown men who lie, steal, and terrorize their way through Las Vegas while whacked out on every drug imaginable.  They’re seeking the American Dream, and they think they’ll find it in the decadent, artificial, five-and-dime Baroque that was Vegas of the late sixties-early seventies.  It’s more than that though.  Through his simple, here-it-is narrative, Thompson paints a picture of loss and isolation, of a dream gone wrong, and a nation unwilling to pick up the pieces and start over.  Thompson doesn't so much comment on society as react to it, often times too much, and he makes us privy (and culpable) to the drug-addled rationalizations of a society on the precipice of insanity.  I expected all that.  What I didn’t expect was the innocence and pathos present in Thompson's unique voice.  The reader feels for Raoul Duke – Thompson’s alter ego.  He comes across as a lot more likable and sympathetic then I thought he would, even as he’s wreaking havoc wherever he goes.  In the end, the book is about two people – and a country - left holding the bag from the failed experiment that was the counter-culture ‘60s. 

2.    The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson – Daniel Burnham was a brilliant architect and one of the men responsible for bringing the city of Chicago into the modern world and onto the world stage.  H. H. Holmes was a different kind of brilliant.  A contemporary of Jack the Ripper, he murdered dozens of people, mostly women, yet hardly anyone has heard his name.  These two men’s purposes collide at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.  The story darts effortlessly between the two men: Burnham’s struggle first to convince financers of his vision and then to build his magnificent white city on a marsh on the shore of Lake Michigan contrasts with the ease in which Holmes used his natural charisma to attract his victims.  Larson does an excellent job of bringing into life this hidden history of a nation on the verge of the “American Century” and how its spirit of rugged individuality and entrepreneurial determination can bring out both the best and the worst in us.  And all of this took place less than twenty miles from where I live.

1.  The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein – Maybe it’s because I have three lab-terrier mixes myself, maybe it’s because I recently lost a cat, but I fell in love with the narrator, Enzo, on page one.  Enzo is a lab-terrier mix nearing the end of his days who longs to be human, and he knows that when he dies, he’ll be reincarnated as a person.  He knows that because he saw it on TV.  Racing is Enzo’s memoir (or as close as he can get since he can’t read and has no thumbs – an unfortunate reality he’s always taken hard), a tale of loss and of courage in the face overwhelming circumstances.  If his owner (and best friend) Denny seems a little too perfect, it’s only because we see him through the eyes of his faithful companion.  Not only does Enzo give us insight into what it’s like to be a dog, but through his observations and yearnings we learn from him just what it means to be human.

Stop by the Broke and the Bookish for more great lists.

Top Ten Tuesdays: Santa Give Me Some Love - and Some Definitions

Okay, it’s not Tuesday and this is far from a top ten.  Actually it’s a Top One.  The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is, “What books do you wish Santa will bring you?”  There are plenty of books I’d like to have, but only item, book or no book, that I would flip out over like a little kid if that jolly fat man left it under my sad little Charlie Brown tree.

1. The Oxford English Dictionary – Some people have a car they dream of owning one day, or skimp through their twenties and thirties to buy a Harley.  Maybe it’s a really expensive pair of shoes or a state of the art home entertainment system. For me, it’s a bunch of words, roughly 600,000 of them.  I don’t remember the first time I saw the OED in the library, but I do remember that the volumes were glowing, and choral music played in the background.  Okay, that probably didn’t happen, but I was – and still am – enthralled by the very sight of the twenty-volume collection.  I wanted it from the moment I saw it up until, well, up until I found out just how much it cost.  Right now the complete set is going for a measly $995.  That’s not even one grand, no problem. 

So the OED is my dream purchase.  When I finally “make it big” – whatever that entails exactly – there will be a shelf in my library dedicated the Grand Master of English lexicons.  Until then, I’ll get by with my tattered pocket Webster’s.

Start the Resolution Without Me

I’m a little late to the Rejectionist’s party, but I’ve decided to participate in her New Year’s pre-resolution un-contest.  Basically, you make a resolution for New Year’s but start hacking away at it early, kind of like getting a running start.  I’ve learned my lesson many times about trying to compress important things in my life I need to be doing or changing.  Or not doing.  I don’t know if I’ve ever in my life kept a resolution, so eventually I stopped making them.  If I don’t keep my New Year’s promises, then resolving to save money, land an agent, or eat healthy will only doom those endeavors to failure.  Trust me, I know.

Instead, I’ve come up with something I need to do, but if I don’t accomplish it, the world won’t fall apart:

I’m going to read every book on my eReader. 

Doesn’t sound too hard, right?  Well it’s definitely a straight forward task, it doesn’t involve any physical labor, and I don’t need to solicit anyone’s help.

Of course, I have 50 plus unread books in there right now, including Moby Dick and War and Peace.  Also three different histories of the Protestant Reformation.  And the Histories of Herodotus.  And a science book by the guy who invented calculus (Isaac Newton).

And I decided not to include the King James Bible I have on there.

I like this resolution; it’s more of a challenge then a mandate for some great life change.  I’ve already started, too.  I’m almost done with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.


At some point, I’ll make a list.  If anyone wants to join me, that’d be awesome.  If you’re not too keen on reading Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences or The Physics of Superheroes (not by Galileo) I’ll understand.

Top Ten Tuesday – Favorite Reading Spots

As most of you already know, the Broke and the Bookish host a Top Ten Tuesday every week on… well, you know.  This week the subject is favorite reading spots.  For me it’s more “Good Spots to Read” as some of these reading locales are born of necessity than desire (like the BMV).

My Top Ten, in no particular order (except the order that I thought of them):

1. In bed, of course.

2. On the beach.  We live less than an hour away from one of the Great Lakes (Michigan).  How lucky is that?  The beach is always on the summer itinerary.  And spring.  And fall. 

3. In a lounge chair at the waterpark watching the family splash around and have a good time.  Kristy and the kids love waterparks, but I’m not that into the rides myself.  That makes it a prefect place to get lots of reading done.

4. In the closet.  I have this thing that I can only describe as “reverse claustrophobia” – I tend to be drawn toward enclosed spaces.  Don’t ask me why.  Our bedroom closet is as big as one could be without being a walk-in, and I used to keep a chair in there and just read.  It was wonderful.  (Now my wife insists we use it for clothes and for storing things.  The nerve!)

5. My writing room.  This makes up for the loss of the closet.  I don’t call it an office because there’s no desk (on purpose), just two comfy chairs.  It’s also where the book shelves are.

6. Under the oak tree in the backyard.  After too many years spent in apartments, just to be able to say “under the big oak tree in the backyard” is a beautiful thing.

7. The couch on the back deck.  Okay, I’m a redneck.  I have a couch outside, and you know what?  Awesome!

8. Waiting for slow moving trains.  For obvious reasons, I don’t read while I’m driving, but when I see the train slowing down, or worse, backing up when it was almost done, the car goes into park and out comes the Reader.

9. In front a crackling fire.  Whether from a fireplace (we don’t have one) or a campfire.  Or just out back in our fire pit.  Nothing makes better background music for the written word than the pop of wood and the gentle purr of flames licking the air.

10. Anywhere I can.  This isn’t a copout answer.  I’m referring to any situation, like the line at the license branch, or a doctor’s waiting room, or anyplace else that involves being on someone else’s time, where the poor saps who would rather claw out their eyes than pick up a book are left twiddling their thumbs while I’m getting lost in a world of someone’s imaging.