“We, the library”

I came across this tweet around the time Kirn (substack here) posted it, and it continues to haunt me.

I don’t know how many physical books I have collected. Five or six hundred, perhaps. It seems, to me, to be “not a lot,” so it shocked me just now when I quickly estimated the count.

If they were shelved compactly in one place, they might cover one wall or so of a smallish room. And yet. They take up space and gather dust. And every time I move (I have moved, on average, every 3.5 years since I graduated college — does it ever end, this moving?) they are such a troublesome thing to pack and unpack and sort and re-shelve.

So when my sweet father, who read books constantly, gave me a Kindle (I’d begged him not to, but he loved his so much, and so much liked to share that kind of thing with his family) I thought, okay, now I’ll be able to read on without piling up more and more physical books. This is good, I thought. “I’m comfortable that certain experiences are supposed to be ephemeral,” I blogged. “I’m okay with some books as experiences rather than things.”

But then came the stories about Amazon erasing peoples’ books from their Kindles (some sort of issue with copyright or publisher disputes, the story would go) and I became a bit uneasy.

When you buy a “book” for an e-reader, you don’t really own the book, as it turns out. You have paid for permission to read something that belongs to someone else. And “they” can take back that permission any time they please. (And my father’s Kindle? The books on my father’s Kindle? I took photos of the screen — screens, pages of them — so that I would know what books he “owned.” They are gone, now that he’s passed and no longer “pays” for his “account.” There’s your “ephemeral.”)

I have also had a longtime habit of picking up used books that struck me as unusual, or that I learned would be going out of print. I bought an old edition of The Joy of Cooking when I learned that new editions have dropped the recipes for cooking game. I read at some point years ago that Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations was being revised — modernized — so I hunted down a second-hand copy (the centennial edition published in 1955). (I adore that book. It may be my take-on-a-desert-island-game book.)

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 1955 Centennial Edition

I’m old enough to have lived through the transition as second-hand booksellers began selling online. It drove up the price of old books — that copy of Lyrics of a Lowly Life by Paul Laurence Dunbar that I picked up for 50 cents in a junk store in my home town in the early ’80s would be displayed in a locked case, today, and likely priced at $100 or more. (Of course you can buy reprints of it for pennies — have you ever bought a book, thinking it was second-hand, only to find out it was a cheaply made reproduction? The quality so poor it was basically unreadable? I have. I will not, ever again, if I can help it.)

And I remember as well reading — also years ago — that decorators were buying up antique hardcover books — the ones with ornately decorated covers and gilt-edges pages — and using them as, well, decorations. In some cases they were gutting the books and using just the covers. Because what mattered wasn’t the words inside but the effect walls of books would convey, the image they’d convey of erudition.

Lyrics of a Lowly Life by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

It was around this time that I became weary of being outraged. Is that cynicism?

Not to say that I’m no longer outraged, ever. I am, believe me.

But — and this is more pronounced now than ever, since I lost both of my parents (within a span of less than a year), my birth family now basically as gutted as a home decorator’s empty books, not to mention these godawful exhausting never-ending lockdowns — I am, more and more, handling my outrage by becoming quiet, by turning inward. I am thinking — all the time, basically — about soul, and about words, and about preservation. Not preservation of myself but of what really matters — what will always matter.

Thinking about whether the outward things I preserve, the words I preserve, could ever help someone else, one day, grope a bit closer to some faint Light.

That I shouldn’t gamble with such a thing.

It’s been several years, now, since I began to regard my Kindle as a device, solely, for what I consider to be throwaway books — I know that sounds pejorative but what I mean is books I would under any circumstances read only once and then pass along (and the Kindle is also very good for reading samples for free).

I’ve started to buy up physical copies of the books on my Kindle that I do not consider one-time reads.

Which leads, of course, into the next phase of my weird relationship with Amazon. (Seems it’s always about Amazon, isn’t it?) Now with their new policies, their decision to start taking books off their platform — once again reminding me as it does all writers of our uneasy truce with That Company: I am utterly dependent on Amazon if I’m ever to sell my novels in any numbers whatever; “my” readers are not really “mine,” they are Amazon’s “customers,” no matter how ridiculous and unfair that may be (and before you defend them — because yes, I know they do me a service by building their platform and attracting traffic and letting me sell my books there — when I have, in the past, bought other things from them, cosmetics or whatever, I have gotten emails from the seller, I have gotten direct mail, snail male from the seller. How can other vendors “own” customers that came to them via Amazon but writers cannot? There is no happy answer to this, I suppose. I suppose these other sellers have done their own fulfillment. I suppose there are so many writers that we are, to Amazon, something of an unwashed hoard, with a handful of exceptions more trouble than we’re worth.)

In any event, I’ve been going to Alibris instead of Amazon more and more. Telling myself maybe that helps, in some small way, other booksellers (“hello?” “echo echo echo…”). And I am picking up more and more second-hand copies of old books. Despite the fact that my shelves are full and we’ll likely be moving again sometime in the not-too-distant future and once again I’ll be packing books in boxes…

And I am increasingly aware of how I feel, when I sit near my shelves of books, thinking or journaling or writing, and I need to look something up and I scan my titles and find a book and page through it. Like right now, for example. Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village (I own the Oxford University Press 1989 edition):

All media are a reconstruction, a model of some biologic capability speeded up beyond the human ability to perform: the wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing an extension of the skin, and electronic circuitry is an extension of the central nervous system…

The Global Village by Marshall McLuhan

My books — I feel this as I sit near them, scan their titles — are also an extension of my mind, of my memory. I very often go back to books I read decades ago (I haven’t opened the McLuhan in probably 20 years) with that same felt sense that arises when we go back into our mind’s memory banks to pull something out that we once experienced and would like to look at it again and draw upon, again, because it will add some sort of richness or meaning to what is happening now, today.

So if I look for a title and can’t find it right away (I don’t have enough space on my shelves; about half of my books are stacked behind the other half; my books hide on me, sometimes) I become anxious, even, at times, agitated. It’s like I’ve lost a bit of what should be there, should be recallable. (I was looking the other day, for my copy of The Great Gatsby and can’t find it and it still bothers me…did I lend it to someone? Should I buy another copy? Would I be able to find the same edition I owned?)

Ephemeral, indeed.

Sigh.

Buy physical books now. Great ones, good ones, bad ones, ones you happen to like. Store them safely as you would treasures. They are. Some will become unavailable soon, I suspect, for reasons that may not be stated candidly. If I’m wrong, what have you lost?

We, the library.

Walter Kirn

Books as an extension of mind — an extension of our thoughts and memories. Individually and collectively.

“We, the library.”

What happens to our books, if we, their contemporary guardians, decide to begin culling them?

And if we cull them, what injury are we committing that we cannot feel (the brain can’t feel pain, right?) but that will one day exact an awful price — one day we’ll wake up and sense a gaping hole where, we know, some memory ought to be?

I am buying more books, now, than I’ve bought since I was in college. Unapologetically. Knowing that it means I have more “stuff” that I will need to cart around, that someone will one day have to dispose us when I am dead.

Unapologetically.

Come join my DH Lawrence group on Goodreads

461px-D_H_Lawrence_passport_photographEvery once in a while I get interested enough in a writer that I decide to read “everything” he or she has written.

(No literally everything, perhaps, but a lot!)

This started in college, when I discovered that the college library often had volumes of letters or collected essays written by novelists that I was studying. I remember reading a collection of letters by Dostoyevski over one Christmas break, and a collection of essays by Virginia Woolf. It gave me a sense of connectedness with the novelists — with the human beings behind the novels. Continue reading

Announcing: my e-newsletter :-)

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time.

Now here it is: an easy way for you to stay in touch.

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Monday Musing: Whoa. Wow. Waugh.

Musing Mondays from Should be ReadingToday’s Monday Musing prompt from Should Be Reading:

  • Are you currently collecting any authors? Why?
  • Do you have all of their books? If not, why not?
  • Did you buy all the books in the collection at the same time, or did you buy a book here, a book there? Have you actually read all of the collection? If not, why not?

Currently? No.

But I have done, and when I do I like to not only collect the author but also read things like bios and collected letters.

The last author I collected, for instance, was Evelyn Waugh. I read a number of his novels: Decline and Fall, Scoop, Vile Bodies, Handful of Dust, The Loved One, Helene. (I’d already read Brideshead some years earlier.)

Around the same time, I also read Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family by Evelyn’s grandson, Alexander Waugh. I read Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London’s Jazz Age by D. J. Taylor.

Reading related non-fiction books enriches the reading experience for me, and may even  help me become a better writer.

What is your response to the prompt?

Musing Mondays, Cannot Tell a Lie

Musing Mondays from Should be ReadingToday’s Musing Mondays prompt:

Other than for school, do you read books to learn how to do something? What was/were the topic(s)?

There are a several types of how-to books I read from time to time.

I sometimes pick up books on writing. The most recent standout is Michael Moorcock: Death is No Obstacle, which is a transcript of an interview of Moorcock by Colin Greenland. It’s an opportunity to spend some time with a writer who truly “gets it,” a real gem of a book.

I sometimes read books on marketing and PR. In this category I recommend Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port, a great book for anyone who sells services or intangibles.

I also read books on consciousness/metaphysics which, loosely speaking, might qualify as how-to books. But since I have yet to, yanno, actually bend a spoon with my mind or something I hesitate to recommend any of them. But I’ll be sure to update this post the SECOND I succeed :-D

Thanks for stopping by! And if you need ideas for your To Be Read pile, please check out my novels in the sidebar.

Teaser Tuesdays . . . and omg I’m a such a lit nerd

So the idea is you turn to a random page in the book you’re reading, and pick out two sentences, and post them.

I thought I’d play along, only I just started reading Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal. So my teaser sentences are . . .  135 words long. And has a loooot of commas. LOL

I’m such a lit dork :-)

The beautiful idea of dying near the object of one’s love, expressed in a hundred different forms, was followed by a sonnet, which set forth that the soul, parted after hideous torments from the weak body which it had inhabited for the past three-and-twenty years, and impelled by that instinctive desire for happiness natural to everything which has had life, would not, even if the great Judge granted pardon for all its sins, betake itself to heaven, to join the angelic choir, the moment it obtained its freedom; but that, more happy after death than it had been in life, it would join itself to its earthly love, within a few paces of the prison in which it groaned so long. “Thus,” ran the last line of the sonnet, “I shall have found my paradise on earth.”

A tale of beer and books

Southern Tier Iniquity black ale.

Out there in The Long Tail you’ll find some mighty fine brewskies. P.S. Southern Tier, please bring Iniquity back. Thank you.

Only imagine: MSNBC has a story up about beer sales, and lo and behold, they’re plummeting — for mainstay brands like Bud, Old Milwaukee, and Michelob. [UPDATE: sadly, story no longer there…]

Of the 23 “largest selling beer products” in the U.S., “eight . . .  have lost a staggering 30 percent or more of their sales between 2005 and 2010.”

Yikes.

But here’s what strikes me. For years, we’ve been hearing that “digital” is killing the publishing industry. Digital is killing newspapers. Digital is killing music.

And the focus for the most part has been on the medium. You’ve probably heard “kill the medium!” arguments along these lines:

  • Blogging makes it too easy for know-nothings to pose as journalists. Result: newspapers face too much competition from low-quality websites. Newspaper circulation plunges.
  • Digital music is too easy to steal. Producers can’t control their product any more — people are getting for free what they used to have to buy. Music sales plunge.
  • Self-pubbing books is too easy. Now unvetted self-proclaimed “writers” can put their better-hold-your-nose junk on Amazon or B&N with a click of a mouse. They are squeezing out legitimate publishers. Print book sales plunge.

But here’s the thing. With beer, you take the medium out of the equation. People can’t buy or sell beer in digital form. It’s an analog world experience still, thank doG.

So beer becomes a control case.

Right?

You have your traditional, old school industry — all those gargantuan beer brands that our grandfathers used to drink — and you have this nascent (well, still sort of nascent) decentralized craft brew movement with its funny labels and quirky flavors.

And what happens?

We learn that when people have a choice, lo and behold, they will abandon “safe,” boring, insipid products and seek out interesting, imaginative, vibrant alternatives. In proverbial droves.

This also suggests IMO that “brand” — which you  may have noticed has been elevated in the past couple decades to near-mystical status in the marketing lexicon — is actually not enough to carry a product. On the contrary, “brand” has some mighty heavy clay feet.

Anyway, a prediction. Bud, and Old Milwaukee, and Michelob (which btw is in my WP spellcheck. Really? My spellcheck doesn’t recognize the word “spellcheck” but it generates its red squiggle if I type Michalob or Michelobe? Really????) are already working furiously behind the scenes to launch a stunning new menu of “craft-style” beers.

Second prediction. Book publishers will engage in a parallel activity, if they’re not already. And they’ll figure out which self-pubbed products sell well (possible examples: shorter novels; serials) and start assembly-lining e-books into those niches with a vengeance.

But without offering author advances ;-)

Writers like to believe they can change the world. This one actually did.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Fergus Bordewich reviews Mightier Than the Sword by David S. Reynolds: a book about Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Bordewich quotes from the book that in the first year after its release, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

sold 310,000 copies in the United States, triple the number of its nearest rivals.

It would eventually sell a million copies in Great Britain alone.

The book “opened the way for a widespread acceptance in the North of antislavery arguments that had long been ignored or dismissed.”

It helped pave the way for Lincoln’s efforts to “convert countless apathetic Yankees into men willing to fight for the emancipation of slaves.”

I read the book many many years ago, as a pre-teen — it was one of the novels I found as I worked my way through my hometown’s little library. Even then I recognized it was not only dated but propaganda; I recognized that the writing was in service of a Cause rather than an esthetic.

But what a cause, and what an accomplishment for a writer to almost single-handedly turn an entire country away from its acceptance of slavery . . .

Johnny Appleseed preached Swedenborg????

That wasn’t in the Disney version! John Chapman (Appleseed’s real name)

kept Swedenborg’s “Heaven and Hell” with the Bible in his cookpot hat. Arriving at a house on one of his walkabouts, he would greet the inhabitants: “Will you have some fresh news right from Heaven?” The answer didn’t matter—he was already reaching for the cookpot. Chapman’s “religious intensity,” not his apple planting, was “the driving force of his life,” Mr. Means says.

Guess what else. The apples that grew from his trees weren’t the big luscious bake-into-a-pie sort you find in the supermarket today.

Nope. They were little sour things — that people grew to make hard cider.

LOL