reading
A few days before my vacation Toronto, I went through the library of books in my apartment, and organized them into two shelves, one for the books I've read and another for the books I haven't read. My situation isn't as bad as Ealasaid's, with a bookshelf of unread books that at least doubles the size of mine, but at least until I read them all, a new rule: for every book that I buy, regardless of whether I've read that newly bought book or not, I will give away one book. No rules around size or whether I've already read it, or who gets it (a friend, a stranger, the used bookstore, or the library). This is just my way of keeping the number of things in my apartment to a minimum, and ensuring bookshelf sustainability, while at the same time knowing that I'll never have to worry about running out of things to read.
Monique links to the miniBookExpo for Bloggers, where you claim a book in exchange for sending in $3, and promising to write about the book within a month. If my unread pile weren't as high as it is, I'd be interested in claiming a few of the books listed, including The Best American Magazine Writing 2006 [claim by leaving a comment] and The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami (audiobook, not many of which I've listened to) [claim by leaving a comment], but if you're looking for some sweet summer reading, the miniBookExpo might be for you.
A suggestion for next year: a small maple leaf next to each book's listing. I'm making an effort to read more local authors, and I'm sure Canadian publishers could use the extra little indication that the writers are themselves Canadian.
Hugh McGuire, linking to Steph (Dandruff) about reading books compared to reading online materials (which I've quoted and discussed): “Some of the problem is also the insidious effects of too much online reading. For everything Dandruff has to say about reading a real paper & ink book, the opposite is true of the internet… the mind becomes accustomed to skimming not for the detail, but for the general, and once the gist is gotten, more info (from elsewhere) is sought — I often don’t even read whole short blog posts, once I get the drift I’m done, and then it’s onto the next link. This lack of ability to pay attention to detail is deadly, and pervasive.”
Karl: “Les gens continueront à payer pour aller voir un concert, car c'est la possibilité d'accéder à une performance unique, donc une nouvelle expression de l'oeuvre d'art. Il n'y a pas de copie possible d'un concert, c'est un événement unique. Les gens payent l'accès qui se passent dans une enceinte close. Là encore droit de passage pour accéder à l'oeuvre à laquelle on ne peut pas accéder par d'autres moyens. On ne paye toujours pas l'oeuvre d'art. Faites l'expérience suivante, concert ouvert en plein air, avec juste une corde et un guichet. Les gens qui payent peuvent rentrer dans le périmètre de la corde, ceux qui ne paient pas restent à l'extérieur, mais il n'y a aucune différence de qualité d'écoute ou de vue du concert. Combien de personnes vont-elles vraiment payer ?”
Karl's thoughts mainly concern books, but first, a brief summary of the above. Karl is saying that a musical concert is a unique experience, with the artists' interpretations of their own music and that of others as well as the visuals and spaces for dancing, etc. and the general atmosphere factoring into the experience. Only because it's possible to close people off from a physical space (in the case of a stadium or a club, open-air concerts making it difficult to exclude people who do not pay) can fans get in the door.
As a lover of the physical object of books, Karl reports that he understands that books are inevitably the next cultural art form to lose its physical identity in a digital world. Fortunately he is not worried that writers will lose their livelihood, because writing is incredibly difficult and valued-highly. Just as musicians will continue writing and performing music, authors will continue writing and distributing books.
See also: Jay McCarthy's notes on Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, by Gabriel Zaid.
Steve Landsburg wonders if there are too many books: “This year's Man Booker Prize, Nobel Prize for Literature, and Pulitzer Prize for fiction have now all been awarded for works I will never read, and next month's National Book Award is certain to follow suit. Which causes me to wonder whether the world's got enough books already. I own hundreds of novels that I will never have the time to read. If these were the only copies on earth and a fire destroyed half of them, my life would not be signifcantly impoverished.”
I wonder if Landsburg has read So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance by Gabriel Zaid, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Jay McCarthy has extensive notes) or what he thinks about the long tail. The demand for books coupled with the number of readers or sales that the author considers enough for the book to be a success justifies the number of books that exists and its steady increase. If Landsburg is worried that there are too many books now, just wait until publishing books is available to the masses. This is already happening.
Also, his life may not be impoverished by the copies of books being destroyed, but I wonder how people other than him would think. He may not have the time to read them, but surely there is one person out there who does. That is the premise of "the long tail": there are enough people in the world with diverse enough tastes that there will always be a market for something, no matter how small. I doubt a rational economic model can explain it, but it offends the sensibilities of someone who loves books as much as I do, and who has worked in a library, that anyone could consider the burning of books and the ideas contained within them as something unproblematic.
Paul Collins on a survey question about reading in America: “"The survey asked respondents if, during the previous twelve months, they had read any novels, short stories, plays, or poetry in their leisure time (not for work or school)." It will come as news to historians and memoirists, working in the two most vibrantly evolving genres of the last decade, that what they create does not constitute "reading." Nor, for that matter, do essays or graphic narratives. ¶ [...] The question's wording also rules out any students who may already be reading for their classes, and for that reason are not engaged in leisure reading. Fancy that: You can be an English major and still be a nonreader. And then, when you're done working on your term paper, you can relax in the campus coffeehouse Not-Reading newspapers and magazines, and fire up your laptop to Not-Read the blogs and the latest wire reports.”
Collins looks to Japan and finds that in an incredibly technology-centric society, not only were the survey methods were better, but the surveys found that reading rates have risen rather than fallen. Collins also does some funky quote mashing-up to show that today is not the first time that the demise of reading has been incorrectly predicted.
Lindsay Waters: “The humanities must now take steps to preserve and protect the independence of their activities, such as the writing of books and articles, before the market becomes our prison and the value of the book becomes undermined. It was not always so. John Milton once wrote that good books are "the precious lifeblood of a master spirit." Today the humanist should look back to such expressions of illuminated belief. The task is to engage in constant re-examination.”
I don't share Waters' concern, at least not the concern he addresses in the opening section of his essay. I'm optimistic that the "problem", in the forseeable future, will be one of too many books, not, as Lindsay suggests, too few. For people like me who are consumers of books rather than writers, this is no problem at all, simply because that means there will be always something to read, and reading is an activity I spend hours a day doing and will continue doing until the day I'm robbed of my eyesight. Reading for me is an essential part of the conversation that life is supposed to be, though it is only one part of the conversation. The other parts include, but are not limited to, critically thinking about what I've read, discussing it with those around me, and, through writing for my weblog(s), those who are far from me. Most of the friends I literally talk to are not really book-inclined (that's changing, but they're still mostly non-book-nerds), and that's okay: I like having them around for reasons other than talking about books. I write far less than I read (far, far less), and that too is okay. I feel no obligation to share every single thought (though regular readers of this weblog, especially in its early days, may disagree). A market for books, and a market in books is both a good thing—like I said, the existence of a market means there will always be something for me to read—and a "bad" which can be bypassed if necessary through publicly funded universities, independent, second-hand book stores and, my homes away from home, libraries.
The bulk of the essay addresses the lack of critical thinking, especially in American culture, and to an extent, he has a point, though critical thinking will never disappear. There's only so much that TV can do (“teacher, mother, secret lover”, Homer called it, but that's about it), and the Internet, still a textual medium despit an onslaught from audio if not so much video (yet) will have a lot more people fighting for it if—when, says Lawrence Lessig—the forces of control and permission and conformity start weilding their power than TV ever will. In the meantime, I expect to continue my obsession with books.
Fellow obsessives will do well to read So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance by Gabriel Zaid, translated by Natasha Wimmer. Jay McCarthy has an an excellent summary and comments on the book.
Jay McCarthy, reviewing a book I sent him to help rebuild his library after the fire that burned down his house, So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance by Gabriel Zaid, translated by Natasha Wimmer, highlights one of the arguments the book makes: “Books are the most versatile media form because they support blockbusters and experimentation--they promote wealth, diversity, and creativity. This is because the barrier to entry is so much less than a movie or a television program, and thus a book doesn't have to make as much money to be justified, and thus it does not have to appeal to as many people to be published. Thus diversity flourishes and hits are possible.”
One argument that Jay does not highlight is the fact—and not argument, admittedly, but that this is not obvious strikes Zaid as strange—that books require no special device to read them. No software to install, no hardware to buy (and upgrade), no format lock-in. Books are extremely portable, are easy to write on for annotations and highlights, it's easy to keep the place of where you stopped reading (and you can stop and start reading whenever you want!), and they're cheap. Yes, cheap: for up to 30 dollars each for a hardcover and up to 20 dollars each for a softcover (or for about 40 dollars a year, at least in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, you can borrow them for a few weeks at a public library), you get hours and hours of entertainment and information and education. For me, I've stopped reading books for the information and ideas (okay, not quite), and have taken to reading simply because I derive pleasure from the act of reading. That's not to say there aren't I don't derive pleasure from other activities, but reading is and always be chief among them, and Gabriel Zaid's book made me fall deeper in love with reading books.
Jay also highlights a section suggesting that finding a good book is, because bookstores don't come close to stocking 1 percent of all books, that finding a good book—or, rather, the book you're looking for—is a miracle, to say the least. It's interesting that I found the book because it was on hold for me at the library. I don't remember every placing the hold. In fact, it was the first book that I don't remember every putting on hold. But seeing the title of it and reading the blurb on the back, I decided to give it a chance, and it turned out to be one of the best books I ever read.