what is lost

I bought and read my first e-book on a phone this year using an iPhone app. I don’t plan to repeat the experience, not because it was horrible but because I know too many booksellers personally and until it’s easy to buy from them I’m not planning to purchase e-books. But I felt as if I needed some experience with e-books.

The good side? It didn’t weigh much when traveling and I could read it in the dark on the long shuttle ride from the airport. The bad side?

Let me count the ways.

First, the pages look ugly. There’s no other way to put it. There is no page design, just letters poured into a mechanical box, no art in the chapter headings, no thought given to initial capitals, words broken in the wrong place, justified lines full of gaps like bad teeth. And of course no page numbers. The design of a page in a printed book is a nearly invisible pleasure. Page design is something I appreciate more since seeing what is lost when it’s absent.

Second, reading on a phone is fine for e-mail and  for short form texts on a web page, but it’s hard to get lost in a book when you have to turn pages every paragraph or so. I also found it strangely disorienting to have only a bar at the bottom of the page telling me where I was in the book. A sense of place, of orientation in the arc of the story is harder to grasp. (I found this also true when I held my most recently published book in my hands for the first time. The last chapters felt different when measured between the thumb and fingers and the growing weight of the left side than when I was scrolling to the end of a document. Though I did read the galleys on paper, I shifted the pages to the back of the stack as I read and so was surprised by how profoundly the anticipation of an ending affects the reading experience.)

Third – I don’t like a future for the book in which sharing is disabled and ownership of an immutable copy no longer exists. It bothers me that a corporation could reach into my personal library and pluck a book back or alter it. I don’t like the fact that there is no such thing as fair use in a world of licensed content and that I can’t give a friend or family member a book I read and loved. Sure, I could buy them a second e-book version, but it’s not the same as handing on the book I read.

Fourth – this post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation spells out just how much we give away to Google and Amazon when we let them be our “bookstore” and “library.” Real booksellers and librarians have stood up for reader privacy. Personal information is a valuable commodity to these corporations. I don’t like the idea of my reading habits becoming a commodity and I don’t like the aggregation of readers’ behavior becoming a huge data mine of our minds.

Google’s new Google Book Search Project has the ability to track reading habits at an unprecedented level of granularity. In particular, according to the proposed Google Books Privacy Policy, web servers will automatically “log” each book and page you searched for and read, how long you viewed it for, and what book or page you continued onto next . . . your Kindle will periodically send information about you to Amazon. But exactly what information is sent? Amazon’s wording — “information related to the content on your Device and your use of it” — reads so broadly that it appears to allow Amazon to track all content that users put on the device, regardless of whether that content is purchased from Amazon. Some security researchers have indicated that the Kindle may even be tracking its users’ GPS locations. Is this the future of reading?

God, I hope not. Cory Doctorow has put some of this in sharp perspective in “How to Destroy the Book” in which he argues that the true pirates are the corporations who are remaking our book culture so that they can be in the center of it, controlling books for the sake of profits. He contrasts this perspective with that of “people of the book” who love books, want to fill their houses with them, and pass favorites on to their children.

Anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself. We must stop them from being allowed to do it. The library of tomorrow should be better than the library of today. The ability to loan our books to more than one person at once is a feature, not a bug. We all know this. It’s time we stop pretending that the pirates of copyright are right. These people were readers before they were publishers before they were writers before they worked in the legal department before they were agents before they were salespeople and marketers. We are the people of the book, and we need to start acting like it.

What he said.

photos courtesy of brewbooks and Josh Bancroft.

by the time you’ve read these . . .

. . . you’ll have gone right around the world.

LibraryThing is having another book pile contest. I decided to join in this time – with a few books I’ve been picking up that are from different parts of the world. Here’s my entry:

In ascending order, there’s crime fiction from Sweden, Palestine, Slovakia, Turkey, Brazil, Botswana, Russia, South Africa, Australia, Iceland, Scotland, and Canada – with a non-fiction book about China, thrown in for good measure. (We’re reading John Pomfret’s Chinese Lessons as a college common reading this year.)

By the way, LibraryThing is fun – and it’s where I keep track of what I’ve been reading, which is handy when you have a terrible memory.

the holy trinity

Karen Chisolm has tagged me with a meme that started over at David Montgomery’s Crime Fiction Dossier: who are the three authors you couldn’t live without?

A few years ago, I might actually have duplicated his answer – Lawrence Block, John Connelly, and George Pelecanos. Or maybe it would have been John Harvey, Reginald Hill, and Dennis Lehane. Or Elmore Leonard, Robert Crais and James Lee Burke . . . Okay, you get the picture. It wasn’t hard at all to name my favorites. I had a fairly short list.

Now I have a very long list. And an even longer list of authors I want to try, but haven’t yet. (Damn you, 4MA! I’ll read until I die and I still won’t be finished!!) Another thing that has happened is that some of my favorites ten years ago are still writing, but either I’ve changed or they have. They just don’t have the pizazz for me they once had.

So I think I’ll divide this into two parts: authors who made me the reader I am today and authors whose work really excites me right now. And then the Meme graders can give me an F for not following directions.

Three authors who made me the reader I am today – Dennis Lehane, who showed me you could write beautifully about terrible things. Elmore Leonard, who loves all of his characters, even the lame, the halt, and the uncool, and who has a laconic but utterly generous approach to the world. And John Harvey, whose writing has a very special quality of light.

Three authors whose work excites me right now – Jo Nesbo, who is simply brilliant and makes me believe in his world. David Corbett, who takes risks and is insightful about what’s going on. And Denise Mina, who had me with GarnethIll, but keeps surprising me with her range.

Of course that’s three authors among some 3,000 that I could name . . .

photo courtesy of Your Guide.

me-me-meme

I’ve been tagged again! This time by Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise. It’s a simple meme, meant to spread the word about books. The task, should you decide to accept it, is this:

Pick up the nearest book, open to page 123, find the fifth sentence, then post the next three sentences. You’re also meant to tag five more people, but so far as I can tell everyone I know has already caught the bug. So I’ll skip that step and instead do the other steps twice for penance.

“Lucien’s grip was legendary, and if you were ever unfortunate enough to have him lay hands on you, you suddenly paid very close attention. It was fun to watch the mechanisms start up, to see Lucien’s eyes start flying over Absakora County, sweeping down from the mountains, through the gullies, over the foothills, and into every attic, cedar chest, closet, and gun case in a hundred square miles. He added five more names to the list, none of which were Indians.” This is from Craig Johnson’s The Cold Dish.

“When he returned to the locker room, he noticed the handkerchief on the bench. It was Chinese silk, embroidered in red with the monogram AL. He picked it up and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, not really caring whether or not she’d return for it.” This one from Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang.

Both books are in a rather tall TBR pile, one from the book room at LCC Denver, the other from my last foray to Once Upon a Crime. Speaking of which, if you’re in the Minneapolis/St. Paul neighborhood, come keep me company on Tuesday, April 29th, at 7pm there, where Pat and Gary are kindly hosting the launch of In the Wind.

Steve Jobs, take a memo

People seem to think Steve Jobs is oracular. When he recently said “nobody reads anymore,” because he was annoyed the Kindle was getting so much attention, readers felt as if they had just found their name on the Endangered Species List.

Well Nielson Online, which is not institutionally sentimental about books, has just found the product most often purchased online is . . . is . . . can you guess?

Yup. Books.

help. I can not go.

I’d like to believe I am much more saddened by people whose lives fall apart than I am by crumbling stones or plaster. Sadly, social decay is just so much more easy to ignore, and not as prettily exposed with the lens of a camera.
Dutch @ Sweet Juniper

This Flickr set is astonishing. Please – go see it.

I can’t quite put into words what I feel when watching the entire slideshow. It isn’t the destroyed, neglected books. Sure, I have a certain fetishized love of books, but that’s not what hurts.

It’s not the decay of the building, one that is beautiful in spite of its ruin.

It’s the realization that in so many American cities, kids in the public schools are being treated much the same way. Someone bought books that sit amidst the ruins still in their shrink wrap, forgotten. And all those new, bright, hopeful human beings are put into decaying schools and forgotten, except when the tests roll around and the failure is put on the kids. Not on whoever lets this happen.

And when I am stirred by the beauty of these photographs, I have to realize that I’m one of the people who lets it happen.

This photo was is part of a set of the same ruin taken by elRojo, who has posted them under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you.)

Ian Rankin, The Naming of the Dead

It’s 2005 and Edinburgh is gearing up for world leaders to convene the G8 summit – and for the protests that will accompany the event. As tens of thousands arrive to have their say (including Siobhan Clark’s parents who never quite understood her rebellious career path), scraps of clothing appear hanging on the trees at Clooty Well, a place where people leave offerings for the dead. The clothing belongs to a thuggish associate of Big Ger Cafferty, accused of rape and killed by someone unknown. As Rebus and Siobhan investigate they find more murders tied to a website that tracks evil doers – and they try to investigate the suspicious death of a minister at the summit in the teeth of a shadowy security service’s hindrance. As with other books in this series, the plot is tangled and many-layered. Here the massive protests converge with the investigations and the characters’ own stories until they are cut short by the 7/7 attacks in London. The ending is appropriately ambiguous for these ambiguous times. Rankin does a wonderful job of bringing together real world issues with his long-running series characters. I’m looking forward to the next in the series – but will be sorry to see John Rebus retire.

what are you reading?

I was delighted to be asked by Marshal Zeringue what I’m reading. His multi-blog Campaign for the American Reader is full of fascinating stuff. What I particularly like is the wide range of genres and ideas included. It’s like rummaging through a vast shared library where people turn to each other and say “have you read this?” If you’re ever in a reading slump, or want to try on a kind of book you don’t normally read – here’s the place to compile a reading list that won’t ever run out.

It strikes me, too, that it would be a wonderful collection development / reader’s advisory tool for librarians.

carnival launch!

The Carnival has begun. Karen, who documents crime fiction in Australia and New Zealand, is hosting Carnival of the Criminal Minds No. 1 at her blog telling us what’s up down under. I’m pleased that US publishers are finally realizing we’re interested in other parts of the world here and are finally publishing the likes of Peter Temple and Garry Disher. I’m really looking forward to Adrian Hyland’s Diamond Dove (though I gather for the US edition it’s getting a name change and features a cover with a bird that looks not at all like a diamond dove but more like that ugly bird over the door of the US embassy in London, which suggests we’re still being protected from the scary news that the entire world is not Just Like Us).

Next up – The Rap Sheet will host the carnival round about October 15th, to be followed by others.

This just in – nice post about the carnival over at The Rap Sheet!

the point of it all

J. D. Rhodes has a sad, thoughtful, wrenching post today over at Murderati and it raises a question about crime fiction that I often ask myself. Here’s some of it.

This past Friday morning, Emily Elizabeth Haddock was home alone, sick with a case of strep throat. Three young men, not realizing that there was someone in the house, broke into the mobile home where she lived. Apparently, when Emily surprised them, one of them shot her to death with a stolen .22 caliber pistol. Emily’s grandfather found her body on the floor when he stopped by the house to check on her and saw the door forced open.

Emily Haddock was 12 years old. She went to my daughter’s school. She lived on the same road as one of my daughter’s close friends.

The three charged in the murder were apprehended and jailed Monday night. They’re 16, 18, and 19 years old. . . .

. . . As crime writers, I think we sometimes lose sight of what murder’s really like. Most often, it’s not a puzzle for the brilliant detective to solve. It’s not the plot device that causes the plucky heroine and her true love to get together so they can be happy and just too cute for words forever. It’s not the dangling thread of a giant tapestry of international conspiracy to be unraveled.

More often than not, a murder is just a stupid and pointless fuckup by someone who didn’t start the day out thinking “I’m gonna kill me someone today,” but who started that day with one bad choice that cascaded inevitably into another, then another, like a snowflake that turns into a snowball that turns into an avalanche. In this case, the avalanche leaves an innocent girl dead and not just one, but four families devastated.

I’ve been looking at the words above for the last fifteen minutes, trying to draw some conclusion from all this, some point. And I can’t find one. . . .

Go read the whole thing. Give it some thought.