Why I don't like e-books

Pretty!

• When you accidentally leave your e-book on the plane, you loose a $200 device and your entire library.
•  All e-books look the same.  I do judge books by their cover and the glossy picture on the front of the screen doesn’t do it for me.
• You can’t lend or borrow an e-book.
• You don’t know what others are reading, which means you can’t start conversations about a book, or find commonalities with other humans over books.   All our reading is suddenly done anonymously.  One of the pleasures of reading is sharing what you read.  I bought my husband a book for his birthday only to find out he had already downloaded it and was reading it. 
• Books look great lined up on shelves.  They have a feel and a smell and a place.  E-books are just pixels on screens. 
• Curling up with a good e-book doesn’t even sound like fun.
• When e-books take over we will loose the most important public gathering place: the public library. 
• When I drop my books, I pick them up.  If I drop a book reader, I have a pile of glass. 
•   Academics have a harder time citing passages from e-books since page numbers in e-books are all relative.
• What will happen to book fairs and book sales and book stores? 
• E-books don’t have a smell or a feel or carry nostalgia.  When my books are lined up on the shelves I can peruse them and remember where I was and who I was with at each one.  When I was 24 I backpacked through Europe and carried one book: a volume of women's travel adventures.  It lasted me most of the trip and started up several conversations with fellow female travelers.  I still have the book and I think of my adventure often when I see the book on my shelf.
• What about children's books like pop-ups and touchy-feely books and board books?  I'm not letting my toddler run around with a reading device in her hands.
• Everyone talks about the environment.  Does an e-book reader recycle?

 (I’ll grant you e-books are great for travelers, and for people with eyesight problems who can’t read small print, or people with small spaces who can’t have a huge library.  Sometimes I feel like one of those musty old writers who still write on typewriters and can’t see the benefit of a word processor.)  

Please comment and tell me about your vision of our book future.  Are they destined to end up only in resale shops like LPs?  Why do you like or not like the e-book reader?  

Some reading from the NY Times

Dear Readers,

The heat has officially worn me down and I haven't been able to focus too much on the reading life.  I am expecting a new book from the ER program, and I have started reading about a dozen books which are laying around my house collecting dust and overdue fines.  I have read two very good (and long articles) in the NY Times that I'd like to share. These are by a writer named Daphne Merkin.  The first was out last year and was about depression.  A friend who suffers sent it to me to help me understand.   The other I stumbled across a few weeks ago and found fascinating.  I do know people who have been seeing therapists for many years, and I wonder how they can function living so closely under the mirror.

Enjoy!

Esmerelda

The Artistic Crime of the Century

Man on Wire won an Academy Award in 2007 for best documentary. The subject was Philippe Petit who stretched a cable from World Trade Center building one to World Trade Center building two and did a high wire act--110 stories up in the air.  I can't comment on the artistic merits of the movie.  I am sure it was fine.  But I can never stop thinking about this extraordinary crime (Petit was arrested afterwards!) and feat of daring.  I find it difficult to describe with superlatives because it seems impossible.  On the morning of August 7, 1974  Petit and his accomplices strung a cable from building to building and Petit danced and hopped and laid down on the cable.  For 45 minutes he performed for the crowd below.  This was before CNN and videocameras on cell phones and well before 9/11.  When I think about what it must have taken to perform so high in the air, I absolutely shiver.  I do not believe anyone else could ever do this.

It is against this amazing story that Colum McCann sets his fabulous novel Let the Great World Spin. Philippe Petit is a minor character performing high in the air and 9 other characters tales are woven into this historic high wire walk in strange and beautiful ways.  What is even more magical about the story telling is that all the stories finally weave together into a heartbreaking, jaw dropping, yet redemptive tale set on a hot summer August day in 1974.

In addition to some great characters and fabulous stories (McCann can really get into the hearts and minds of many different types of people.) he evokes the 70's and makes it feel more magical than I remember it being.   I felt nostalgia for 1974.

One critic I read wrote that this is the only good novel written in tribute to the World Trade Centers and 9/11. When I read that I realized that this was the true beauty of this novel:  it never lets you forget these stunning buildings that are no longer dotting the NYC skyline.  

After you have read the book, check out the documentary. Let me know how you would describe this man's walk on the wire.

A letter to Mei-Ling Hopgood

Dear  Ms. Hopgood,

I was at a party recently and a guest, who was admiring my recently adopted daughter from China, asked if I hoped to find her birth family someday.  I told the guest I did not think that would ever be possible given the situation for girls in the People's Republic of China.  "Oh yes," she replied. "I just read this great book about that. It's called Lucky GIrl."

Because of my recent trip and adoption I have a huge interest in memoir and China adoption story, and so I did not hesitate to pick up a copy.  I loved it all, and I wept copiously over many parts.  Specifically the part where you met your biological family for the first time in Taiwan, the part where you forgave your family for their attitudes rather then dwell on them, and when you imagined the boy baby brother, starving as he lay alone.  Last, the birth of your own daughter felt like a miracle.

As the mother of a girl from China, I marvel every day at the seemingly random circumstances that brought us together.  I think about the birth mother every day and imagine that somehow she has gotten word that Xiaojian is okay and healthy and happy and will have this amazing life in America.  I especially loved the part where you discussed some women's obsession with birth mothers.

You really gave me a wonderful gift.  Although I know my daughter will have her own set of feelings and emotions about her country of origin, it gave me great solace to know your story.  

People frequently call her a lucky girl.  I always respond that I feel like the luck is all mine.

My best to you,

Amy Cornell

Bermuda Shorts by James J Patterson

When Bermuda Shorts arrived in my box from the ER program, I had to study it a minute.  I thought this was a new book by the famous author who is known for thrillers and detective novels. The one who has all those books on the best seller list.  Why does he need an early review? I wondered.

I realized after glancing at the back that this was a different James and a different kind of book: a collection of thoughtful, humorous, bittersweet essays about love, growing up, sports, politics and telephones.  There was also a short story thrown in at the end as a kind of bonus.

The personal essay is not an easy form to master, but it is also the most compelling reading, and I found myself thinking of people who would like to read certain essays.  My father-in-law would love his essay on the Washington Redskins (in fact there was a whole series of sports essays that for some would be quite compelling.)  The ministers at my church would have loved an essay titled God, Gordo and Gandhi.  Anyone who has been in love would like The Conjecture Chamber.  There is something here for everyone.  

I hope more than a few people notice this small book.  I enjoyed every essay and found them all to be clear and intelligent and worthwhile.  He manages to tell stories and be thoughtful.  He draws almost always from his rich and interesting life as a sports fan and a musician and son.  James J Patterson is a good writer and you will spend an enjoyable afternoon with this collection.

If you saw my last post you know I also love the publishing house that put out this collection.  I am more than willing to lend this to anyone local, but would also like to encourage you to buy it or to request it from your local library.  Support small presses!

Alan Squire Publishing

I recently received an ER copy of a collection of personal essays put out by a small publishing company called Alan Squire Publishing.  I'll be reviewing this book in a few days, but before I get to that I want to share a bonus story that was included as part of the package.

Included with the book and the obligatory letter from the publisher was a 6 page photocopy of a newspaper story.  I blew it off at first.  One night as I was drifting off, it caught my eye and I became caught up in the story of the man behind this small press.  The newspaper article was from a 2008 edition of The Washington Post Magazine and was by an incredible feature writer by the name of Laura Wexler.

It seems Andrew Gifford the founder of Alan Squire Publishing was heir to the famous Gifford Ice Cream stores which all went out of business when Gifford's father left town with all the money.  Andrew was 10 years old at the time and never saw his father again.

Gifford was left with nothing and eventually found his way to a routine day job trouble shooting for the APA.  In the meantime, he always had this dream to publish books, and so using his own credit card he began to publish.  He has published three books now and has teamed up with the Santa Fe Writers Project to start offering a literature prize.

Thirtysomething Gifford also suffered from a horrible disease  called Trigeminal Neuralgia.  For 14 years he had a searing pain in his face.  Apparently this disease is also nicknamed the suicide disease because the pain is so horrific and apparently very difficult to treat.

So Gifford labors away at his day job, heir to a scandal that rocked the Baltimore ice cream world, and by night labors to produce good books and deals with searing and enduring pain.

The article I read recounted how finally he met a doctor who offered him a risky procedure to end the pain (brain surgery) and after all the years of the most painful existence you could imagine, he woke up after surgery to find his pain was gone.  Andrew Gifford went through a period of time after the surgery where he actually missed his pain.  He fingered the pills he used  to take. He mourned his missing pain like one might mourn a missing lover.

I reread that last page several times.  How could you miss your pain?  Is it true that we can become so attached to even the most horrifying life set backs that we actually miss them when they are gone?  I was amazed at Andrew's story and kept turning that idea over and over in my head.  How could someone miss a pain so awful that you feared breeze on your face or the feel of the shower on your skin?

The newspaper story did exactly what it intended to do.  My heart is very big for this young sweet man, and I hope that his business does well, and I intend to go out and buy and read all his books.  I am telling you to do the same.


Readers, this is the kind of guy we want to succeed.  So take a look at these books and ask yourself if you wouldn't like to read one or two of them. I don't mean to say buy these books cause you feel sorry for a guy who has had a rough life and is trying to do something to make himself a little piece of happy.   I am saying, the books are pretty good and we should patronize this guy because he is a good guy and he is trying to make for himself a little piece of happy.

At least request it at your public library so they will buy a copy of these good, good words.

Banned in China

At the end of Pearl of China the author, Anchee Min, writes a short note to the reader about her inspiration for writing this book, a fictionalized account of the life of Pearl Buck in China, as seen through the eyes of her (fictional) life long best friend Willow Yee.

Min writes that she had never read The Good Earth (Buck's most famous work) and in fact during Buck's bid to return to China with Nixon in 1972, Min (along with other school children) was forced to denounce her.  While Min was giving a reading of her memoir Red Azalea at a book store, a woman stepped up to her and asked if she had ever read The Good Earth.  Min replied no and the woman handed her a copy of the book as a gift.  While doing so she told Min that The Good Earth taught her to love China.

Min took the book and read it on the flight home, and when she was done she wept.  She never imagined that a Western writer could capture the essence of China, especially the peasant class, so beautifully.  And then there was that whole denunciation thing.  Min resolved to write this novel at that time.  

Min tapped exactly on why I have become fascinated with Pearl Buck.  She really understood China and its people and was able to write to tell the world and begin to bridge gaps.  We underestimate her importance on East West relations.  Remember that Nobel prize.

This novel was filled with moments like the one Min experienced herself: regret and longing and friendship and deep abiding love, especially toward the latter half of the book when we see Willow struggling to keep her faith and her dignity in spite of all the horror heaped upon her by the Chinese government.  The narrator foreshadows saying good-bye to Pearl for the last time.  She kneels at her grave in the US heartbroken that she did not see her friend for the last 37 years of her life.  She meets Nixon who brings her greetings from Buck (true?) in the US and you can feel the whole town tense and then admit that they know and love Pearl.  All these moments had me reaching for my box of tissues.  I loved this fictional story for that reason.

I was struck by how much Min's style of writing copied Buck's style.  They write in short sentences that move the plot forward quickly.  There are heros and there are villains and there exists no subtlety in any of the characters.  I was surprised to note that in Min's story the missionary work of Pearl's father, Absolom Sydenstrecker, was regarded as heroic. In fact, all the characters who converted to Christianity were heroic.  The Christian conversion narrative was so thick and annoying that it could easily be mistaken for a Christian tract.  While I find reading about missionaries in China interesting, I think there are always downsides and upsides and Min seems to really push a Christian agenda.  

This small part aside, I loved Pearl of China.  Because so much of the plot revolved around historical evidence, I am eager to turn now to some history books and biographies to see what of this volume happened and what was an invention of the author.  

By the way, as my title indicates, I don't think I can send this one to Catherine.  It is not very nice about Chairman Mao and Anchee Min's books all appear on the banned list.