Formatting the Book
October 10, 2010

How many of you have e-readers? I do now thanks to one of my best friends who passed along the first Kindle a couple of months ago when she purchased the third edition. It’s been an interesting experience for me to watch the stages I have gone through with it.

First: the excitement. It’s an e-reader! This was my getting-used-to-it phase which was exciting as I initially played with it.

Second: wow! All those books are free! I suddenly felt as if I was at a buffet that had unlimited portions of every kind of food imaginable. No calories at this one, though, and no cost. Plus, I can be as “greedy” as I wanted and yet it wouldn’t affect anyone else’s servings. Amazon is not, of course, the only place to add e-books to  an electronic reading device. There’s the Internet Archive with more than 1.8 million titles, Open Library with more than one million, Project Gutenberg with 30,000 and climbing, and ManyBooks, the baby of the bunch at a “mere” 26,000 titles. And those are just books.

The question of course is how many of those books would be worth reading. The British Library recently released 65,000 free e-books with their original typefaces and illustrations so that if you are inclined to explore the way a penny dreadful was read by the downstairs maid in nineteenth-century England you can now do so. For those interested more in the research end this is an unbelievable opportunity. Instead of having materials restricted to visiting scholars, people who may never visit the British Library or if they do have access to the restricted areas now can see everything, especially since the library’s goal is have fifty million items in digital form by 2020.

So . . . I won’t run out of reading material?

The third stage is more sober. I love the idea that I can sit down and reading something to which I would never otherwise have had access, but for books that are readily available I am less certain. I have used the Kindle a few times. I am surprised at how much I like it. For novels, it works extremely well. But for the nonfiction I favor it is a mixed bag. The ability to increase text is marvelous. What really puts me off—and I see no way of changing this—are the images. I recently downloaded a preview of Blind Descent, a new book in my self-named and beloved Adventure genre. It’s the story of extreme caving, and it comes loaded with pictures—pictures which, unfortunately, suffer badly in both quality and in having their captions separated, sometimes by three pages from their images. It’s both disorienting and annoying, which is why that purchase will be in hardcover. That formatting problem is one reason that e-readers, at least for the foreseeable future, will be for me an adjunct to my library.

The second reason is that I love seeing walls and even piles of books. I am amazed and thrilled that my e-reader can hold hundreds of books in one small package—no more having to figure out what to take with me when I know there might be a wait somewhere—but I could no more imagine living in a house that didn’t have full bookshelves than I could imagine living in a house without cats. Both make life worth living. Both imbue my home with a soothing, comforting feel so that when I drag myself in from work I enter not just a residence but a physical as well as an emotional refuge.

Because of that my first instinct when I want to read is to hit the shelves. As I said I don’t see that changing. Audio books haven’t replaced my books; they have enlarged my reading choices. So will my e-reader. I am grateful to my friend for her generosity. And I am even more grateful that my passion for reading—which last week seemed in positive danger of disappearing—has returned. Three different formats, and all of them making me a very happy reader.

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Once again, another weekend of fabulous book festivals. For those of you who are fortunate enough to live in the following places, be sure to stop by and buy a book, meet an author, attend an event, or just soak up some literary air.

From October 14-17,  Bouchercon will take place in San Francisco, California. This annual event brings together creators and fans of mystery and detective fiction. It is named in honor of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher. This year, they will offer three great films, special opening ceremonies with the Barry and Macavity Awards followed by a festive reception, book signings, and then the Subterranean San Francisco Black Envelope Event. Sunset cruises highlight Friday and Saturday nights; there’s also a disco dance and a Sunday morning brunch. Other special events include the Rex Stout Banquet, the PWA Shamus Banquet, a reception with The Scowrers and Molly Maguires, a local Sherlock Holmes scion society, and of course the usual panels, conversations, and one-on-ones. If you are a mystery lover, this is the place to be!

On Saturday, October 16, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will host the Twin Cities Book Festival from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm at the Minneapolis Community & Technical College.. In addition to the usual readings and talks, there will also be a book fair with exhibitors and events, a special Children’s Pavilion (with games, crafts, author readings, and musical performances), and a used book sale and literary magazine fair. The Morning Mixer allows attendees to meet and chat with local literary luminaries.

Also on Saturday, the 16th, is the Boston Book Festival which will take place in Copley Square from 10:00 am to 9:00 pm. Among their presenting authors are Joyce Carol Oates, Bill Bryson, Amartya Sen, Gish Jen, and Dennis Lehane. There will be special programs and activities for the children and teens, musical performances and slam poetry on the Festival Stage, workshops on writing, panels and presentations on wonderful array of subjects ranging fro baseball writing to social justice.

Waynesboro, Virginia, is the host of Book ‘Em: Buy a Book and Stop a Crook at Kate Collins Middle School, where four dozen authors will be talking in more than twenty talks, discussions, and workshops from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. Genres represented include historical, non-fiction, mystery, romance, suspense/thrillers, fantasy, horror, true crime, and children’s books. Proceeds support organizations dedicated to increasing literacy rates, decreasing crime rates, helping police solve crimes, and raising public awareness of the link between high illiteracy rates and high crime rates.

Also on Saturday, October 16, is the Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books & Authors in Providence. From 9:00 am to 5:30 pm at the Lincoln School ten authors and illustrators will talk about their works and meet with the children. There will also be a musical performance by the Flannery Brothers, and the opportunity to participate in craft workshops including bookmaking. A mobile food truck from Chez Pascual will be there for lunchtime snacks.

In Austin, the Texas Book Festival will take place on the weekend of October 16-17 by offering more than 200 authors and 100 vendors and exhibitors, an event called Reading Rock Stars that invites selected authors to present their work to students in economically-disadvantaged schools, and the awards for the winners of the annual Fiction Contest. Numerous panels, presentations, readings, and other events for children, teens, and adults are scheduled continually over the two days.

The West Virginia Book Festival is also  a two-day event, which takes place at the Charleston Civic Center from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm on Saturday and noon to 6:00 pm on Sunday. New York Times best-selling authors Nicholas Sparks and Diana Gabaldo head a line-up of seventeen authors who will present readings and workshops and also autograph their books. In addition, there will be a large marketplace where books and other literary items may be purchased, a special children’s area with many hands-on activities, and a large two-day used book sale. Panels and presentations run throughout the two days.

Northampton, Massachusetts, is the  home of the Pioneer Valley Book & Ephemera Fair on Sunday, October 17. at the Smith Vocational School. Running from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, it features more than sixty-five used and antiquarian booksellers who offer books in a wide variety of genres as well as literary ephemera. Admission is $6 for adults, $3 for those aged 12-21, and free for children.

The Pub House:
Rockport Publishers is an imprint of Quayside Publishing Group. It offers books in the areas of Architecture, Art, Business and Economics, Comics and Graphic Novels, Design, House and Home, Nature, and Technology and Agriculture. If you are or know of a SFF fan, Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art is a fabulous book that offers 224 pages of astounding visuals—paintings and poster art—as well as interviews with the established and up-and-coming artists of the genre and their strategies, techniques, and inspirations. Small Spaces, Beautiful Kitchens is a hands-on workbook with ideas for every kind and size of kitchen and every type and lifestyle of its owner. If you are going to remodel or are even thinking about it, this is a superb way to begin. Comics fans who aspire to create their own would probably love to have Creating Comics, a book that explores, though interviews, the back stories of many of today’s visual artists who “walk readers through their conceptual process when devising story lines with powerful graphics.”

Imaging Books & Reading:
Most of us carry a book or an e-reader with us nearly every place we go for fear of finding ourselves waiting without something to read. Well, if we were to install one of these we’d never have that fear again.

Of Interest:
The Quivering Pen blog is written by David Abrams, someone I “know” through a book discussion forum in which we both participate. Several years ago, on a now-defunct forum, he posted that he was heading off to Iraq and wouldn’t be around as much. But when he did post he mentioned that books were so desired over there—that most had already been devoured by the troops—that several members sent packages immediately. When David returned he also returned to the forum.

And now he has set up this blog which, despite its  shiny newness, is already a favorite of mine. The name comes from a quote by Emile Zola, and David has really made it seem very real. In his latest post, he talks about reading an old book we all know about but some of us, including him, hadn’t read—Deliverance. His take on it is exquisite. He paints the book in a way that probably most of us, certainly those of us who haven’t read it, are unfamiliar with, noting that it is “an unbroken confessional babble, words spilling one after the other in a stream of never-ending imagery and meditation on the human condition. . . . He writes in elegant bursts of language, self-contained images tailor-made for stand-alone quotes.” Could there be a more eloquent description? Or blogger?

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren