Why I will probably never own an e-reader.

(You can blame both the spiel and the double whammy!post on Aurora. She started it.)

Don't get me wrong. I can see why e-readers are popular: convenient for traveling and storing multiple (hundreds of) e-books, reduced prices on those e-books, and for those of us in the Northwest (the hippie capital of the country), it's generally a "greener" way to read -- with the added bonus of being sleek and shiny technology. I get why people buy them.

I just don't see myself ever owning one. Can't say for certain, of course, but I have a hard time imagining it. Because the thing is: I like books. I like the musk of the pages (whether old or new), and the texture against my fingers. I like the shape and heft of a book in my hand. I like to underline my favorite passages and write in the margins. There's even something strangely pleasing about certain font types, and the arrangement of words on the page -- particularly when it comes to poetry. I like to look at the covers of books. The old truism about never judging a book by its cover? I do. Always. The cover art of a book is a huge draw to me. It's one of the things I love about aimlessly perusing bookstores -- seeing all the books lined on the shelves, just waiting to be picked up, flipped through, seen and handled in a way that has no equivalent in an e-book. I also like the fact that reading a book is not reading a screen. As someone who works on a computer for eight hours a day, five days a week, I don't want to look at yet another screen to read for pleasure.

And if we want to talk about practicality for a moment, books still one-up e-readers in several ways: I don't have to worry about dropping a book too hard. It's okay if I accidentally spill a drink on it; it might be water-stained afterward, but it will probably still be legible (and even if it's not, I don't have to drop $200 to replace it). A paperback is probably not an object of interest to a thief, and again, if it does get stolen, I can re-buy it for less than $200. A book can last you a lifetime; you can pass it down from one generation to the next (I own an old, musty copy of a Hardy Boys book given to my dad when he turned 10 years old -- there's still a note from his aunt on the front flap). E-readers, like all other forms of technology, will constantly be outdated -- there will always be new versions to buy. Sleek and shiny though they are, they are costly bits of programming that are not made to last.

So, while I hope that people with e-readers enjoy them and use them, I'll stick to my paperbacks with the notes in the margins.

E-Readers are Grey

Oh, books. How can technology be causing people to abandon you? Video games have torn at your fan base, but really, they weren't reading the good ones anyway. Of course, there will be no reference to how much television has diminished the imaginative capacity of the mind. It's too obvious to be worth mentioning.

It is an unfortunate truth that technology has diminished the appreciation of literature in favor of other more controller involved hobbies, yet....Would those who have taken up games have been readers in the first place? I don't know. I have absolutely no idea, but it's a thought. Quite obviously, my stance on books is everyone should and to hell with all other forms of entertainment! Well, perhaps slightly milder.
But only just! The It Crowd and misc. cute iPod apps. have swayed me towards more electronic entertainment than I once partook in.

Which brings us to the new technology that relates to the written word. Well, not NEW, but it's so overwhelmingly in the press it's completely impossible to know that e-readers do not exist. At first, I was absolutely appalled at the idea. How dare anyone lessen the whole idea of a book! How dare they!

Yet, my boyfriend Tyler has a kindle, and reads on it when he probably wouldn't read the physical thing. He says it's more convenient to read in bed and less of a hassle to carry around.

Which is something I don't completely understand because I appreciate the presence of a book....The smell, the texture, the weight, and the way the sunshine reflects off the off white of paper and black ink. Books have made me appreciate the work that goes into fonts and the layout and structure of  a page. If you bother to read the last few pages of plot-less info in a book, you oft times can find a story about the font and who made it.

My opinion on physical books is that books are the equivalent to sunshine. I can read one in a hospital or a terrible storm while I'm stuck in my car, and there's light and happiness!

But then I think of ideas and rationalism... What is a physical book, but an idea? What does it matter what it's read? The idea of the story exists more really than the physical book does. (DOWN WITH EMPIRICISM!!)

Then,  I received one as a gift. A 114$ version of the Kindle. So now I can critique without the pang of guilt that troubles me when I haven't done the opposing!

I like my Kindle a lot. It's pretty durable, and if you buy books from Amazon you can break your Kindle and then re-download those books. Amazon has EXCELLENT customer service if your kindle has any issues. Biggest pro: You can download tons of expired copy righted books for free and read them on your impressive ink technology screen. This, will eventually save me the $114 my family spent on it.

Then you have other ways of procuring books for free (I don't give an opinion either way here), but I think everyone should familiarize themselves with the concept of intellectual property. An interesting article in the rise of e-book pirating can be found HERE.

Yet, you can't lend a physical book out to someone with notes written in them. You can't run your fingers over notes made in book eighty years ago. You can't pass an e-reader down as a beloved family heirloom. I've read several books on my Kindle that I want to show someone a line in or read a page to my family, but it's not worth flipping through a ton of pages. (Though, there's a highlighting tool that I should probably learn to use.) If I read a book on it that I really like, then I want the physical book on my shelf regardless of if it's the same idea. Tamora Pierce's Mastiff is coming out on October 25 and I've already pre-ordered. In hardback. So that way it can stand in a place of pride next to the other dozens of Pierce books I have.

Final Word: 


I like my Kindle, but I prefer paper and glue books. I will appreciate any device that gets literature into more people's hands. Even if that device was a obnoxious man wearing spandex. You give him a book canon and he's my friend.

Yet, if the e-reader is going to put public libraries out of business then I will gladly crunch it under my foot to save ONE library.

Afterthought After the Final Word:

Speaking of book technology, everyone should check out Goodreads.com.

Tortall and Other Lands by Tamora Pierce

I've recently become a pretty large fan of short story anthologies. It's bits of awesomeness that you can enjoy in fifteen-ish minute intervals. It's great for those who don't relish long ventures into fantasy worlds and like a tiny bon bon for those of us who live on them.

Tortall and Other Lands is a collection of short stories done by one of the best young adult fantasy authors of all time, Tamora Pierce (See title!). Which was overall pretty enjoyable, but I was strongly disappointed by the lack of Keladry. If you liked Nawat and Kitten, you'll still be decently happy.

"Elder Brother" was worth the $11 I paid for it. It explains the repercussions of Numar using the word of power to turn whats-his-face into the apple tree. What happened to the tree that turned into a man? Read and find out!

To seal the deal it also had "Dragon's Tale". The story which shows into the mind of Kitten while on a tour of Carthak with Numair and Daine post Trickster's Choice.

I don't know if I would highly recommend it to those who hadn't read some of her previous Tortall books. First, I would recommend reading those. If you haven't read them you are being grievously wounded by the great stories you are missing.

Hilarity: Not My Norm, But Could Be Yours!

If you enjoy Facebook, and Classic Literature, you should read this. The layout is unique, done in the form of classic pieces of literature (Hamlet, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Alice in Wonderland) being posted about while they're happening on Facebook. Then to break up the monotony you have the authors interacting on each others pages, and when you think about James Joyce trying to interact with Charles Dickens, can you NOT read this? I thought as much.
I bought this at a Barnes and Noble tent sale for five dollars, and it was worth so much more. I read some of the books mentioned in it just so I could get the jokes. Really! (Okay, fine, it still could not compel me to read Finnegan's Wake.) Pick this up if you want a good laugh at some of your favorite authors, Sarah Schmelling has done a very good job with Classic Lit Signs On To Facebook.

More than a Picture Book

The Princess's Blankets, written by Carol Ann Duffy and illustrated by Catherine Hyde, is the only book that I've ever bought simply for the pictures. There's not much more to say. The story is a throwback to classic fairy tales. Written with an almost poetic sense of rhythm, it details the life of a princess who has been cold her entire life. Try as she (and her entire kingdom) might, she cannot be warm. Then a stranger with "hard, gray eyes like polished stones" comes to the kingdom and gives the princess rather peculiar blankets in an attempt to make her warm.

While I appreciate the story and its surprising nuances, the real pleasure of this book is in the illustrations. They are simply beautiful. This is the sort of art that you want to frame and hang in your living room. It's a book very, very worth purchasing just for the sake of taking long looks at the pictures. And that isn't something I can say about many books.

Deafening

Deafening by Frances Itani is one of the better novels I have read in a long while. Although not particularly mind-blowing, it's written with a quiet thoughtfulness and an understated loveliness that (I think) is rather rare in contemporary fiction.

Deafening--set in World War I era Canada--is the story of several people, but largely it is about Grania, a young deaf woman who loses her hearing at the age of five. The novel begins directly after her loss of hearing, and follows her through years of struggling to adapt to a now-silent world. She must learn how to communicate with those around her. She must learn how to meaningfully engage the world when she is cut off from nearly all spoken language. Itani artfully explores themes of communication, the nature of language, and mostly the nature of silence.

About halfway through the novel, Jim--Grania's (hearing) fiance--appears on the scene. This is where Itani's focus seems to shift, and the novel makes a somewhat strange digression. Shortly after their marriage, Jim enters the war as a stretcher bearer, which launches the novel into entirely different thematic territory: the war and its losses and ramifications. Some of the themes--namely those of language and silence--continue into the latter half of the novel, but for the most part its entire focus shifts. Where before we'd been following Grania and her experiences as a deaf woman, halfway through the novel we begin to follow Jim through his experiences as a stretcher bearer. And while Itani's writing is good as ever, and Jim's character is sympathetic, the novel seems to lose something. I felt as though I could've been reading any other war novel (with the notable exception that Jim is a stretcher bearer and not a soldier). The originality of the premise and the ideas implicit within it peter out as the war totally takes over the plot.

Don't get me wrong, I find "war novels" fascinating when they thoughtfully explore the phenomenon of war (see The Things They Carried, The Killer Angels, etc.), and Itani does, to some degree, pose interesting questions about the impact of war on the individual, and the way in which the individual might cope (which ties in nicely with the theme of internal silence). But, her exploration of war wasn't insightful enough to make me forget the loose, loose threads from the first half of the novel. The shift in focus is too abrupt, and I was left wanting better development of both Grania, Jim, and their relationship in general.

The characters of the novel are compelling, and the writing is lovely, which is its saving grace. It's worth reading (probably even worth rereading), but it's a bit incohesive.

"Magic is born in death."

Okay, I openly admit that I bought Mira, Mirror by Mette Ivie Harrison solely on the name and art. I’m a fan of lovely hand drawn book covers and retelling of classic fairy tales. Who isn’t?!* Though, for sooth, Snow White is not one of my favorites.

The story is very German/Brother’s Grimm-ish. A bit gruesome at time, filled with dark forests and grim peasant villages. A true telling of fairy tales has to be a bit gruesome to stay canon. Especially the Snow White one. It was vaguely disturbing as a Disney cartoon. Really? Cut out Snow White’s heart?! Really?! What was she doing? What, what was she doing??

But this story isn’t about the beauteous red lipped wonder. It’s about two sisters, both apprentices to a witch. One is destined to be a wicked queen, and the other to be her instrument: Mira Mirror. Even someone with the gentlest personality can be tainted by evil if they come in contact with it for hundreds of years. How can you redeem yourself?

I really enjoyed this story for the most part. Especially the gradual change in all of the characters. It has one or two scenes of disturbing violence, but you mostly expect it. The story style is a bit choppy, seen through the eyes of a mirror being toted around by a teenage girl. But overall I’d give it a 7/8 out of ten.

A must for lovers of fairy tales.

*Ummm...losers is the correct answer to that.