Saturday, August 25, 2007
One in Four
Yeah, you've seen it everywhere, that little report about one in four U.S. adults having read no books at all in the past year (what they don't tell you is that another one in four ONLY read Harry Potter...), and the average among those who read at all being 7. Hmm. That's about a book every two months, meaning that the average reader has a much poorer ROI on their public library than I.
I do, though, like Karen Schneider's slant -- it sounds a lot different when you say "Three out of four people read books!" That's the power of marketing right there, especially when we're still and likely always brand: books.
(Perhaps people are spending their time at Hamsterdance instead -- I know I've missed these little guys.)
I do, though, like Karen Schneider's slant -- it sounds a lot different when you say "Three out of four people read books!" That's the power of marketing right there, especially when we're still and likely always brand: books.
(Perhaps people are spending their time at Hamsterdance instead -- I know I've missed these little guys.)
Labels: hamsterdance, harry, reading
Monday, August 13, 2007
Reading, 'Riting, and Ranting
Since I've finally waded my way out of the Deathly Hallows (and don't even get me started on that ending!), it seems timely to point to "Teens Weigh in on Changes in Publishing, Media" over at O'Reilly Radar. This quote cracks me up:
On that note, we're also off to play the blogs vs. print game again... Current Cites points to "What a Difference a Publisher Makes" over at OptimalScholarship, with a fascinating look at recent studies on copy editing changes and the implications for repositories. Stephanie Willen Brown at CogSci Librarian asks which is better, blogging or print publishing, and Jim Rettig responds over at Twilight Librarian.
Brown writes: "...does it matter that librarians are writing more on blogs than in print?" Are they? This, I'm not so sure about. Some librarians are writing more on blogs than in print. Some librarians are reading more on blogs than in print. Some librarians still wouldn't know a blog if it came up and bit them. I think it's more useful to argue that different formats serve different purposes. Brown quotes Stephen Abram along the lines of: "It doesn't matter where you write, just get your ideas out there." Well, yes, and no. It does matter where you write if you're working towards tenure. It does matter where you write if you are targeting a specific audience, or trying to impress your boss, or your work needs some editing editing, if you are worried about the longevity of your work, or want a bigger audience than might flock to your brand new blog, or ... It does matter where you write if you are concerned about timeliness or if your thoughts flow more freely in a more informal medium or if you have a built in audience online, or ...
In principle, though, Abram has it right. The answer to the question of blogs or print is: YES. The more of us that participate, in whatever medium, the wealthier and more robust our profession.
Then again, publishers don't help themselves in cases like Eric Schnell's, who details his two-year saga over at The Medium is the Message in "Where is My Manuscript? part 1 and part 2. Perhaps one of our measures of a journal's prestige should relate to its responsiveness and timeliness. T. Scott weighs in here with "Publishing Faster," talking about the five-six month turnaround time at JMLA and the basic issues with timeliness and quarterly publication.
Note also his comments on the other issues with Haworth journals when considering where you might yourself wish to publish... Then again, you could always self-publish on Amazon.com!
"As high school students with busy lives, going to a bookstore is just not part of our schedule. It isn't that we don't want to read, but with schoolwork, sports, and personal life, not enough time is left open to both find interesting books, as well as read them."Yeah, gosh, that is different than when I went to high school... but, sarcasm aside, some thoughts there about reading for information v. reading literature. And about movie hype v. book hype, which displays a pretty major lack of understanding as to the comparative economics there, but so it goes.
On that note, we're also off to play the blogs vs. print game again... Current Cites points to "What a Difference a Publisher Makes" over at OptimalScholarship, with a fascinating look at recent studies on copy editing changes and the implications for repositories. Stephanie Willen Brown at CogSci Librarian asks which is better, blogging or print publishing, and Jim Rettig responds over at Twilight Librarian.
Brown writes: "...does it matter that librarians are writing more on blogs than in print?" Are they? This, I'm not so sure about. Some librarians are writing more on blogs than in print. Some librarians are reading more on blogs than in print. Some librarians still wouldn't know a blog if it came up and bit them. I think it's more useful to argue that different formats serve different purposes. Brown quotes Stephen Abram along the lines of: "It doesn't matter where you write, just get your ideas out there." Well, yes, and no. It does matter where you write if you're working towards tenure. It does matter where you write if you are targeting a specific audience, or trying to impress your boss, or your work needs some editing editing, if you are worried about the longevity of your work, or want a bigger audience than might flock to your brand new blog, or ... It does matter where you write if you are concerned about timeliness or if your thoughts flow more freely in a more informal medium or if you have a built in audience online, or ...
In principle, though, Abram has it right. The answer to the question of blogs or print is: YES. The more of us that participate, in whatever medium, the wealthier and more robust our profession.
Then again, publishers don't help themselves in cases like Eric Schnell's, who details his two-year saga over at The Medium is the Message in "Where is My Manuscript? part 1 and part 2. Perhaps one of our measures of a journal's prestige should relate to its responsiveness and timeliness. T. Scott weighs in here with "Publishing Faster," talking about the five-six month turnaround time at JMLA and the basic issues with timeliness and quarterly publication.
Note also his comments on the other issues with Haworth journals when considering where you might yourself wish to publish... Then again, you could always self-publish on Amazon.com!
Labels: amazon, blogging, blogs, editing, haworth, print, publishing, reading
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
.... Long Live Genre Fiction
What is it with the little spate of literary snobbery lately? I guess the Internet really does give a platform to everyone. But really, the better question is, how can one not love Ursula K. LeGuin.
.... Edited July 10 to add...
But wait, there's more! Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels also point to an Erica Jong Publisher's Weekly article talking about the marginalization of fiction written by women... and give their take on it.
.... Edited July 10 to add...
But wait, there's more! Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels also point to an Erica Jong Publisher's Weekly article talking about the marginalization of fiction written by women... and give their take on it.
Labels: chabon, jong, leguin, reading, reviews, romance, sf
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Luminously Indiscriminate
I'll leave this indiscriminate reporting business alone soon, I promise, but just wanted to point to this hysterical post, which includes such gems as:
4. Novels written by M.F.A.'s, or their friends and lovers, will be reviewed glowingly. The reviews will contain language such as "breathtakingly original" and "hauntingly luminous."Also, as Sarah Johnson pointed out in a comment on the last post, this GalleyCat post notes that, 1) as one of the few bloggers to actually review Kohler's book, Johnson also reviews historical fiction for Booklist (and has written a book on the subject), and 2) Kohler's poor publicist has been going around trying to pitch the book to literary blogs.
and
9. Each review will contain a quotation from Jacques Derrida, such as, "The epoch of logocentrism is the moment of the global effacement of the signifier." (No, I can't wait either.)
Labels: blogs, kohler, litblogs, reading, reviews
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Indiscriminate Reading
Not only have I been known to occasionally air my views on books, literary fiction or otherwise, I tend to read a lot of them. And cereal boxes, and signs, and magazines, and... This all goes toward saying, as a (somewhat) indiscriminate reader, I'm an excellent public library patron -- I can always find more reading material than I need, and can use ILL for anything more academic that my local library doesn't carry. Reading a lot of different things also went a long way towards making me a fairly decent librarian, since people tended to come in asking for a lot of different things.
I appear also to be raising a new indiscriminate reader (which has led to some embarrassing situations in supermarket checkout lines with Cosmo prominently displayed, let me tell you). I think that this is a Good Thing. It also makes libraries a fairly easy sell; like Ryan Deschamps' son, mine goes to the library weekly. He grabs greedy stacks of books, and knows that this is where we go to find things out. He meets his information needs there (lately: lions, the human digestive system, flags of the world) while also getting his Junie B. Jones and 101 Dalmations fix.
It baffles me to see articles like David Isaacson's "Don't Just Read -- Read Good Books" in the December American Libraries (p43). Which I'd point to for you, but ebrary isn't so friendly that way; it also tries to copy/paste across two columns, so any typos in the following quote are solely mine:
I just renewed my nonresident public library card for $205. $205! you say -- well, let's do the math. I spend $14.99/month for my two-at-a-time Netflix subscription, watching around 10 DVDs/month at ~$1.50 each. I visit the library weekly and check out around 20 items each time, costing me about $.20/each. (This doesn't account for children's programs, summer reading prizes, and other benefits.) That's a pretty good ROI, not to mention that I'm pretty happy with that $205 going to fund a public service for everyone else.
On a related note, my book club just read The Book That Changed My Life. It's the sort of thing I probably would have leafed through but never finished otherwise; a number of the authors, most writers themselves, seemed too self-aware, as if it were an interview question they'd answered one too many times. Quite a few of them (I'm sure to Isaacson's delight) identified one classic or another as inspiring them to become a writer.
The book that changed my life, back in the dismal mid-80s? Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which I still re-read every few years. Yes, genre fiction. And they're making a movie!
I appear also to be raising a new indiscriminate reader (which has led to some embarrassing situations in supermarket checkout lines with Cosmo prominently displayed, let me tell you). I think that this is a Good Thing. It also makes libraries a fairly easy sell; like Ryan Deschamps' son, mine goes to the library weekly. He grabs greedy stacks of books, and knows that this is where we go to find things out. He meets his information needs there (lately: lions, the human digestive system, flags of the world) while also getting his Junie B. Jones and 101 Dalmations fix.
It baffles me to see articles like David Isaacson's "Don't Just Read -- Read Good Books" in the December American Libraries (p43). Which I'd point to for you, but ebrary isn't so friendly that way; it also tries to copy/paste across two columns, so any typos in the following quote are solely mine:
But I question the argument that libraries should go out of their way to acquire romance novels, thrillers, and other literature whose primary purpose is escape and titillation....I do care that patrons are readers rather than nonreaders. But why set our goals so low? Literacy is better than illiteracy, but discriminating readers are ever so much better than undiscriminating ones.(Isaacson would probably get along great with Sheila Kohler...) But anyway, better than? Oy. First, let's work on the obvious lesson: attack behavior, not people, folks. But beyond that, how does one learn what "good" literature is other than by having a broad basis for comparison? I'm perfectly aware that some books are more well-written than others, some are more evocative of their times than others, some appear at the right time to influence minds and public discussion. But dragging out the tired old argument against genre fiction, some of which, by the way, offers a framework for some of the most imaginative writing going, attacks both public libraries and the people that they serve -- the people who offer a reason for libraries to exist in the first place. By encouraging my son to read broadly -- and to enjoy literature whose "primary purpose is escape and titillation" (there's really no other excuse for Junie B.), I'm also encouraging him to become a lifelong library user, and to learn that books are where you turn for both information and entertainment. With any luck, he'll keep it up into adulthood, maybe even reading a thriller or two -- or Harry Potter! -- along the way.
I just renewed my nonresident public library card for $205. $205! you say -- well, let's do the math. I spend $14.99/month for my two-at-a-time Netflix subscription, watching around 10 DVDs/month at ~$1.50 each. I visit the library weekly and check out around 20 items each time, costing me about $.20/each. (This doesn't account for children's programs, summer reading prizes, and other benefits.) That's a pretty good ROI, not to mention that I'm pretty happy with that $205 going to fund a public service for everyone else.
On a related note, my book club just read The Book That Changed My Life. It's the sort of thing I probably would have leafed through but never finished otherwise; a number of the authors, most writers themselves, seemed too self-aware, as if it were an interview question they'd answered one too many times. Quite a few of them (I'm sure to Isaacson's delight) identified one classic or another as inspiring them to become a writer.
The book that changed my life, back in the dismal mid-80s? Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which I still re-read every few years. Yes, genre fiction. And they're making a movie!
Labels: books, ender, isaacson, jacob, kohler, publiclibraries, reading
