BookFinder.com Journal

Bloomsday and a Canadian book charity

Shauna one of my BookFinder.com colleagues found two neat posts on Boing Boing today and I wanted to share them with you.

First.  Today is Bloomsday, and if you download this Mp3 you can hear the one and only James Joyce reading from his own Ulysses.  If that link dosen't work try this mirror link

Second.  If you are living in Canada, more specificly Ontario, there is a Book Drive for Aboriginal Youth happening until the 21st of June which is collecting books to send to isolated communities in Canada's north.  Here is the description from the original post:

If you live in Ontario, or want to (quickly!) send some books to a good cause, the Lieutenant Governor of the province is doing his annual drive for new books for kids living in remote First Nations communities. These are generally small, isolated communities located deep in the northern boreal wilderness. Most have a population under 1000 and are accessible only by aircraft. Kids in these communities often have access to only old books in bad condition, so our province's Lieutenant Governor launched this annual effort several years ago to refresh community libraries with up-to-date titles.

The deadline, June 21, is only a few days away, unfortunately. If someone from outside Ontario REALLY wants to help out, feel free to get hold of me directly at dglad@sff.net and you can make arrangements to send a book or two to me, and I'll get it into the donation stream. But for those of you who live in Ontario, or nearby (I'm lookin' at you, folks in northern New York, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.!) this is a great chance to get some new reading material into the hands of kids who really, really need it.

Happy Bloomsday everyone!

Summer reading, don't believe the hype

I don't know if you notice to the swath of "summer reading" lists that are posted on every media platform known to man each year around this time?  I do, because its my job, and most of them suck.  The vast majority of the books on parade sound like a great way to ruin all the good weather and pleasant scenery that mother nature could muster on even the best summer afternoon.

Just because it's summer does not mean you have to read crap.  Reading this Esquire article, I am not alone in my views.  The columnist took one for the team and actually sat down to read Dean Koontz, Harlan Coben and David Baldacci - so we wouldn't have to.  Here is his take:

Stupid books take almost as long to read as not-so-stupid books. The chapters are short, the dialogue is "snappy," and still things go on forever. There's a reason only very special episodes of CSI stretch past the hour mark. These books are interminable — imagine a poorly produced thriller starring Tim Allen or Jim Belushi that lasts something like 12 to 15 hours.

This is the point where I'm supposed to find something positive to say about these books. That's how it works. You're supposed to get all counterintuitive and say that Sarah Palin is so freakishly stupid, she's actually some kind of genius. Here's what I can say: The Coben is not quite as bad as the Baldacci, which is not as god-awful as the Koontz.

It seems it's widely considered bad form to call stupid things stupid. But that's mostly what these books are. They'll cost you $25 a pop, waste a half day of your life, and leave you neither smarter nor happier, just kind of bored and a little depressed. That's no way to spend a summer. Screw these books. Take a walk.

I like a walk as much as the next guy but I also like reading in a hammock. So I want to ask, what is the best book you have read so far this summer?  Maybe we can collect some comments and post a list of books that you may actually WANT to read this summer.

New uses for card catalogs

I always wondered what happened to all the card catalogs once libraries went digital... I'm glad they are still being put to good use.

Here is a neat blog with photo's of card catalogs in peoples homes...

Have you ever had one of these days...

I just saw this on the Book Bench blog and it struck me funny, hope you enjoy it too.

Good afternoon. This is your pre-boarding announcement for Flight 505 to Milwaukee. All first-class and business-class passengers, passengers needing special assistance, and families travelling with small children may now board the aircraft.

We also invite any Platinum Club, ProTravel Select, Apogee Plus, and Sigma Alliance cardholders to board at this time.

Thank you for waiting. We now welcome members of Skyline Advantage, Priority Partners, Front Row Preferred, Exclusa, Summit V.I.P., Head of the Line, A-List Connections, Imperial Privilege, InCrOwD, Icarus Prime Choice, Top Rank Silk, and Top Rank Crystal Reserve. You may now board the aircraft.

We appreciate your patience. We now welcome members of Focus^One, Altius PremierPlan, Silver Platter, Jet Pack Invicta, Above and Beyond, Screaming Eagle, Canadians of Distinction, e-Go Trip, Express Wishes, Superba/FasTTraKK, Freedom Rider Élite, ¡Por Supuesto!, The Circle of Enchantment, Hegira, Hegira Mach Five, Wanderlu$t, Godhead Supreme, Godhead Burnt Offerings, Qomfort Qlub, MeFirst, MeFirst Deluxe Rewards, Out of My Way, and VelourPass. You may now board the aircraft.

The rest of you? Beat it.

Used books can green your reading

It is Earth Week this week, and while we should always be working on reducing our environmental impact one should take special consideration this week in particular. 

In grade school they started teaching us about environmentalism with the concept of the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  (A campaign which made much more grammatical sense to my young mind than the previous three R's I was told to endorse: Reading, (W)riting, and (A)rithmatic).  The idea behind it being that first you reduce your consumption, then reuse items when you cannot reduce, and lastly when the item is no longer of use to you or anyone else you know, recycle it so that it may be turned into something of use once more.

All of us at BookFinder.com do a lot of reading and so we wanted to take a look at what kind of environmental impact our hobby and our industry have on the environment. I take a lot of joy from reading and out of all my activities that are potential harm to the earth it is one of the last that I will cut back on so I was happy to find that I was already doing a small part by mostly reading used books.

We found that the creation of every book produces 8.85lbs of carbon dioxide, and that shipping a book 2,123 miles (or 3,417 Km) by media mail only produces about 1.7lbs of C02 (ie: San Francisco to Chicago).  So even when shipping a used book across North America you are still producing less carbon than if you had bought a new book in your own town.

There are times when I have to buy a book new, sometimes I just can't wait to read a new authors work, or when I was in school I could not always find the textbooks I wanted used; but with used books being both better for the environment and easier on your pocketbook I think it is an easy decision to make.

So get into earth week and read a used book!

You can read our full report, search for used books, and learn to green your reading  with used books here

Uppers and downers; candy and booze

It was often touted that sin industries were recession proof, the 1930s are often characterized by their speakeasy's and mob run gambling dens.  However if you read the news lately you see it reported that both liquor and gambling are down in this current recession, however sweets are still in fashion.

"The recession seems to have a sweet tooth. As unemployment has risen and 401(k)’s have shrunk, Americans, particularly adults, have been consuming growing volumes of candy, from Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls to Gummy Bears and cheap chocolates, say candy makers, store owners and industry experts.

Theories vary on exactly why. For many, sugar lifts spirits dragged low by the languishing economy. For others, candy also provides a nostalgic reminder of better times. And not insignificantly, it is relatively cheap."

So that explains the sweets boost but why have people stopped drinking away their problems...

"a manifestation of Calvinist guilt over both the present failures of the economy and its prior excesses. A deliberate effort to deny oneself pleasure."

  So candy may be the cheapest "high" but as the NYT suggests high end candy is also heading into the tank as people pile on the Hershey's to get a bit more bang for their buck, and if quality candy gets the ax craft beer doesn't stand a chance. 

If your like me, and believe me I'm a cheapskate, and you like quality but don't really want to pay for it allow me to make the suggestion of a little DIY, the BookFinder way.  Make Taffy, Tiger Butter, Turkish Deliht, Peppermint Patties, Fudge, Truffles, Peanut  Brittle and more.. Just like grandma used to make.  Tiger Butter is very expensive in the stores but stuipidly easy to make and SOOO good, same can be said for any Fudge.

 

Now candy may be dandy, but I would happily exchange a pile of sweets for a cold beer with my dinner and since I'm not a spendthrift and happen to live in a country where liquor is taxed to an incredible degree, I brew my own beer to help keep my extravagances under control!

                                              

If you are a little overwhelmed at first, try going to a local "You Brew" shop and get a feel for the process before trying it out in your basement, most shops will help you make a variety of beers and wines for about half the price you pay in a store for the finished product and when you branch out on your own the cost drops from there.

For christmas the last couple of years my wife and I have included a bottle of home made wine along with some of the afformentioned candy, cookies and preserves making a cheap but envyable gift basket.

Stimulus package

          

      

March is math month with pi day and square root day

This year I am proclaiming March to be the month of math and I urge you all to host your own geometrical galas to celebrate a pair of algebraic anniversaries.  For this March we celebrate both Square Root Day and Pi Day, a feat which only occurs once each century.

Square root day is held on the date that both the day and the month are both a square root of the last two digits of the year; so this year it’s March 3rd, 2009 (3/3/09).    Celebrating is easy.  When eating your all important three square meals don't forget your root vegetables like potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, or parsnips; but remember to cut them quadrilaterally. Date squares, or any other square really, will also make an excellent dessert.  After your meal have a try at square dancing, or if that’s not your cup of tea head to your local elementary school yard for a round of square ball.  Although in truth the most perfect square root day activity is, of course, the magic square.  Remember to get you fill though since the next time you can celebrate is April 4th 2016.

Then two weeks you later continue your mathematical merriment on March 14th when we celebrate Pi day, at 1:59 (am if you’re a purist, pm if you’re happy with the 12 hour clock).  Again food plays heavily into celebrations and mass quantities of sweet and savory pies are eaten along with pizza (pie) and things containing pineapple or pine nuts (both of which are good on the aforementioned pizza); pina coladas are often the beverage of choice.  Traditionally meals are eaten at exactly 1:59, but if you do choose another snacking time I suggest meals which approximate pie, such as a Cornish Pastry.

After your very early breakfast (or late lunch), sit down and write a pi-ku poetry which can take a number of forms. 

Firstly you could try a haiku about Pi, I borrowed this one from TeachPi.org
Unending digits...
Why not keep it simple, like
Twenty-two sevenths?

Or add a Pi twist to haiku and use the 3, 1, 4 syllable format as I did here
Number Pi
Is
Never ending

Reciting  pi with a friend can consume a large part of your day, here is a site which has calculated pi to 4000 decimals.  If all of this is sounding a little too nerdy for you you can read Life of Pi, which has absolutely nothing to do with math or watch Pi the movie.

Hopefully this double dose of function fiestas can hold you over until October 24th at 6:02 when we rejoice with our chemistry brethren and celebrate Mole day.

*edit* - ... I just saw this via Boing Boing and could not resist.  Pi-Day ice cube trays

Do books have to look like books?

Charlie and I spend a lot of time talking about books. Specifically, what makes a book a book. It may be because of his predilection for reading (heavy!) thousand-page fantasy novels, but he's been dabbling with hardware- and software-based ebook platforms for a while now. Charlie's last foray into the land of the e-book reading platform, the Sony Reader, was pretty much a failure. It sustained his interest for a while, but eventually never managed to fit into his workflow, due to bad desktop client software and lack of interesting content. Unusable as a book reader, then he tried to use it as a "computer-lite" to display RSS feeds; it worked up to a point, but was very inelegant, largely because of inherent device limitations.

Charlie's mental jump—from seeing the Sony Reader as an electronic book, to a portable computer text display device—reflects the same insight that Virginia Hefferman's son had, in her recent article on the Amazon Kindle:

"In their book 'Freakonomics,' Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt write that kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books. But they also contend that reading aloud to children and limiting their TV time has no correlation with success on tests. If both of these observations hold, it’s worth determining what books really are, the better to decisively decorate with them. The widespread digitization of text has complicated the matter. Will Ben benefit if I load my Kindle with hundreds of books that he can’t see? Or does he need the spectacle of hard- and softcover dust magnets eliminating floor space in our small apartment to get the full 'Freakonomics' effect? I sadly suspect he needs the shelves and dust.

Anyway, Ben doesn’t distinguish between my Kindle and a BlackBerry. My immersion in the Kindle is not (to him) an example of impressive role-model literacy. It’s Mom e-mailing, or texting, or for all he knows playing video games. In fact, the only time he describes what he and I do together as 'reading' is when we’re sitting with a clutch of pages bound between covers, open in front of us like a hymnal." (more...)

There's a social role for books, books that look and feel like books. I fully expect to buy an ebook reader sometime in the next few years (I'm rarely an early adopter), but I'm acutely aware of the fact that you lose things along the way. I've had long conversations with friends about the role of record cover art; those who grew up in the age of records have a very different relationship with it compared to those who saw cover art shrink down to fit cassettes, CDs, and iPod screens. I'm not ready to make a value judgment on how important cover art really is, but I do know that eighteen year olds seem to have a disproportionate amount of 60s-70s rock cover art posters on their walls, versus cover art from the 2000s. If nothing else, I fully expect to see some print editions of classic angsty lit in college dorm rooms in the 2040s.

Beyond author websites

For the last several years, I've been the webmaster for my friend Chitra Divakaruni, a mid-career novelist and poet. Her website talks a bit about her and each of her books. It's pretty simple, and hasn't changed dramatically in a long time.

Chitra has the paperback of her latest novel coming out soon, as well as a new book for young adults. This, along with the ongoing death of US newspaper book sections, has lit a fire under us, and we're trying to think beyond the website, embracing social media to better reach readers where they're at. We have a mailing list set up, and are syndicating tour dates on BookTour.com; a blog and an expanded Facebook presence are on their way. It's been exciting to see the kind of positive feedback Chitra's already been getting from readers able to connect directly to a favorite writer.

The New York Times recently ran a piece on the new business of big budget author websites, online book launches, and author promo videos. As much as I'm into this sort of thing, some of the tactics just seem excessive. Is it really worth spending $35,000 to launch a promotional website for a novel? Does a website for a book really need an original score? Apparently I'm not alone in my confusion; publishers, bullish as they are, also seem to be a bit fuzzy on the ROI. (The article does mention that in a specific study, 8% of readers had visited author websites in the past week; by extension, 92% hadn't.)

How are your purchases swayed by author or book websites?