Reading in a screen-based culture

Much is written, with alarm, about the death of the book, the bookstore, and serious reading in general as the result of digital books and our screen-based culture.  I have participated in the hand wringing since change is always challenging.

If serious reading were doomed, I would not have published my novel on Kindle nor would my wife, Lynn Schiffhorst, have used the same e-book format for her many stories.  There are many advantages to online reading, especially the immediate networking available as one reader shares his or her views with many others, joins a discussion group, or links to a website. Writers and readers become part of a new global community, with access to a vast array of titles available via the Internet.

Yet, as Michael Dirda wisely observes in a valuable article last month (in the journal Humanities), the new technology poses some serious problems. The kind of reading we do online encourages skimming rather than the deep immersion associated with holding a printed book in the hand.  For most people I know, nothing beats the traditional printed book: it is always there, not subject to the fluctuations associated with many online publications. Who is to say, Dirda asks, if some censor will alter the texts of certain classics to make them politically correct? 

Factual errors are commonplace in online reading and have to be double-checked against the more stable medium of the printed work. Beyond that, book lovers like Dirda and me value printed books because of their reassuring presence in our lives. They allow for browsing (in libraries, in bookstores) that leads us to find related books or ones whose covers invite investigation. This is hard to replicate online. "Human beings are tactile creatures," Dirda writes, "and we find ourselves drawn to things we can touch and handle."

He also worries about the way online reading, which I see as a valuable adjunct to print reading, involves an excessive concern with the present and its demands for conformity and political correctness, with the past too often viewed as irrelevant.  In other words, the screen-based culture is youth-oriented in a way that will never satisfy those of us beyond the age of forty who seek an engagement with more than the present culture.

And this returns me to the main concern, the loss with online texts of what has been called the spirituality of reading: the ability we have with a printed novel in our lap to enter worlds and cultures other than our own, to savor the characters and language in a well-crafted story and lose ourselves there. I hope this kind of interiority is possible for some readers on Kindle and similar media; I have found some short pieces online that encourage deep reflection, yet these websites are part of an electronic world filled with meaningless Internet chatter on a multiplicity of distracting, constantly changing sites. It is hard to pay real attention to such reading.

In short, there is nothing like a traditional book: its advantages continue to outweigh the benefits of the newer technology.

Living in the Past: a new book

For the past ten  years, I have given a number of talks, mainly on historical topics or literary figures, in the central Florida community. These range from overviews of Shakespeare's life and that of Hemingway to examinations of a diverse crew of characters who interested me: the Emperor Frederick II, whose many achievements included respect for the Islamic world in the Middle Ages; Winston Churchill, a complicated man, admirable despite his faults and errors; Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit who brought Western science to China before dying there in 1610. And others.

Even though there is no inherent relationship among these studies, since they represent a big chunk of my thinking and research, I decided to publish them.  This was made easy because my wife, Lynn Schiffhorst, has mastered the technique of launching a number of her stories on Amazon's Kindle.

And so, yesterday, with her help, Living with Past: Essays on History was published. I doubt if many people will find it or bother to download and read it, but it satisfies me that much of what I have written will, like this blog, have a permanent home and not be lost when I am gone.

I am grateful to the various groups (such as the University Club of Winter Park and the English-Speaking Union) for inviting me to talk to appreciative audiences, providing opportunities for me to examine history from a biographical perspective. And I am grateful to Kindle for helping us make the process of electronic publishing easy.

Entering the Blogosphere

This is a notice from a proud husband about his wife's latest literary achievement:  Having published ten books for children and ten other books for adults on Amazon's Kindle, Lynn Schiffhorst today launched herself into the blogosphere with her own blog: starsandtails.blog.com.

Her blog, the work of someone generally reluctant to embrace the new technology, is actually called "Starshine and Cat Tails."  She explains why in her initial post.

Lynn, whose poetry has been published in a 1989 book by the University of Florida Press, has been writing fiction for children for many years. Thanks to Kindle, her books of poems, Spoons on the Moon and The Green Road to the Stars, introduced readers to "quiet rhymes for quiet times" (ideal bedtime reading for kids). Since then, she has done several novels for older children (age 9-12) set in Denmark and a group of "feline detective novels" set in Manhattan, ideal for adults who are cat lovers.

There are also stories about a whimsical ghost named Giggle and several collections with holiday themes. The list can be seen on Amazon.

I am happy to have been part of this literary launch and equally happy to recommend her work to the wider world.

More Quiet Rhymes: a note of thanks

This is in part a belated--and totally unconventional--note of thanks to one of my faithful readers, Chris Parmentier, who has taken the time on several occasions to comment on my posts. Since I have no other way of thanking her, I begin with this acknowledgement: that every writer longs for a few perceptive and appreciative readers; even one (like Chris) will more than suffice. Ned is another, but I know how to thank him personally; so, too, Kurt. The others are nameless but also appreciated.

Since Chris commented two months ago concerned my listing of Lynn Schiffhorst's newly-published Kindle book of poems for children, I thought I would mention here that Lynn, who happens to be my wife, has published a second volume of "quiet rhymes for quiet times," entitled Spoons on the Moon, intended for younger kids (6-9) but, of course, also directed to their storytellers.  So this post is also an unabashed advert, as the Brits say. (Butu at least it is not a fund-raising request!)

Lynn has had a difficult time finding a conventional publisher. Few editors seem interested in her old-fashioned, literary pieces that would have easily found a wide audience in print thirty years ago or so.  So we have turned to Amazon, where anyone can peek at her books, and those with Kindles can download them for $2.99.

This week, Lynn Schiffhorst is launching two works on fiction (novels for young readers) on Kindle; the first of them, set in Denmark, is called Cats, Dogs, and Miracles. It will soon appear on the Amazon.com site and I hope will attract readers.  Even if she reaches only one or two readers, that might suffice.

I remain grateful to all the readers who find something of value in what I write and would welcome comments at schiffhorst@yahoo.com.