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.
Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Monday, September 1, 2014
All in the Family
As the literary agent and publicist for my wife, Lynn Schiffhorst, I thought I would use this post to announce, to parents,grandparents and others who like to read to children, that she has published several new "read-aloud" stories on Kindle. You may find on her Amazon page something inexpensive as a gift for a child in your family. There are many titles to choose from.
These include two stories about a little wind that lives at the North Pole and plays tricks on people: "Gusty Wants More Time" and "Gusty Plays his Tricks." Gusty, of course, is the little wind (a challenge for any illustrator).
Several other books feature Giggle, a little ghost who goes to school (she's in the 4th grade) and enjoys helping people. This week, a reviewer, Jaclyn Bartz (author of The Retired Tooth Fairy) wrote this about Giggle Goes to the Moon, a collection of three stories:
"These sweet stories are a great addition to any child's bookshelf, or, in this case, Kindle library. Lynn Schiffhorst tells each tale in a precise, fast-paced manner. . . a well-executed, well-crafted work."
The full review by Ms. Bartz is at jmbartz.blogspot.com/2014/08/book-review-giggle-goes-to-the-moon-other.html. The reviewer notes the positive attitude toward a disabled child in one of these Giggle stories.
Another reviewer on Amazon had this to say about Lynn's book, "A Cat and Mouse Christmas":
A lovely story to add to this magical season!
If my followers and/or their friends are thinking about giving books to children in the coming months--especially books to be read to children--I hope they will consider some of Lynn Schiffhorst's special Kindle editions, which require a smartphone, Ipad, or Kindle. Most are priced at 99 cents.
All are listed on her Amazon.com page.
These include two stories about a little wind that lives at the North Pole and plays tricks on people: "Gusty Wants More Time" and "Gusty Plays his Tricks." Gusty, of course, is the little wind (a challenge for any illustrator).
Several other books feature Giggle, a little ghost who goes to school (she's in the 4th grade) and enjoys helping people. This week, a reviewer, Jaclyn Bartz (author of The Retired Tooth Fairy) wrote this about Giggle Goes to the Moon, a collection of three stories:
"These sweet stories are a great addition to any child's bookshelf, or, in this case, Kindle library. Lynn Schiffhorst tells each tale in a precise, fast-paced manner. . . a well-executed, well-crafted work."
The full review by Ms. Bartz is at jmbartz.blogspot.com/2014/08/book-review-giggle-goes-to-the-moon-other.html. The reviewer notes the positive attitude toward a disabled child in one of these Giggle stories.
Another reviewer on Amazon had this to say about Lynn's book, "A Cat and Mouse Christmas":
A lovely story to add to this magical season!
If my followers and/or their friends are thinking about giving books to children in the coming months--especially books to be read to children--I hope they will consider some of Lynn Schiffhorst's special Kindle editions, which require a smartphone, Ipad, or Kindle. Most are priced at 99 cents.
All are listed on her Amazon.com page.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Death of the Footnote
A recent NYTimes piece by Alexandra Horowitz on the lowly, often-derided footnote is really an essay about change: from the printed book, where scholars can wage a war--or at least a battle or two with opponents--at the bottom of the page, to the e-book, set up without conventional pages. If e-books are not killing ordinary books, they are apparently killing the page as we know it, i.e., a unit of text with a top and a bottom.
I lament the death of the page, and of the book (which I believe will survive) but not the footnote.
As a teacher, I generally required endnotes rather than footnotes from my students in their research papers and theses. As a student, I hated doing footnotes because I had to leave adequate space at the bottom of the page while typing; but such, I learned, was the life of a beginning scholar, who establishes his or her reputation by citing authorities. I came to enjoy reading many a long footnote for the role it played in academic skirmishes but never tried to emulate this use of the note.
The reality is that both footnotes and endnotes tend to go unread by most readers, even in academic work, and they are routinely dismissed as a nuisance, an interruption, by general readers. It's possible that the scholarly footnote might be seen as a sign of insecurity on the part of the young scholar, eager to establish his or her authority. And it can be tempting to put controversial ideas in the footnote rather than in the text of a chapter or article, where they would have to be fully developed. I have seen a few footnotes that were misleading in this way, like throw-away lines that call for more explanation. So footnotes will not be missed.
But Anthony Grafton in his History of the Footnote insists that the footnote is essential; it offers the needed proof that the scholar has consulted the appropriate archives; thus the footnote, much preferable to the easily overlooked endnote, is a badge of legitimacy. There is nothing anachronistic about the footnote, says he, concerned as he is with professional historians like himself.
"Like the high whine of the dentist's drill, the low rumble of the footnote on the historian's page reassures: the tedium it inflicts, like the pain inflicted by the drill, is not random but directed, part of the cost that the benefits of modern science and technology exact."
I quote this sentence in part because I admire its elegance; Grafton is a fine stylist. And because it shows, as does the whole discussion, that any topic, however lowly or dull, can be turned into something interesting, even witty, in the right hands. Such is good writing.
I lament the death of the page, and of the book (which I believe will survive) but not the footnote.
As a teacher, I generally required endnotes rather than footnotes from my students in their research papers and theses. As a student, I hated doing footnotes because I had to leave adequate space at the bottom of the page while typing; but such, I learned, was the life of a beginning scholar, who establishes his or her reputation by citing authorities. I came to enjoy reading many a long footnote for the role it played in academic skirmishes but never tried to emulate this use of the note.
The reality is that both footnotes and endnotes tend to go unread by most readers, even in academic work, and they are routinely dismissed as a nuisance, an interruption, by general readers. It's possible that the scholarly footnote might be seen as a sign of insecurity on the part of the young scholar, eager to establish his or her authority. And it can be tempting to put controversial ideas in the footnote rather than in the text of a chapter or article, where they would have to be fully developed. I have seen a few footnotes that were misleading in this way, like throw-away lines that call for more explanation. So footnotes will not be missed.
But Anthony Grafton in his History of the Footnote insists that the footnote is essential; it offers the needed proof that the scholar has consulted the appropriate archives; thus the footnote, much preferable to the easily overlooked endnote, is a badge of legitimacy. There is nothing anachronistic about the footnote, says he, concerned as he is with professional historians like himself.
"Like the high whine of the dentist's drill, the low rumble of the footnote on the historian's page reassures: the tedium it inflicts, like the pain inflicted by the drill, is not random but directed, part of the cost that the benefits of modern science and technology exact."
I quote this sentence in part because I admire its elegance; Grafton is a fine stylist. And because it shows, as does the whole discussion, that any topic, however lowly or dull, can be turned into something interesting, even witty, in the right hands. Such is good writing.
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