Let the Birth of the Book Begin

 There's another giveaway!

http://bit.ly/1S2ObH8

After years of slogging away on my writing, logging in the ten thousand hours plus, the tectonic plates have shifted and added to my day are online interviews and public appearances. I'm still working on another novel, but progress has slowed.

When the book tour commences my goal is to post a daily diary much like I did when I drove across the country with cats. No cats allowed on the tour. Otherwise my blog posts will be even more sporadic than they already are.

Meanwhile, enjoy this lovely reveiw. This is important for two reasons: 1, it's written by a teen, the audience for which I write, and 2, she gets my book.

http://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2016/03/book-review-breakfast-with-neruda-by-laura-moe-reviewed-by-teen-reviewer-lexi/

Be sure to enter the Goodreads giveaway.

Happy Reading (and Writing.)

Love That New Book Smell

Recently I read a blog post by a writer
 Jill Smolinki,  who says she does not keep many books in her house. I’m stymied. I have never met a writer who wasn’t a bit of a book hoarder.

 http://www.jillsmolinski.com/heythere/2012/9/14/do-you-hoard-books.html

Granted some of us now use e readers. I read in any format: books, e books, clay tablets. When I was in college, living in a small apartment, I had stacks of books under my bed and inside my kitchen cabinets. Later, when my then boyfriend moved in, he explained the kitchen was for cooking; it was not a branch of the Columbus Public Library. He insisted we place food and dishes in the cupboards. But he and I were both big readers, so the stacks of books doubled. The only solution was to give some of them away.

I often reread books, so I tend to hold onto them. You can tell my favorites by the post-its sticking out from the pages, and the underlined passages. Being in the company of paper books soothes me the way others might be placated by sitting on a park bench on a sunny afternoon. Granted I love that, too, but nothing beats a rainy Saturday in a bookstore, relaxing in an overstuffed chair, poring through a stack of books to choose which will go home with you. But as the photo on Jill’s blog shows, one’s attachment to books can get out of hand without sufficient space.

On a design show once I saw how books can be used a decor by arranging them on the shelves by color. One of my living room shelves has books arranged by tones.

Don't they have a nice aesthetic? They blend well with the family photos. Books are family.

I recently spent ten days on business/vacation in Seattle, where I set aside time to visit Elliot Bay Books.  http://www.elliottbaybook.com/ I entered Nirvana: rows and rows of books, real ones, not a dressed up toy shop like Barnes & Noble. Call me old school, but this is what a bookstore is supposed to look like. I was on my way to SEA TAC and had dragged my rolling carry-on bag with me. A bookseller offered to hold it for me at the counter as I browsed. I looked for staff recommendations, and someone named Kenny has similar taste in books, so I picked up a few he liked. (I was hoping to meet him and talk books, but he was off that day.)

I spent two hours (and seventy dollars) inside the bookshop.  I picked out five books (one was a gift for Elizabeth.) Since my bag was full, I had to choose which books to ship home and allow myself one to read on the plane, and had the rest mailed home.

A few days after I got back from the Northwest, the package arrived from Elliot Bay. Inside were two carefully bundles wrapped in craft paper.. I took the parcels out of the box and set them on a bureau in my living room, where they sat for a day before I opened one. The other still remains an anticipated gift. Yes, it’s silly. I know which book is in there, but because it’s still wrapped, I look forward to the jolt I will get from studying its cover and contents.

There is an aesthetic to a paper book not found in digital format. I like the rough hewn paper, the fresh inky aroma of a new book. I like to flip back to the cover and study the cover art, or gaze at the author’s picture. Which can be done with an e reader, but not without jumping though a few fiery hoops. I kept forgetting the title of the book I just finished reading last night on my kindle, so each time I turned the device on I had to hit the home key to see which title appeared at the top. And forget about trying to find the cover illustration or the author pic.

All my kindle book smell the same.

Perhaps instead of new car smell, someone will come out with a fragrance of ‘new book smell’ we can spray around us as we clutch our e readers in our hands in bed at night.

For more on this see related post; http://bit.ly/12b77I1

Happy Writing ( and Reading).

The Odds Are Not Great Either Way

Recently my friend Thomas, a fellow librarian, posted this comic on Face book. I usually laugh heartily at Thomas’s postings, but this one is too true to be funny.

Given the ease and speed of e publishing, more “books" are being published than ever. A recent article by Mike Shatzkin points out, http://bit.ly/MW2knf ”half of the bookstore shelves that were available in the US in 2007 are gone by now.”

Handwritten letters are gifts; someone cared enough to sit down and share words of comfort, congratulations, birthday wishes, family news, or mail a postcard from Europe.  Who does that anymore?

Is print media dead?

I'm as guilty as the rest of you. I download books on my Kindle, and use Kindle and Nook apps on my phone and PC. But the nearest physical bookstore is an hour‘s drive from my house and sometimes I don’t want to wait two or three days to get a book in the mail from amazon, Powells or Barnes and Noble.

It's easy and fast to send e mail and catch up through social networking, yet it saddens me how the art of letter writing, handwritten cards and stamped paper envelopes may someday disappear.

Biographers often use old letters to carve out written portraits of their subjects. Through letters, authors are able to reproduce a subject’s voice, and recreate possible dialogue accurately. Imagine trying to track down electronic messages. For the past twenty years I have had numerous email accounts through my university days and several service providers. In the early days of the internet, service providers cropped up and disappeared with the seasons, so thousands of my communications are somewhere in cyberspace under addresses I no longer recall. Not that I will someday be worthy of a biography, but given the magnitude of social media, what will be worthy of existing in posterity?

Interesting how brick and mortar bookstores and libraries stores have only recently changed how they operate. While libraries still boast books as a major source of information, the shift toward multi media has not only oncreased circulation statistics, patrons expect to be able to find moivies, magazines, and music at the library. Similarly, patrons use library spaces for computer space.

For decades, books were the thrust of book stores. In the past few years I have noticed a trend toward games and gifts at the forefront and books displayed almost as an afterthought.

Books are my passion, one of the considerations for where to retire in three years is how many extant bookstores are nearby, yet

According yo Shatzkin, “One thing that will be different but similar in the rest of the world will be the decline of bookstores.”

Linda, another library colleague, suggested that maybe bookstores and/or libraries should have post offices and coffee shops in their lobbies. I love the idea of entities struggling to survive forge a symbiotic relationship. It happens in the natural worls all the time.

Meanwhile, the you can find world’s most interesting bookstores this site. They also sell hand crafted metal bookmarks and have links to lot of bookstore and library related stuff:

http://www.miragebookmark.ch/index.html

Your writing assignment this time is to write someone a letter or a card and mail it using snail mail. Then go visit the library.

Feel free to weigh in on this issue. Of course, you'll have to do it electronically, but there is room for multiple versions of comunication. When TV came out, people predicted it was the death of radio....

Happy Writing

@LauraMoewriter

The Bookstore is Wounded, Not Dead

I am reading the most delightful book called The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee. Part memoir, part history of bookstores, the book confirms the existence of bibliophiles through the ages and the need to preserve extant book stores. True book lovers want more than just the book in our hands; we crave the entire experience of being surrounded by books and other book people. It’s so easy to download a book, but the aesthetic is thin and unsatisfying. Many writers were fostered by the presence of bound volumes, their heft and aroma, and the texture of words and illustrations on a page. Printed books have existed since ancient times, and these were not limited to religious texts and intellectual treatises. Even in ancient times, book buyers wanted romance and mystery. More evidence for the power of story and its place in human nature. Cave men craved story enough to carve into cave walls.

With the advent of e books and digitized media, story is not lost. The form has changed, just like we no longer carry clay tablets. Our tablets are bright, colorful and interactive, yet something feels lost. Reading on a tablet is a bit like dating a string of attractive people with whom you have little in common, but holding a book is coming back to an old lover with whom you have an enduring history.

I wonder about future generations, and how they will forge a bond with story that lingers. As much as the paperless society has been predicted, books published in paper form are tangible.

The publishing world is changing so fast even the “experts” don’t know what to expect. Independent authors are finding cheaper and easier means to get their work published and purchased. With KDP and Pubit and other e publishing venues, writers can upload text, design a cover, answer a few questions, and make their books available throughout the world. Granted, most self published writers should let their works simmer awhile and revise them before offering them up to a buying public. Do the ten thousand hours. But society is in a hurry, and the pursuit of instant fame and fortune is prevalent. Writers will never have a reality show, (though there is plenty of drama among writers). Perhaps readers want the illusion that the story writes itself and the writer and his/her life is secondary. A writer can be famous and anonymous at the same time. Other than Stephen King, can you picture your favorite author’s face?

There is room for multiple platforms, and my guess is kids reading stories on e books now will one day want to own a precious bound and illustrated volume of their favorite tale. The radio didn’t die when TV came out, and we though there is a junk food restaurant on every block, we still like a home cooked meal. Nothing feels like a book store. Other than the library, which is free, other stores will not let you hang out for hours and buy nothing. A coffee shop is close, but it’s missing books.

“When exploration and trade brought far corners of the world closer together-The Age of Exploration, The Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Rail, etc- there was a sharp rise in literacy. The ability to read was needed to keep up with the new technologies and business practices. And mandatory reading is always followed by elective reading. The more readers, the more books needed; more books, more bookstores.” (p.55, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop)

Happy holidays, everyone. Yes, it is Christmas Day, but a writer never sleeps.


Happy Writing.