A Momentary Taste of Being

This month's free book promises to be quite interesting: Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the America West Eric Hogan I stopped at one tourist attraction, Hole n” the Rock, about fifteen miles south of Moab. Though its curious punctuation might suggest that it boasts both a hole and a rock, the site is actually a hole in a rock, excavated by its owner in the 1940s and 1950s. Albert Christensen—painter, sculptor, taxidermist—sandblasted and carved his way into the rock, eventually building a five-thousand-square-foot home for himself, his wife Gladys, her doll collection, and his taxidermy menagerie. It took him twelve years, from 1945 to 1957, to move about fifty thousand cubic feet of sandstone for their cozy lair. The result is an appealing—albeit dark—suite of rooms that stay cool during the summer and warm during the winter. Albert also found the time to carve the smiling face of fdr into the side of their home (visible in the photo, outlined in white benea...

The University of Chicago Press is publishing more e-books--this time a group of mysteries about which I had been wondering just recently.  You can get Robert van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders for free. To call van Gulik's mysteries concerning the apparently real Judge Dee magisterial is a gross understatement.  They are unmatched for their sheer interest and oddity in the annals of crime. I am, however, puzzled by the match in cost between the paperback edition and the e-book.  I do understand that there is a price point below which e-books are not viable--but there must be a substantial cost differential between supplying the ephemeral e-book and supplying the permanent paper, ink, and glue book.  This saving should, in part be passed on to the consumer.  However, I also recognize that here are hidden costs, especially with DRM deliveries.  What I would love to see is cost analysis of the two.

"The Hollow Men"

Chasing Science at Sea While we're on the topic, I had two rare delights on Sunday before Sam's recital (another rare and extraordinary delight). We went to Sea World so he could ride Manta and Atlantic.  Generally while he rides Manta, I go into the nearby aquarium and enjoy the fact that we have somehow learned how to maintain a reef community aquarium, an accomplishment available only to the most elaborate aquaria and research institutes only a short while ago.  But the real delight is that Octopus vulgaris was out of her lair and swimming about her aquarium.  I've been here many times and the only view I had was of the octopus stuffed into a small tube that connected to adjacent aquaria.  But here she was out and about stretching and flexing for all the world to see. So, while Sam was riding Atlantis, I went into the nearby aquarium where normal one can see Pacific Sea Nettles ( Chrysaora fuscescens ) and, usually, Moon Jellies ( Aurelia aurita) both incredi...

Isolarion--James Atlee

Who Wrote the Book of Love --Lee Seigel So far these have been high-quality and worthwhile reading.

iPad apps that combine books with video And who exactly wants these, and why?  I know that I have trouble watching many foreign films because I'm seldom in the mood to read a movie.

Last Night I discovered,  probably late, because I'm always late to the table, the Google Books app for iPad.  Because I'm not one to let a single book opportunity slip by, I immediately appropriated it and was plunged into a phantasmagoria--indeed an orgiastic richness of such proportions the English language lacks terms for it.  I plugged in and immediately began to search for pre-1923 favorites--books that should be available free.  And one of the first places I went was to an relatively obscure English author of the early part of this century--Robert Hugh Benson.  I've been a fair Benson collector for some time now.  But what I found there surpassed by wildest expectations.  In ten or so minutes of searching I found twelve books that I haven't seen in Gutenberg or any of the known sources for e-books.  In addition, there was a wealth of other material by the family--A.C. Benson, and E. F. Benson, his brothers, and other Benson, related or no...

On writing the story The story--"Ziggurat" via Mark Atathakis

Free Catholic Fiction E-Books notice Catholic E-Books Site I can feel my iPad quiver in antici. . . . pation.

Best American Essays--The Free Way The best way for me, because I never finish one of these books--I always intend to, but I'm so slow at reading nonfiction that by the time I get around to the last essay, the next year's is out.

And have already tossed aside your well-worn editions of Shirley Jackson.  Stephen King not to your taste?  Looking for Lovecraft that isn't Lovecraft? Well you could do worse than to check out The Literary Gothic,   a site that I have been perusing for what seems like forever at this point (but obviously cannot be).  Collected here are a great many public domain texts--books and short stories.  You can find a great many of the works mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's magnificent essay " Supernatural Horror in Literature,"  indeed, as the link indicates, you can find the essay itself. Additionally, you can find works by Vernon Lee, J Sheridan Le Fanu, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Maria Edgeworth, Matthew "Monk" Lewis; in many cases you can also find critical essays and biographical information to accompany the works.  So if you're looking to head into October Country, this could be your one-stop shop.

A comment on a technical review that says that paper books will survive. While I agree with most of what the commenter has to say, I disagree with one proposition which I cannot determine from context whether it belongs to the reviewer or the original article.  All of the stuff on my Kindle, or at least nearly all of it (because I make my own e-books) will continue to be readable into the future because I will simply convert the files into whatever format comes forward as the next e-reader.  Worst comes to worst you extract them to html or xml and you have ultimately repurposable files without much concern about backward compatibility.  I've done it from palm to kindle to iPad and will continue to do it into the future.  I like portability.  I like being able to have a choice among thousands of books if I'm away from home.  I like being able to walk to the corner of Grafton Street across from the Fusilier's Arch and read Dubliners or to Davy Byrne's and...

A selection of classics available in the open-format epub- -works on computers and iPad and any epub capable reader. Truth of the matter is that the interested reader can get these files and make their own epub books with a software program like Calibre. (And being a book-geek, I've already done so.  But I'm lazy and I don't really need or care for cover art, etc.  All I care about is well-formatted text. )  For those who don't want to make their own, these are reasonably priced and are said to be human edited and mediated--and they do appear to have some cover art, etc. It's nice to see things like Lord of the World and Come Rack, Come Rope more widely available again.

Electronic publishing holds much promise--but Laura Miller emphasizes an essential weakness --a lack of any filter at all. I'm not keen on some of the ways books get published and some of the writers who remain long excluded because they can't find an in.  But I'm also not certain that I want to wade through the slush piles that have long been a lowly editor's work.

The perfect infusion of the luddite into the modern--see the typewriter extension for the iPad. I should have noted that this looks like a machine out of Burroughs's Naked Lunch via David Cronenberg.

Amazon reads your Kindle Highlights Charming.  I have nothing to hide, and most readers would find nothing worth noting in the highlights I make from books.  Moreover, I have the wireless off most of the time, so it seems unlikely that I am a regular contributor to this data stream.  But it is seriously disturbing to consider that someone might be reading over your shoulder.  I suppose it's part of the license agreement that I didn't pay much attention to; however, it hardly seems conducive to business.

The electronic archive of the Adams family papers is beautifully designed, with lovely popover tabs filled with information about specifics in the letters--particularly useful when those tidbits help you better understand who is talking about whom and how they are related.

Don't fear the e-reader I've used some version for 10 years now.  I never abandoned print books.  I did not dry up and fly away.  Metal parts have not (so far as I am aware) significantly replaced important body parts.  Indeed, I have found it liberating to get on a plane, train, or other conveyance with the calm assurance of carrying five-thousand books with me, lest I should get bored or need to consult the 1919 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica or the Catholic Encyclopedia at the spur of the moment.  Being able to find any word in any book with a simple search--lovely--better processor speed would make this lovelier. So, it's a brave new world that has such creatures in it, and it is with us to stay.  You do not have to become one with the collective, but "turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. . . it is not dying, it is not dying."

Another country heard from An interesting analysis that parallels our own.  Prune away the massive popular tree-killers and make room for the real book-making art.