Fire and Knowledge

I love books. From 2004 to 2009, I spent most of my evenings reading. We owned no TV to distract me. At first it was mostly theology… until I got a taste for novels. I read through most of the Dickens canon in a year. Next I dove into culture and came out a neo-Luddite. Then I got into history, economics, and science. I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t spend their evenings reading — it was hard to imagine wanting to stare at a television instead.

I became a compulsive book buyer. Now I have 5 full bookcases, and that’s only because I gave away hundreds to Goodwill when I moved. During my years in Minneapolis, my Saturdays usually included stopping by a used book store.

For the last few years I’ve gotten most of my books from the library. That has two main disadvantages:

1. You’re not supposed to write in them
2. You only have them for a few weeks

Let me make a confession. I write in library books. I can’t stop myself. But don’t worry Mom, I always use pencil and I erase everything when I’m done. Why do it? Because I mark quotes. After I type them out I erase my markings.

I haven’t been able to get around the part about it only being a loaned book, however. I have become quick friends with the online renewal system, but it only lets me renew three times (they set limits because of people like me).

So the library doesn’t work for books I want to write in and have on hand for a very long time. So should I buy them?

I used to. But unless it’s a book I am extremely excited about, I’ve found myself not wanting to buy a paper version, even though I love paper books. Why? They’re expensive, they’re heavy in bulk, they’re easily ruined, and they take up a lot of space.

The truth is, I want a good e-reader and it’s only a matter of time before one exists. It doesn’t exist now. I owned a Kindle for a while, but sold it. The terrible interface and control mechanisms (a joystick and a noisy page turn button) ruined the experience. The iPad isn’t it either — the screen is backlit and there doesn’t seem to be a good way of marking books. However, it seems better than the Kindle.

I used to hate the idea of e-books. I thought paper was far superior and that it wouldn’t really catch on. That was naive of me. Eventually paper books will go the way of scrolls and stone tablets — of interest to collectors, but not to the rest of us. E-book readers (either as separate devices or integrated into mobile devices) will fit much better into our lifestyles and we’ll gradually move to them in the coming decades. I think most of us know this intuitively as we watch how the technology and culture is progressing. I don’t think this is a bad thing anymore; it’s just different. There will be advantages and disadvantages, just like any technological revolution, and it usually balances out.

All that rambling to say that I’m waiting on discovering my e-bookmate. My compulsive book buying has been put on hold until I can buy them digitally (non-DRM) and read them on a device that I feel is a worthy alternative to a paper book.

And in the meantime, I’ll be a loyal — if not ideal — visitor to my local library.

Kudos to Jeff Bezos for giving a real apology about removing purchased books like 1984 from user’s Kindles. He said:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

Short, simple, and humble. I admire that.

Now there’s a new way to publish your autobiography: The Tweetbook.

I’ve been expecting an on-demand book printer for a while, so I’m glad see it’s finally being done:

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Signalling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton’s Book of Needlework. Blackwell hopes to increase this to over a million titles by the end of the summer – the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are currently out-of-copyright works, but Blackwell is working with publishers throughout the UK to increase access to in-copyright writings, and says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Much of my early intellectual life was trying to like things others said I should like. And I would often get frustrated at myself, because I usually wouldn’t like what they said I should.

Some of the classics are outstanding — but most of them I’ve found dull, drawn-out, and unsatisfying. And unfortunately, I’ve read hundreds of them.

It’s been that way with art, too. I’ve been to art museums and tried to like the classics of art. I tried to reform my unruly tastes. But I found most of them unmoving and unimpressive.

So it’s a relief to hear that someone else that I respect felt similarly. Here’s Mark Twain:

Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michael Angelo, a Caracci, or a da Vinici (and we see them every day), you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now….

[People] stand entranced before [a da Vinci] with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture:

“O, wonderful!”
“Such expression!”
“Such grace of attitude!”
“Such dignity!”
“Such faultless drawing!”
“Such matchless coloring!”

I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest… But at the same time the thought will intrude… How can they see what is not visible?

I’ve stopped caring that my tastes are not what some people considered “cultured.” I’m not going to delude myself into liking something just because others do.

Tastes are subjective. Life is too short for reading books I don’t enjoy. It’s too short for old movies with bad acting and bad editing. It’s too short for art that was once moving, but now is mediocre at best.

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,” said Francis Bacon. And some, I’d add, are to be shut and put back on the shelf for someone else who enjoys them.

Audible.com has the audiobook of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey available for free for a limited time. I found the book helpful, even though it’s a little dense in parts.

If you’re into audiobooks, you should definitely get it for free while you can.

I want an e-ink writer. I want it to have a large screen, like Plastic Logic’s E-Ink Reader (shown to the right). But it needs to have a on-screen keyboard with some kind of tactile feedback — I’d be happy with a laminate overlay until they get that technology worked out. And of course it must have a full-featured word processor, as well as the ability to create and edit blog posts.

Most of all, I want to write on something that doesn’t give me a headache. Who wants to stare at a backlit display for reading or writing?

The technology exists for this, but it hasn’t been created yet.

I’m waiting.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

—Albert Einstein, as quoted in Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007), p. 82.