The Future of Books

Every few months some company releases the equivalent of an eReader, and sparks a discussion about whether or not society will ever adopt the idea of a paperless world. In the end, people ultimately agree that readers will never adopt the technology because nothing beats an actual book.

The talk of the town in recent months has of course been Amazon’s little contraption, Kindle. It’s too expensive, and people still are not quite ready to grab onto this kind of technology, but I for one believe it’s the closest thing to the reality of eBooks that consumers have ever seen. I think it’s quite sad how little librarians have done to campaign for the little device.

A pretty large conscientious of librarians say that books are here to stay for some time; I’m not in this conscientious. I still believe that one day people will adopt eBooks. For some time, I’ve believed that the publishing business was on the verge of a new median in literature, and that new median will rest in interactivity.

I think one day they'll be wi-fi equipped (with built in Internet Browsers and one day full blow GUI operating systems), and we'll get Blogs and RSS feeds we subscribe to automatically once they are updated—much as they are with Kindle…but I’m going to go a step further and say that I think this same kind of technology is going to keep authors literally at readers hands, and they'll be publishing a lot more novellas (if there is any median out there that can bring the novella back to their glory days it is these kind of readers).

I believe in the future every library will have free wi-fi and people will walk in with their readers and automatically their will be the database of every book they can put on their reader. I don't believe we'll see the end of books for a long, long time (if ever), but I do believe these devices will be as common to some people as an iPod. And I believe that when they are, books will change; we'll start seeing more books for free, but embedded with advertisements that readers can click on and go to the Internet right on their eReader.

I think we are already seeing a trend in people’s reading habits, and that trend is they like to read more content in smaller doses. I think eBooks fit perfectly into this trend.

The problem with eBooks so far, in my opinion, is they have predominantly targeted the traveling businessman; this market is too limited. The future of eBooks rest in the company that can make something for the rest of us. Something that will let a college professor beam his lecture notes to every student in class who has a reader; something that will let a television viewer instantly receive a recipe they just saw on a Today Show cooking segment; something that will let a person stand next to a bus stop and automatically receive the bus schedule delivered to their reader; and finally, something that let’s you not just see a Wikipedia website, but the entire Internet. The technology is here for such a device, but not enough has been done to grab a hold of it.

Nicholson Baker Is a Big Fat Idiot

If you go to graduate school to get a degree in library science, you’re bound to come across figures in the literary circle that really pissed off a librarian, and your entire two years in graduate school will be at times misery because of this literary figure.


There was only one when I was in school. Nicholson Baker. There are few people who can stand alone in a sentence by being both the noun and verb--good ole Nick is one of these people.


The curse of Nicholson Baker apparently all started in 1996, when Baker wrote an article called “The Author vs. the Library” for the New Yorker (volume 72). The article attacked the way the San Francisco Public Library was discarding many of its older books.


I have not read the article, I do not care what the article has to say, and indirectly I don’t hold anything against Baker (although I still cringe when I hear his name and silently curse him for the horrors the name put me through in graduate school).


To this very day, many librarians have remained bitter and outraged with Nicholson Baker; in fact many faculty members at San Jose State’s library science department will probably be willing to argue about Baker and book preservation at the mere drop of his name.

Divorcing the Enviornment

I've heard people say don't divorce for the sake of the children, or good old family values...but today I heard a new one: stay married for the sake of the enviornment. Scientist are now citing the increase of single family homes (due to an increase in divorce) as a contributing factor to the environments destruction. Read the full story here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR2007120301485.html). So I guess next time you see a celebrity pull up to an award show in an eco-friendly car with his fourth wife/husband next to him/her throw an acorn at his head, and tell him he doesn't really care about the environment.

The Librarians - Update

Unless you live somewhere down under you probably haven't caught a glimpse of the new sitcom set in the library "The Librarians." Through the power of the Internet, you can now see what you are missing out. Visit ABC Austrailia (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/librarians/#/films/) to see the current episode, and comment what you think!

For Mature Eyes Only

Norman Mailer may be dead, but that didn't stop him from recieving this years award for Bad Sex in Fiction (yes, apparently there is an award for this sort of thing...and the award has been going on for 15 years). The judges cited his use of excrement in his novel "The Castle in the Forest" as being the tipping point for the award, though they also cited a line about a male character being "ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive into her piety" as another example of bad sex.

An honourable mention also went out to Jeanette winterson who used the phrase "silicon-lined vaginas."

Read the full article here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217967,00.html

The Other Bob Dylan

I love Bob Dylan. I love 60s Dylan, 70s Dylan, 80s Dylan, 90s Dylan, and 00s Dylan. A lot of people try and forget Gospel Dylan, but it's one of my favorite periods. Watch the video below of Gotta Serve Somebody and judge for yourself.

See You At Star Bucks Professor

A few years back, I decide to take a writing class at a local community college. At this point in my life I was already having mild success getting paid as a writer, but I was at work on a novel and I wanted workshop it to see what others thought.


I listened for several classes as the teacher rambled on and on about his accomplishments (he had published a poem (I think it was actually a poem in one of those books you have to buy to be published in))...that was it. He was qualified to teach a class in writing because he had a PhD.


When it came time to turn in actual writing of our own, I turned in a self contained fragment of my book; I thought it was great stuff. A week later I got the story back with the following: "Seems like a novel. Grade, C." No explaination of why it was a "C." No mention of what didn't work in the story. Nothing.


I wasn't bitter, but I wasn't about to spend a whole semester in school, and not be taken seriously. I emailed the professor to let him know I was dropping the class and why. I gave him suggestions on how to make it better. I told him quite passionately how a creative writing class should go. He wrote back telling me until I too had a PhD then I was not qualified to tell him how to teach a creative writing class.


We emailed each other back and forth; each time he basically rebuted that his PhD made him better than me. On his last email he explained that one day, when I had given up on my dreams of being a writer, I would be serving him coffee at Star Bucks.


At this writing, to my knowledge, this profession has yet to publish anything aside from that one poem. It seems these days he's the one who has given up on his dream of being a writer, and to him I say today, "Bruce, I'll see you at Star Bucks...and I take my coffee black."