301media.com | A mixed media blog by David Baker

Update – 08-11-10 – ReadWriteWeb offered 5 reasons why paper books are better than eBooks. Kobo offers a host of free eBooks including every classic you’ll ever need to read.

It’s been at least ten years since I first started thinking seriously about eBooks and getting excited about the idea.  I had a Palm Pilot for work, and the display was poor and the Internet connection was horrible. But I loved the idea of carrying an entire library in my pocket. Still, I never even purchased the first book. The Palm Pilot is probably in some museum right now. Maybe the Gutenberg Museum we recently visited in Mainz, Germany.

Far Beyond the Pale is the new novel from Daren Dean.

Well, it’s taken me ten years to finally give it a try. What I needed was the right device and a strong reason to jump in. I bought an iPhone a couple years ago. But still, I didn’t download the Kindle app and a book until  my friend Daren Dean released his amazing novel, Far Beyond the Pale, on Amazon. I downloaded the app and fired up the book, and now I’m thoroughly enjoying both Daren’s excellent writing and the experience of reading a novel electronically.

Readwriteweb recently gave five reasons why eBooks are better than their paper ancestors.Though they highlight some amazing features of eBooks that aren’t available in the dead tree format, I wouldn’t go so far as saying this makes them superior. There’s still nothing quite like the smell of a fresh (or old and dusty) book, or the feel of pulp in your hands. There’s a sensory pleasure in reading a paper book that can’t be replicated digitally.

But the actual act reading, of experiencing words, even on the iPhone’s small screen, is just as engaging as reading on paper. You can make notes, highlight, save your spot. The iPhone allows you to flip pages with your thumb, adding a new level of touch to the experience that pressing a button can’t give you. The digital annotation tools are more efficient than the analog system of sticky notes, highlighters, bent corners and margin scrawls (albeit aesthetically less pleasing). The price is also fantastic. Daren is self-published, but I was able to buy his novel at a price on Kindle that allowed him a better profit margin (per copy) than if he’d connected with a traditional publisher.

Some writers and book lovers may think that the advent of eBooks is a sad day for novels, words and books in general. I think that’s pessimistic horse shit.

There’s also something nice about the short page length on an iPhone…it gives you the feeling of headlong progress (through the 4,000+ pages that Daren’s novel reaches in this format). I thought I’d need time to adjust to thousands of micropages compared to the traditional200-400 page length of a novel, but it’s been no problem at all. In fact, I appreciate being able to flip a page or two between giving my kid a bath or waiting for her to brush her teeth. It seems easier to dip in and out of a novel than reading a fraction of a longer, standard-length page.

Some writers and book lovers may think that the advent of viable eBook platforms is a sad day for novels, words and books in general. I think that’s pessimistic horse shit. eBooks may just be what saves the novel form in this digital age. The new platform introduces the novel experience to people who are used to consuming all of their information on a mobile device and wouldn’t otherwise think to read something of that length. It saves trees. It allows self-published authors to reach a global audience in minutes. It enhances the opportunity to deepen the novel experience with, say, video of the author reading or social highlighting and notes that give you an instant book discussion group. The future of the book-length manuscript would be far more precarious if they didn’t translate so smoothly to the Kindle, iPhone and iPad.

And it’s silly to think that paper books will die as a result of the growing popularity of eBooks. We all now have keyboards and mobile devices that shoot video and record audio. People write blogs and online diaries and send volumes of digitally composed email. But personal journals are as popular as ever. Moleskine notebooks are on sale everywhere. I see them in every coffee shop in Oregon, but I also recently returned from Germany and Italy, and they’re all over Europe as well. Every corner in Florence seemed to have a fine stationary shop, where Moleskines were the cheap option, and antique leather notebooks fetched ridiculous prices. There’s still a place for the handwritten word five hundred years after Gutenberg. People will always read paper books as well.

Hands-on printing at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz - they'll still be doing this 500 years from now.

While we were in Germany, we stopped at  the Gutenberg Museum. My daughter joined her cousins in making prints in the museum’s hands-on print shop. She was thrilled by the tactile, mechanical experience of creating art in a method not unlike Gutenberg used when he printed his first Bible page a half millennium ago. This experience could never be replicated digitally. The art hanging on the walls of the print shop was innovative, and had a warm, comfortable feeling. Prints will be decorating walls for as long as I’m alive. Gutenberg’s invention brought the Bible and a host of other materials to the hands of people who didn’t have access to them before. He created a world of readers, expanding the simple practice of reading to the great unwashed. eBooks have the potential of bringing novels and book-length manuscripts forward, not only reaching people who already read them, but even introducing them to folks who never would have thought to pick up a manuscript on their own before.

Just like Gutenberg's invention brought the new experience of reading a book to people never reached before, the digital novel will bring novels to new readers.

So for writers and serious readers, there’s nothing to fear from eBooks. Bookstores will still exist. Some will flourish, and some will close. But books and novel manuscripts will persist. Writers like Daren Dean will be able to share their stories with friends on the other side of the country, and hopefully even reach a wider audience. Far Beyond the Pale is a compelling novel with an engaging voice. It’s a little raw, but it’s better than a lot of the pap that I’ve bought from traditional publishers in the past year. It also has a feeling of personal authenticity that other novels I’ve read recently. Maybe it’s because I know Daren, or maybe it’s because the digital age is allowing novelists to engage readers without the filter of big corporate publishers.

Daren is an amazing writer who surrounds his readers with voice-driven prose and rich, tactile imagery that comes through just as well on screen as it does on paper. And even traditional publishers and agents have been telling him for years that he’s an amazing writer, though, “the market is just too tough right now.” But today he’s now able to reach the audience he deserves.

Gutenberg would be pleased.

Best overlook near Corvallis for watching the sunset. Set the timer at 3-second intervals and captured about 1200 images over the span of an hour.

Roger Ebert’s voice roars louder than ever, this despite the fact that he can no longer talk. I’ve been reading his blog with added interest since thyroid cancer rendered him unable to to speak. Maybe his blogging has gotten better and grown more frequent now that it’s his main outlet to speak to the world.

Ebert is so much more than a film critic. He’s a journalist and writer, an unabashed middle western liberal voice in an age when most progressives consider activism to be making excuses for Obama, car pooling, taking those easy potshots at morons like Bush and Palin or shopping at Whole Foods.Ebert’s latest post on the film Insider Job is filled with his even handed contempt for what’s been happening in Washington since Reagan:

It is easy to say Republicans oppose financial reform, because they do. But too easy to say Democrats support it, because they hold back from meaningful reform. Their measures amount to pissing on a forest fire.

The film is an expose about the “Masters of the Universe” on Wall Street who encouraged bad debt, betting against their own customers to enrich themselves, and consequently drove the world into a financial crisis that we may feel the effects of for the balance of my life.

Ebert, even voiceless, is louder than ever. He’s smart, angry and passionate about film. And he’s a decent guy. I used to work in an office across from the television studios where he did his show with Gene Siskel. During the opening credits, Ebert was seen wandering the streets of Chicago giving a thumbs up and a smile to random passers by. This wasn’t some affectation for the cameras. I passed him several times in the busy streets, and he shared it with me.

Now that the rain clouds have lifted (at least temporarily), I’m reminded of some of the perks of living in Oregon.

Zusak's "The Book Thief" sparkles with gems

I just finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which was a runaway success a few years back that I somehow missed. But then I’ve always been a few steps out of tune with pop culture.

It was recommended to me by my sister, who has outstanding taste in books despite being a Republican. We forget that there are intelligent conservatives, or at least I do. Such individuals are no less misguided for possessing thoughtful qualities. But then there also are plenty of people who vote Democratic who are complete assholes. No general truths are absolute. They’re just generally true.

So back to Mr. Zusak and his wonderful book. The New York Times is credited with saying that, “it’s the kind of book that can be LIFE CHANGING (sic).” I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s pretty friggin’ good.

It’s set in Nazi Germany during the war, and it’s about an orphaned, illiterate little girl taken in by a foster family on the shady side of Munich. The family looks to be a horrorshow: a passive, if good natured husband and a terror of a foster mother with a foul tongue and a penchant for corporal punishment. Little Liesel Meminger seems to be in for a rough ride. I read with extra interest as my own mother was a child of four during the Allied bombing raids over Berlin. Liesel’s only a few years older. And I couldn’t help but think of my mothers stories all during this novel.

In a kind reversal, Liesel’s gruff little foster family is hardly Dickensian. Instead, they turn out to be surprisingly human in a world of Nazis. They hide a Jewish man in their basement, for example, at time when neighbors will readily turn you into the Gestapo. Papa risks a beating to give a crust of bread to a man being marched to a concentration camp. He teaches Liesel to read, which leads to the title character’s book thievery, giving this novel it’s title. And Mama’s capacity for love proves to be as large as her off-color vocabulary and as quick as the back of her hand.

With Allied bombs turning German civilians into hamburger, and columns of half-starved Jews marched through Liesel’s neighborhood on their way to Dachau, The Book Thief is brutal and tough, especially for a young adult novel. But then it’s probably the type of thing young adults should read if they are to tackle such a big subject.

The pages are replete with magic and dazzling characters. Like Liesel’s neighbor and boyish crush, Rudy Steiner, a wiry pre-teen who likes to sneak out of the house at night and paint himself black and run laps at the local track to emulate his hero, Jesse Owens, the man who rose from his own country’s segregation to travel to Berlin and disprove Hitler’s theory of racial superiority. Liesel’s first kiss with young Rudy will conjure a few tears if you have any sort of a heart. I’ll admit to being a little choked up at the end of this novel, and not a little sad that it was over.

Probably most magical element in this book is it’s narrator, who is none other than Death himself, Harvester of Souls. And Death certainly has his hands full during the Holocaust and WWII. In a brilliant stroke, Zusak makes Death the most thoughtful and “human” presence, whose grim work is undertaken (pun!) with such grace and beauty that one can only wish the real Grim Reaper has such compassion. For example, Mr. D says of this key character’s soul, as he carries it off:

This one was sent out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested.

The language is subtle, stylish and beautiful. There are many asides and interjections by Death made in bold type, little sonnets of wit and bittersweetness that give this long book a clever, clipped pace. When the book ended, I didn’t want it to be over. Zusak said, “I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it.” He sure as hell writes as if he believes that. This book sparkles and glitters.

Four stars, three and a half thumbs up. It’s great to know that this whole novel writing thing is alive and well.