I’m Bad at Vacationing

I just spent the past several days alongside a lake in upstate New York. It was kind of cold and the ratio of spoiled-yappy-dog-to-human was an unfavorable 1:3. I prefer something closer to 0:1.

So, faced with the choice between embroilment in family drama over joint appliance purchasing and accompanying a sailboat captain with zero experience, I slunk over to the room used as a library. I had with me an enormous tattered copy of The Trust, a history/biography of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan, the owners of the New York Times.

Whatever you think about that particular paper is largely irrelevant about this book. Its authors delve deeply into the business of news (see also “Backstory” by Ken Auletta) and the sociopolitical role of such a dynasty as the Sulzbergers’. The period of the book encompassing the 1950s-60s mirrors the social environment of my new favorite show, Mad Men (which started its second season last night – hooray for OnDemand).

The trade paperback edition is over 800 pages long, and I still have 100 some pages to go. But in reading it, I have a slightly more favorable outlook on the resilience of the newspaper industry, a better idea of the industry in general, a stronger dislike for high society, and another winner to add to one of my many nonfiction shelves.

And I’m bad at vacationing because the scenery in upstate New York is absolutely gorgeous, but my head was buried in this book most of the time.

Lifestyles of the Cheap and Frugal: Part 3

Books.

Finally, a good thing to say about being cheap: libraries. I grew up splitting my summers between the Jersey shore and the kids’ book club at the library. For my parents, it was a win-win deal: it got my brother to read books for free pizza at Pizza Hut, and, well, I just got free pizza at Pizza Hut. I must have blown through the Babysitters Club series and its spinoffs in three summers or less.

I occasionally troll Yahoo Answers primarily to yell at idiots, and a very common question in the Books and Authors section is WHAT WEBSITE WILL SEND ME FREE BOOKS or something to those ends. Hey, goofballs, the library is 100% free. Unless you keep their stuff for too long. Ride a bike over there or something, because only a criminally insane parent wouldn’t take their kid to a library.

Books are among the only things we splurge on. My county library holds a book sale each year and their profits set a new record each year. I’ve been to each and every one of these sales since I was eight years old and the sale itself consisted of a dozen boxes on the park benches outside the library building. Now, the sale lasts three days and fills both buildings of the local National Guard armory, and people have to be  bussed over from the library’s much larger parking lot. On the final, half-price day, hardcovers and trade paperbacks cost one dollar. I personally spent close to two hundred dollars this year, and many of the books were considerably cheaper mass market paperbacks. Do the math. I needed to build new shelving in my apartment to handle the newcomers.

At a store, cost will still be taken into account due to my incredible cheapness. Why spend $14 a pop on a load of Kurt Vonnegut novels when I can order them used for $7 apiece plus discounted shipping online? Bookstores are still great for impulse buys, like the very wonderful Jhumpa Lahiri collection Interpreter of Maladies, the stationery section, and the bargain section.

The other thing I like about books is that no technology is required of me to read one.

Nice, nice, very nice.

A paper addict on the digital revolution

I love my computer. I love how Bloglines organizes my RSS feeds for me (although Yahoo doesn’t have a Books feed – grrr). I love watching Law & Order SVU reruns. But I love even more the quarter ton of books I have collected throughout my life. I love even more smudging newsprint, and printing first pages. I love JStor and printing out articles only to attack them with highlighters for my research papers, and yesterday’s speech on…

dun dun dun…

the death of the newspaper and the rise of the Internet. Boo hiss. But as the last magnate Rupert Murdoch told a gathering of newspaper editors, “we have been complacent, hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.”

Newspapers are still working on the switch. I do like the idea of local papers going more in depth locally, because why go to the national networks to read about your home town?

Publishers, however, may have found their savior. My ink-and-paper soul wrenches to say it, but Kindle just may be the industry’s saving grace. The thing has a lot of technical kinks that still need to be worked out, but the concept alone just might bring people back to reading. It saves physical space – think thousands of books in the space of one paperback; great for travelers and people with itty bitty apartments. (My apartment is small but I fit all my crap, including 500+ books, just fine.) People obsessed with gadgets would no doubt love to get their hands on this thing. Also, since they’re essentially selling e-books for these things, the books themselves are cheaper (though the device still tops $350).

The shrinking market of us Luddite page-strokers is becoming more of a niche, whether we like it or not. So if our market in general is to be saved, we must admit at least partial defeat and let the techies have their toys.

(originally written for my now-merged What Is Lit blog)

Oates and Honey

I am a recent convert to Joyce Carol Oates. She may be fond of Sylvia Plath, perhaps a warning for you Plath-haters out there, but Oates should be considered much more important, literaturally speaking, than Plath. Regrettably, my school schedule leaves little time for reading, but that doesn’t stop me from getting through a largish book every 1-2 weeks. Queued is “Do With Me What You Will” by Oates, lent to me by the same wonderful girlfriend who lent me Oates’s “Beasts,” a kind of stop-you-in-your-tracks novella which I had to read twice more to fully grasp. It’s like a really good movie you know you have to watch again to catch everything, of the few items of Oates’s work that I have read (“Beasts” and the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”). It’s a deceptively quick read, almost like poetry, with each word so loaded you read it thrice to catch its nuances. I recommend Oates, to say the very least, but until I myself read more, don’t take my word for it and don’t consider this post a review.

Your Mind on Books

I’m totally addicted to Kurt Vonnegut. Sure, I “read” Slaughterhouse-Five in high school, like I “read” Shakespeare and Jekyll and Hyde and To Kill a Mockingbird. Am I the only person in the world who didn’t like the latter? I kind of enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye. Never was in a class requiring Beowulf. HATED A Thousand Acres. God damn you, Jane Smiley.

Two years ago I picked up a copy of Timequake at the library book sale (a wonderful annual event which raises tens of thousands of dollars for the county library system) because I knew the author’s name, and a brief glance at the back cover blurb seemed somewhat interesting. I didn’t actually get around to reading it under this past August, on the plane to Missouri and round 2 of military police school. I fell in love, and ended up reading the book twice more during stolen moments in the course of MP school. That’s more of a feat than it sounds like – A787th MP Co is a horrid microcosm of the MP corps and US Army at large.

Upon returning home from MP school, I took my list of things to buy and things to do and with the full intention of acquiring every Vonnegut book possible (plus a lot more), I instead blew most of my AIT earnings on apartment rent and a wedding dress. Nobody saw that last one coming, including myself. In all honesty I’d rather have the books, but I can’t return the dress.

O, Bounteous Holiday

Among many lesser forms of nevertheless well-thought-out gifts I acquired this holiday season, including a rather twisted Build-A-Bear courtesy of my hilarious brother, the following list was partially delivered:

by Kurt Vonnegut:
*Cat’s Cradle
*Slaughterhouse-Five
Breakfast of Champions
Fates Worse than Death: An Autobiographical Collage
*God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
A Man Without a Country

by H.L. Mencken:
Newspaper Days, 1899-1906

by Hunter S. Thompson:
The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955-1967
*Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist
The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977-2005
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The Rum Diary
Screw-jack and Other Stories
Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

by Tim O’Brien:
*The Things They Carried

by Sylvia Plath:
The Bell Jar
* The Collected Poems

Note the stunning correlation between starred items (received) and bolded items (the short list of what I politely requested). Not bad at all, Mom. Thank you, and I extend that thanks to all the parents who play Santa for their spoiled-brat demanding children.