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.

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)