The Literary Blog Hop Asks: Are You Predisposed to Like the Classics? Yes. Next Question.

I'm beginning to look forward to every other Thursday and the Literary Blog Hop hosted by the lovely ladies over at The Blue Bookcase.  Not only have they introduced me to some wonderful literary book blogs, which have turned me on to some great books, but they always ask the most interesting questions.  This week's question is as follows:

Do you find yourself predisposed to like (or dislike) books that are generally accepted as great books and have been incorporated into the literary canon?

Yes (like).  Next question.

Discuss the effect you believe a book’s “status” has on your opinion of it.

Aha!  I thought we were getting off easy this week.  Ok.  Well, I'd like to say that I remain objective in my reviews, regardless of the reputation of the author or work under consideration, but that's simply not true.  In fact, I would argue that it's not human.  We're all subject to social pressures and preconceived opinions, though some do a better job than others of maintaining a relative objectivity.  For myself, I think that a book's status or reputation creates a kind of synergistic effect on my own appreciation of it.  If it enjoys a reputation as a classic, I am predisposed to like it, and I tend to be more effusive in my praise of it.  On the other hand, if I do not like it, my dislike tends to be exaggerated as well.

A case in point is our recent review of The Man Who Loved Children.  Though not widely known, the book enjoys a reputation as a modern classic and, in fact, is included in Time Magazine's list of the Top 100 Novels in the English language from 1923 to the present.  I was predisposed to like it.  I did like it.  And I was probably more effusive in my praise because the book (twice) met and even exceeded my expectations.

What about you?  Do you love to love the classics or do you love to hate them?   

Aaarrrgghh ... Is Piracy Really a Problem for the Publishing Industry?



As a general matter, I like to keep my work life separate from my blog life, and I find that there is rarely any substantial overlap between the two.  That said, as I've mentioned in passing on a couple of occassions, by day I'm an intellectual property attorney dealing primarily in issues of copyright and trademark law.  Recently, our firm's publicist asked me to give an opinion on the scope of the problem of e-book piracy in the publishing industry.

My reaction to this question has always been skeptical.  I just don't see e-book piracy as a significant potential problem given the fact that people don't consume books in the same way that they consume music and film.  First, though e-book sales are increasing rapidly (as recently reported in a study by the Association of American Publishers), hardcover and paperback book sales still constitute a majority of the market.  Second, book purchases tend to be carefully considered decisions in my experience, as opposed to impulse purchases of music and movies.  Third, and perhaps most important, e-book distributors are ahead of the curve in terms of distribution (and far, far ahead of both the music and film industries when piracy first became a serious problem for them).  Simply stated, it is easier to pay $10 for an electronic copy of The Lost Symbol from the Kindle Store, the iBooks Store, the Sony eReader Store, etc., than is it so find a quality copy through Bit Torrent, download it, and upload it onto your particular device.

But not everyone agrees, as evidenced by a recent article by David Carnoy over at CNET entitled, "Kindle e-book piracy accelarates."  Evidently, there is a group of e-book enthusiasts that like to shop in bulk (as in 2500 books at a time).

So, what do you think?  Is this really as much of a problem for the publishing industry as it has been for the music and film industries?  Have you ever looked for a pirated copy of a particular book or known anyone that has?  Thanks for any (anonymous) insight that you may be able to provide.

The Literary Blog Hop Wants You to Consider Your Own Mortality

Debbie Nance over at Readerbuzz apparently had quite the St. Patrick's Day because she's thinking about death.  And as a green-blooded Irish-American, I can tell you that a Jameson-soaked contemplation of The End is often the unwanted byproduct of the hours of Guinness-swilling jubilation that precede it.  But I give her credit--what could be more Irish than to tie a contemplation of one's own mortality to a work of great literature?  Here's to you, Debbie.  Slainte! 

The question Debbie posed over at the Literary Blog Hop is the following: What one literary work must you read before you die?  Like everyone else that's weighed in on this topic, I'm pulled in ten different directions at once. 

If I'm recommending to others from the books that I've read over the course of my life, I think I'd have to go with Ulysses by James Joyce.  The fact that Joyce was Irish is merely a happy coincidence, but I'll toast him just the same.  Slainte!  Though it was a struggle to get through, I think I've never been as intimate with the characters of a literary work nor have I ever seen such mastery in Joyce's playful manipulation of the English language.  Ultimately, it is hands down the most rewarding work of literature that I've ever read.   

Now, if we're talking about the one literary work that I feel that I must read before I die, I'm going with Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  There's something about the decline of an entire civilization that makes your own mortality just a little bit easier to contemplate.

Thanks to Debbie and the girls at the Blue Bookcase for a great topic.

The Book as Sacred Object, and Recollections of the Paris Codex

So, this morning I received a nice, big box of very old books on Spanish and Mexican history that I had purchased on the cheap at auction several months back.  I already have a fairly large collection of books on the Maya of Guatemala and the Yucatan, and my hope was that I would find a couple of useful--or at least intriguing--volumes in what I otherwise understood to be a grab bag of dusty, old history books.  I was not disappointed. 

But even more than the useful or intriguing knowledge that may be contained within their pages, I found myself relishing the look and feel and musty old smell of each and every volume that I pulled from among the styrofoam packing material and unwrapped from its tissue paper.  And I realized once again that, despite all the support for ebooks and audiobooks that can be found in these posts, there is nothing quite like a good old book to fire my imagination.  For me, as for most of you I would suspect, books are sacred objects, and I find myself caring more about them than I do about even my most important and useful possessions.  Every time that I stumble on a worthwhile old tome, I want to take it in like a stray kitten and nurse it back to health or at least put it to the use for which it was intended.  I know that I'm not alone in this appreciation.

The whole experience got me thinking about the most significant book that I've ever held in my own two hands--the Paris Codex.  For the uninitiated--and I'm perfectly willing to admit that the field is obscure--the Paris Codex is one of four surviving manuscripts written by the Maya at the time of the Spanish Conquest.  That there are only four may be blamed as much on Spanish zealotry as the ravages of time--they famously burned thousands of such manuscripts in their less than subtle efforts at conversion.  And only one, known as the Grolier Codex, remains in the Americas today.  The rest are scattered about Europe in Madrid, Dresden, and Paris, where they are known less than creatively as the Madrid, Dresden, and Paris Codices.

Each provides an example of the well-developed written language of the Maya, the only such writing system that originated in the Americas and, arguably, one of only three written languages that developed organically  (i.e. was not borrowed or adapted from some other civilization) throughout the entire world.  The written language of the Maya died out in the generations following the Spanish Conquest, though amazing strides have been made in the last several decades with respect to the understanding and preservation of the language, which can still be found not only in the codices, but on stelae and temples throughout Central America and Mexico.

The Paris Codex is kept in a sealed box at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and is not generally accessible to the public.  I was able to handle it only after a lengthy formal request process during which I explained repeatedly that I was working on a book in which the Paris Codex figured prominently.  By sheer persistence, I wore them down.  And I was even able to sneak my wife in as well as my "translator" on the day of our viewing.

To hold a five hundred year-old book from a "lost" civilization that is written in a language that no longer exists is absolutely indescribable.  I remember carefully paging through the codex from beginning to end over the course of several hours, its pages still bright and beautiful, though delicate and fading in spots.  And I couldn't help but think of the author, seated cross-legged, paintbrush in hand, half a century behind me, and born of a civilization that owed nothing to my own.  I might as well have been reading the marks of an alien world light years away.  But one thing I knew that I shared with him was an appreciation of the written word and a love of the books that contain it.  In many ways, I think it is the written language that allows us to finally transcend time and place and to sympathize with those around us--and isn't that the very thing that makes us human?

I've gone on far too long--I get wrapped up in books, what can I say?  But what about the rest of you?  Do you consider any books sacred?  Do you remember a particular experience with a particular book above all others?  And what do you think it is about the written word that transfixes and binds us?   

       

     

Reflections on the Year Gone By, and a Question for You, Dear Reader: How Can We Be Better?

With the coming of 2011, it is inevitable (and healthy, I would argue) that we all reflect for a time on the year gone by.  I began TLM in March with my very first blog post on The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald and, with the help of Aaron and Greg, we proceeded to genarate another 50 posts (including this one) in the following 9 months.  I have my personal favorites, of course:  our Declaration of War on All Things Twilight is a poor (but honest) man's literary manifesto; Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, which continues both to haunt me and to climb the ranks of my top ten novels of all time (it's currently number seven); and Ulysses, which represents a hard-won personal battle over the forces of literary intimidation and general laziness.    

Objectively speaking, I think that we've been modestly successful in 2010.  This past November, we received more than a thousand page views in a single month, which I consider a real achievement.  And, in December, we briefly achieved 100 followers before someone dropped off the face of Google Earth and reduced us to 99 once again.  Of course, many, many book blogs carry several hundred or even several thousand followers as a matter of course (and we applaud them for it).  But our focus is a little different--we've tried to stay true to our mission: promoting the reading of literary fiction (and the occassional work of non-fiction) among male readers, an endangered species if ever there was one. 

Which leads me to the point of this reflective post--we here at TLM appreciate the support of each and every one of you, and we recognize the strides that we have made in 2010--but we want to refocus and redouble our efforts on promoting the reading of fiction among men in 2011, and for that we need your help. 

Based upon the comments that we received in 2010, there are a few promises that we are making to you in 2011:

1.  Keep the post titles and tone light and playful--it seems clear that a playful sense of humor or at least a dry wit generates interest, drives readership, and creates loyalty.  Relatedly, I vow not to use the first-person plural unless I am actually talking about "us" as a group; 

2.  Bring insight to bear and focus on unique aspects of each work that we review--there are literally thousands upon thousands of dry, uninteresting, and very opinionated book reviews out there (I'm looking at you, Amazon).  But we strive to create discussion, which requires a novel approach, or at least an interesting topic.  

3.  Be more specific about how each work is of specific interest to men--we've never been nor will we ever be a He-Man Woman-Hater's Club (that's a Little Rascals reference for you youngsters out there), but the point here is to make reading relevant to the lives of our male readers (which we hope may also be of interest to our female readers); and

4.  (Related to number three above) Incorporate more references to our favorite alcoholic beverages--we've received almost as much comment on our passing references to microbrews, scotches, and rums as we've received on the books themselves.  And they seem to go hand in hand--a good book and a nice warm tumbler of single-malt scotch.  It's always after five o'clock somewhere.

And now it's your turn.  What else would you have us do?  What do you love about your favorite book blogs?  What do you hate?  How can we improve the quality of our posts here at TLM?  How can we generate/maintain more interest among our target demographic--men and the women that love them will push them to read again?  Please do comment, and do so with brutal honesty, for we are committed to improvements in 2011.

Happy New Year to all!