Month: December 2010

Reading in the Digital Age, or, Reading How We’ve Always Read

by

This post, from Kassia Krozser, originally appeared on her Booksquare site on 11/30/10.

As much as the idea of enhanced ebooks brings the sexy to publishing, it doesn’t really do much for most of the books published. Enhanced, enriched, transmedia, multimedia…these are ideas best applied to those properties that lend themselves to multimedia experience (or, ahem, the associated price tag). While many focus on the bright and shiny (and mostly unfulfilled) promised of apps and enhanced ebooks, the smart kids are looking at the power of social reading.

Social reading is normal reading. It’s how we already read in an offline world, and, yes, how we read in an online world. First, some historical context, all stuff that is well known. In the beginning, humans told stories around campfires*. The storytelling happened in group situations, with some stories passed from campfire to campfire, and eventually the woolly mammoth the hunter felled was a large as the Titanic. Some stories became institutionalized — myths, biblical stories, parables. Others, well, they never really gained market share.

Hmm, publishing, the early days.

Time passed. We developed alphabets, we coalesced around local language standards, we wrote stuff down, but the process was laborious (think rocks) or fragile (think parchment) or valuable (think illuminated manuscripts). These printed stories (using both words broadly), fiction and non-fiction, were not possessed in great numbers by common folk. Reading, or sharing of stories, was done in groups, except for those ancient-times-us who wrote stories in their heads (go ancient-times-us!).

Even after the invention of the Gutenberg press, the possession of books was outside the reach of most people. We moved from campfires to candlelight, while the act of reading remained a social activity. The tradition of people reading to each other remains alive and well. I cannot think of the stories of the knights of the Round Table without remembering my mother reading them aloud to four impressionable minds. Likewise, when I remember “reading” The Island of the Blue Dolphins for the first time, I remember my third grade teacher’s voice as she read it to us.

And with the reading, of course, comes the book discussion.

 

Read the rest of the post on Booksquare.

A Writer's Night Before Christmas

by

In honor of the holiday season, I’m digging up this old chestnut from last year. I hope you enjoy it!

Twas the night before Christmas and all through my draft
Were examples of my inattention to craft
My characters all hung about without care,
In hopes that a plot point soon would be there.
 

My family were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of red herrings danced in my head.
The dog on its blanket, and the cat in my lap
Had just settled themselves for a long winter’s nap.


When on my computer there showed a blue screen!
(And if you use a PC, then you know what that means.)
Away to the cell phone I flew like a flash;
I dialed tech support and broke out in a rash.


The sales pitch that played while on hold I waited
Ensured my tech guy would be roundly berated.
That is, if he ever should come on the line.
And for this, per minute, it’s one-ninety-nine!


“Good evening,” he said, in a Punjab accent,
“I am happy to help you, and my name is Kent.”
More rapid than the Concorde was his troubleshoot,
I was back up and running, after one last reboot!


"Now Gaiman! Now, Atwood! Now, Cheever and Austen!
Salinger! O’Connor! Shakespeare and Augusten (Burroughs)!
Don’t withhold your wisdom! Upon me, bestow it!
Inspire me! Show me how best not to blow it!"


To their books I turned for some worthy advice;
I was pumped to return to my work in a trice.
So across clacking keyboard my fingers they flew,
With a speed and a passion—and no typos, too.


Hour after hour, the prose kept on flowing,
Though I had no idea where my story was going.
“But write it, I must!” I decided right then.
I resolved to see this project through to the end.


At one a.m. the second act came together,
At two I knew this book was better than ever!
My hero had purpose, my plot had no slack.
I cut my “B” story and never looked back!


I got up to make coffee at quarter to three;
Curses! My spouse left no Starbucks for me!
With instant crystals I’d have to make do.
Cripes! He used all of the half and half, too!


“I could add some Kahlua,” I told myself.
“There’s a big, honking bottle right there on the shelf.”
So I added a splash. And then a splash more.
At five, I finally came to on the floor.


With more Kahlua than coffee in the cup nearby,
An idea for the third act I wanted to try.
Werewolves! In high school! And vampires, as well!
It worked for that Meyer chick, my book’s a sure sell!


I tied up the plot in a neat little a bow,
With the arrival of aliens, and giant worms from below.
Defeated were foes of the Earth and the sky,
And thousands of townsfolk did not have to die.


With the Kahlua bottle all but drained,
I turned to do the last bit of work that remained.
To this one tradition, I was happy to bend.
Two carriage returns, all in caps: THE END. 

To Facebook I sprang, to announce I was through.
From thence, on to Twitter, and MySpace too.
But lo, I exclaimed as my face met the sun,
"Twenty-four days late, my NaNoWriMo is done!"