Words on a page

I admit it. Blame it on the foolishness of youth. A foolishness that’s been tempered by something resembling maturity.

What I’m referring to is this article. Written by yours truly in the early 1990s. If you have a moment, read the article to understand where I’m coming from

[For those of you who don't have the time to read it, the gist of the article was that the drive to make book digital would never create a replacement for actual dead trees.]

Times change, and so do opinions. I’m one who straddles both old and new schools. I still read physical books. But I also read electronic books. The “experience” (whatever that means) of reading both is slightly different but it’s pretty much the same.

In the time that I’ve immersed myself in digital text, I’ve come to the conclusion that many people rethink how they define what a book is.

It’s the words

What is a book? Is it a mass of bound paper? Is it a collection of bits?

It’s both.

What makes up a book isn’t its form. It’s the words. It’s the thoughts and ideas and emotions that those words convey. That is what a book is. Nothing more, nothing less.

It could be that trade paperback on my shelf. It could be, say, that nice hardbound edition of Anna Karenina that I pick up from time to time. It could be a PDF file that I view on my computer screen. It could an ePub file that’s read on an ebook reader or my smartphone. Each and every one of is a book.

A while ago someone saw me with an ebook reader and asked Don’t you think you’re helping kill the book by using one of those things? My reply, in a marginally Nietzchean vein, was Changing something doesn’t kill it. And that’s how I feel now.

The book isn’t dead. It’s just changing form. Books still need to be written. Books still need editing. They still need someone to publish them — although that can be done by the writers, too.

Even if masses of ink and paper go the way of the horse-drawn buggy books will still exist. For now, we have paper and digital. And that’s a great thing.

Thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment.

Photo credit: robootb from Photoxpress

A short while ago, while taking a break from the endless work my wife and I are doing around the house, I grabbed a collection of Isaac Asmiov‘s essays off a bookshelf and just started to read. Once again, I found myself being caught up with what was on the page.

I’ve been a big fan of Asimov’s non fiction for decades. While he wasn’t the most brilliant prose stylist, Asimov’s writing was clear and lively and easy to read. And he packed a lot of information into what he wrote, no matter how long or short it was. The best thing about reading Asimov, though, is that you’re learning something without realizing it.

Why do I find Asimov’s prose so effective? The key is in an exchange that Asimov had with the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (a brilliant writer in his own right):

I picked up the phone one day, and a voice bellowed “Gould, this is Isacc Asimov. I hate you.

So I replied with an astonishing lack of originality, “why so?”

“I hate you because you write so well,” he said.

So I replied, “And if I’d written four hundred books instead of 10, I wouldn’t be paying such rapt attention to stylistic nuances either.

I have nothing against descriptive, nuanced writing. But, as Asimov proved, you can be an effective and interesting writer even if you ignore (or, at least, don’t put too much stress) on stylistic nuances. If you take that lesson to heart, you’ll be able to produce more. You won’t be as prolific as Asimov was (at one point, he’d written 141 books over 138 months), but you’ll probably do all right.

Photo credit: mensatic from morguefile.com

I don’t do as much reviewing as I used to. Back in the early to mid 1990s, I got the reputation among some editors as the go-to person for critical pieces on software, hardware, and (occasionally) books. Lately, it’s been the odd book or Web application that’s come under my gaze.

Then, as now, I used the reviewing process as an opportunity to learn. With software, for example, I looked at writing a review as not only a chance to play with a new application but also to:

1. Learn about an area that I had little experience with (like machine translation)
2. Understand why the developers made certain design decisions
3. Explore new ways of working and doing things

With books, on the other hand, it’s new knowledge or (again) new ways of doing things.

Sometimes, though, things don’t work out that way. Sometimes what I’m reviewing has nothing to teach me — either I’ve seen the information before or it’s so badly done that I’m wasting my time on it. Sometimes, it’s just me. My ingrained ideas and opinions preclude me from keeping an open mind.

And let’s be honest, an open mind is what you need when reviewing anything. You can’t fall into the trap of It’s not like such-and-such. So what if it isn’t? Does that make this approach wrong? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by going in depth.

Maybe that’s the most important thing you can learn from writing reviews: keep an open mind and be like an empty cup. You never know what you’re going to find out, whether it’s about what you’re reviewing or about yourself.

Do you write reviews? If so, what do you learn from them? Feel free to share by leaving a comment.

Photo credit: Taras Vyshnya from Photoxpress

While I like Google Docs a lot, there are a few things about it that I’m not really keen on. One is the way in which documents are organized. I should say how they’re organized when you first set up your Google Docs account.

The main portion of the Google Docs window is a list of your documents. They’re displayed in the order in which you last opened or viewed them — newest ones at the top. If you have a lot of documents, this can make finding the one you want a bit of a chore. You can use the Google Docs search engine, but search only eases that chore if you have a pretty good idea of what you’re looking for.

It’s easy, though, to organize your writing in Google Docs. Curious? Read on.

read more »

My friend Jeff speaks several languages, and over the last few years he’s been trying (unsuccessfully) to get me back on the language-learning horse. Three falls off that horse is enough, thank you.

Last week, he pointed me to a debate between two language bloggers and a good analysis of the debate by a third language blogger. Not wanting to sit through the video of what seems like a dull debate, I skimmed the analysis. That definitely wasn’t dull!

Essentially, the third blogger said that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, and you should do what works for you. While I’m not learning a foreign language, what he wrote definitely has a lot to do with writing (and other activities, too).

read more »