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greygirlbeastAnd here it is Friday, and only seven days until we leave for Portland (and that's counting today). So things are getting weird and hectic. I've never been to Portland, but Spooky lived there for three years, 1996-1999, and has tremendous trepidation about returning. So, we're coping with that, too. But I am not a traveling writer. There seem to be so many traveling writers these days. By "traveling writer," I mean writers who spend a lot of time on business-related trips (i.e., workshops, conventions and conferences, expos, and book tours). I love to travel, if it's purely for the sake of traveling, but I'm really not one for writing-related travel (except in the sense that any given trip may inspire stories). So, this sort of thing is rare for me. And it makes me very anxious.
I also don't know how writers who spend so much time engaged in writer-travel get anything written. I wouldn't be able to get anything written.
I was wondering, the other night, why people seem resistant to the idea of writers having public personae. It's perfectly normal (and common) for actors and musicians. But with writers it seems to piss people off (including other writers), or at least annoy them. I sort of have a public persona. The person you see at a con isn't precisely the person I am in private. I found it necessary a long time ago, both to alleviate my anxiety about public appearances and because the person I am in private is terribly anti-social. So, for cons and signings and readings I have this other Caitlín persona I put on. I wear her (though she's changed over the years). Trust me, she's much nicer to be around.
---
Yesterday, I decided, we needed one last day off before the mad rush to the trip. One last day just for me and Spooky to be calm. So, about three p.m. we headed to Conanicut Island (the right way round), out to West Cove, our favorite beach for sea glass. When we arrived, there was a large group of scuba divers. It's a popular spot for scuba, but I'd never seen so many at once before. Most left shortly after we arrived, but some lingered in the cove, occasionally rising to the surface like strange aquatic hominids. The weather was good, warm and only a few clouds. We found some good glass, but some really spectacular bones. West Cove is also a good bone beach, mostly bird bones. Yesterday, I we found an assortment of wings bones and vertebrae from cormorants, gulls, and other birds, and I also found a spectacular gull jaw, complete with yellow-orange keratin sheath. Really gorgeous. I also found three bones I'm fairly certain belong to a seal, which is a first.
I've often imagined, while at West Cove, carrying out a weird sort of "future paleontology" study there. I mean, imagining what the sandy, pebbly deposits there would be like ten or fifteen million years from now. And trying to reconstruct the local fauna, assuming the bones I'm finding would be preserved as fossils. A diverse avifauna would dominate the assemblage, with lots of fish and very rare mammals.
Yeah, I'm a science nerd.
Anyway, we stayed until it was almost dark, and the tide was coming in. We watched two mallards, and a sad sort of sea gull that seemed to be following them around. We tried to decided if a cross between a gull and a mallard would be called a "gulk" or a "dull." We finally, reluctantly, headed back to the van about six-thirty p.m. I wanted to stay all night, listening to the lapping waves and watching the sky and hearing the birds. There are photos, at the end of this entry, behind the cut.
Oh, I read Richard Bowes' short story, "Knickerbocker Holiday" (from Haunted Legends), on the way down to the island.
---
I think I have to do an interview for Weird Tales before we leave.
---
In all this discussion of eReaders, one thing in particular strikes me as absurd. And I'm honestly not trying to pick on anyone, I'm just being honest. What strikes me as especially absurd are the people who tell me they absolutely could not live without their Kindle or Nook or whatever. They are fervent in this claim, and I assume they truly believe what they're saying. I'm just not sure they've thought very much about what they're saying. I mean, they got along just fine without these devices a year or two or three ago, right? And now they can't live without them? I kind of have to assume this is hyperbole, that they're very enthusiastic and overstating their case. Because, otherwise, it's absurd, and I like to think people aren't absurd (though clearly most are).
I think about recently acquired tech that is very dear to me. Say, my iPod (I'm still using a sturdy old fossil of an iPod from early 2005). Or my very low-tech mechanical pencils. Or the PlayStation 3. Our digital cameras. Or certain programmes, like Second Life and World of Warcraft. These things are dear to me, to varying degrees, and I use them a lot. But can I live without them? Sure. I did just fine before they came along. So, it's hard for me to imagine these eReader users keeling over from shock or wasting away if they were ever suddenly deprived of their Nooks. Or Kindles. Or whatever.
When they say, "I can't live without my eReader," they must surely mean, "I don't want to live without my eReader," or even "I can't imagine living without my eReader."
Rarely does it help an argument to overstate your case.
---
At Eastside Market, I saw a book with the excruciatingly embarrassing title Wuthering Bites, and a cover that was clearly meant to look like one of the Twlight covers. And the book's exactly what it sounds like, Emily Bronte's novel rewritten with vampires. Can we please stop doing this? It was never very funny, and at this point these parodies seem like parodies of parodies. Which is to say the gimmick is on beyond tired. Stop milking it. Please.
---
I almost forgot, there's a very nice review of The Ammonite Violin and Others at The San Francisco Book Review (review by Ariel Berg). I love this bit: "Those whose imaginations flourish best in the dark will find a great deal to love in The Ammonite Violin."
Okay. Here are the photos. I need to get to work, and Spooky has to go to the post office.
Crab claw and acorn.
An assortment of sea treasures.
A very small and perished crab.
The author (a paragon of glamor) searching for beach glass.
My box of wonderful things. The gull jaw is visible.
West Cove (view to the east) from sand level.
The setting sun setting the trees on fire (view to the east).
And the sun is lower still (view to the southeast).
Mallards and a sail boat (view to the south).
Driving through Jamestown (view to the west, obviously), and the sun was amazing.
Crossing the West Passage of Narragansett Bay, heading back to the mainland (view to the west).
All photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R, Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac.
I also don't know how writers who spend so much time engaged in writer-travel get anything written. I wouldn't be able to get anything written.
I was wondering, the other night, why people seem resistant to the idea of writers having public personae. It's perfectly normal (and common) for actors and musicians. But with writers it seems to piss people off (including other writers), or at least annoy them. I sort of have a public persona. The person you see at a con isn't precisely the person I am in private. I found it necessary a long time ago, both to alleviate my anxiety about public appearances and because the person I am in private is terribly anti-social. So, for cons and signings and readings I have this other Caitlín persona I put on. I wear her (though she's changed over the years). Trust me, she's much nicer to be around.
---
Yesterday, I decided, we needed one last day off before the mad rush to the trip. One last day just for me and Spooky to be calm. So, about three p.m. we headed to Conanicut Island (the right way round), out to West Cove, our favorite beach for sea glass. When we arrived, there was a large group of scuba divers. It's a popular spot for scuba, but I'd never seen so many at once before. Most left shortly after we arrived, but some lingered in the cove, occasionally rising to the surface like strange aquatic hominids. The weather was good, warm and only a few clouds. We found some good glass, but some really spectacular bones. West Cove is also a good bone beach, mostly bird bones. Yesterday, I we found an assortment of wings bones and vertebrae from cormorants, gulls, and other birds, and I also found a spectacular gull jaw, complete with yellow-orange keratin sheath. Really gorgeous. I also found three bones I'm fairly certain belong to a seal, which is a first.
I've often imagined, while at West Cove, carrying out a weird sort of "future paleontology" study there. I mean, imagining what the sandy, pebbly deposits there would be like ten or fifteen million years from now. And trying to reconstruct the local fauna, assuming the bones I'm finding would be preserved as fossils. A diverse avifauna would dominate the assemblage, with lots of fish and very rare mammals.
Yeah, I'm a science nerd.
Anyway, we stayed until it was almost dark, and the tide was coming in. We watched two mallards, and a sad sort of sea gull that seemed to be following them around. We tried to decided if a cross between a gull and a mallard would be called a "gulk" or a "dull." We finally, reluctantly, headed back to the van about six-thirty p.m. I wanted to stay all night, listening to the lapping waves and watching the sky and hearing the birds. There are photos, at the end of this entry, behind the cut.
Oh, I read Richard Bowes' short story, "Knickerbocker Holiday" (from Haunted Legends), on the way down to the island.
---
I think I have to do an interview for Weird Tales before we leave.
---
In all this discussion of eReaders, one thing in particular strikes me as absurd. And I'm honestly not trying to pick on anyone, I'm just being honest. What strikes me as especially absurd are the people who tell me they absolutely could not live without their Kindle or Nook or whatever. They are fervent in this claim, and I assume they truly believe what they're saying. I'm just not sure they've thought very much about what they're saying. I mean, they got along just fine without these devices a year or two or three ago, right? And now they can't live without them? I kind of have to assume this is hyperbole, that they're very enthusiastic and overstating their case. Because, otherwise, it's absurd, and I like to think people aren't absurd (though clearly most are).
I think about recently acquired tech that is very dear to me. Say, my iPod (I'm still using a sturdy old fossil of an iPod from early 2005). Or my very low-tech mechanical pencils. Or the PlayStation 3. Our digital cameras. Or certain programmes, like Second Life and World of Warcraft. These things are dear to me, to varying degrees, and I use them a lot. But can I live without them? Sure. I did just fine before they came along. So, it's hard for me to imagine these eReader users keeling over from shock or wasting away if they were ever suddenly deprived of their Nooks. Or Kindles. Or whatever.
When they say, "I can't live without my eReader," they must surely mean, "I don't want to live without my eReader," or even "I can't imagine living without my eReader."
Rarely does it help an argument to overstate your case.
---
At Eastside Market, I saw a book with the excruciatingly embarrassing title Wuthering Bites, and a cover that was clearly meant to look like one of the Twlight covers. And the book's exactly what it sounds like, Emily Bronte's novel rewritten with vampires. Can we please stop doing this? It was never very funny, and at this point these parodies seem like parodies of parodies. Which is to say the gimmick is on beyond tired. Stop milking it. Please.
---
I almost forgot, there's a very nice review of The Ammonite Violin and Others at The San Francisco Book Review (review by Ariel Berg). I love this bit: "Those whose imaginations flourish best in the dark will find a great deal to love in The Ammonite Violin."
Okay. Here are the photos. I need to get to work, and Spooky has to go to the post office.
Crab claw and acorn.
An assortment of sea treasures.
A very small and perished crab.
The author (a paragon of glamor) searching for beach glass.
My box of wonderful things. The gull jaw is visible.
West Cove (view to the east) from sand level.
The setting sun setting the trees on fire (view to the east).
And the sun is lower still (view to the southeast).
Mallards and a sail boat (view to the south).
Driving through Jamestown (view to the west, obviously), and the sun was amazing.
Crossing the West Passage of Narragansett Bay, heading back to the mainland (view to the west).
All photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R, Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-24 08:03 pm (UTC)I work in a peculiar library in the Genealogy collection, and we get most of our stuff through donations. We do have come CD-Roms, but most of our books are on paper. The books on CD usually cause more headaches.
Our staff did get a few Ipads to play 'round with. We tried the Kindle, but it wouldn't work due to the proprietary format. But there seems to be a little more cheer for the Ipad, though I don't share it.
I like a good-looking book, but my preference remains utilitarian: I usually give people the example of a society with no electricity: none of the books on my shelves require charging.
In gritty cyberpunk-flavored dystopia: We already know that Amazon will sell information if need be. There are companies making online profiles of people, which includes the books they browse for. I'm not sure how secure the Phoenix Public Library system is, so even if they keep my records private-- and librarians have fought for this, bless them!-- would the web browsing that led me to those books remain so?
I think habitual readers are probably the last creature not caught up in marketing's frightening web. We tend to remain inconsistent and have a tendency to remember things we're not supposed to, almost as if they were printed on pages somewhere. We forsake television's flickering inanity for something else, making us less susceptible to commercials or other programming. So in some ways I see ebooks as a way to foist some of that off on us, and also as way of tracking and control. When I go into a used bookstore and buy a stack of books, no one knows what they are except me and the cashier. What do epublishers know? Who do they pass it on to?
And then I actually go down to Phoenix Public Library and look at the dwindling shelves. I remember when the fiction section was nearly twice the size it used to be. Where are the books going? Are they all sucked up into computers? I think that sense of physical floor space changing really gets to me, the same way I've seen wilderness gobbled up by housing developments.
I think the creep between different versions and different devices to read them on isn't a bug, but a feature. They will make you buy the same thing again, which you thought you owned, repeatedly, with no guilt.
Yet, on the other hand, with text and PDF, I've been able to find passages for comparison far better than my memory can. I'm trying to work my way through several translations of Montaigne, and having access to many translations, and the most voluminous French version really helps, and I don't think I could do it as quickly physically... so I can copy them back down into notebooks.
As to the smell of books: I had a few from used bookstores over the years that had a really herbal smell, that I couldn't quite place. Strong perfume? Then, from the library, I had a book that smelled partially like that, but also of smoke. I realized the books I had were from smokers, and that perfume was decades-old smoke on the pages.
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Date: 2010-09-24 08:17 pm (UTC)I usually give people the example of a society with no electricity: none of the books on my shelves require charging.
Precisely. The archival value of an etext is severely limited.
In gritty cyberpunk-flavored dystopia: We already know that Amazon will sell information if need be. There are companies making online profiles of people, which includes the books they browse for. I'm not sure how secure the Phoenix Public Library system is, so even if they keep my records private-- and librarians have fought for this, bless them!-- would the web browsing that led me to those books remain so?
Probably not.
When I go into a used bookstore and buy a stack of books, no one knows what they are except me and the cashier. What do epublishers know? Who do they pass it on to?
Okay, at least in theory, the hard copy books are just as traceable to you as are the ebooks. Booksellers and publishers keep close track on book sales, and on demographics...and the potential for abuse does exist. The FBI or DHS or whoever could trace that data if they so desired.
And then I actually go down to Phoenix Public Library and look at the dwindling shelves. I remember when the fiction section was nearly twice the size it used to be. Where are the books going? Are they all sucked up into computers? I think that sense of physical floor space changing really gets to me, the same way I've seen wilderness gobbled up by housing developments.
I think, here, the problem isn't ebooks (which, in theory, take up no space at all). It's libraries deciding (or being told) that their mission is to provide computer access to those without computers (I have issues with this, but whatever). Computer terminals take up a lot of space, and use a lot of electricity, and hardcopy books lose out. DVDs and audiobooks are also gobbling space in public libraries.
I think the creep between different versions and different devices to read them on isn't a bug, but a feature. They will make you buy the same thing again, which you thought you owned, repeatedly, with no guilt.
I'm sure many publishers hope this is the case.
And I agree about the convenience of searchable texts. Though I also worry if this might not somehow make for sloppier researchers.
As for the odor, books history in a sense no digital file ever can, and I greatly value that history.