Confessions of a Bibliophile

It is not something that I recognized right away.  Growing up, my yearnings seemed normal to me.  But that shouldn't surprise anyone.  That is the way these things develop.  You feel an attraction to something that seems perfectly normal to you, and as you gratify your desires, and you become more comfortable indulging in them, you begin to equate joy with your particular object of desire.  And that's how a young boy from the heartland grew up to be so obsessed with books.

Sure, coming into my home as an outsider, you would recognize this dysfunctional behavior immediately.  You'd simply look to the left and the right, spot the stacks of books that line the walls and cover the furniture (all of which does not include the shelves full of books) and say to yourself "what a sick, sick, man.  Doesn't he know there are programs that can help him out of this private hell?"  Then, when you realize I've raised five children in this atmosphere, you'll add this addendum: "not such a private hell!  Here's hoping he hasn't warped these kids for the rest of their lives!"

But take a step back, realize that no matter how obvious this addiction is to you, it has never been obvious from my perspective.  Back in the 1970's, before any real awareness of electronic media alternatives (yes, television had emerged as a healthy counterpoint to the unsavory habit of reading, but it had not yet won over a super-majority of society at that point), it was considered perfectly normal that an old, converted city bus would creak its way into our little town on the Illinois prairie and wheeze to a stop next to our little IGA grocery store.  Mind you, this was just a block from our house.  My mother, bless her heart, saw nothing sinister in allowing us children to don our stocking caps and stuff ourselves into our wool coats as we ran down the street to clamber aboard the Bookmobile.  (I was under the age of five!  A mere babe in the wood...on a treeless prairie, no less!)  Just that name—The Bookmobile—you know it was designed to lure children into its crowded passages, full of colorful, worn books, all of them suffused with the odors of a million aging pages pasted to hardback covers with crusty, yellow paste; pages that had been pored over by thousands of other bibliophiles from hundreds of other small towns identical to our own.  One can easily see how yet another obsession of mine germinated in the suffocating shell of that ancient bus—my germaphobia.  That old Bookmobile would sneak into town during the day and every homemaking mother would encourage her innocent children to check out books from its jam-packed shelves.  I often wonder, did our fathers even know this thing existed?  Were they aware of its book-peddling influences on our provincial, pastoral lives?  I doubt it.  One can only imagine how the men of that town would have snatched their shotguns down from their fireplace mantels and chased that asthmatic motorcoach into the surrounding cornfields, eventually shooting out its flabby tires.  I'm sure with a little help from a few of the local farmers, that old bus would never have been seen again.  Just think of how that might have saved me from a lifetime of bibliophilia.

But the bookmobile was never hunted down and murdered by the men of our small town.  And as the years passed, I never did purge myself of the bookworm that had nested deep inside me.  And as I grew in stature and age, so did that serpent within.  By the time I was in high school, I was maintaining a small library of no little significance.  Of course, I married a bibliophiliac.  Neither one of us was aware of our literary disorder, though we must have been subconsciously drawn to each other.  She accepted my library as hers, mixing it with her own peculiar affection for reading.  Her own addiction was for a much more ancient form of reading.  Thus began my experimentation with the hard stuff: books that had been around for centuries, books that normal people instinctively keep out of their homes.

While I've overcome my shame enough to admit these things, it is still hard to confess what inevitably came next.  It is not easy to admit that we actively drew our children into this world of words and ideas.  Sure, young parents make the simple mistake of reading a few, light verse children's books to their beeblets when the little tykes need something to lull them to sleep.  But parents can be forgiven this indiscretion, since these youths are far too young to be affected by such incidental contact with books.  However, we didn't stop there.  We continued to read to our children, even as they matured enough to understand what we were reading them.  We would read with passion, acting out the actions of the characters, developing elaborate and memorable voices for the dialog, shaking the children to make sure they did not fall asleep before the story had come to an end.  We would leave the books lying around, and never scolded the kids when they were found sitting in a corner of the room, gazing at some book's illustrations without permission.

Children raised under the shadow of books.

All of this occurred, mind you, during the 1990's and the 2000's, as most children in our society had been freed of traditional book-reading habits by the advent of Gameboys, the Cartoon Network, AOL Instant Messenger, and Myspace.  The rise of digital media meant we had no excuse for our actions.  Yet we continued to buy books, filling our home with stacks and stacks of Hardy Boys Mysteries, Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, and Great Illustrated Classics.  Stuck in our own reading quagmire, we gleefully dragged our children down with us.

But this story ends with a little hope...of sorts.  Though I've not yet had a road-to-Damascus epiphany, I have begun to see our book habit for what it is; this blog post is a painful yet important first step on the road to recovery.  I've begun throwing our books out.  Not a complete purge, mind you, I'm just taking baby steps for now.  But they are steps, nonetheless.  I've been able to toss out not only books I've already read, but even a  few I had hoped to read again.  More importantly, I've been able to take that most difficult of steps; admitting that a few of the books I bought are books I'll never read.  They've taken up space in the house for decades, and it takes real courage to say "this book looked interesting back in 1994, and it was a steal at $3.99 from the Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller mail order paper, but I haven't read it in nineteen years, and I know in my heart I'm never going to sit down and read the darned thing."  I know.  I just went from talking about baby steps to taking Goliath steps.  Like I said, this story contains a little hope.  And if I can throw out a book like My Summer in Alaska (One man's struggle to survive in the Alaskan Wilderness) and admit that it is no great loss for me, then maybe someone else out there can do the same, and together we'll all take those baby steps, Goliath steps, and all those steps in between as we break free from our obsession with books.

Now, if only Amazon would quit selling so many eBooks for just $1.99.  But that's an addiction to conquer at a later date.

The Lost Books of my Youth

One of the many overloaded
bookshelves in our home.

Lately I've been spending a great deal of time thinking about books.  I know, this is hardly a surprise to those of you who know me or read this blog on a regular basis.  But I'm not just talking about writing books, or even reading books.  I'm talking about a collection of books I used to have when I was younger.  Let me explain.

When I was a kid, oh, like thirty-plus years ago, I can remember when it really started for me.  I was at a flea market, a really big one.  And as I walked past tables and tables of old farm implements (you know, the really scary looking ones that are used in all the slasher flicks) and used sewing machines and vintage toys and rusted old signs (this was before all the signs were reproductions), I came to a stop at a table with a bunch of old books mashed together with their spines facing the open sky.  It was a wonderful sight and I forgot all about the other vendors and settled in to look at those old tomes.

All of them were hardbacks.  I don't think any of them had dust jackets on them.  Just plenty of beautiful cloth covered books with titles imprinted on their spines.  Often the front cover was blank; a soft blue, or stark green, or even a faded red.

I don't remember how it was I had money in my pocket, but I must have had some.  Perhaps my parents had given me a few dollars to spend that day.  I was too young to be earning anything at that time.  But I was so entranced by these books, and they were so cheap, that I bought a good number of them.  An old Ben-Hur was among them; with a solid dark green cover, it had a fancy illustration on the front cover made of gold an silver leafing.  I knew it wasn't real, but it was dazzling to see.  A great big Robert Louis Stevenson volume of The Wrecker, which I'd never heard of, and a strange little book entitled The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.  I'd never heard of that before either.  I certainly had no idea what an autocrat was.  Why I picked that book I cannot remember.  But pick it I did, and it became a mysterious member of my collection.

Over time, I began to seek out more old books; a great big blue Gone With the Wind, a Vanity Fair by Thackeray, a slim volume of W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, and other odd, strange, and delightful titles.  I read a great deal back then, but I rarely read much of the hardback collection I had gathered.  The edition of The Wrecker couldn't be read.  Many of the pages had not been cut.  This fascinated me, I had no idea books were printed like this, and I often pulled it out to try and peer in between the pages that were uncut.  This was always a challenge.

Eventually I amassed about forty or fifty hardbacks that became something of a burden on my family.  We moved more often than the average family, and boxing up and moving these books was a bit of a problem.  Lugging boxes of hardback books up and down stairs is a memorable experience, to say the least.  However, I don't recall my parents complaining about them, and they stayed with me until I married.  I still regret the fact that I loaded most of them up and sold them to a used books store one day so that we could make the rent payment early in our marriage.  I really didn't get much for them.  Pretty much nothing at all.  Of the ones I held onto, most of them were ruined when hurricane Rita blew through the back of our home in 2005.  They ended up in a pile of wet pulpy trash on the side of the road.

The survivors.  By the way, whatever happened to Thomas B. Costain?
When I was a kid, there was always a wide selection of his books
in every library.  I suppose he was the James Patterson of his day.

Searching the stacks and stacks of books I've accumulated since I married, I can only find a few of the original (and to me, infamous!) hardbacks.  I still have that Gone With the Wind, and a rather gaudy looking The Silver Chalice.  One of my favorites from that collection, and one of the few that had a dust cover, was Thomas B. Costain's The Tontine.  (This was the first of two volumes.  I never did own the second, though I read them both.  I can't remember where I finally found the second volume.  Must have been a library, since I didn't buy it.  After all these years, I can finally buy the second volume for a few dollars on Amazon Marketplace.  Maybe one day I will.)

I read all three of those books.  Of the others I had collected, I read The Moon is Down by Steinbeck (a wonderful book!), and maybe only one or two others.  I read a little from the collected works of Washington Irving.  But many of these old books were so old, the pages were brittle and I was not too keen on ruining them.  It was as if I had become like the Eloi, from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, existing side by side with the great literature of mankind yet never reading them as they slowly decayed into nothingness.  Actually, a number of them I actually did read, but I used volumes from the library so as not to cause undue damage to the older hardbacks.

I have a newer collection of books now; hundreds of books are scattered throughout my house.  I don't move anymore.  Or haven't for some time, which is a good thing considering the total weight of books in our house.  A little more than half of the books I have now I've read.  There are a few that I haven't read and will never read.  But getting rid of them is hard.  I still bear the scars from that trip to the used bookseller to pay the rent.  But I still enjoy looking over the titles, some with fond memories of what I'd read in them, some with the excitement of not yet knowing what is in them.

Most of my reading is done on a Kindle now.  I can carry all of the books I've ever read and ever want to read in that one, slim digital device.  Yet I'll always cherish the books that clutter up the house.  They're important.  I expect my grandchildren to grow up around them, occasionally pulling them out and paging through them with curiosity and wonder.  I'd be disappointed if they didn't.  They were always here for my kids, and I know it had an effect on them.  You can't grow up in a house full of books and not be influenced by them.

Now I've got to go finish the latest book I'm reading.  I've collected over thirty titles on my Kindle that I have yet to read and I really need to get to them.  So many books...so little time.

Skip the Boring Parts

The Overwhelming Tome: The Lord of the Rings

   I'm a bit discouraged by a post I recently read at Goodreads, in which a reader was advised to skip the boring parts of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. You know what I'm talking about, all those stupid poems, and all that nonsense about Tom Bombadil, and anything that has to do with a historical backdrop. Then there's all those long, descriptive passages of topography, and the scenery. Just chuck that crap, who needs it?
   At first, I thought these people were just illiterates who perhaps find reading to be so difficult they really need to skip the long words. But that isn't it. Of course not. What they really meant was that they just can't concentrate on anything that doesn't have running and stabbing and peril. Actually, I get the feeling that battle scenes like that might just bore them as well. I mean, after all, such things do take up your time. And that's the crux of the problem. I don't think people feel they have the time any more to read. They just want to get it over with.

Lengthy books are far easier to handle on a Kindle.

   We've been raised by our televisions, where we get the whole story in two hours or less, with plenty of commercials in the middle to give us a chance to stretch and graze in the kitchen, or go check Facebook. What we do not want to do is sit down and really take the time to read. One reason I love my Kindle so much is the little per cent bar at the bottom, which tracks my progress. I've always loved to play math games with any book I was reading, calculating how much of it I had read or how much was left. I even will make the effort to time how long it takes to read a page or two, then do the math to see how long it will take to finish. I have no idea why I do this. I usually hate to finish a book I read. But the point is, I know how long it takes me to read a book. If I were to read non-stop, some longer books can take around 20 hours to read. Broken up over so many days, that can be really tough for people to do. Shorter, more common genre books take 7 to ten hours to read. This is still difficult for many people in our busy world. But is it?
   Two football games on Sunday last almost seven hours. Many people watch two or three hours of TV every night. The fact is, we have lots of time to read. People just don't do it. But what of self-professed book lovers who do read? Why would someone like that wish to read The Lord of the Rings by skipping the boring parts? What point is there in reading a book that you find to be full of parts you don't like? That's where pride steps in, I believe. Perhaps people, whether on Goodreads, Shelfari, or other social book-lover sites, are so keen on impressing their fellow book-lovers that they want to add books to their list that will look impressive. Maybe they want to be able to tell people at a party that they've read the The Lord of the Rings but just can't bring themselves to outright lie about it. I don't know. What I do know is that if you find the great majority of a book boring, don't skip those parts. Put down the book. Find a book you do like. There are so many out there, it is not like you should feel obligated to force your way through any book.

Spend a month on Tolstoy?  Or just a few days with James Bond?

   When I went looking for a copy of Les Miserables to read, I read the notes on the abridged version, one that left out Hugo's extensive descriptions of the Paris sewers, among other things. Why? Can't readers take the time to learn a little something? Does everything have to be candy?  I fear the biggest need for these abridged versions is the fact that our society is sliding into ignorance.  That most people just can't handle reading anymore.  It is a terrifying thought.
   At this point, I calculate that only about ten per cent of the people who started reading this post are still with me. Possibly you're reading this part because you skimmed most of what was written before. I'm guilty of doing this in magazine articles; this generally happens when I'm just searching for specific information. But I've never thought to skim sections of a novel. I just never thought an author put parts in there that he did not really intend for people to read. I figure it is all a part of the story. And I've read many long works: Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamozov, Les Miserables, Last of the Mohicans, and the list goes on. I've also abandoned books. But I can't remember skipping parts of a book.

Have books outlasted their shelf-life in our busy society?

   One book by James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, has been a real sticky wicket for me. I love Cooper's writing, and love the Natty Bumppo character. Three times I've tried to read The Pioneers, three times I've put it down. I can't really say why. But I do know I've never considered just skimming it, or skipping over large chunks of it. What would be the point? It is now like an old familiar defect in my house that I will one day correct. I'll finish that book eventually. I really will.  If I only get the time.
   Or, if it looks like my time on earth is going to be cut short, I might just skim the darned thing and mark it down on my Goodreads list as read.  After all, as Julia Childs liked to say: who's to know?

The Closing of the American Bookstore

I've been hearing this sob story lately about the decline of --insert a teary eye here--the decline of the American Book Store.  Just a few years ago B Dalton Books closed its last store.  There was talk of the decline of reading in our country.  Then, last year, Borders closed its last store.  A judgmental finger was pointed at Amazon as the leading cause of their downfall.  Now, we hear of Barnes & Noble stores being selectively shut down.  The end of the Brick-and-Mortar bookstore is now considered to be a near inevitability.

Books-a-Million Superstore, 1999

  Independent bookstores are in even greater peril.  First shoved aside by the large chain stores, the few that have been able to withstand such pressure are now collapsing under the competition from online sites like Amazon.  There is great weeping and gnashing of teeth over this.  We are meant to pause, hang our heads low, and feel a bit of guilt over our complicity in the demise of these once great bastions of literature, these outposts of culture in our society.  Their magnanimous, selfless attempts to keep our society supplied with the power of the written word have been betrayed by the selfish, greedy public who would have benefited most from their altruistic efforts.

  To quote Colonel Sherman T Potter: Bull-Pucky!

  Allow me to disagree.

  If you know me at all, you know I am a capitalist at heart, and I do not begrudge any company from making money from its chosen business.  If the people are willing to pay for goods or services, then they ought to pay away, and any company should be allowed to pocket the profit.  But there are some things about bookstores people really ought to know.  Things that are, if not disturbing, at least change the image of this sad demise of brick-and-mortar bookstores.

  To quote Bill Nye the Science Guy: Consider the Following.

  Bookstores have an odd view of their inventory.  They seem to feel that they are entitled to stock their shelves at no cost or risk to their pocketbooks.  It's a great idea.  Who wouldn't want to do business like this?  Bookstores look at it like this: they are willing to stock books on a shelf, as long as they only have to pay for the book after it has sold.  So they accept a book for their shelves, and invoice it out to the supplier, which essentially means they agree to pay for it in about ninety days or so.  They might do this as a consignment, which is a more honest way of admitting they won't pay for the book unless it sells, but either way, the book is not paid for during those ninety days.  At the end of this period, the books are returned, which nullifies the payment.  A nice little trick here is to return the book on the 89th day, wherein the supplier then must accept the books back, and often by agreement, the books must be destroyed.  Now the bookstore is free to order more of these same books to be printed, and they'll go on the shelf again for another ninety day stint.  (Imagine what this does to the cost of books.  Or did you think the supplier/publisher takes the loss on this deal?)

  This sounds like something out of a Woody Allen movie.  (That may be giving them too much credit.  It might be more accurate to say it sounds like something out of a Three Stooges Movie.)

  Basically, the bookstore has stocked its shelves for zero cost, and they are free to return the books at no charge.  A pretty sweet deal.

The Paris Equivalent to Barnes & Noble:
Gilbert Joseph on Blvd Saint-Michel 

  Now on top of this the bookstores demand a 50-60% discount on the titles, so that they make at least fifteen dollars off a thirty dollar hardback new-release.  Remember that the next time you're thrilled when they knock off 10% for your membership discount.  A real sacrifice on the part of the bookstore.

  Just these two practices in themselves make you wonder how poorly run a store needs to be to lose money.

  But remember what I said earlier:  If the people are willing to pay for goods or services, then they ought to pay away, and any company should be allowed to pocket the profit.  And there's the rub.  The paying public has been educated by evil people like Amazon and they are learning they don't have to kowtow to bookstores anymore.  The increased variety available online has a lot to do with this.  And here again is a brick-and-mortar bookstore sin come back to haunt them.

  In the quest to reduce risk (and overhead), traditional bookstores have joined with the larger publishing houses to target the sale of particular books.  Unable to stock all the books that are being published, and eager to sell as many books without cramming their shelves with too many different titles, bookstores have set up massive displays of new releases and helped push particular titles, manipulating people into buying one book over another.  We see a huge display as we enter a store, see the big posters that declare this new book is the book of the year, and we eagerly snatch it up.

  Well, we used to do this.  Until someone taught us a better way.

  Yeah, you know who I mean.  Those jerks at Amazon.

  Through their algorithms, Amazon has found a way to help readers learn about books that might interest them by analyzing their purchasing and browsing history and then suggesting titles to the reader.  If you've spent any time on Amazons site, you'll soon discover that they are very good at helping you find books you never would have found before, and most of them are a perfect match for your reading tastes.

  Added to this new variety is the ability to find most books as a used book, which Amazon is only too happy to help you purchase.  Most of the time you can find a used book for around four dollars (which includes shipping).  In our troubled economic times, this is of great significance to book lovers, since we cannot keep ourselves from buying books, and most of us are not up in the tax bracket that President Obama is so eager to pillage.

  Oddly enough, some of the criticism aimed at Amazon has been that they are undermining the publishing industry, making it nearly impossible for authors to make a living as writers.  It has even been suggested this is un-American, as if they are going to destroy the artistic vein of our great country.  But to make this suggestion would also point the finger at public libraries all over the country, which are far more aggressively undermining the publishing industry by allowing everyone to share a book.  If public libraries haven't killed the publishing industry since Andrew Carnegie opened up 1,689 libraries across the United States in the early 1900s, then I seriously doubt Amazon will be able to.  (Don't think the library is agressive?  What about their guerrilla efforts to bring free books to the people by use of their mobile anti-bookstore weapon--the Bookmobile?  One of which I saw just the other day.  I had no idea they were still around.  Man, I loved climbing on board the bookmobile when I was a little five-year-old.  But I digress...)

  As a matter of fact, I've spent more money on books since Amazon has opened up than I ever did when bookstores and libraries were my only option.  Most of the time, to save money, I'd just go to the library to get the book I wanted.  Now, I never use the library.  I usually buy my books, from both Amazon and my local bookstore.

  I guess I'm just tired of hearing how evil Amazon is, and how sad it is that bookstores are being run out of business by them.  In my opinion, what we are really seeing are the results of an industry that has been overly greedy in its desire to protect and increase its profits.  Their customers have been educated enough to discover there is a better way.

An Independent Bookstore that has
managed to stay in business far longer
than B Dalton ever did.

  Do I mourn the loss of brick-and-mortar bookstores?  No.  I'll miss them.  I've always loved to wander their aisles, browsing the titles, pulling out each book, paging through it, wishing I could buy every book that caught my fancy.  But you know what, I do the same thing at Amazon, and though I cannot pick up each book by hand, I can browse through them, and even better, Amazon helps me find similar books far faster.  There are trade-offs that make it worthwhile.

  So the next time you feel sorry for a bookstore chain that is closing, think of all the books that were destroyed in order to allow that bookstore to make a profit.

  As for the small, independent bookstores, I'm not sure what can be done for them.  If the public cannot afford their mark-up, it is not the public's fault, nor is it the fault of the bookstore's.  Unless people are just willing to donate money to keep the store open, which has actually happened in some communities (efforts that I wholeheartedly applaud), perhaps there is nothing that can be done.  Our society is evolving, and some changes may just be inevitable.

  As for now, I have a small stack of books waiting to be read.  Some of them I bought new at my local Books-a-Million, some I bought either new or used at Amazon.  I also have used books that were bought at our local Goodwill.  I am eager to read all of these books.  No matter where I bought them, they're still a joy to read.

  (While I recognize the dynamic changes the eBook has wrought, I'll leave that subject, as well as the emotionally charged subject of self-published books, to another post.  Full disclosure: I am not a representative of Amazon, although I do have books available with them online.  Said books can also be bought online at Barnes & Noble or ordered in the stores.  I have books for sale in several Independent bookstores in the New Orleans area.  One more bit of information to disclose:  I've done my part to keep bookstores open.  Stop by my house.  You'll see you have to walk around the stacks of books that clutter it from one end of the house to the other.  The amount of books I've bought is somewhat ridiculous!)

My Lonely View of Books

Am I the only one who loves to check the local bookstore to see if they are carrying copies of new editions of old classics, and then gets excited to find one?
Am I the only one who measures what he has read in a book by fractions, always revising it as I go along?
Am I the only one who sits in front of a bookshelf full of books I've read and reads over the titles, remembering each one, recalling scenes and characters from them as if they were old friends?
Am I the only one who reads two or three books at the same time?
Am I the only one who loves to start a new book, hoping it will last as long as possible, then rushes to reach the end as soon as possible?
Am I the only one who gets angry when he hears someone has skipped portions of a novel that did not seem important or were just passages of description?

Am I the only one who used to slowly walk the basement "stacks" at my father's seminary, enchanted by the musty smell, reading the titles of obscure books and periodicals?

Am I the only one who hates to throw books away, and keeps them, even if the book was so bad I stopped reading one-third of the way through it?
Am I the only one who loves to read so much it hurts to hear that other people hate to read and haven't read a book since High School?
Am I the only one who actually read every word of War and Peace, Moby Dick, Les Miserables, and The Brothers Karamazov voluntarily?
Am I the only one who wants to buy up all the editions of classic novels that I already own when I find them at the discount table of a bookstore?
Am I the only one who loves the Leatherstocking Tales, but wishes Cooper had come up with a better name than Natty Bumppo?
Am I the only one who misses the library check-out cards that listed who had checked out and read your book before you?
Am I the only one who, as a child, bought an old hardback copy of Oliver Wendall Holmes' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table just because it sounded cool?
Am I the only one who reads all the title page information of a book, including copyrights, notes on fonts, and any and all publisher notes?
Am I the only one who uses a highlighter to mark the books I have read on the page that lists Other Books by the Author?
Am I the only one who carefully arranges books by author, then has to rearrange them once I've pulled them all out to look at them again?
Am I the only one who thinks these questions are not evidence of strange behavior but merely the behavior of a well-balanced mind that understands the importance of books in our lives?

My View of the Quick and the Dumb

   I have been working on a project for several years now.  It started with a book I picked up: Charles King's The Black Sea: A History.  This was a fascinating little overview of that region's history since the early ages of man up until our modern age.  One of the more interesting nuggets I mined from this book was a discussion of the use of lazarettos in port cities.  I admit I'd never heard of them.  They were kind of bizarre.
   A lazaretto was a quarantine station in which newly arrived travelers (by sea) were placed, to wait out a specified time in order to prove they exhibited no symptoms of infectious diseases.  What caught my attention was the fact that if you were found to be sick, you were often refused entry into the city, and there were precious few ships that were willing to take you anywhere else in the Mediterranean.  Simply, you could be stuck in the lazaretto for the rest of your life.  It was a daunting prospect, to say the least.
   Intrigued, I began to think of what would happen if a space-faring society set up a lazaretto on a central planet and forced all travel between planets to pass through this system.  The real catch was that I imagined that if you were found to be sick, you were left in the lazaretto, with no chance of ever leaving.  It would be a dark world, indeed.
   So I set about writing this story.  I didn't just write a story, I wrote a novel.  Then I wrote a second one.  I'm writing the third one now.  I've pestered my family with it, as well as a few others.  Those who have read it have been more than kind with their praise.
   There are just a few problems with it.  The kind that get me in trouble with today's publishers.
   The novel is longer than your typical thriller.  Most books today run from 80,000 words to around 120,000 words.  That is something in the neighborhood of 250 to 400 pages for a paperback.  The common advice to writers now is trim, trim, trim.  The idea being that a book must read as fast as possible.  You skim from one page to the next, and you finish in time to buy the next, quick-paced volume in the series.  Don't waste time with any text that doesn't rush you to the end.  People just don't have the attention span for anything else.
   And speaking of people, let's move on to the next bit of advice that is handed down from on high: dumb it down.  Seriously, editors actually use that phrase.  They advise that we look at the lowest common mind set out there and write to their level.  No one wants to read anything that forces a man to use a sizable portion of his brain.  Smaller ideas and smaller words sell.  We're living in an age of idiots.  Pander to them.
   These guidelines can be defended, depending on the type of book written and the sales goals of the publisher.  I have decided, however, that for my story about the lazaretto, it just won't do.  What I really want is to believe that there are readers out there who still care about a good story, and don't just want a fast food novel to consume on their way to the next little snack.
   I am encouraged, from time to time, to see that there are exceptions to this dismal publishing outlook.  Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a wonderfully long and evenly paced adventure that is far longer than nearly every book available at the chain bookstores.  Dan Simmons has published several long books that don't fit next to the other genre novels on the shelf.  And of course, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books certainly would have to be trimmed down and sped up by today's standards.
   So I will not give in.  I understand not everyone has time to read lengthy novels, though they seem to have time to watch hours and hours of television series and sporting events.  I also realize not everyone has the education to handle every level of writing.  I have trouble reading Henry James.  I'm serious.  I don't seem to understand half of what that man is saying.  But I do think that most people could take the time to read something that is written on at least a high school level.  Remember, most newspapers are written on a sixth-grade level.  We get used to that.  We must work to keep our minds exercised with something heavier.
   If you've taken the time to read this post, you might just be the type of person who has the attention span and desire to read something more than the usual fare offered in the marketplace.  If so, you might want to check out my Lazaretto books.  The first one will soon be available.  I'll update everyone when it does.  Now, go on and read something that requires your full attention and the use of your wonderfully complex mind.  You'll be happy you did.
  

My View of a Book I've Never Seen

   It started out like this: I was online, reading a review of a book on Bloomberg.com. The book was about the building and design of our American Highway systems. The book, The Big Roads: The Untold Story of theEngineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways,by Earl Swift, was right up my alley. Or maybe right up my road. You see, I was sort of raised on the Interstates and U.S. Highways. For a time, when I was a kid, we didn't have a house; we simply lived in a van, then a motor home, while traveling from town to town. That was it. On a day-to-day basis, I was able to sit at a window and watch the Interstate roll by. Oddly enough...I loved it. And so, after reading the review, I knew I wanted to read this book.  I mean, it was a book about the design and construction of my boyhood backyard. Now, I was not at home at the time I read the review, so I emailed the name of the book to myself, so that when I arrived at home I could look it up on Amazon and buy it. What troubled me, when I did find it, was that it was too close to Christmas to buy it with a clean conscience. I really should have waited in case someone might buy it for me. So I added it to my Christmas wish list, and waited.

   I love books about building things. I read a book on the building of the Erie Canal, and one about the building of the German Dreadnoughts. I once read a book about the design and publication of the King James Bible. These kinds of things fascinate me. Mainly because I could never be the guy who says...hey, I think we could dig a tunnel from England to France. Okay, I might think of it, but I'd have no idea how to go about it. I mean, I still think that when my wife and I climb aboard that Air France flight to Paris this Spring, it will be sheer magic that gets that big, heavy, lump of metal off the ground and into the air. Magic! That being the case, I love to watch Modern Marvels, and I enjoy reading these types of books.

   Now, let's ignore all the patient waiting I endured, and certainly ignore the shaking and nervous ticks I performed as I forced myself to sit still and not click that buy-with-one-click button on Amazon. Suffice to say, I was a good boy and did not spend money on myself so close to Christmas.

   The good news is that Simon, my youngest, came through for me. He bought me the book, and it was nicely wrapped and waiting for me under the tree. Only the book was not really under the tree. I received a picture of it. You see, my son was fully aware that my wife had bought me a Kindle reader for Christmas. So, with great joy, I downloaded my new book.

   Within two days I was finished. Cover to cover. The book was a complete marvel. I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in major engineering feats as well as a nod to the nostalgic. I could not have enjoyed it any more than I did. It blew the scale away.

   But here is the part that has me taking a step back in deep thought:

   At no time had I ever held this book. I'd never hefted it with one hand to test its weight. Never flipped the pages to take in the new-book smell while checking to see just how many pictures were in it. I had never set it on the table in front of me where I could look upon it with that simple joy that comes from buying a new book and seeing it in your home. Surely this meant I had not been able to enjoy it like I would have if I had physically bought the book.

   Maybe. That would be hard to prove. Difficult to disprove. I'll leave wiggle room here.

   However, I do know for certain that I loved the book. I couldn't put it down. It was a real page-turner. I was sorry to reach the end of the book. Even though it had no pages, and it was not a book, it fit all of these clichés. But at no time did I feel like I was missing anything. This was a surprise, since I was a scoffer when I first heard of the Kindles. I'm an old book-lover who just can't get enough of that old book smell. I love to hold a book in my hands, and all that sentimental hoo-hah. I mean, since I was about nine I've collected books. I was really proud of my old, dusty, hardback edition of Oliver Wendell Holmes The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table even though I had no idea what an autocrat could possibly be. It didn't matter. I had the book. I would often pull it off the shelf and page through it, despite the fact that I couldn't follow any of what was being said. Then I'd gently replace it, my eyes shining with admiration for it. I'm that kind of book lover.

   From time to time, I like to sit and look at the books on my shelves. I read the spines, and remind myself just how great or not so great each book was to read. They are like old friends to me. Will it be the same for this new book I downloaded? I don't know. Perhaps I'll begin to browse my list of books that I've read on Goodreads as a substitute for looking over my bookshelves.

   It is too early to tell. But for now, I can say that I think I'll transition into this brave new world of digital books without too much discomfort. Who knows? Perhaps I'll never buy another physical book again. I doubt it.

   I do worry about what I'd do if my Kindle died and I had no way to power it back up.

   That would transform this sci-fi story into a horror story.

My View of Bookstores and Bathrooms

Photo from BAM
Corporate Website

   Yesterday, my beautiful bride and I went to one of our favorite haunts, Books-A-Million.  On any normal day we love to buy a cup of coffee (two café au lait's with skim milk, please), browse the magazines (she grabs copies of Chronicles, First Things, and the National Review, he grabs France, Analog, and Mental Floss), check out the clearance books, and make silly comments about the covers and titles we see.  As Christmas nears, we add pumpkin spice to the coffee order, search for Christmas presents for our kids and other family members (another book?), and ooh and aaah and giggle at the calendars.  (She always teasing that this year she'll get him that pinup calendar, he always knowing she's just teasing.)Here is where I would like to add an awkward bit to this quaint shopping scene:

   Neither he nor she had ever planned on walking up to the front desk and announcing that they had to relieve themselves in the bathroom.

   Yeah.  I know.  More than awkward.

   But as uncomfortable as it sounds, that is precisely the new twist to this experience.  You see, one of the corporate dingledobs at the big Books-A-Million in the sky has declared that at every BAM store across America, the restroom doors shall remain locked and inviolate.  At no time, shall any man, woman, child, or book-lover be allowed to enter the restroom of their gender without first consulting and procuring the authorization of the Books-A-Million Keymaster.  And yes, said authorization can only be procured by the verbal announcement at the front of the store that yes, you the customer, are in need of the bookstore toilet.  You could, I suppose, lie and ask for the key in order to wash your hands, but this would only be effective if you had little children wherin all within range of your voice would believe that the little brat that's been running amok in the store did indeed smear some sort of sticky substance upon your hands, arms, legs, or other less delicate part of your body.

   I blame the Occupy Wall Street crowd on this one.  I have a feeling that if I Googled Books-A-Million and Zuccotti Park I would find that they are directly across the street from each other.  And we all know what a nuisance those people made with their waste disposal issues.  More than likely they kept slipping out of their tents and into the bookstore to browse the fiction section.  We can speculate this because we know from their statements and poster boards that they have never been in any section of a bookstore that wasn't full of fiction.

   As a concerned customer of my local bookstore, already aware that such stores are losing business to the online giants Amazon and eBay, I quickly approached the store manager as soon as I realized two things.  One, that the restrooms were locked, and two, I had to use the one with the stick figure sans dress.  Oddly enough, the door with the stick figure wearing the dress was not only unlocked, it was slightly open.  I was not, however, that desperate to use the facilities.  Hence my calm, yet determined approach to the manager.

   He seemed less than thrilled to speak with me when I broached the subject.  I was polite, and simply stated my disappointment that the store had begun locking the restrooms, making a point to remind him this was generally only done in gas stations.  He was quick to make the point that it was a corporate policy.  The message was clear.  He could do nothing for me save pull out the key.

   I held my breath.  I was terrified that he would hand me the key attached to the complete works of Shakespeare.  It's not that I don't enjoy the Bard from time to time, I just wouldn't know which one of his plays to start reading while I was in there.  One can hardly be expected to make such an important choice at such an indelicate time.  To my great relief the key was not attached to any sort of book anchor.  Unfortunately, he did not hand the key to me.  He escorted me to the bathroom.  As I shut the door, I was hesitant to begin.  Was he waiting outside?  Was he, in fact, pressing his ear to the door to make sure I was not involved in any destructive shenanigans?  That kind of scrutiny can lead to certain inabilities that would leave the scrutinizer with a silence that would lead him to wonder just what the heck is going on in there?   I wanted to turn around and get out.  But then I realized that he'd wonder why I'd asked to be let in for just three seconds.  Would he think I'd just asked to go in as a prank?  Or worse?  Maybe he'd think I'd arrived too late!



   I did what I had to, making just enough noise to satisfy the man that my intentions were pure and true.  Making sure to run the water loud enough that he would be satisfied with my thorough hand-washing, I took a deep breath and opened the door.

   He was gone.  But another man was standing there, waiting to come in.  He was not a manager.  He was not an employee.  He was just another booklover like myself.  I began to move to one side when it hit me.  Was he really a book lover?  Or was he some graffiti artist, looking to spread his filth across the walls of the bathroom.  Those walls were my responsibility now.  The manager had let me in.  I was the bathroom user of record.  I would be blamed for any damage incurred.  But what did that mean?  Should I block the man until I slammed the door shut, thereby locking him out of the restroom?  A noble act indeed if the man had vandalism on his mind.  A rotten act indeed if the man had only seconds to make it to home plate, so to speak.

   This was all really more than I had bargained for when I decided to go into the bookstore for a coffee and a chance to browse the magazine shelf.

   I let the man in and walked away.  Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, right?  After all, the manager should have been standing there waiting for me to come out.  If not, what was the point?  Shouldn't he have checked to make sure I hadn't written free verse poetry on the stall door?  (Though if not there, where else would it be appropriate?)  Shouldn't he have made sure I flushed?  What is the point in asking for the key to begin with?  Would he have said no?  I'm sorry, you can't use our toilet.

Books-A-Million
current website logo.
I'm not kidding.
To protest the new
policy, write:
mailto:support@booksamillion.com
or call:
1-800-201-3550

   Next time, I'm gonna be the second guy.  I'll just wait until someone else announces to the checkout crowd that they need to use the bathroom.  Then I'll saunter along behind them, and wait until they come out.

   Seriously, no one wants to have to tell the world they have to use the restroom.

   I gotta go.

My View of the Louisiana State Library

Recently, I was honored to be able to accompany my wife to a gathering of Louisiana authors, in Baton Rouge, for the Louisiana Book Festival.  The party was held at the Louisiana State Library, just across the mall from the State Capital Building.  My wife was one of four poets who were participating at a panel being held the next morning.  The party that night was catered by Mansur's on the Boulevard and music was supplied by a very good jazz quartet.  We did not know too many of the authors in attendance but we had a pleasant time.
     However, I was in a library, or rather, the library of our state.  I could not resist the impulse to browse.  I did not stray far, sticking close to the food.  So with my camera in hand, I ducked into the nearest stacks and began to look for anything interesting.  It was a habit I'd developed as a youngster.  I still fondly remember browsing the stacks in the basement of my father's seminary, checking out the books available in Notre Dame University's massive collection (a book on concrete engineering that I spied there might just be the solid foundation upon which my love of books is built), and spending an hour in the library of Temple University dusting off copies of the Congressional Record while my brother attended his racquetball class.
     It didn't take any time at all for me to find what I was looking for.  I discovered I was in a massive section of Who's Who books.  Who knew there were so many categories of Who's Who?  Not I.  I found so many Who's Who that I needed a What's What in Who's Who to keep track of all the Who's found within.  I found Who's Who in Germany, Who's Who in France, a surprising number of Who's Who in Canada, followed by Who's Who in the Arabian World, in the Midwest, in the East, in the Orient, and so on and so forth and who knows who else was listed who might have distinguished themselves in Whoville?

     I came to a stop when I discovered the collection of Who's Who in World Jewry.  I have to admit, I hadn't even known that Jewry was a real word, let alone an acceptable word to describe the Jews.  After all, has anyone ever been accused of anti-jewry?  A quick check of the online definition of jewry gives the following as the first definition: A section of a medieval city inhabited by Jews; a ghetto.  This is actually the second definition listed at the freedictionary.com, although it is listed first on Google's search page.  The first definition is simply The Jewish People.  I seriously doubt, however, that anyone of the Jewish heritage calls themselves a member of the Jewry.  At least as late as 1989 this series was being published, though I cannot find an edition produced beyond that date.

Who's Who in Library Service was the next little oddity I found.  This was a definite case of nepotism, as books go.  You have to wonder just how many people out there really cared about who was the latest, most important and influential people working in libraries in the Sixties and Seventies?  Okay, I'm sure someone did.  And that someone knew a big shot Who at Who's Who who gave the go-ahead to research, write, and publish a series of books (multiple latest editions, mind you) of who was tops in keeping books organized in 1966.  Of course, the fact is, judging by the size of the books available, there were precious few people in library service at that time.  But at least we know who the heck they were, right?

     I was pretty jazzed to find this next set of books.  If only I would have had the time!  Oh, to be able to sit and browse the list of the extraordinary men and women catalogued in the latest edition of the Directory of British Scientists.  Surely I would have come across the British scientists who had developed all of the awesome science they were doing (to steal a technical term from '60s science fiction movies) in 1964.  Or even better, the wilder, more astounding science done in 1966!  I'm sure James Bond himself had to check out one of these books in order to keep track of who Blofeld was going to kidnap next!  It is no stretch to suggest that the volume on 1964-1965 looks quite worn and heavily exposed to the elements.  There's no telling what kind of exhaustive research was going on as multiple library users combed the depths of this historically essential tome.  Perhaps the Hardy Boys had to check it out in order to discover who that guy was living down the street with the laboratory in his Gothic basement.

     Matching the theme of my interests in cemeteries, I had to stop and admire the Annual Obituary.  First of all, there's no ignoring the publisher's great taste in using the image of a dead tree as the identifying symbol for this list of the recently deceased.  Sure, the tree has died, but it still stands in the open, for all to see, slowly decaying in the exposure of the elements, waiting for the termites to eat out its internal structure until its eventual collapse.  Someone on the Annual Obituary's staff had a wicked sense of humor.  I tried not to puzzle too much over the fact that our library only had copies of this grave collection (oh, I'm so sorry about that!) from the years 1980 to 1987.  I can only guess that this was the reason:  The Eighties were indeed the greatest decade ever, taking into account the music scene of that time, and so it is no wonder that Louisiana wanted to keep a detailed record of those who died in those influential years.  Why stop in 1987?  Well, that was the year this song made it to number one in the charts , which was probably the beginning of the end for the greatest decade of music ever.  Music wouldn't be listed in the 1987 Annual Obituary, but it took its first steps in that direction that year.

     I shouldn't have been surprised to discover the large sections of criticisms aimed at Short Stories (most certainly written by editors!) and Literature in general.  As you can see in the photo on the left, the brown section is the vast collection of Contemporary Literary Criticism (more than 200 volumes in print) that the library keeps.  Since everyone has their own opinion on what they read, I doubt very much that anyone reads these volumes.  Who needs to hear what the critics think of any book that's been painstakingly written by those tenderhearted literary writers?  We can form our own insulting opinions and sling them across the Internet without the slightest effort.  This series, therefore, has become painfully obsolete!

     The last books of interest I was able to capture before we headed out the door was this great little series entitled What Fantastic Fiction Do I Read Next?  I often hear this question from my kids, who, bless their hearts, think I know a thing or two about books and can offer them advice on what great books are out there waiting for them.  If I should ever fail them in that endeavor, I can rest assured that they can always check out this volume and get some advice on what to download to their Kindles.  Or their laptops, or their phones (remember when those were for speaking to people with actual voices?) or to their Xbox 360's, or who knows what next?  Perhaps they'll be downloading books to their calculators.  Or even to their pencils, which will then write out the text onto space-age paper.  At any rate, I hope next year's edition of What Fantastic Fiction Do I Read Next? will include my own books which will soon be hitting the shelves in the coming months.