Vacation and the "New York Times"

We are in Chicago for the first part of a Christmas-New Year's road trip. We drove here Friday to see our son and his partner. So far we haven't done a whole lot. We went to the zoo last night and saw the Christmas lights they put there. I think we will go to a movie tonight or tomorrow, maybe The Life of Pi or The Hobbit. Otherwise we are watching season 4 of The West Wing, which Lynda and I haven't seen.

This morning my son a copy of the Sunday New York Time in front of me. I haven't read the Times since I quit traveling for business. I used to scoop them up in airport after people boarded a plan and left their newspapers in the waiting area.

But today I was the first to look at it. It has a lot of interesting articles for a writer. On the front page, below the fold, is the headline "Giving Mom's Book Five Stars? Amazon May Cull Your Review" (by David Streitfeld). The article talks about the problem with fake reviews that Amazon is trying to figure out how to correct, as well as reviews by those related to the author, or even by other authors in a review trade. The article gave no conclusion, but did mention that in the process of trying to cull the related reviews an the review-for-fee reviews, Amazon has also deleted legitimate reviews by true and ultra-loyal fans of the author.

Then, of course, there's the Sunday book review section itself. The page 1 story there is "Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?", an article by Paul Elie. The gist is that once upon a time Christianity was infused in fiction. He says it's been a half century since Christianity provided the background for the bulk of American fiction. He writers:

Forgive me if I exaggerate. But if any patch of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature. Half a century after Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Reynolds Price and John Updike presented themselves as novelists with what O'Connor called "Christian convictions," there would-be successors are thin on the ground.

I suspect he's right. But if that's the case, I want to stand up and shout, "I'm here! My novels are underpinned by a Christian worldview, by the importance of faith in a person's life. I gladly pick up the mantel dropped by American authors decades ago.

It appears, however, that Elie is either unaware of the vast body of overtly Christian works available, or he counts them as nothing in the world of literature. I know that much Christian fiction has been panned as being, shall we say, less than good. But I have also read how it has come a long way over the last twenty years. And, really, is the vast majority of general market fiction really that much better? Not based on my limited reading of it.

Also in the book review section is an interesting interview of Lee Child. I've not read any of his works, but I have been following news about him for a while, so the headline pulled me in. Another article reviewed two books by Eva LaPlante on Abigail May Alcott, the mother of Louisa May Alcott. An educated woman, and as accomplished as was possible for her as a married woman and mother in that era, her husband and celebrated daughter took the scissors to her journal and letters. Enough remains, however, that LaPlante was able to pull these two books together. I'll keep my eye out for these once they go on the remainders table. $26 and $15 are a little steep for me to spend on them.

I haven't yet reached the editorial section of the paper, nor the business section. I can tell that this is going to give me more hours of pleasure. Ah, to be on vacation.

"The Jefferson Lies" Pulled

As I drive home in the evenings, if I'm still en route after 6:05 p.m., I catch a few minutes of David Barton's Wallbuilders show. I'm generally sympathetic to what Barton believes, but listening to him describe it is often painful. Part of the problem is his speech pattern, where he cuts off his words as if he's in a hurry. That grinds on me. He says he swallows his words because he's from Texas. No, Mr. Barton. I've known many Texans, working with them and attending church with them. I've never heard a one of them swallow their words like you do. Don't blame your speech on Texas.

The latest controversy is his book The Jefferson Lies, which deals with what he considers revisionist history having been foisted on an unsuspecting population by generations of inaccurate historians. On August 9, 2012, the publisher, Thomas Nelson (a division of Harper Collins), pulled the book due to concerns about it's inaccuracies. The Internet is abuzz over this. I found what I consider to be a fair treatment of it at http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/19840.

I've been concerned about Barton. As I said I listen to him some and think I'm somewhat in agreement with his conclusions, but wonder how he could get to those conclusions based on his logic. Also, he has the view that we should base what type of country we are today on the type of country we were in the distant past. I don't know that I agree with him. So far I've not read any of his published books, nor even as much as a blog post of his.

I think the case for basing our current public policies and administration on biblical principles needs to be made afresh for each generation. They were good in the past? So what? Why are they good now? This is what Barton has failed to do in my listening to him. He needs to make the case that biblical conduct is superior to secular conduct. It was in 1776. It was in 1789. It was in 1861. And it is in 2012. Absent of that case being made, whatever our Founding Fathers believed is an important item to throw in the mix of other items, but is not definitive.

Long Live the Booksellers

This morning I went to the doctor's office—well, really the lab—to have blood work done in advance of my appointment with my rheumatologist next week. I brought a work magazine with me to read, but they called me within two minutes of my arrival and I was out in five.

So the hour I told the receptionist was wrong, since it was only a 4.5 mile drive from the office. I thought about stopping at the convenience store near the hospital, buy something, and sit in the air conditioning and read the mag. But I had lunch in the fridge at work, I didn't need the calories and carbs of the stuff they have at the con-store, so I didn't want that. I decided to stop at the Goodwill store on the way back to the office and browse the books.

As readers of this blog know, I buy way too many books, though most of them are used, either from thrift stores or yard sales. The thrift store near the office has a better book section than does the Goodwill, but I'd been to the former recently but not the latter. After fifteen minutes of browsing I had five titles picked out, paid for, and in the pick-up.

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I'm pretty sure I have this at home, but the one I bought is a clean mass-market paperback from 1991, and will stay in the office should I ever get around to reading it in the next 5 years, 7 months, and 6 days.
• The Prince and other Writings by Niccolo Machiavelli. This is another classic I've never read. I might have a copy at home, but I can't remember. The one I bought is from the Barnes & Noble Classics collection.
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. I haven't heard of this one before. It looks like an excellent non-fiction read. Also a Barnes & Noble classic.
• A New Look at the Sacraments by William J. Bausch. I believe this is a modern (1977) Catholic view of their sacraments. What am I doing buying a Catholic book, you wonder? I believe it can help me flesh out my Bible study "Sacred Moments", which I'm hoping to self-publish at some point in time.
• Mr. Maugham Himself: A collection of Writings by W. Somerset Maugham. I bought this without even checking the table of contents. It's a 688 page hardback, Book Club edition, and contains items of Maugham's that I haven't yet read.

All this for an even $6.00.

Traditional publishing is dead, or dying. So say the army of self-publishers, though many of them would die for a contract with a traditional publisher. No so fast, say the somewhat smaller army in the traditional publishing camp. The curation done by publishers and agents is invaluable. The distribution systems in place favor the traditional publisher. And most of the publishers are profitable. No, traditional publishing isn't going anywhere.

Caught in the middle is the bookseller. Borders is gone—liquidated in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Barnes & Noble is hanging on, though industry insiders say that's because of the Nook. The smaller chains were mostly swallowed up long ago. The mom and pop, sole proprietor books store have been disappearing due to Borders and Barnes & Noble.

I wonder, though, if the independent bookseller isn't poised for a comeback. They won't be able to do it the same way the did before. The public still wants books. Even those who own an e-reader will sometimes want a book in paper format. Some people won't ever own an e-reader. These will be around for a long, long time. So books in paper format will continue to have a demand, maybe a good sized demand.

The small bookseller who learns to adapt to this can make money. The mom and pop store can come back, but may have to be a mixture of used and new books. It may have to be a niche store. It may have to have an on-line presence, and may make as much money in a booksellers co-op as it does with walk-ins.

Back in the late 1990s I was an on-line bookseller. After we brought to our house the 2,200 books that were in Dad's house when he died, added them to the 500 or so we had brought back from my father-in-law's house when he died, and to the 1,200 or so that we had, and I decided to sell them. I established a business, The Sexton Collection, and joined the Advanced Booksellers Exchange network. For $30 a month we got the inventory software, a website, and the benefits of the ABE system. I waited until we had about 300 books inventoried and listed, then I took the site live. Most months we made a little money. When they raised the monthly fee to $35, once I hit three consecutive months where we lost money, I folded the business.

The problem was, we didn't reduce our inventory. We quickly found we needed more inventory to have enough selection for people to buy from. So we scoured the thrift stores, the garage sales, and any place we could, looking for over-looked first editions, older books, anything we thought would sell. I imagine at the end of our two years of book selling we had 100 to 200 more books in inventory than when we started. [Aside: My best buy was a book listing the service men from Philadelphia who served during World War 1. I bought that for 50 cents on a Saturday, listed it for $22 the same day, and sold it on Monday for that price plus shipping and handling.] With all the used book purchasing we do, I don't even want to think of our current inventory, even after we donated well over 100 books to the church library.

I think the bookseller will always be with us. I hope so. The friends of library type bookstores are great. The used bookstore down on Dixon Street in Fayetteville is great—if it's still there; I haven't been down there for a few years. People will want books, and books will be published. The bookseller is the broker/inventory holder/retailer who helps an author, a publisher, and a reader to all achieve their aims.

Long live the bookseller!

An Evening at Barnes and Noble

So I put in a lot of hours at work this week, about 50 through Friday, and I'll work at least seven today and maybe five tomorrow. The work load demands it, the wife is out of town, and I'm able to do my writing for a couple of hours in the evenings, so why not try to get ahead of the workload curve? I'm not getting much recreation, and little exercise (though I walked at noon yesterday, ten minutes in 20-30 mph winds). Still, I've been eating well, my weight is falling, and I have little or no desire for snacking. Maybe giving up chips and soda for Lent is a good thing.

I decided to treat myself last night and after leaving the office at 6:00 PM I drove 2.2 miles out of my way, a true expense with gasoline at $3.459, to go to Barnes and Noble. I usually do this at least once each time Lynda is out of town, though didn't the last two times she deserted me for the grandkid(s). I browse through the remainders tables, and sometimes find a bargain. I look through many of the aisles, looking at lots of books, and every third trip in have to buy one. I daydream that mine will be there someday, though I know the odds against that are astronomical. Eventually I grab a magazine or three from the rack, buy a vente house blend, and sit in the coffee shop and read. Normally I can't do that for very long, for Sidelines Syndrome takes over and I feel I should be writing. So I leave halfway through the vente and head home and thence to The Dungeon to write.

But last night I was in the store almost two and a half hours and suffered not at all from Sidelines Syndrome. I didn't buy any books tonight, though I found three that were tempting. The first was The Kennedy Detail, written by Gerald Blaine, one of the Secret Service agents assigned to JFK. Focusing much on Dallas, he speaks of how the agents felt in losing the man they were sworn to protect. I read in this for over an hour. Someday I'll buy it, but not for $28.00. The second one was Founding America. This caught my eye because it is mainly a compilation of original documents from 1774 to 1791, with a few editor's notes. The idea is sort of what my Documenting America is. We have no reason to be ignoring source documents in favor of historians' sifting through them and in the process giving opinions. Read the documents; they aren't difficult to understand. I didn't buy Founding America, though I was sorely tempted, and the price was better at $12.95 (I think it was).

It seems to me much has changed in Barnes and Noble. I find fewer shelves of books and more display tables. These tables hold fewer books than the shelves they replaced did, and some have games, puzzles, or other non-book items. At the front, where latest releases were once displayed, is a Nook display. In some places in the store a major amount of shelves have been removed in favor of even larger display tables.

The teen book section seemed to be larger than before, the poetry section smaller that the even minuscule size it have been previously, if that's possible. Reference books seemed to occupy fewer shelf-feet. Cookbooks even seemed to be reduced, as maybe were travel books.

These latter things people now get on line. Google for a reference. Google a recipe, Google a destination. Or Bing them. As a result B&N doesn't need to stock as many books because they don't sell. What will happen when Nook and Kindle take over the world? The brick and mortar stores are shrinking, and will soon be shrivelled. Such are the observations of an occasional B&N patron. And, as always, I set off the alarm as I left, even though I bought nothing and carried nothing out of the store I didn't bring in except the vente. I warned the cashier that I always set it off, so was not arrested for shoplifting.

Oh, the third book that caught my eye? It was in the remainders section, on a lower shelf, a neat stack of perhaps twelve copies. When I saw it, I almost whipped out my cell phone and called good friend Gary in Rhode Island. The book was The Screaming Skull, & other Classic Horror Stories. The Screaming Skull? Who knew a college freshman prank, quite minor at that, in which no animals were hurt, no feelings were hurt, no one was bullied, no hate speech was uttered (except maybe by the subject of the prank) would find its way onto a remainders bookshelf in B&N in Rogers Arkansas in 2011? Maybe I should have invested the $7.95 plus tax just to say I had it. Gary, check it out at a B&N where you're at.

Reading Magazines

Last night, about 9:45 PM, I pulled a book off the reading pile and began reading, mug of coffee at the ready. I'm sure I'll give a report on it, 510 pages from now. For the last three weeks or so I've been concentrating on reading magazines. On the end table between Lynda's and my reading chairs, we each have a stack. Actually I have two. One is a stack of books; the other a stack of magazines and newsletters. I tackle each as the spirit moves me. Actually the stack of books is not my reading pile. It is the current book I'm reading, plus a Bible or two, and maybe a study book. My reading "pile" is actually out of sight, on a bookshelf in my closet.

The magazine pile is quite varied. I only subscribe to one magazine, Poets and Writers, and that's a one-year experiment. I'll see in February if I'll renew it. But we get lots of other mags or newsletters. There's alumni magazines from the University of Rhode Island, the University of Missouri, the UoM College of Engineering, and I think Lynda may get something from the University of Kansas. We get a magazine twice a year from our timeshare organization, every month from our rural electric cooperative, and one a month from AAA. They pile up.

Then add to that the newsletters: Prison Fellowship, New Fields Ministries, our water utility, Focus on the Family, the Bella Vista POA, the non-official Bella Vista newsletter (almost a mag), and a couple more. These pile up as well. Lynda gets a couple every month from various stock trading organizations, though those may be more "buy our service" type of ads rather than true newsletters. I also classify as "magazines" things such as annual reports from insurance companies and stocks. We get a few of those.

Then add the mags we pick up at thrift stores, yard sales, or the recycling place. That one is amazing. When the magazine box is full, you have your pick of hundreds within reach. Conversely, when they've just emptied the box, you can't reach any. We normally come away from there with just about the same number that we drop off. The National Geographic I've read recently came from there—though we've got years of the Geographic on shelves downstairs, waiting for me to get to them.

I try to read them all. Why? I feel like I'm probably missing something if I don't read them. They come to me to impart knowledge, maybe even wisdom on occasion. How can I simply trash them? Certainly what I pay for I'm going to read. Every page. Even the ads. Those that come free I might skim. Oh, wait, most of those I actually pay for. The cost is just hidden in the utility rate or the overhead of the organization. The ministry newsletters are always interesting. New Fields is an organization of Russian-Americans who provide a wide range of Christian ministries in the countries of the former Soviet Union. They do a great work, including much humanitarian work.

So for the last three weeks, when reading time materialized, rather than go to my reading pile I grabbed something off the mag pile. As of Monday night the mag pile was left with only two things it in. One was something from Blue Cross Blue Shield that I just didn't feel like reading. The other was the timeshare org mag, and that is almost as much sales pitch. So I felt caught up and grabbed the book from the reading pile. While it's a rather large book, it will feel good to get back into that kind of reading. At ten pages a night and a few more on the weekend, I should finish this around the end of September or early October. By then another ten to fifteen magazines should have piled up.

Book Addiction

Last night we moved books. First we took them out of the bookcases. Then we moved the bookcases. Then we moved other bookcases into the spots where the first bookcases were. Then we put the books back on the shelves.

Well, the whole process is not yet done. We did get all the bookcases in their new places. One short one was replaced with a tall one next to another tall one, except those two didn't match, and one of them (the one already in place) matched two or three on the other side of the room, and another bookcase in a semi-used state in a spare bedroom matched the tall one replacing the short one. Are you with me so far?

First, the short one went on a wall where there was no bookcase, under the high school graduation pictures of the kids. The same books went back in that one in the new location. Then I took the encyclopedias off their shelf and set that bookshelf to the side, for two other shelves had to be moved four inches first to increase some space for the encyclopedias. The tall one being moved to its two (or three) matching brothers, where the encyclopedias had been, went next, but those books were not necessarily going back on to it, so they had to stay in piles for a while. That all happened Monday evening, along with vacuuming vacated places and spraying for bugs.

Then yesterday evening I moved the unused one from the garage to where the short one had been, went to writers guild, came back from writers guild when no one else showed, moved (with Lynda's help) the other matching tall one. We then unloaded two other tall ones and moved them four inches. Except that proved to be a little too much and so we moved them back one inch. Then the encyclopedia case went in its new home, right by the door into the Dungeon (as we fondly call our walk-out basement where all this was taking place).

Then the slow process of moving books began in earnest. Christian fiction, alphabetical by other first, then Biblical fiction also alpha by author, then secular fiction alpha by author and collating two groups, then non-fiction (Christian and secular mixed), except how to organize the non-fiction? Alpha by author wouldn't work. It has to be topical. I worked on that some, until it was after 10:00 PM and time to wind down for the evening. The few remaining piles on the floor, and whatever the final look of the non-fiction will be, can wait for tomorrow.

All of which says: I have an addiction to books. It's very difficult to pass any up at a sale. At least, to pass up any I'm truly interested in. The list of books I blogged about a couple of days ago had all come from used book sales over a month's time. That's too many books to be adding to an already over-stuffed collection. So as of now I am swearing off used book stores, thrift stores, garage sales, and even new book stores. The library? I'll still go there, but only at times when that little used book store in the entryway is closed.

Now I have to read them, all 4,000 of them (my best estimate). It might take a while, especially with finding a couple of articles in every book. More on that tomorrow--if I'm not too busy shelving books.