I’ve noticed two things [are different since publishing my last book]. One is that I’m able to observe via Twitter the global launch of the book. I’m able to simultaneously see for the first time that the English language editions, which have been exported from England into Europe and Australia, are released a week and a half before they’re released to the rest of the world. I kind of vaguely knew before but didn’t think about. The other thing is the number of Twitter users asking me questions that I’m usually woefully unable to answer about formats and editions.
I am [experiencing a greater level of fan engagement]. It’s much more direct and much more pleasant than I would have expected it to be.
Tag Archives: Books
Emotional Attachment
There is much more emotional attachment to the paper book than there is to the CD or the DVD. It is not logical — it’s visceral.
Actually, it is logical. (It might not matter to you, but the different response is totally logical.) You don’t sit across the room from a book; you interact with it—hold it, look at it, turn the pages, etc. A book is not just visual; it’s also tactile + olfactory (old book smell!) + a little bit aural (think: sound of the pages turning). You don’t interact with music and movie media in the same way. You listen to music. You watch/listen to movies. But you don’t smell or touch the medium while you’re watching or listening. You might not even be in the same room with the device delivering the movie or music. I started a post on this eons ago. I should finish it!
What makes them enjoyable
For me, to deny books their physical structure simply ignores far too much of what makes them enjoyable. The commitment they require, the way they force you into a state of simultaneous calm and focus — these are things I have yet to duplicate by any other means. Not to mention other factors that I’m terrified have been lost in the transition from paperback to screen: the mood it puts you in to carry a particular book in your bag all day, or the giddy/strange feeling of seeing your favorites on someone else’s shelves.
Merit Badges
We show off our books on shelves like merit badges, because we’re proud of the ideas we’ve ingested to make us who we are, and we hope to connect with others based on that. I think this is endearing and charming. When I paint someone else’s favorites and they have the same book I have in mine, I feel closer to them, like we must understand each other in some meaningful way.
How you go from a blog to a book
BlogHer is about talking about how you go from a blog to a book, and how us writers, us people who live inside our heads, how we tap in to our own experiences to use for our writing and if maybe those experiences are too close, too hard to tell, too hard to share, we then turn our own experiences in to fiction, so that even though others might read it and not know those were our own childish eyes watching these events, we will know, and we will remember, and in the telling we will heal.
A book is much more personal
Books and blogs are very different things. You write a blog every day, it’s super-topical, you communicate with your readers – and you can assume your readers have a certain level of knowledge, even that many are geeks. A book is much more personal. It’s more personal to write, and it’s a quieter, more personal, intimate experience to read a book. I didn’t want the book to be dated next week. And in the book I wanted to express something that’s under the surface in the blog – that cycling makes me happy. In the book I wanted to say that overtly.
Now this is interesting. Lately I’ve been thinking the changing expectations of/by readers might be the key to my dissertation and I think this ties into that. No one expects a reader of a book to email the writer and announce that they’re reading the book or that they’re on page 182 or that they like it or hate it or that they’re done. I mean, sure, some readers do that. But it’s not expected. You’re not called a lurker or creepy or a stalker if you just read a book w/o notifying the writer that you’ve done so.
But if you just read a blog, you risk being called all those things. As a blog reader, the expectation seems to be that you will announce that you’re reading (in some fashion). Reading blogs (& other online writing) privately is seen as suspect. Case in point: The first mentions I saw of Twitter’s new “fast follow” feature (allows people to follow via sms w/o joining Twitter) yesterday called it creepy and stalkerish. Really? Keep in mind that people can already read Twitter pages (unless private) w/o following and/or follow via RSS. So, what’s the difference? I don’t think there is a substantive one. I think it’s just that it reminded people that they don’t like it when they can’t “see” everyone who is following them.
I think part of it is a writers vs. people-who-write thing. I think the writers tend to be cool with not knowing who all is reading their writing (because they view it as “writing,” i.e. something that they have made/created). But it tends to make the people-who-write uncomfortable because they don’t view what they write as being a creation (separate from self) but a transparent reflection of self. So, looked at that way, it makes sense that they want their readers to be their friends (or at least acquaintances). And that they don’t want “secret” readers.
On the readers’ side, I think when one has been used to considering reading a private activity, this expectation of being social at every turn is a hard adjustment to make, harder than seems to be taken into account. Especially when the most ardent readers tend not to be known for their gregarious personalities. And there’s also the weirdness of being made to feel bad for reading. Just reading. When did readers start to get labeled with terms formerly reserved for deviant (m-w def: deviating especially from an accepted norm) behavior? And does that mean that just-reading (as opposed to “participating in the conversation”) is now deviant? (ooh.)
And then there’s the whole flip side of this reader/writer thing, and that’s distance. Book writers know they have readers, of course (or they hope they do/will), but those readers are distant (not always any more, but in general). So, as Weiss says so elegantly, the book is more personal because it is more individual. Less influenced by the audience. Whereas blog readers (at least some of them, the conversators) are close. They’re in the blogger’s face, cheering or booing as the case may be. So the audience gets entwined in the narrative.
Writers Read
In which I share an assortment of reading material I may or may not ever have time to actually read. 😉
Stack o’ books from annual pilgrimage to The Book Shop. Not that I needed more books. But you know, resistance. futile.
$80 (used books ftw!)
Magazines!
$74 (!)
BTW…
Cost of reading Toasted Cheese? Free.
Number of hours the TC editors put in each issue? Innumerable.
Amount the TC editors are paid? $0
Number of years we’ve been publishing TC? Almost 10. (That’s like 100 in print years!)
Your donation? Priceless.
Changing Forever
When I was about ten a pen pal came to visit from all the way across the country and I didn’t notice her for a few days after discovering a copy of Madeleine L’Engle’s Meet the Austins in her suitcase.
“Want to go swimming?” she would ask. “Want to ride bikes? Want to watch TV?”
No. I was reading. I was busy becoming an Austin. There were four kids in that family and in my family there was only me, but for the duration of the book and all subsequent readings, I owned those brothers and sisters. I had to make sure Vicki recovered from her fall off her bike, that Maggie didn’t get Suzie into too much trouble, that nobody froze during the ice storm. A beloved pen pal paled in comparison.
That’s what reading used to feel like: changing into something better, or at least different, for a short time. Becoming the characters. Changing forever.
You know I had to quote this. I was just so surprised to see someone else mention Meet the Austins this way.
I suppose it’s funny to list Meet the Austins as a Book that Changed My Life, but it was. (Perhaps the first?) I was 12, the book was a gift/prize from the school librarian for some aborted contest I’d entered (random!), and after meeting the Austins I was addicted to MLE to the point where seeking out all her books was a quest for me for a long time. (I even found/read the elusive Ilsa.) And, arguably, MLE was my entry into literary fiction. So, yeah, defining moment.
An object of attachment
My tears [as I started to read Swallows and Amazons] could perhaps have been nostalgia (defined as memories of things that never happened) but I think they were a matter of attachment, as when one is reunited with an attachment person after a period of separation and danger. In the first paragraph of Swallows and Amazons, I was suddenly reunited with an object of attachment. I have read all of Ransome’s children’s books, I think when I was between eight and eleven. I used to own the whole set. I remember them on a bookshelf. They must have been given to me, one by one, by my parents. … My attachment to these books was made at a time when neither my parents nor I knew anything about. sailing. It must have been Ransome’s books that implanted in me the desire to sail.
Trophy
The creative possibilities that physical books offer is invigorating and rewarding. Featuring a book on your bookshelf is akin to displaying a trophy. You’ve accomplished something in reading a book; it feels like a victory. The opportunity to display your literary conquests in unique or unexpected ways is something I will greatly miss with e-readers.
The Remainder Table 