In which I concede that e-books are sort-of OK...

Several years ago on this blog I presented an argument against e-books, vowing that I would never use them. But during this pandemic, e-books (and audiobooks) have been a godsend.

That's because the local library is still closed to the public. To borrow a physical book, I have to order the book online, then wait for the librarians to find it on the shelf (at whichever library it is available) and notify me. I then must make an appointment to pick it up within whatever timeframe they have available, sometimes days away. The library leaves the borrowed book(s) on a table in the alcove, in a paper bag with my name on it. 

When I borrowed a book this summer on how to learn Korean the whole process took a couple of weeks. And it turned out to be the wrong book. Without being able to browse it on the shelf (or see previews of it online), I hadn't realized that the book used a Romanized Korean alphabet, when the whole point was that I wanted learn to read Korean.

Last week when I wanted to borrow The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, I merely had to go to my phone, open the Libby library app and request to borrow it, and download the audiobook to the app, which took maybe ten minutes. I was given 21 days to read it. After a few days, when I wasn't feeling Tom Hanks's narration, I checked Libby again and found an e-book copy available and was able to download it in under five minutes to my iPad, so I could read it with the Kindle app. (I sat up last night, well past midnight, to finish it). I sent back both versions of the now-finished book this morning via the app, and now it's available to the next readers on the list.

So I don't think e-books are evil anymore. They serve a purpose. But I don't want paper books to be entirely replaced with them. When my iPad battery runs down, poof, the book disappears. Meanwhile, all the paper books I own sit placidly on the shelves.

The impermanence of texts, and everything really

I am reminded of the impermanence of life as I go through the agonizing process of cleaning out my old iPhone. Its text messages--sometimes the only written communication I've had with people in the last five years--did not transfer to my new phone. And so, before handing the old phone off to the child whose even older phone is dying, I am reading through old texts to see if there is anything worth keeping.

Based on these communications with my husband, our marriage seems composed of an endless quest for grocery items. Lists are sent every few days (eggs, bananas, milk, coconut oil, rice) without  any voicing of affection. From these you would never know that ours is a happy marriage. Occasionally there is the exceptional day where not-good things are noted, like this text: "At pediatricians. E-girl has a fever and pink eye. I-guy is in the bathroom throwing up." Is it worth remembering that moment at the pediatrician's, on that particular date, or would it be better to forget the specifics and move forward? To ponder this is to ponder what composes a life--is it a series of days/events or is it the intelligence and feeling that evolve from all these experiences?

I couldn't ponder this question or this particular day too deeply since there were so many other messages to get through. Overall, most of the messages between my husband and me were mundane and not worth remembering. I took a deep breath, put my finger on our last message there and, with a flick, all of them were gone, as if they had never been. Then it was on to the next cache of texts.

Erasing our messages was a fairly easy decision. He is here with me and texting composes only a small fraction of our communication. Not so with my son, who moved 3,000 miles away more than a year ago. Sometimes a text once a week is the only time we communicate directly. It's not surprising, then, that I have saved his texts for last. Less mundane than the texts with my husband (at least, there are no grocery lists), there's still probably not much worth keeping here either, at least in what we've expressed or how we've expressed it. But still. If I wipe them out, those moments will be gone--just like all the moments of his childhood, which get further away every year.

My memory for specifics fades a little each year as my brain refuses to take on too much more information. Without these texts, how else will I remember what day he wrote about the fire a mile from his house, which almost triggered an evacuation?  Or the July day this year that he successfully cooked his first full meal?

Yet, if I keep the texts from this phone, they will probably take on just another impermanent form, compiled into Word files or inserted into long email messages. And then--where will they really be? Of course, there is always paper. The messages could be copied and printed out, stapled together, and shoved into a file. But having cleaned out my mother's home after her death a couple of years ago and throwing out most of the greeting cards she had saved over the course of a lifetime (along with her correspondences with people I didn't know), I know that eventually, even that will be lost.

Those last few messages need to be gone through. My daughter's phone is dying. Let me just jot down a few of these first. Let me not have to let it all go, at least not yet.

Print it out!

Elated to find a flash drive a few days ago tucked into a drawer, which contains files of some prose pieces I had never printed out and now thought were lost. But the elation was dashed when I plugged the flash drive into my MacBook and clicked on the files:

(filename) uses a file type that is blocked from opening in this version

Undaunted, I opened Microsoft Word (2011) and clicked on the filenames there. Once opened, the documents appeared like this, all across the page, row after row:

[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []


I thought all my pieces were all lost—at least everything I wrote pre-2007 that wasn't already on paper. Then, desperate and willing to try anything, I plugged in my old iBook, which I have never had the heart to throw away, despite its appearing to be in the throes of death the last time I plugged it in. Miraculously, at least for the time being, the iBook had healed itself. The screen was clear and visible, no keys were stuck—and, best of all, it opened up the old MS Word files without complaint. It was simply the difference between .doc and .docx—.docx, the newest version of MS Word, no longer cares to open up anything from five years past.

I opened up each file and saved it as a newer version of MS Word (able on the iBook only to take them up to .doc) and then printed them all out, page after page, until I had used up most of a printer cartridge. Sure it's pricey and maybe frivolous to print out pages of things I may yet toss. Yet the alternative is, well, nothingness.

I thought the flash drive would save everything, even if my computer died. And, these days, I rely a lot on Dropbox. But neither backup addresses the problem of evolving technology. Something saved today may not be accessible in ten or even five years.

And so my advice to anyone who writes and might want to read it tomorrow or ten years later is to PRINT IT OUT!

The question, of course, then becomes what to do with all these papers, something I haven't begun to fully answer yet...

Why I'm not using voice transcription software (yet)

Cleaning  out my Inbox this morning, I discovered this past experiment with the Dragon Dictation app on my iPhone. There's potential, surrealist prose there, maybe but not much else:

I know I'm talking implicitly fit thinking about what I need to get a day that I joined the spider center group provide normal revision Chucky cleaning up the house child in the housewife dream you were some things I thought about writing for my blog work for essay.

I would like to have more on my personal essays Trisha Vine i one possibility about my blog wondering if I should write something about who wants to be a man they're equestrian with the Manale for Steve's angle and also the fact that I'm doing it everyday of the Lycan I got for now as I write this I'm jogging with Wii fit actually I not writing or typing I'm dictating to something and my iPod you'll see the results after I e-mail it to myself and put it up here so the question is is it possible to ride and walk or exercise at the same time and end up with a readable text. I'm not sure it is but it sure would be great if I could walk in right same time I'd like to try to write dialogs or to speak dialogs without typing get this evening sounds like him and everything will be in my own southern accent elk characters perhaps we'll something!

Instagramatic

This post mostly serves as a buffer between my last post in July, about my friend Joan Preiss, and what was was written as my next post more than a month later (on Aug. 24) about my crappy summer—because as E-girl just pointed out, it looked like I was talking about Joan on the same page as my complaints about our sewage spill, which seemed disrespectful. So, this post was written on the 24th also, but pre-dated Aug. 23rd. 

I haven't had time to write this summer, but I did find moments to take photos on my phone, whenever I was waiting somewhere or en-route to somewhere else. The photo at the top was taken when I was waiting for my friend, Orit, to show up at our CSA (community-supported agriculture) pickup. These were the vegetables I had just taken out of the box to divide between us. I took the pic and loaded it up on Instagram in the few moments before she got there. And then I rushed back home to get something else done. But there's that moment, recorded.

Perhaps technology is offering people more opportunities for quick moments of expression. But it's such a time-suck otherwise, especially with the allure of social media and video gaming, that it seems a two-edged sword (I tried to think of a less cliche way of saying this, but am rushed to finish this post in the few minutes I have free...).

I took this photo at the top of the ferris wheel at the county fair last weekend—altered and loaded on Instagram before our car swung back to the bottom.

I'm not sure who is looking at all the pictures loaded onto Instagram and Facebook—both could be infinite cyber-galleries. Is it art if no one really looks at it? Does it matter? For me, Instagram has just become a visual diary of where I've been, sometimes. I don't load up a picture every day because much of what I've done recently is too mundane.

I took this picture of a lake I had tried to paint in a watercolor moments before. The photo looks so much better than the painting, which grew muddy as I added too much color (the secret with watercolor is in what you don't do). But trying to paint the yellow parts of the green leaves and grass, where the sun was shining, made me see everything more vividly as I took the picture. What fun to take the time to play for an afternoon, with a child's watercolor set, sitting in the shade at a park with E-girl and my friend, Mary.

Perhaps photography is like watercolors, in that part of the art is knowing what to leave out or show. The last photo I'll load up here, above, was taken at a diner during one of the first weeks of summer. Is it art if everyone who walks into the diner sees the same scene—and could take the same picture with their phones? I don't know. It's one of those questions I'd like to ponder for awhile, perhaps for the rest of my life...

1. The end of the world as we used to know it; 2. Zombieland

1. Last night I rode the Metro to D.C. for the first time in many months. What struck me most was that every passenger was looking at and tapping on a smartphone—not a paper newspaper or book in sight. Even the Metro construction worker I passed on the way to the escalator was taking a break and... looking at his Kindle. It was as if a nuclear war had obliterated all the non-virtual text in-hand in the world. (Except for me. I pulled out my latest edition of one story magazine, which I keep in my purse, and read one of the finest short stories I've read in a while, “The World to Come” by Jim Shepard.)

In the past, when sitting on the Metro, I could tell who was reading a romance novel, who was reading historical fiction, etc. I sometimes struck up conversations with people who were reading authors I love.* But how would I know what they were reading (or doing) on their phones? Hunkering over a phone is not an interrupt-able activity. They could be reading work emails, writing texts to their boyfriends, researching restaurants. Each passenger in his or her own miniature workstation, accessing and accessible to invisible conversations.

2. This is what I find so eerie and irritating about all the smartphone technology. A person is there, and yet not there at all, their minds like the little yellow man on Google Maps, pinned to a web page. Lately I've been running into people jabbering loudly to themselves whom I think are crazy until they turn their heads and I see the small cylindrical earpiece that connects them to the Matrix. Wherever I see groups of people sitting down, there's always now a significant percentage of them looking at their cellphones. Even at the comedy club I went to last night, during the actual sets, every few minutes someone pulled out a phone and tapped into it. For all I know a play-by-play of the comedy competition was being uploaded simultaneously to dozens of Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. Or people were checking their emails.

I have lately coveted a smartphone—partly, yes, because I envy my hubby's ability to pull out his semi-smartphone and find a restaurant close by or settle trivia arguments with correct answers. But mostly because the power goes out in our house at least twice a year and I can't access my email—more than an irritation when your at-home editing work often depends on a swift response.

But I worry about being accessible always, and of the temptation to constantly share my thoughts and visage with everyone everywhere. Worse, I worry about becoming another zombie—what I call people who constantly check or look at things on their cell phones. They are there, and yet they are not, each in his own little world, sucking up data with his tiny device, wanting ever more.

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* FYI - I never interrupted any readers, only talking to them when they had set a book aside...

#LikingTwitter

Despite my earlier disdain for Twitter, I have begun to tweet a few times a week. It has helped ease my withdrawal from Facebook. And, unlike other social networking sites, it's surprisingly easy to do from my non-smart cell phone. But the real reason I like Twitter is: subject headings.

(Once upon a time, my dream job was to be a subject cataloger at the Library of Congress. It was a vision of putting the universe in order, one subject heading at a time. Alas, it was dashed when I actually took a cataloging class. Cataloging is a precise art, particularly the assignment of call numbers. The Dewey Decimal system drove me up the wall with its long strings of numbers. One number off in a class assignment meant that it was all worth zero points, even with perfect subject headings.)

But I still like labeling things. Hence, my new-found (and probably temporary) love of Twitter. The hashtags (#) mark the searchable phrase—the creative part is in coming up with new phrases. I've been thrilled to discover that I'm the first to type in: #5wordTVreviews (based on an earlier blog post). I'm planning to also start #literarymaps, to mark any new ones I find. The possibilities of new, searchable phrases appear to be endless—though, the downside is that no one will know to look for them if they're not already well-used (and that most Twitter users are not looking for insights from the middle-aged anyway).

So, for whatever it is worth,  I add my voice to the narcissistic hum, in as few characters as possible.

The dream of dictation, slightly dashed

For a long time, I've had the fantasy that I can find software that will allow me to take long walks and write at the same time—a program that will convert my speech into typed words. It would be like having my own secretary/transcriber (or wife... see Tolstoy, et al.).

So I downloaded a popular dictation app for my iPod and tried it the other morning. The results are mixed (see below). While some phrases and even sentences are nearly intact (i.e., "as I write this I'm jogging with Wii fit"—true!), there is a lot of gobbledygook (i.e., I'm sure I've never spoken the word "equestrian" out loud). One big problem was the lack of punctuation. Perhaps another use for this might be to create inner dialog for mentally ill characters:

wondering if I should write something about who wants to be a man they're equestrian with the Manale for Steve's angle and also the fact that I'm doing it everyday of the Lycan I got for now as I write this I'm jogging with Wii fit actually I not writing or typing I'm dictating to something and my iPod you'll see the results after I e-mail it to myself and put it up here so the question is is it possible to ride and walk or exercise at the same time and end up with a readable text. I'm not sure it is but it sure would be great if I could walk in right same time I'd like to try to write dialogs or to speak dialogs without typing get this evening sounds like him and everything will be in my own southern accent elk characters perhaps we'll something

I later realized that I might create punctuation by simply saying "period" and "comma," etc. This worked, but it's a little awkward (and a lot like that famous Victor Borge routine). I read out loud a paragraph I'd written by hand:

Earthlings are strange Megan G-alt. Perquimans in to take a lot of time with her hair. She talked about hair and her earth here have her hair may Chun. Men seem to think about Paul's throwing and kicking and hitting. The women through their hair up and divided and shaped and Minka for sure. Women had around breasts and then didn't, the sept the fact ones. Lemon tart around in high heels and then more comfortable shoes with socks, get both expected to walk next to one another as equals,

I know that "G-alt" is actually supposed to be "thought" since that's what I had written down. But if I had taken a walk and talked out a story, I'm not sure what I would end up with if it was the only copy of it that existed later. Of course, I could use this method to come up with a surprising phrases, e.g., "Lemon tart around in high heels" might be a line in a surrealistic poem (it was actually dictated as "Women walk around in high heels").

So my dream of cheap/free dictation is slightly dashed, for now, but I'll probably use this app when I do a phone interview for work, hoping it might cut down even a slight bit on all the transcription I usually do afterwards.

Invisible words, written in the ether

My iBook has been in the throes of death for years. First, keys became stuck until their covers were discarded (thankfully, I rarely use "~"). Then Internet pages stopped loading. Finally the screen started to flash and sputter if not set at an exact 40 degree angle.

So I began to eye other Apple laptops on eBay; after a few mornings of watching bids flash by, I grew weary of the whole exercise and, on impulse, probably paid too much for an old MacBook Pro.

Although the MacBook loads Internet pages and offers an unblinking screen,  I have yet to fully adopt it. Four weeks after its purchase, all my writing from the last five years still resides in my iBook.  The writing is already backed up on flash drives and external hard disks, so I know that it can be somewhere else, but I can't bring myself to take it out and transfer it completely to another machine.

Getting rid of one machine for another always feels like a little death to me. I get a sweep of nostalgia when we've had to move to a newer, better computer. But there's something else going on here, I  finally realized. To transfer all my words in one motion through the ether somehow acknowledges that they aren't real, that they are invisible, fragile. It feels like I am ripping them from their home, the place of their birth.

I wonder if other writers feel this way? Maybe it's because I first started to write on typewriters and the words could only exist there, unquestionably tangible. Words written on a computer are more of a verb than a noun, an action frozen. They are written, typed, saved. Even when completed, they still remain more an idea than a thing. Writers who have always written on computers perhaps don't feel this need for a specific home for their words.

(The photo above reveals the one thing I've done on my MacBook--play with its Photobooth feature. Self-portrait, March 2011)

The non-virtual books that will remain

In a recent post, I gave my five arguments about why (some) books should continue on paper. But the reality is that the non-virtual books that are likely to survive may not be the picture books and beach paperbacks I advocated for, but books for collectors.

This week CBS devoted a Sunday Morning segment to Taschen Books, which publishes large and beautiful books, sometimes costing thousands of dollars. (Their limited edition Muhammad Ali book costs $15,000). The books are sold online and in their dozen Taschen bookstores. 

Until someone figures out how to create value and exclusivity in e-books (which I can't envision happening ever), art/collectible books—and comic books—will continue to be published on paper.

The digital picture book takes hold

A week after I wrote my post, Five Arguments Against the Total Inevitability of E-books, the Washington Post Book World arrived with this article on the popularity of iPad picture books. So popular, in fact, the article states:

Earlier this week, eight of the top 10 paid book apps on iTunes were picture books. Today’s digital-native children seem keenly interested in a story told to them on a 10-inch screen with a finger’s swipe to reach the next page.

Five arguments against the total inevitability of e-books

Surprisingly, many writers I know are starting to embrace e-book technology. They cite their portability—parents can load up a bunch of kids’ books for long car trips (which might mean more book sales); their paper-bag potential (no one will know you’re reading a romance novel on the subway); and their prospects for generous royalties (anywhere from 25 percent to nearly 100 percent, for self-publishers).

Perhaps the most persuasive argument is that they save trees.

As I’ve said in a past post, I’ll probably be the last person in the United States to buy an e-reader* because they're expensive and I lose things.  But there are still broader, compelling reasons to continue publishing things on paper, including:

1. Longevity. I've had some of the books on my shelves for more than 30 years. If they were in bygone electronic formats (like 8-track tapes or 5-inch floppy disks) they would be useless now. This year's e-book probably won't be readable a decade from now. Good books meant to last still need to be on paper, even if also available electronically.

2. Tactility. Babies need board books they can grab and chew on, and which can offer smooth, rough and fuzzy elements.

3. Sturdiness. Small children need books they can fling and sit on without parents screaming at them. At the same time, the perfect vacation book is not something worth $100+, which must be vigilantly guarded against theft, sunscreen and drops of water. (I've never figured out how the sunbathers in the recent Kindle commercial are going to swim since they can't leave it on their towels).

4. Accessibility. More and more e-editions will mean fewer book titles for the poor. Even if libraries begin to lend e-readers, their cost will limit how many customers can be serviced at any given time. Many families won't be able to buy multiple e-readers, meaning that if newspapers go entirely electronic, sharing the Sunday paper will be a thing of the past—everyone will have to wait their turn.

5. Locality/serendipity. I'm a trained librarian, but I still find many books in my house by the color of their spines, their placement on the shelves. An html search has its value (for finding recipes online, etc.), but it's not the same as browsing a physical space. Many is the time I've stumbled upon an interesting book simply because of where it was in the library—on an adjacent shelf or left on a table. And I would miss bookstores. People who love books need a place where they can go and see one another occasionally. The virtual bookstore is a silent and lonely place.
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* My resolve is not entirely firm since I have the Kindle App on my iPod now (pictured above)—but it gives me a headache if I read on it for more than ten minutes at a time.

In defense of paper

At a PTA meeting I went to a couple of nights ago, some parents argued that, for ecological reasons, the PTA newsletter should no longer be printed and mailed. They argued that parents should read the newsletter online and not expect a paper copy, which costs the PTA thousands of dollars each year in printing and mailing costs. The counter-argument was that not all parents have computers and/or Internet access. So an ad hoc committee was formed that will look into providing computers to parents who don’t have them in the home. (Although, now that I think about it, I’m not sure that the energy required to manufacture, ship and run a computer is all that much ecologically better, in the long run, than printing and mailing a bi-monthly newsletter).

I receive the PTA newsletter by email because it arrives a week earlier that way, but I don’t want to receive all my news—or all the words I read—this way. The primary reason is that it hurts my neck to read at the computer for long stretches of time. And online text glows, which never feels natural to me. Stare at it too long and I start getting eyestrain and an ache in my forehead. I never had a headache in my life—or neck problems—until I started to use a computer in the late 1980s.

If everything goes online, I’m afraid readers of the future will be awkward head-jutting, Advil-popping creatures tethered to the computer screen (since that will be their only access to any kind of writing and all measures of entertainment), unable to move away since their physical misery will keep them from wanting to get up.

Of course, there are portable devices that lack the glow of a computer screen, and which you can read as you eat breakfast, but as I said in a previous post, unless the Kindle becomes so cheap I can buy it at the Dollar Store, where I buy my sunglasses, I’m not likely to own one. Leaving the paper Style section of the Washington Post behind on your Metro seat is no big deal; reading it on a Kindle and leaving the Kindle on your Metro seat is nearly tragic, given its current cost.

But beyond cost and discomfort, I would miss paper because books and magazines are more inviting to me than hyperlinks. Sure there are splashy web pages, but looking at a publication online, I miss the typical Table of Contents, being able to physically thumb through a magazine, letting things catch my eye. More than anything, I'd miss layouts—I rarely see an online layout that compares to a great two-page spread.

And, since I have chosen what comes into my home, the books and magazines I own or borrow from the library usually have more authority than whatever pops up in a Google answer. One of the best books I own is The Indoor Kitchen Garden, which I bought 20 years ago—$14.95 seemed so extravagant at the time. I used it to start an herb garden in my high-rise, no balcony apartment in D.C. and still use it to figure out what plants can go on my deck in containers. Plant by plant, it tells me how big the pot must be to provide for the roots, what the soil pH should be, etc. I’ve tried to find similar information on the Internet but when I type in “basil,” I’m given hundreds of pages, most not specific to container gardening, many written with god-knows what expertise. I can try to sift through and navigate the many possibilities on the Internet, or simply go to my bookshelf, pull down my well-worn book, and have my answer in a just a minute.

Postscript: I wrote this on my laptop a couple of days ago and uploaded it today, finally realizing the irony of complaining about reading on the Internet via a blog post that I now hope people will read on... the Internet.

Tiny tales of technology: Flash drives

The other week a writer friend took what looked to be a small, striped toiletry bag out of her leather purse, unzipped it and dumped its contents on the table. An array of flash drives poured out, in an assortment of neon colors, looking like so many flattened lipstick tubes. She said she backs up all her writing on these flash drives, color coded according to the type of writing, and carries them with her everywhere because she doesn't trust computers. 

"But what if you're mugged," I asked.

"Then I'd still have it on my computer."

"What if your house burns down the same day you're mugged?" I asked.

"Then I would be in a lot of  trouble," she replied.

This has inspired me to find a less home-based method of backup. I'm thinking of putting all my writing from all my computers and external hard drives onto one mega-flash drive and locking it up in a safety deposit box, at least until that thumb-size technology is eclipsed by something else.

Why I'm not buying an e-reader

I am not going to buy a Kindle. Not even if print newspapers disappear and "print" news is available only on such a device. Not even if paperbacks and hardcovers go away and all new books are issued electronically.

My obstinance in this regard is not from a tactile need to feel and smell a paper book, nor because I love getting black ink on my hands every morning when I read the Washington Post. The reason I won't buy a Kindle is the same reason I never buy anything but Dollar Store sunglasses anymore: I'm sure I would lose it. I would set it down on a Metro seat or leave it at someone's house and that would be the end of it. Not such a bad thing when you lose a paperback book that costs five bucks, but near tragic when the device you're reading it on costs more than $100.

Perhaps it is because I am a kleptomaniac when it comes to pens—my drawers are full of pens I've permanently borrowed from stores (to sign credit card receipts, etc.) and from friends—that the universe requires a balance. Thus, I constantly lose sunglasses. So many sunglasses that I now buy five to ten cheap pairs at the start of the summer, and feel lucky if I can get to the end of the summer with one pair left.

So, when the Kindle sells for a dollar, or it's as cheap as a pen and friends don't mind too much if I absently take it from them, I'll be glad to have one, no matter how temporary.