Monthly Archives: April 2019

Reading

How long to read that book?

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A new online database is offering a service that estimates how long it will take a reader to complete a book. They have twelve million titles in their vaults, so you should find the book that interests you. It’s possible to tailor the reading speed per minute rate, should yours be different from their average of 300 words.

http://www.howlongtoreadthis.com/index.php

I find this intriguing and a bit worrying. Given that there’s been a reported trend towards people reading bite-size chunks of stories on their smartphones, and that short stories and novellas are proving more popular, where does that leave novels? Will readers look at how long a book will take to consume, discounting it should the estimate be too long?

Too long; didn’t read is increasingly seen as an abbreviation TL;DR

I anticipate that it will come about that publishers start to print the probable reading time on the cover, in the same way, that CDs and DVDs have a running time. I’m being whimsical here, but perhaps the information could morph into nutritional content as well:

‘A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens contains valuable lessons about charity, sharing, benevolence and conquering regret; parental warning: contains ghosts, so may be unsuitable for young children.’

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Reading

Bookmarks—what do you use?

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This article in the Guardian shows some unusual objects used as bookmarks:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/sep/24/bookmarks-versus-dog-ears-how-you-keep-track-of-your-reading-in-pictures

I abhor the practice of turning over the corners of pages to mark where someone left off reading. I also get annoyed when previous readers have left written comments on the page, as I was brought up to value and look after books. I can just about see the point of making useful notes in a textbook, and it’s something that I’ve done with Haynes workshop manuals for cars and motorcycles when I’ve found a better way of doing a repair.

Image result for bookmark cartoon

Although I’m able to remember the number of a page, where I left off reading, for, after all, it’s only one number, I tend to use postcards as markers these days—such as when I have four books on the go at the same time. These cards include a greetings card with a charming message from a friend, as well as some American rustic postcards from Wyoming that a photographer sent me. I’ve been known to use squares of tissue paper, though it’s been a while since I had a proper leather bookmark with tassels.

Librarians are always finding bookmarks, and usually, keep a box of them under the counter— just in case a reader asks for their return. When I worked as a librarian, I sometimes found things that we most definitely did not keep. You may find it hard to believe, but these included slices of bacon (cooked and uncooked), condoms (used and unused), combs, straws, razor blades, cocktail sticks, matches and paper-clips. Weirdest of all was a squashed army of woodlice, which I think are known as pillbugs in America. Their flattened corpses marked the reader’s progress through the book. This slaughter had been deliberately done, as the reader left a message declaring her hatred for woodlice beside her last victim!

Image result for woodlice

Writing

Con Games: Why Stephen King Can’t Write

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After Stephen King’s article about whether a novelist can be too prolific, which I posted in the thread of that title, someone has gone and stuck the boot into him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-conniff/con-games-why-stephen-kin_b_5601945.html

Writing in the Huffington Post, Michael Conniff has concerns about the quality of Stephen King’s writing – while still liking much about him. My initial reaction is that popular writing is rarely of high literary quality. This makes it easy for elitists to look down their nose at the commercial success of an author who sells books by the million.

Campfire tales, tall stories and yarns are no less worthy than a weighty tome that has been agonised over for style, language and philosophical message. It’s like comparing a hamburger with a haute cuisine dish of beef bourguignon – each has its time, place and purpose. I might read (or eat) something on the move when I’ve got a few minutes to spare that is very different from what I’d consume at my leisure at home.

What do you think? Is Stephen King a nobody novelist who just got lucky? It’s worth remembering that ‘Carrie’, his first novel to be a success, was actually the fourth novel that he wrote. He almost ditched ‘Carrie’, only finishing it at the insistence of his wife who fished the pages out of the garbage. Had she not done so, he could still be languishing on the slush pile.

Image result for Carrie (novel)

Humour

Bo’s Café Life

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‘Bo’s Café Life’ is a series of comic cartoons created by Wayne E. Pollard. They take the simple form of coffee cups representing the thoughts and comments of their various writer drinkers.

https://boscafelife.wordpress.com/

Pollard is a writer and cartoonist, and his site was voted one of the best 101 websites for writers in 2013. I subscribe to his daily cartoon, and though it can be a bit hit-and-miss, he sometimes really nails the dilemmas that we writers face. I find myself smiling wryly at cartoons like this:

Weekend-Bella-Shutting Down

Writing

Stephen King: Can a Novelist Be Too Productive?

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Some of you may have seen this article by Stephen King, which was in the New York Times in their Sunday Review section:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/31/opinion/stephen-king-can-a-novelist-be-too-productive.html?_r=0

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It certainly made me think about the relationship between quality and productivity. I created a lot of writing when I jump-started my creativity in June 2013. It was impossible for me not to write, and nine novellas, four short stories and thirty volumes of poetry and song lyrics poured out of me – a literary Mount Saint Helens. 2014 was devoted to writing my first novel, with a few poems thrown in for sanity’s sake.

Image result for gif Mount Saint Helens.

2015 was spent chasing literary agents, and all I did creatively was write four poems. From 2016-2018, I wrote another four Cornish Detective novels, hoping that a series would be easier to query with than a stand-alone.

All of this activity has given me an appreciation of the fits and starts of some authors’ careers, as well as the production line output of others. It’s always puzzled me how some writers take so long to produce a new novel, while others appear to be one-hit-wonders. Arundhati Roy wrote The God of Small Things, which deservedly won the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction. Although she announced that she was working on a second novel in 2007, it didn’t appear until ten years later, called The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. That’s not to say that she wasn’t busy, as she wrote many essays and become an advocate and activist for social causes.

At the other extreme is British romantic novelist Barbara Cartland. She wrote more than 700 books, leaving behind 160 unpublished manuscripts on her death at the age of 98. Her worldwide sales are estimated to be anything from 750 million to more than 2 billion copies. You might think that she would have worn her fingers away with this output, but her usual writing method was to lay on a sofa and tell the story to her secretary, who later typed it up. In this way, she created a novel in two weeks.

Image result for Barbara Cartland
I’m guessing that most authors are somewhere in between Arundhati Roy and Barbara Cartland in their productivity.

What do you think about the conundrum posed that being prolific means a drop in quality, while taking time produces fine literature?

Reading

Are tablet computers harming our children’s ability to read?

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This article is in today’s Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/24/tablets-apps-harm-help-children-read

My first reaction to the concerns raised is that as long as children are reading something, it’s better than not reading at all. I agree with the worries that tablets could join televisions as being unpaid babysitters that are used to occupy the attention of youngsters, while their parents do other things.

There’s plenty of distractions available on tablets, which might well take a young reader’s attention away from the story. I like it that Gruffalo creator Julia Donaldson took a stand against allowing an app for her book to be created.

Image result for gruffalo and julia donaldson

The notion that the powers of imagination could be neutered by expecting things to happen automatically at the touch of a button is terrifying to me. Extrapolate that concept far enough, and you’re entering territory where stories are written by computers – which is already happening, of course, as discussed in other threads. Artists, of all types, would become redundant.

I agree with what the UK’s National Literacy Trust’s project manager Irene Picton has to say about books:

“We often forget that books are a technology too, and one that’s had several centuries to evolve. With ebooks or apps, we’re comparing them to a relatively new format for reading. It’s important to be open-minded around this,”

It troubles me that the social aspect of reading a book together can be lost, should the tablet be seen as a solo device. Also, their space-saving capabilities mean that homes will have fewer books on shelves, which also reduces their importance. The tactile qualities of a book make it a friend to the reader, something lacking in a shiny electrical device.

Do any of you have children or grandchildren? It would be interesting to hear some empirical evidence on how youngsters use tablets for their reading.

Image result for child with tablet computer cartoon

Writing

Where Writers Write

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Some famous writers were rather eccentric in their choices of where to write, with a few needing the reassurance of strange rituals and fetishes to feel comfortable.

I’ve heard of authors writing while standing up, which could avoid some of the health risks of spending ages sitting down, but would surely be tiring. There are lots of retailers selling stand-up desks these days, though I’ve yet to see a bed or bath aimed at horizontal writing.

Image result for posturite sit-stand desk

Haruki Murakami has shared some images of his writing desk and accoutrements. I see that he’s another writer who works with music playing. I rather covet his reading lamps and am currently watching several flexible neck and Anglepoise lamps on eBay. I’m relying on a bedside table light, atop a suitcase next to my writing table for illumination at the moment.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/aug/18/heres-haruki-murakamis-desk-is-yours-as-tidy

I don’t have any lucky talismans around my computer, just a mobile phone, memory sticks and a wristwatch, along with a long-bladed Kitchen Devil knife with a serrated edge that I use as a back-scratcher! I think that this makes me pragmatic, rather than stylish!

Some more writers have shared images of their writing desks on the Guardian’s book page:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2015/aug/20/thought-your-desk-was-messy-think-again

I think that I’d find sitting by a window with an attractive view too distracting, especially if I had birds to watch. The nearest window to me is ten feet away, looking out on a car park for the petrol station where I live, so not that attractive an alternative to my laptop screen.

The writers’ desks with views of the natural world made me think of Richard Le Gallienne‘s poem: 

‘I Meant To Do My Work Today’

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand,
So what could I do but laugh and go?

Image result for become a writer they said, it will be fun they said