The Times and the New Social Reader

On Monday, I had a great idea for a blog post. So good, in fact, that I almost asked Caroline to switch days. But then I remembered how devoted Caroline is to her Monday posts, polishing drafts over the weekend, thinking about subjects for weeks in advance.

No one gets between that girl and Mondays.

Well, that’s fine, I thought, it can wait until Friday. Except now Friday is here and, as you’ve probably already guessed, I’ve forgotten the topic that so inspired me. After thinking about it, hard, I thought of something that could have been my great idea—but I’m not sure. The one feeling worse than not remembering a great idea: possibly remembering it, but not having that sense of conviction, not hearing that little snick as it clicks into place.

Anyway, here’s what I was thinking about. I’m currently in a master’s program, and this semester, I’m taking a class on readers and reading. In our first session, our professor had us share our thoughts on that subject—remembering Katie’s beautifully written post from a few months ago, I brought up the question of professionalizing reading (something Jess touched on yesterday as well). That was fine, but a more interesting point was made a few minutes later, when a classmate mentioned the historical shift from communal reading (the family gathered around a father and the fire) to private reading, from the oral to the silent. Now, this woman said, we seem to be swinging back to a more social form of reading with the proliferation of comments, Twitter, and email, with all of the ways of discussing reading material as a group and sharing pieces you find interesting.

The conversation quickly switched topics again, but I stayed with her observation for a while, because it just seemed so true to me. Some of the recent articles in The New York Times on "Why Criticism Matters" also mentioned the socializing effect of internet commentary, where everyone's a critic, but—I thought in class—isn’t the truly strange part how much we share? Looking at the Times’s home page, under “Most Popular,” we find this:

Most E-mailed
Most Blogged
Most Searched
Most Viewed

That, my friends, is peculiar. First of all, it’s peculiar that these forms of sharing (e-mailing, blogging, even searching) are so prominent. When “Most Popular” means “Most E-mailed,” it does not mean “Most Read.” That, one would assume, corresponds to “Most Viewed.” Instead, “Most E-mailed” means those articles readers feel most compelled to give to friends and family. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at this moment, the subjects of those articles are not incredibly serious:

1. Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen
2. Nicholas D. Kristof: Tussling Over Jesus
3. Diner's Journal: The Minimalist Chooses 25 of His Favorites
4. Paul Krugman: Their Own Private Europe
5. Personal Health: Long and Short of Calcium and Vitamin D
6. State of the Art: Ins and Outs of Calling via the Net
7. The Great Deflation: In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks
8. Well: How Meditation May Change the Brain
9. Ugandan Who Spoke Up for Gays Is Beaten to Death
10. Skin Deep: Full-Service Gyms Feel a Bit Flabby

“Most E-mailed” is to “Most Popular,” I would contest, as the Thursday Styles section is to the rest of the Times (and in fact you’ll see Styles articles on the list frequently). The articles are a little bit more embarrassing, more about wacky health trends and shocking diet discoveries and, well, the shortcomings of gyms. By contrast, here's "Most Viewed" at the same moment:

1. Egypt Calls In Army as Protesters Rage
2. Paul Krugman: Their Own Private Europe
3. Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Galvanizes Arab Frustration
4. A Car Sale Gone Wrong, Then a Grim Discovery
5. David Brooks: Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burke
6. The Great Deflation: In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks
7. The Minimalist Chooses 25 of His Favorites
8. Court Allows Emanuel on Ballot for Chicago Mayor
9. Ford Shares Tumble as Fourth Quarter Misses Forecast
10. Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen

OK. There’s some overlap. Japan, Bittman, stressed freshmen. But really, doesn’t this second list give you some sense of pride? Readers of the Times may be sharing articles about calcium and meditation, but they’re reading about the protests in Egypt and domestic economics and politics. They’re more internationally and nationally engaged than “Most E-mailed” might lead you to believe.

Bu in the publishing world, it’s “Most E-mailed” that matters. When a first serial piece makes it there, we’re delighted. When a particularly smart Sunday magazine article is up, we take notice, and you can bet that writer’s agent will be getting a few calls. But friends: what’s being emailed is not necessarily what’s being read. If that were the case, wouldn’t you expect the two lists to match exactly, or almost exactly? People seem to be reading the news they seek out on their own more than the news that their friends send them. And yet—books don’t work that way, do they? What seems to breed a bestseller is a combination of quality and word of mouth. You need it to be shared.

I’m not sure yet what to make of these thoughts, but it seems to me that the Times’s structuring of their “Most Popular” articles says something about how we should think about buying and selling books in publishing. Americans—or those who are reading the Times, anyway—seem to be interested in the tough topics, although we have to dig a little for that information. So my question is this: how do we make our “Most E-mailed” list look more like the “Most Viewed”? How do we make our readers buy and share the books it seems they just might want to read? How do we make the private reader of the past translate into this new (old) social reader?

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Whee! The countdown to the holiday break has begun and, in the offices of publishing houses and agents all over town, normal routine is slowly sliding by the wayside. These final weeks of the working year bring with them a feeling of excitement and anticipation that, despite its annual recurrence, never ceases to take me pleasantly by surprise.

Some of the first signs of the season appear overnight in our office lobby: two giant wreaths, two menorahs, a gaggle of poinsettias, and four life-size Nutcracker soldiers. Some might say it's childish to admit that their presence gives my step a little extra spring in the morning, but that's the truth. And I think that I'm not alone--the front desk folks and the elevator attendants seem to smile more brightly, and it feels natural to exchange a grin with a coworker as we wait for the elevators below a garland shimmering with gold.

Sadly, our floor doesn't go in much for collective holiday decoration. With my string of lights and single card, I'm probably the most outlandish celebrant here. But as I walk down the halls, I can detect the sound of Wham! singing "Last Christmas" through more than one person's headphones. I rock out to holiday music all day on Pandora, too--it's much more fun to do all the end-of-the-year catch-up work while internally crooning along to Bing Crosby.

Even though we lack tinsel and giant baubles, you can still tell what season it is by the number of gift packages and bags that start arriving. Most of them collect along the publicity corridor, which for this month becomes a regular diversion on my route around the office. You would not believe what they collect: chocolates, cookie plates, cakes, cheeses, and all kinds of fancy candy. Right now there's even a box of gift bags containing half-bottles of Moet et Chandon, which I unfortunately don't think is for the collective taking. Production gets a fair amount of love too from all the printing companies and photo agencies, but I have slightly less of a pretext to be wandering around their hallway, so I haven't had a chance to assess their haul this year. Disappointingly, Editorial tends to be the most barren of all unless a good-natured author happens to see the light and send something along; usually, a few cards from agencies constitute our seasonal gifts.

I think the personalities of different literary agencies emerge most clearly around the holidays. Just as it's revealing to see what cards your friends and acquaintances choose to send, so it is to examine how each agency chooses to acknowledge (or not acknowledge) the holidays. Some don't send anything, whereas others mail elaborate cards, signed by the entire office, that turn into calendars. A lot of agencies choose to throw parties around this time, too, which is even more interesting from an anthropological perspective. Some of the bigger boutique operations hold formal bashes for the big editors: they send official invitations, hire a bartender, and have the food catered. Others pride themselves on their informal get-togethers, where assistants are welcome and everyone pours their own wine and helps themselves to a Trader Joe's cookie assortment.

The other ubiquitous gathering of the season is the hosted party. Young editors or agents who work together will often pool their resources and industry contact lists to jointly host a shindig in the reserved back room of a reasonably trendy bar. These are a bit less nerve-wracking than agency parties, as there's less of a professional agenda; the crowd is usually comprised of people climbing through the various ranks of assistanthood, and although you are there to "network" the guise of the holidays and the neutral location make things feel more socially genuine. With the prospect of the break ahead, everyone is usually feeling quite jolly and ready to have a drink (or three), and an authentic sense of fraternity often sets in as you begin comparing stories of servitude with other party goers.

These numerous side events notwithstanding, the November/December party carousel is always centered around some kind of official bash. It seems that the improved fiscal outlook of 2010 has spurred publishing houses to be more extravagant than last year; there are reports of one company-wide blow-out at Gotham Hall, a house that decorated each floor of their building with a different theme to host a grown-up version of "Around the World," and more than one dinner-drinks event at a rented restaurant. Individual imprints and groups also celebrate informally with happy hours and lunches. And, despite the essence of forced festivity that always lingers at the fringes of these mandated office celebrations, I think I might enjoy them most of all. And here's why.

It takes a village to make a book--editors, production managers and editors, designers, publicists, marketers, and salespeople. During the stress and chaos of the year's span cycle, it's all to easy to lose track of the big picture, of the real scope of achievement. However, there's something about December that brings everything back into focus. Our slowed schedule, the release of cumulative "best of" lists, and a collective holiday spirit unite all the separate departments together in a community celebration of accomplishment. Looking back at what I, my imprint, and the house I work for have done this year makes my little heart swell with pride. Sure, there has been sweat (try hauling boxes of books and manuscripts around), blood (oh, the paper cuts), and more than a few tears, but at this time of year--particularly when slightly inebriated on the company dollar and surrounded by my closest co-workers, many of whom have become friends--it all seems more than worth it.

As you may have discerned by now, I'm kind of an emotional lush at Christmas. It gets to me, all this baby Jesus-ing and "Joy to the World" caroling. If I go on, I'll just get worse. So let me just say, "God bless ye merry publishing people," and more importantly, "God bless ye merry readers." Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good and safe break.

XO, Hannah

The Luxury of Reading

Good morning to you on this rather dismal, grey New York Friday. I apologize for being in absentia for the past couple of weeks; my mother slipped on some acorns and "broke" her knee(true story!). She did quite a number on herself and actually had to have surgery, and so I've been boosting Amtrak's profit margins this quarter by zipping back and forth to be with her.

One of things she managed to do was tear her quad tendon. The way they mend it is actually quite intriguing (but not for the squeamish) -- they tie wire sutures to the torn edge of the tendon, and then drill holes in the kneecap so they can lash it tight, like a sail to a boom. Then they staple up the six-inch incision and strap you in a medieval-looking metal brace that locks the leg straight...and you can't put weight on it for six weeks while it heals. SIX WEEKS.

As of today, my mother has been under medically-enforced house arrest for a month, with at least another two weeks stretching out ahead, and she's really bored. Especially now she's cutting back on the prescription narcotics and actually awake. People come to visit, of course, but there's a lot of "down" time. So, appealing to the charitable hearts of my publishing pals, I have been sending her a lot of books.

She has been whipping through them at a voracious pace: since last Friday she has finished The Cookbook Collector and the first two Henning Mankell mysteries, and she's now knee-deep in Bill Bryson's At Home. When I was visiting her this past weekend, while watching her tick off on her fingers the other books she's read since her accident, and what she has next on her stack -- Room is first up, if you're wondering -- I realized that I was...jealous. Jealous because she actually has time to read.

If you're reading this blog, you're most likely an avid reader. But, if you are anything like me, the daily demands of life and work mean that the reading you do is in bed, in the half-hour or so before you turn off the light; it's in brief snatches of time on the subway or on the bus; perhaps, on a Sunday morning, you allow yourself a few pages before falling back asleep. I do spend a lot of time reading for work, but for me that's totally separate to "real" reading -- reading for pleasure, reading books that I've heard about or had recommended to me, books that I've eagerly anticipated. Books that I read simply because I want to, not because someone's asking me for a report.

I can barely remember the last time I spent an entire day, or even a full afternoon, just reading. All I can rely on are the visceral memories of childhood, of being utterly engrossed in a book to the exclusion of everything else. It's a completely different reading experience, a whole-body engagement that truly releases the transformative power of books. You give the words time and attention, and in return they envelop you into their world. Hours later, you return, a little dazed and confused -- a bit exhausted, even -- but exhilarated, different from the person you were when you begun.

This kind of connection just can't happen in the brief engagements we make with books in normal life. But for my mother, "normal life" has been suspended, and she has been able to rediscover what it feels like to READ: to lie with a book from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., to be so deeply embedded in it that breaking the connection to eat or go to the loo is like ripping off a Band-Aid, or clipping a blood vessel. And, as I listen to her describe how she felt while reading Great House , I know I want to feel that again, too. More often than I'd like, the pages of books go by almost in a blur because I'm exhausted and already drained; I read the words but I don't get "in it," I don't experience the holy communion that will remind me once again why nothing will ever, ever replace books.

So, here is my vow -- to make time to read. To turn off my phone and shut down my computer, to lie on the sofa and offer myself up at the altar of the book gods, hoping they'll take me.

In Defense of Little, Brown

If you’re a James Patterson fan—or if you read The New York Times—you’ll know that, apparently for the first time ever, two Kindle editions are currently priced higher than their hardcover counterparts. The books, James Patterson’s Don’t Blink and Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants, and their respective publishers, Little, Brown and Penguin, have subsequently come under some criticism on Amazon. The Patterson novel, for example, currently has 5 five-star, 6 four-star, 2 three-star, 2 two-star, and 31 one-star reviews. Let’s sample them, shall we?

“I refuse to purchase this book IN ANY FORMAT until the publisher lowers the e-book price. It's time for them to come to terms with the technology.”

“I join in the consumer outrage that a print publisher would charge more for a digital edition than a paper edition. I sense that the conglomerate publishers need to learn a lesson, and having a book or three fail because of consumer backlash is probably the only way to get that message across to them.”

“This is corporate greed on display as the suits in their ivory tower think they can set the price for the digital version of the book anywhere they please and people will buy it just so they can have the e-book reading experience. They think we're too stupid to realize they're price gouging us. I'd like to hear one these publishing executives explain the rationale for this pricing. I'd be very interested in learning how the publishing industry can save us money by not publishing a digital edition.”

“Electronic books are definitely the way of the future, like it or not, and this pricing is how we now know it is true. Commerce has seen the future and it is with us ebook readers. Therefore the higher price, even though it is infinitely cheaper to produce and transport.”

“The publishing companies will not see the next decade unless they come to terms with new technology. Pricing an ebook more than the hardcopy is not the right start.”

Ultimately, of the 31 one-stars, five actually evaluate the quality of the writing. The others are spent complaining about either the ebook/hardcover price gap or about a misleading free sample button that Amazon featured on the book page.

Before addressing the anger these would-be readers feel, and the points they bring up, I have another question to ask. When did Amazon reviews become a legitimate place to rate anything other than the book itself? Dear ranters: other Amazon readers are not looking at the ratings to learn more about your personal politics, your views on the author, or your views on the publisher. In fact, those readers might just have their own opinions on those various subjects, and they’ll hardly need the benefit of your thoughts. No, they’re looking for informed opinions about the book itself, and that’s probably what you should stick to. Any review prefaced with “I haven’t read this book, but” is useless. Write an op-ed or a letter to the publisher instead, as I'm doing right now in response to your reviews.

Anyway, back to the Patterson reviews themselves. After all of this anger, if you click on five-star reviews, you’ll find four reviews that evaluate the quality of the book, and then this lonely little voice:

“Amazon is underselling other booksellers by making almost no profit on each book. It's akin to an insider bank thief skimming pennies from millions of accounts and making a fortune. The problem isn't that the kindle price is too much, it's that the hardcover is being sold for too little.”

Er… what? But what about the CONGLOMERATE PUBLISHERS full of CORPORATE GREED intent on GOUGING CONSUMERS and incapable of COMING TO TERMS WITH THE TECHNOLOGY?

Well, let’s just (tentatively) follow Mr. Five-Star’s suggestion, that maybe there’s a misunderstanding here, and discuss some of the claims both explicitly and implicitly made in the one-star reviews, with that thought in mind.

1) Claim #1: Publishers are setting a higher price for the ebook than the hardcover.
Actually, as the New York Times article points out, there are two separate entities with pricing power here. The first is, yes, the publisher, because in these two cases, they have the ability to set the Kindle price. But the second entity is Amazon, and they’ve set the hardcover price on their website. Amazon’s business model, in case anyone isn’t aware, is to buy large numbers of hardcovers at the wholesaler’s discount and to resell them to consumers at more or less this price. It’s a decision that benefits the consumer but is ultimately in Amazon’s self-interest: as Mr. Five-Star above notes, such discounts mean that Amazon makes a very slight profit on each book but ultimately establishes a monopoly, meaning that those few pennies become a fortune. So in fact, publishers are still setting a lower price for the ebook than their hardcover asking price. It’s Amazon that is undercutting.

2) Claim #2: Ebooks are cheap to produce and should be cheap to buy.
Makes sense. But here’s a rundown of publishers’ costs from “Publish or Perish,” an article by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker: “Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price. A simplified version of a publisher’s costs might run as follows. On a new, twenty-six-dollar hardcover, the publisher typically receives thirteen dollars. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price; this accounts for $3.90. Perhaps $1.80 goes to the costs of paper, printing, and binding, a dollar to marketing, and $1.70 to distribution. The remaining $4.60 must pay for rent, editors, a sales force, and any write-offs of unearned author advances. Bookstores return about thirty-five per cent of the hardcovers they buy, and publishers write off the cost of producing those books. Profit margins are slim.” To summarize: only a very slim portion of the price of a book represents what is spent printing it. The rest goes to the people who are making the book the best it can be: the author and the editor, as well as the publicity, marketing, sales, and art teams. One might argue, with some validity, that many publishing houses today are overstaffed and could be run more efficiently, but that’s ultimately beside the point here. The point to be made is that just because something is digital, it doesn’t mean it’s free or even cheap. The same effort goes into any good book that is published, and these expenses will remain regardless of whether reading goes entirely digital.

3) Claim #3: Ebooks are the wave of the future, and publishers refuse to accommodate that fact.
Actually, publishers recognize this—more than you could know—and are working very hard to change. It’s not easy, as you’d probably guess. Publishing houses, like any company, are made up of a lot of different people with different kinds of knowledge and different vested interests. There are young people, mostly assistants, who are perhaps more knowledgable about technology and more excited for its potential. There are older employees who can’t tell an iPod from an iPad. There are those on either side who don’t fit the mold, including young employees who are entrenched in orthodoxy and older employees who are excited for technology but don’t understand it and those who do. There are those, like me, who are mildly excited for innovation but are ultimately pragmatic, and just see this as the inevitable, mostly unscary next step. What publishers do refuse to accommodate, though, is the belief that what Amazon says is the future is indeed the future. Ebooks, as an employee here said recently, are media’s next frontier, an untamed Wild West. From royalty rates to ebook prices (two points of contention that are ultimately linked, contested between agents/authors and booksellers, with publishing houses in between), it’s a world of brawls and uncertainty, and publishers are trying just as hard as Amazon and Andrew Wylie to figure out what’s right and best for readers—and ourselves—as we push forward.

4) Claim #4: Publishers are greedy—and hate us, the readers.
This is both an explicit and an implicit claim. The reviewers above seem to think that Amazon is on their side and the publishers are out to get them, to squeeze every last drop from them. But this isn’t true. The thing is, the people who work in publishing love books. That’s why we’re here—it’s certainly not a career to go into for the money. And because of that, we also love you, the readers. We’re here to see that what we love, good books, is something that continues into the future, and that those books always get to you. Now, there’s been a lot of talk about the death of print. Sometimes the wild talkers have cast you, the ebook reader—or maybe you, the American non-reader—as some sort of philistine. Either you’re not reading or you’re reading trash. I apologize for that talk now, because when I see ebook sales, I know that it’s not true. When I see soaring ebook sales, sales that put hardcover results to shame, I’m hopeful: because it means you care. It means you want our books. Yes, we want to sell them to you—but we also want to just know you’re reading. A world of readers means a world where our passions are still important and relevant.

There are plenty of other things I could address here—things that I believe in, like the continuing importance of at least a small print run, and of the value of the people who work at publishing houses, especially editors and copyeditors—but this has gone on long enough. Although I’m sad to see Stieg Larsson deposed from the top of the New York Times bestseller list, best of luck to you, James Patterson, and to your devoted readers—solidarity is exactly what we need as we move forward into this brave new world.

Lost in a Sea of Words

This is my first blog post in well over a month, and I feel more than a little unsteady in my hands. Every Saturday for the last five weeks, I've set down at my computer to type something--desperately, anything--to no avail. I have been at a loss for words, part of a much larger malady: I've fallen out of love with reading and with writing, and I have no idea what to do with myself. For a woman who's spent her whole conscious life buried in books, and whose character has been shaped by that engagement with the written word, losing my love has had a jarring effect. It's as if I've become a broken glass, unable to hold what was so dear before.

There's a lot of reasons for this loss, both personal and professional. A divorce and three successive moves have overwhelmed me in certain ways, but equally true are the consequences of a decade spent in publishing. Something that once was a joy has become a burden--watching books come in, be published, fade away or find new life, but in either case constantly shadowed by the limitlessness number of titles marching up behind them. I look up at the shelves above my desk and instead of being thrilled by the variety of unread books, I can only think of how many months it would take to digest even one row--and that's without turning around and facing the three double-stacked bookcases behind me, or thinking of the extensive shelves at home.

This is not all bad, realizing my own reading mortality. There's a Wordsworth poem that I think of often, which begins: "The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." Like a lot of people, as evidenced by the slow food and minimalist movements, I'm taking stock of my own situation in the world and trying to learn to live with "enough." For my last move, I gave away 1/3 of my books, and am trying to prune even more now. I may, as Whitman says, contain multitudes, and perhaps part of my despair is a simple mental cry for clarity and slowness, a different way of dealing with this enormous world.

But it's the lack of desire, of passion at all, that saddens me. Reading now is like taking medicine, something done believing that it will make me better, not through any joy in the act itself. It's like making my bed, which always seemed incredibly pointless to me, until I realized that there was something--a great deal--to be said for making a place tidy each day, instead of climbing into and out disorder. There are acts we do to keep ourselves whole, even when that feeling of calm completeness seems so elusive.

It will come as no surprise to you, I imagine, as it surprised me not a twit to land recently on a book that described this all to me, my feeling of being at a loss in the world and so far from the beloved home that books had always created for me. Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me delves into her own and others' experiences with acedia, a deep apathy and indifference to the world, a kind of soul-weariness. I'm halfway done, and while it hasn't brought me out of this particular place in myself, it's a comfort to have a companion along the way, and a voice that encourages faith in the midst of confusion.

I'm relying on friends as well, trying to draw their passions to replenish my own. I posted on Facebook on Friday, looking for suggestions and was heartened by the responses from friends, relatives, coworkers, and publishing acquaintances. People who understood both _why_ it mattered to lose my way with words, and also had advice for places to look for a balm for my broken heart. And what a cornucopia! Neil Gaiman, Kay Ryan, Anna Karenina, Jennifer Egan, What is the What, P.D. Wodehouse and Waugh and Alice Munro and a host of other authors and titles.

Typing that list now, I feel the flickerings of interest and the tendrils of desire unfurling a little. I'm not entirely ungrateful for this time of dispassion in my life, as it's required me to reflect on what I want and to make my way through these questions and confusions. I am finding that path slowly, but with determination: scrubbling through the underbrush, leaning on the love of others and their own abiding love of books, and depending finally on the words themselves to save me, as they have so many times before and for so many people besides myself.

Beach Reads

I spent the weekend with friends on Fire Island in the little town of Kismet. It rained on Saturday, but today was sunny and gorgeous. One of my favorite things about the beach is that no matter the weather, it's always a perfect reading day. Yesterday I read curled up on the couch, listening to the rain falling outside. Today we sat together and read our books under umbrellas, venturing into the rough waves when we got too hot.

I took a little informal survey of who was reading what. Therese brought a couple of books with her, and had trouble settling on one. She started with Couples by John Updike, but decided on Saturday evening that she was annoyed with Updike's sex scenes and his frequent use of the word "flanks" for a woman's bottom. I lent her my new copy of The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, and she liked it at first, but said she wasn't in the mood for a fairy tale. She ultimately decided to fall back on her favorite writer as of late, David Foster Wallace, and read his collection of short stories, Girl With Curious Hair. Before the weekend, she had finished The Possessed by Elif Batuman, which she loved, and left it at the beach house for someone else to read.

Meanwhile, Marcia (pictured, center) was also reading David Foster Wallace, but had chosen his masterwork Infinite Jest. Always one to be in vogue and up with the latest trends, the last time I saw Marcia at the beach she was reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and this weekend we discussed the trilogy, and how we felt about Lisbeth as a character. Everywhere I turn at the beach, someone is reading one of the books in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.

Matt had finished Let the Great World Spin, and was on to Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, which he had borrowed from Joe. Christy (pictured, left) was reading The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Nabokov and Katie (pictured, right) was reading Little Bee by Chris Cleave.

I had brought a couple of books with me, but settled mostly on The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake because my friend Jana who works for Berlin Verlag told me that she loved it and that her colleague has just bought the German translation rights. Cat, who was also at the beach, told me that she took a writing class from the author, Aimee Bender, at USC and couldn't wait to read it. Other beach books I have on deck are C by Tom McCarthy, Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, my August book for review You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin. I think short story collections are often the best format for the beach, and so I have been bringing Birds of America to the beach as a back-up in case I feel too distracted with volleyball games and seashell collecting.

What books are you bringing to the beach?

Book Rules

I was sitting at home on Saturday writing my friend’s online dating profile.

I’d say a successful profile is 60 percent: good profile picture (cute, flattering, not overly trying) and 40 percent: self-description and responses to questions (smart, sensitive, try to be witty).

I was going through the questions quickly. Describe yourself (my friend): People person. Compassionate. Down to earth.

It was easy to describe my friend. I’d rather describe her than myself.

What do you want to do with your life? Easy! I want to make a positive impact in the world.

What would you be doing on a typical Friday night? Dinner with friends. Plenty of good food and wine.

Then I got to a stumper. What are your favorite movies, songs, and books?

My hands came to a screeching halt.

What were my friend’s favorite books? I had lost touch with what she was reading lately. She used to read Barbara Kingsolver and she’s read most of Michael Pollan’s books, but was, probably, mostly reading The Wall Street Journal now.

I could go into the other room and ask her (she had no idea I was beefing up her profile)
but the question reminded me of the many conversations I’ve had about how our favorite books reflect who we are.

My colleagues talk about books being a factor in the men they choose to date. If he doesn’t read—that’s a deal-breaker for most women in this building. I get why it matters. If your relationship works out, you’re going to hear a whole lot about what they’re reading. Do you really want to know what happens in the last chapter of every Clive Cussler book? And I understand that men are increasingly turned off by women who read Elizabeth Gilbert and Julie Powell.

In fact, a couple of years ago The New York Book Times Review ran an essay about a woman breaking up with man over his failure to get a Pushkin reference. But this book-branding concern had never jumped out at me until now.

I wondered—of all the many books my friend has read and liked, what books would portray her in the best way? How will her favorite books brand her to the online community of date seekers?

In real life, if you don’t like a guy because he doesn’t pick up on a nineteenth century Russian literature reference, it’s because you simply don’t like the guy. And what woman wants a man who can’t handle a memoir about a female’s journey in life? In the end, putting a lot of weight on what your partner reads is taking yourself a tad too seriously. On the other hand, in the online world of dating, first impressions matter, a lot.

So, in good fun, I’d like to suggest some titles to keep off your list—even if they are your faves—to avoid having potential soul mates cringe at the sight of your profile:

Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler (poor title, even if the book isn’t half-bad)

The Invaders Plan by L. Ron Hubbard (too frightening)

The Anarchist’s Cookbook by William Powell (we don’t want him think you’re cooking up firebombs)

The Rules: Time Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right by Ellen Fein, Sherrie Schneider (these are secrets for a reason!)

Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding: Why You Save & How You Can Stop by Fugen Neziroglu, Jerome, Ph.D. Bubrick, Jose A. Yaryura-Tobias, and Patricia Perkins (no need to mention this on your first date)

Naturally Thin: Unleash Your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting by Bethenny Frankel (there are other people who can tell you how to lose weight)

It’s Not That I’m Bitter . . .: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World by Gina Barreca (although I’m usually keen on the term panty lines in book titles, this is a bit overwhelming)

How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter by Ann Coulter (if you’re going to be conservative, you don’t need to be so mean about it)

LA Candy By Lauren Conrad (stick to clothes, Lauren!)

Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb (he’ll never get it, too complicated)

Oh, there are so many more. What am I missing, dear blog reader?

Breed to Read: How Children's Books Make us Readers

A few weeks ago, I was bemoaning the state of reading today: too few readers, too much competing for our attention, too little enthusiasm about great books. "The people who love to read are starting to die off or age out of reading for pleasure," I said to my boyfriend, an avid reader himself though a scientist by trade. "Well," he said, "people just start having kids, so they can replenish the waning population of readers." I laughed. "True," I said. "It could be a government-sponsored program. Breed to Read: the best reason to give birth since the Italian government would pay you for each kid."

He was kidding, of course. And as was I . . . but as I thought about it, it started to make more and more sense. There's nothing that'll get a child-phobic 20-something talking about their future parenting plans than what they want to read to their kids. "Definitely The Lord of the Rings," one friend said. "And Anne of Green Gables," chimed in another. "Oh, and for everything Roald Dahl ever wrote. I'll be reading those out loud with my kids," chimed in twenty other currently childless people.

What we read as children influences our reading tastes as adults far more than we know. Before I learned to love Vladimir Nabokov's word play, I memorized most of Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends and Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. Before I discovered the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, I was knee-deep in the folktale-inspired stories of Maurice Sendak and Tomie dePaola. It took the emotional acuity of Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary to set me up for the quiet introspective plotting of Ian McEwan and John Updike. Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet Welsch and Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik were my heroines, and they primed me for the kind of strong female characters I would seek out in adult fiction (and rarely find).

As a child, I was easily influenced by what I read: the stories I encountered helped me form my own concept of how the world should work. Many critics have noted that the most influential and well-regarded children's books tend to expose adults as fallible and often cruel--several of Roald Dahl's works portray adults as tyrants, and imagine that children possess secret talents (Matilda's brilliance, James's bravery) that no ordinary adults will be able to perceive. These books made me feel powerful, and so reading them became addictive. Children who love to read will read almost anywhere —in the car, in the bath, while walking through crowded public places. (It was E.L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler that got me to stop resenting museums; why no one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has turned this into a children's tour, I will never know.)

Children who read are more than just readers, they are rabid readers. They are the ones who sustain traffic in bookstores, who clamor at free books on the sidewalk, who get hooked on audiobooks during long car rides. As Laura Miller at Salon notes, even having books around the house makes the kids in their vicinity smarter. If reading becomes a life-long obsession, they will remain committed to reading as they get older, and even after the required reading of college and graduate school fades into the distance, they will still see books as a means of entertainment and imagination, not as burdensome or time-consuming. Of course, the onus to make these children into readers falls first and foremost on their parents: if you read with your kids, and you get them to talk about what they're reading, their language skills will be stronger, their understanding of the world will be broader and more substantive, and their curiosity will only grow with age. And, inevitably, they will become far more interesting adults, and it will benefit everyone they come into contact with, including your future grandchildren. (Yes, we're thinking ahead.)

So for all the non-child-bearing readers of this blog, a nice thought to leave you on the weekend: breed to read. Raise your kids and any kids you meet to love books as much as you do, and keeping pay it forward.

You Must Learn The Ways of the Force

Alas, today is Friday, which heralds the end of my inaugural blogging stint. But what better way to end than with a re-cap of the Chuck Palahniuk event I attended last night?

Chuck is probably best-known for his cult classic Fight Club, which got made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. Which is pretty good, as far as first novel success goes. However, he's been writing furiously ever since, and some of his other equally awesome (if less famous) books include Choke, Haunted, Lullaby, Snuff and Pygmy. His latest book, TELL-ALL, went on sale this week and so he's currently in the middle of a cross-country tour to promote it.

To call a Chuck Palahniuk event a "reading" is like calling the Superbowl "a football game." Good writers aren't always good performers -- we've all been to at least one reading where the author was hunched over the podium and mumbling in a monotone -- but that's not a problem plaguing Chuck. He is a consummate entertainer, and any evening with him is probably best described as a "Chuck-tacular," even a "Chuck-a-Palooza." For starters, though the majority of readings usually take place in a cramped bookstore with standing room only, Chuck's are held in venues like Webster Hall or Cooper-Union. Because his modus operandi is a little different (and his popularity high) a bigger and more theatrical set-up suits him well. As always, his fans turned out en masse last night, some even in costume, filling the seats and carrying stacks of books for him to sign.

Broadway legend Julie Halston kicked off the proceedings with a dramatic reading from Tell-All, perfectly channeling the voice of narrator Hazie Coogan, and then Chuck came onstage to announce the first contest of the night. He has a history of incorporating gag gifts into his performances -- apparently before every tour he scours job lot stores to find the perfect theme item -- and, as Tell-All is set in both the spotlights and the shadows of Hollywood's Golden Age, he kept the trend alive with four-feet-tall inflatable Oscar statuettes. The first people to fully inflate them won plastic turkeys, signed by Chuck himself, and the audience whole-heartedly accepted the challenge. It was a mob scene as Chuck and his helpers spun the plastic packages out into pairs upon pairs of grasping hands.

(That's Chuck on the right, in the foreground, exercising his throwing arm). For a few minutes, the only sounds were deep, gasping breaths and the hiss of the little valves, but people puffed them up surprisingly swiftly. After picking the winners, Chuck got back into author mode and read an absolutely stunning brand-new story called "Knock Knock". I won't tell you what it's about, as it's going to be published in the December edition of Playboy -- though I suppose that gives you a clue about its general content -- but I was absolutely floored by his performance. The ovation he received at the end shook the spotlights hanging from the auditorium ceiling, but applause quickly turned into cheering as he began flinging another round of statuettes and turkeys.

The last part of the night was a Q & A with Bill Goldstein, an English professor at Hunter College and a founding editor of nytimes.com/books. Normally I dread Q & A sessions because they can be kind of asinine, but Bill asked some really thoughtful and challenging questions -- he'd obviously read and liked the book -- and Chuck answered all of them with wit and grace. When discussing the perils of gossip and fame (a central theme of Tell-All), Bill asked him if he had ever been the victim of a false story or accusation. "My friends will call me up and say 'I didn't know you were a vampire!' " Chuck replied, but his outlook on the whole thing is actually quite zen. He believes that trying to publicly counter this culture of exaggeration and notoriety actually accords it more power; engaging with falsehood just makes it worse. "It's like a taking a rape whistle with you to prison." I think he might have a point.

What's so exhilarating about Chuck is his innate ability to make reading a holistic and accessible experience. He reaches out to build connections beyond the page; he's not too proud, or obsessed with the idea of himself as an auteur, to distribute his work and ideas through multiple mediums (live performance, cinema, digital media). His reward is a readership rare in its loyalty and diversity -- last night people queued for several hours just to get a chance to talk with him, and they were old, young, disheveled, smartly-dressed, male, female, black, white. There are something like six million copies of his books in print, but he still took time personalize his inscriptions and pose for photographs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he's the reincarnation of Mohandas Gandhi or anything, but seeing people so excited abour reading books warmed the cockles of my cynical and bitter heart. I do think that those who bemoan the inevitable death of the printed word might do well to learn from him: he charts a measured middle course, valuing the integrity of literature as a concept while adapting it to reflect the changing culture in which we live.

Let that thought, dear readers -- my Luke Skywalkers of the literary universe -- burn slowly like an ember within you; let it radiate heat and light into the dark unknown of the future. We are the ones in charge of creating that future, and if we fixate on apocalyptic scenarios of a society bereft of books and culture we are in a sense acknowledging that we've already given up. I think it was our friend Gandhi who said "be the change you wish to see in the world." So keep reading, keep believing, keep buying books -- don't underestimate the Force.

I deliver you now into the capable hands of my fellow Jedi Katie Freeman, who will be blogging next week. I'll catch you on the flip side, but in the meantime you can always write to: hwood.tk@gmail.com

May the Book be with you.