Reading Still Secondary for Jobs

 

Steve Jobs still thinks people don’t read. Nobody would build a tablet computer without including e-book functionality, but there are plenty of signs that Apple’s strategy with e-books is an afterthought, not the least of which being that they seemed to have lifted design ideas – of all things – from the Delicious Library for their reader. There are lots of open questions since the device isn’t out yet, but I think if they were serious about the future of e-books they’d have created their own format instead of accepting the limitations of ePub format. Compared to what seems to me like a huge sacrifice to embrace the nascent HTML5 technology over Flash, as was glaringly obvious in Job’s NYTimes demo, their e-book strategy seems anemic.

From John Gruber’s excellent post on the “iPad Big Picture,” quoting Apple COO, Tim Cook:

“We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.”

But Maud’s point that she’d rather have a device that not only is an e-reader but can do lots of other stuff is well taken. iPad is sure to change the e-reading scene for its popularity alone. I said in reviewing the Sony Reader quite some time ago, that despite my disappointment with that device, if Apple made one I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I won’t be, but that’s only because I think there will be a big leap from the first generation iPad to the second.

I think Apple’s e-reading strategy is yet to be revealed and will evolve between now and when the second version iPad is released. Who knows what that will look like exactly, but I think it has a lot more to do with the blending of Web-based content into book-like content rather than books being digitized.

What Reading a Magazine Could Be Like on an iPad

 

This is a conceptual video that’s been out for about a month now on designing magazines for a tablet type of computer:

The Complexity of the Reading Life

 

While the digital side of the publishing industry meets and tweets (#dbw) at Digital Book World this week and the whole world wonders about the wonder coming from Steve Jobs, lots of people are just plain and simple reading. But it’s not so plain and simple anymore. Here’s the start of a mind map of all the modern reader must(?) think about:

click to enlarge

Here’s the actual map, if you want to add anything, I’m working on making it editable by everyone:

Historically Speaking, I’m a Publisher

 

On the Tools of Change blog today, Andrew Savikas reminds Motoko Rich that reading has long been a social act:

The verb “to publish” historically meant “to read aloud in public.” At home, reading the same (often religious) text aloud to the entire family was the norm, not reading “at home at night by myself with one lamp.”

Yes, it’s true, much to everyone in my family’s dismay, I’m a compulsive out-loud reader. Last weekend I read aloud the entirety of Christopher Logue’s All Day Permanent Red (part of his, sadly incomplete, interpretation of The Iliad) while the kids were playing in the tub (yes, it’s a violent poem, but they weren’t really listening anyway). They humor me sometimes, but most of the time they just drown me out or tell me to be quiet, the philistines.

And speaking of reading aloud – one book that brought out the orator in me was Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth, which was an excerpt from Three Days Before the Shooting, Ellisons unfinished-after-40-years novel, which has recently been released and I’m reading now, but more on that later.

Howl

 

Coming soon to your Netflix queue:

At Words Without Borders: Marías, Perec

 

I’ve been posting a couple of items at Dispatches, our blog at Words Without Borders on Javier Marías and I’ve just began a new series called “Classics in Translation” there, beginning this week with Georges Perec.

As part of our new series on classics and to celebrate a new, definitive, edition of Life A User’s Manual, we’re going to be giving away copies of that book. Read about here: Classics in Translation: Georges Perec

Would He Do it Again?

 

I really enjoyed reading Stephen Elliot’s story in the NYTimes about his D.I.Y. Book Tour. Elliot is the author of seven books and this time around decided to go beyond the usual book tour, traveling around the country, staying in people’s homes to read his books. He found quite a different crowd:

Several told me they were big readers, at least a book a week. But when I asked a few of them about their reading habits, they hadn’t heard of the authors who are famous in my world: Lorrie Moore, Roberto Bolaño, Michael Chabon. This is most of America, I thought; I’ve stepped through the door.

I think it’s interesting because most literary events I’ve been to are full of other book people and I’ve often wondered how they can really be productive toward getting books into the hands of actual readers. I think this is part of a growing trend, but what I like about his story is the acknowledgement of the good and the bad and what it’s like to interact with unexpected readers. Elliot concludes “…I thought to myself that they weren’t a standard literary audience: they were better.”

Concerning E.M. Forster

 

I’ve been reading Frank Kermode’s Concerning E.M. Forster, and just as it’s surprising that Mr. Kermode is still publishing books (he’s 90 years old), I was surprised to see a book of criticism to be covered in the NYTimes (“Only Reflect”) and by Edmund White no less:

“Sir Frank Kermode, who turned 90 last year, has written a subtle and fascinating book of criticism that obeys the delightful vagaries of rhythm more than the inflexibility of pattern. In “Concerning E. M. Forster,” Kermode sinks probes into Forster’s book about fiction (the first chapter is called “Aspects of Aspects”) and manages along the way to explore aesthetic questions, Forster’s life and Forster’s links to other writers, like Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence.”

Not an Intellectual, but a Writer, a Reader, and a Dreamer

 

I found a very nice video of Susan Sontag at the Columbia University Press blog of her appearance on the Charlie Rose show. CUP is publishing a critical volume on Sontag called The Scandal of Susan Sontag.

I’m Alive

 

Words Without Borders

I’m here. The last few months I’ve been working hard on redesigning and rebuilding the Words Without Borders Website. It was a particularly big job because we had to migrate over thousands of entries from the old system and build the new one from the ground up. But that’s done and now I’m back to just your everyday insanely busyness and hope to get back to posting here and at Dispatches, the blog of Words Without Borders regularly.

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One of the reasons I publish online!

– L. Lee Lowe
on “Would He Do it Again?”

Last year Derrick Brown did living room readings. I don’t think anyone there had ever read his poetry; I had barely been introduced a few days before. http://vimeo.com/6013960

Compared to any staged, stacked or emceed poetry reading, well, it was kind of like learning you hadn’t ever had good sex.

Granted, he’s a more engaging poet than many, and he reads poems that should be read aloud, like they should sound.  I still think that a lot of the intimacy would have been lost in any a more austere setting.

As a listener, it had a profound and searing impact; if I could speak for the non-poetry-reading kind, I’d say they could not help but connect with this living poetry that was funny and sad and sweet and took you somewhere.

– Emily
on “Would He Do it Again?”

Awesome! I always loved Sontag’s ‘Notes On Camp’. Lucid and concise.


http://e6n1.blogspot.com/

– Eeleen Lee
on “Not an Intellectual, but a Writer, a Reader, and a Dreamer”