Category Archives: reading

May 11, 2010   DG&B   favorites, fun, great books, lists, opinion, Rachel, reading  
8

These are a few of my favorite things

by Rachel

I always wonder if my personality reflects my choice in books, and last August, if you were following the DGLM blog, you’ll remember that everyone in the office put together their list of great books and made you—our readers—guess who had created them. Before working at DGLM, I actually read this series of Great Books posts and loved a lot of selections.

It’s difficult to say why I love a certain book and why I can’t get into another. I fell in love with reading Steinbeck novels when I was living in California, so I used to put my love for his writing down to geographical familiarity—Cannery Row and Salinas were places I knew about and so they came alive in his writing—but then I fell in love with Dostoevsky while living in the Midwest, and when I began reading his work there wasn’t anything familiar about his world, yet I couldn’t stop reading.

Anyway, seeing as I’m now part of the team here at DGLM, I think it’s time to give you my best books list. Scrutinize it as you will. I’m up for friendly banter on why you think my choices are terrible, mediocre or just plain brilliant.

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden
Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo
J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
Albert Camus’ The Stranger
Luke Davies’ Candy
Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
Milan Kundera’s Identity
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

After reviewing my list, it makes me wonder why I enjoy certain books. I still don’t know what it is that draws me to a particular author, or why I get into one story and not another. Years ago I certainly didn’t think John Steinbeck would be my number one writer—reading about farming and migrant laborers?  Are you kidding me? I’m still trying to find out why I love his work so much.

Do you feel at all surprised by your favorite author, or love certain books you never thought you would?

May 07, 2010   DG&B   favorites, opinion, Rachel, reading  
25

The unbearable lightness of not reading

by Rachel

I think most people who love literature have a to-read pile of books waiting for them, but Kirsty Logan takes it to a whole other level in her article for The Millions, where she proudly boasts owning 800 unread books. Yes, 800, unread—I don’t think 800 books could even fit inside my apartment!

I can understand Kirsty’s reasoning behind not reading a book because she knows she’ll end up loving it—though nonsensical, I do this all the time, too. I buy books knowing from reviews, word of mouth, or simply because of its author, that I’ll love reading it, and so I leave them on my shelves for months before I sit down with them. A reader’s comment on her article puts it perfectly: it’s like “savoring the thrill of the unopened present on Christmas morning,”—I get that. But, I do eventually read these books.

What I don’t understand is Kirsty not reading books because she simply worries they’re not the books she thinks they are. I think when it comes to reading, it’s good to have certain expectations, but choosing not to read books because we have expectations and fear disappointment, seems to me, to be a little drastic. Kirsty Logan’s article is titled “The Joy of Unread Books,” but I see no joy in collecting shelves full of books and refusing to read them.

Do you side with Kirsty on this one? Have you ever not read a book simply because you thought your expectations were too high? And if so, what book was it?

May 06, 2010   DG&B   advice, favorites, fun, Jessica, lists, prescriptive, reading  
11

Take two books….

by Jessica

I ran across this article in Salon (which also has a good continuation of the why men don’t read story—see Stacey’s post) in which the author lauds the therapeutic value of the mystery novel, and goes on to recommend several that she promises to have salutary effects. I’ve always been partial to the notion that a book can be the cure for what ails you (or at the very least, provide an excellent distraction). Years ago, a good friend assembled her own book-based survival guide to break-ups; I can’t recall the precise titles, but I remember that it was a blend of commiseration, distraction, and gritty nonfiction–designed to make her unhappiness pale by comparison. Fortunately, I’ve no present need of such heavy duty meds, but when I’m feeling weary of negotiating contracts or listening to the latest Cassandra prophesying doom for the written word, I reach for a work that reminds me of the joy inherent in a great book. I’ve not quite come up with my own diagnosis-driven reading list, but it seems there are those who have: indeed, there is a whole discipline called “Bibliotherapy,” dedicated to the idea that reading carefully selected books can promote physical and psychological healing—have a look at this Guardian article. Interestingly, the books that the bibliotherapists prescribe are not self-help books per se, but serious novels. For a marvelous hybrid of literature and pop psych, check out Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life.

So my question is this: What books do you use to self-medicate? Won’t you kindly share your prescriptions?

May 05, 2010   DG&B   opinion, publishers, reading, selling, Stacey  
12

Men don’t buy books?

by Stacey

I found this recent blog post by thriller writer and former book editor Jason Pinter thought provoking. He brings up a lot of points we hear often in the book biz about men not reading books, and not being the target market publishers are looking to reach. And it is in many ways out of date and completely short sighted, not to mention the fact that it’s just not true. Look at the bestseller lists for fiction and nonfiction, and there will always be a fine collection of books squarely aimed at male (and female) readers. Books about politics or history or science or technology on the nonfiction side, or what about big runaway bestsellers like Freakonomics? I don’t think the target audience there was women. On the fiction side there are the big thriller writers like Michael Connelly and David Baldacci, currently number 1 on the New York Times list, and what about Stephen King? These are just a few examples of big time authors whose audience is made up of a large percentage of men. The story Pinter uses to illustrate his pitch for the Chris Jericho book is pretty funny, but also a little ridiculous. It’s the kind of thing that can drive forward-thinking agents and editors a little crazy when there’s a good idea or project outside the box–it takes a serious load of convincing and ultimately a leap of faith to get it through. And then when one of these “risky” projects does work, a whole slew follow until the market is saturated and you’re back at square one. I don’t think there’s an obvious answer here, but it does beg a further discussion and perhaps a shift in our collective perception about readers and how we find them.

I understand publishers have limited resources, but the goal, especially in this day and age when there are so many opportunities to draw in new readers, needs to be to stop using old excuses and start implementing new tactics to find the audience, whichever gender they might be.

May 05, 2010   DG&B   children's books, favorites, fun, lists, Miriam, reading  
13

A horse is a horse, of course, of course….

by Miriam

Sometimes, when watching NickJr. with my four-year-old, certain imponderables are raised: How come there’s a preponderance of cartoon pigs? Why do Little Bear’s parents wear Victorian clothing while LB himself walks around stark nekkid? Why is Dora the Explorer so irritating? One thing that always comes up with either the tv shows or when reading a book with my precocious little fellow is the fact that there are lots of animals who walk, talk, and think like humans. When we recently added a standard poodle puppy to our household, it was funny to see my son addressing himself to her as if she were another kid, explaining why she had done something wrong and he was annoyed or trying to make her understand the rules of a game he wanted to play with her. I wonder whether these interactions were informed by the expectation that Cleo the dog would suddenly respond not with an “Arf, arf” but with a perfectly formed sentence in the Queen’s English.

This lovely piece in the Guardian discusses animal characters in literature. But it doesn’t explain why Little Bear’s parents wear clothes.

May 04, 2010   DG&B   celebrity, Chasya, fun, poetry, reading  
7

A poetry reading by Bill Murray

by Chasya
In case you missed it, Bill Murray stopped by the construction site for Poet’s House last week to treat workers to the first poetry reading at the new location. And I thought my love for Bill could not grow deeper.

May 03, 2010   DG&B   e-books, future of publishing, Jane, opinion, reading  
16

To Kindle or not to Kindle

by Jane

Last fall, after hearing many people discuss the Kindle for many months and after owning a Sony Reader for a couple of years, I decided to purchase several Kindles for our staff. It seemed to me that the Kindle was more versatile than the Reader and I was excited to begin using it.

Now, it is six months later and I have been reading both books and manuscripts on my Kindle. There is no question in my mind that it is far more versatile than the Reader and, when I am traveling, as I have been quite a bit for the last six months, there is nothing more convenient than the Kindle.

Over the last several weeks, though, I have been reading Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, and while I was doing so, I kept wondering why I wasn’t loving it as much as many of my colleagues had. I finished the book the other night and all of a sudden I realized that the reason I hadn’t gotten the same pleasure out of reading it as everyone else at DGLM had was because I wasn’t reading an actual book—I was reading it on the Kindle. Let the Great World Spin is, first of all, a beautifully designed book with a gorgeous jacket; there is no way to tell this on the Kindle. It is also a story that makes the reader want to dip back and forth to re-read certain passages and this is all but impossible to do on the Kindle. In addition, because there are no page numbers on the Kindle (all one can tell is the percent of the book one has already read), there is no way to know how to reference page numbers. Ultimately, even though I enjoyed the book I believe it would have been a far more pleasurable reading experience had I had a print copy of the book.

Then, recently during a meeting in our office, one of my colleagues was describing her experience reading The Help. She mentioned that it felt like a really long book. I was surprised to hear this. In fact, I had read the book last December and had no sense of how long it was—none at all—because I had read it on the Kindle.

There are so many different opinions about what reading on a Kindle is like. My doctor, who only reads on the Kindle, has to go buy the actual book when he is writing a paper and needs to cite a page. There are those who say they really miss the “feel” of an actual book when they are reading on the Kindle; and then there are those who say that the iPad is better than all the other devices.

I’d like to believe that, in time, much will change technologically with these electronic readers and I think that, ultimately, they will increase the number of readers over all. I would also like to believe that old fashioned books will never disappear entirely; they offer too much comfort to many of us who love physical books. Reading a book electronically simply does not offer the same kind of pleasure in my opinion as reading it in hard copy.

So now I would love to know what you think?

April 23, 2010   DG&B   favorites, literacy, opinion, Rachel, reading  
11

Read Argentina!

by Rachel

One of the things I love to do when I have spare time on the weekends, is to sit in cafés and read. There’s nothing quite like a lazy Sunday afternoon spent with a good book and hot coffee, surrounded by other readers with good books and hot coffee. So reading this BBC News article made me appreciate my lazy café reading time even more.

According to the article, today only 10% of Argentina’s population buys and reads books because of repeated blows to the publishing industry including the banning of books in the 1970’s, the economic crisis in the early 2000’s, and the recent boom in electronic media which has proved to be stiff competition for publishers. In contrast, a NY Times article from 2009 indicated that 50% of adults in the U.S. had read books in print or online within the previous 12 months.

Wanting to promote reading across the city of Buenos Aires, the government has set out to furnish cafés with books by great writers such as Pablo Neruda and Julio Cortazar. Other schemes are also in place to promote reading, including the giving away of books to school children so they can start to build their own collections at home, and large book purchases for school libraries. This is definitely something I like hearing about!

There’s a long list of authors I’d suggest to promote reading–perhaps Dickens? Camus? Twain?

Which books would you give to encourage new readers?

April 22, 2010   DG&B   advice, feedback, marketing/publicity, reading, Stacey  
14

Author websites

by Stacey

An author recently asked me to take a look at her revamped, updated, and exciting new website. It got me thinking about what a good website entails, which author sites are worth seeking out, and what readers are looking for when they visit an author website. My research took me to this old but interesting piece written by the head of Thomas Nelson which offers some ideas about tools to rank your website’s success, and some, as he calls them, surprising conclusions about traffic to author websites.

All of this author website talk now turns to you, our blog readers, to find out what you want to see when you visit an author’s website? Is it personal information about the author, videos of interviews, excerpts from their book(s), contests? I’d love some feedback from you on what’s of personal interest to get some perspective and perhaps allow us to better inform our authors of things they can do to make their websites more appealing to readers and fans. It would also be helpful to know some of your favorite websites, ones you keep going back to over and over. Thanks!!

April 22, 2010   DG&B   future of publishing, Michael, opinion, publishers, reading  
18

When less is more

by Michael

I think we all probably suffer from information overload, and I know that those of us who work in publishing are often even more inundated. At this point, I’ve stopped adding to my RSS reader, and I’m actually taking off all the things I never get around to reading. And, though I love technology and all it affords us, I’m generally trying to pare down. So I was fascinated by this Ars Technica article I found this week. To sum up, Oxford University Press has created a scholarly, peer-reviewed search engine that allows users to find worthwhile articles on specific subjects. Now, instead of wading through pages and pages of Google results to find out what to read on, say, Menander of Athens, you can find out what the authorities think you need to know. And with the curators of each section listed, you can decide for yourself if they’re expert enough to trust.

And while that’s publishing-related enough to mention, it brought to mind some of the ongoing discussion about the future of trade publishing. There’s been talk lately that publishers are on the way out, as authors can now just publish directly through several ebook and POD options. But with statistics like the most recent ones from Bowker stating that over 1,000,000 titles were published last year, I believe publishers and editors become all the more necessary. No one has time to find what they want out of a million titles, so readers will expect someone to help direct them and narrow their choices. That job is going to fall to publishers, their imprints and their editors, all of whose names will be more important in the future as readers will expect that each name means something. It’s not just the amazing editorial, design, publicity and marketing that publishers bring to the table; it’s also the simple act of separating the wheat from the chaff. In a world of information overload, it’s hard to put a price on that service.

But am I just being a publishing Pollyanna? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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