Scratchpad
(books, design, internet, reading, writing — )
19 Jun. 2008
I'm absolutely fascinated by the structure of older books. Books written before typewriters and computers. I'm looking at my copy of Democracy in America right now, for instance. The table of contents for Chapter 15 looks like this:
254 _ Unlimited Power of the Majority in the United States, and Its Consequences
257 _ How the omnipotence of the majority increases, in America, the instability of legislation and administration inherent in democracy
258 _ Tyranny of the majority
262 _ Effects of the omnipotence of the majority upon the arbitrary authority of American public officers
263 _ Power exercised by the majority in America upon opinion
265 _ Effects of the tyranny of the majority upon the national character of the Americans. - The courtier spirit in the United States
268 _ The greatest dangers of the American republics proceed from the omnipotence of the majority
The amount of information contained in each headline here is boggling to me, used, as I am, to terse and non-helpful subsections (if they exist at all) in modern book-length works. In essence, the table of contents here is what we now consider an outline - something to be done in prewriting stages but never actually shown to the reader in the completed work. And yet as shown here it makes the structure of the document, its theses and points and major themes, immediately obvious to the reader. As a designer...as a reader...as an impatient bitch...I fucking love this with every fiber of my tiny being.
It also breaks the text up into tiny, digestible chunks (notice how none of these subsections is more than a few pages at most...some not even a full page) - if I turn to any of these pages in the book, each subsection actually begins with the headline given above and is set so as to obviously indicate the start of a new section. And this makes me think of a recent discussion on the AoIR listserv in which several participants cited an Atlantic Monthly article lamenting the death of reading (yes, yet another of those goddamned 'reading is dead' articles). The gist of the article this time was that the Internet has changed reading for the worse - instead of digging into a long, windy, excessive book with loving OCD, the author now finds himself impatient with verbose crap and just wants to get to the heart of things already.*
Now - assuming for a moment that people are, in fact, expressing more impatience with what they read - could it not be because what people read is being more poorly written? Not that people are becoming more impatient or changing "how" they read? I look at the outline form used above, and it seems to me that it actually makes reading longer works of nonfiction seem significantly speedier. The design of the work means that you are getting slapped upside the head with the point. There's no hunting, wondering, head scratching, or going back to re-read. It's written linearly (something rare in modern works), the main points are immediately obvious and accessible (again - rare in modern works), and it's broken into smaller chunks that are more easily digestible.
In other words....older books are an awful lot like what is supposedly so terrible about reading on the web.
* Note: I adore reading and yet I have never enjoyed reading long winded bitches who fail to get to the point. It's one thing to read a novel that circumnavigates the globe ten times, but I have never, ever had the patience to read a work of nonfiction that does that. Has this author actually enjoyed reading long nonfiction in the past? Or are they confusing reading novels for pleasure with reading reference for pleasure? Seriously. I've just gotta ask. Did this dude really enjoy that once upon a time when he walked uphill to school in the snow both ways? 'Cause that would be really....'interesting.'
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(books, privacy, social networking — )
19 Feb. 2008
Although my feelings on social networking sites are decidedly ambiguous (love del.icio.us, indifferent towards Friendster, ambivalent/distrusting/but still a user of Facebook), I have until now not found a social networking site that I really, really do not want to use. The payoff from most of them has been enough for me to go ahead and suck up any slight misgivings I have and use them anyway.
But yesterday I got an invite to use Goodreads, where, basically, you share what you're reading and can make and take book recommendations from friends. You can also view other users' bookshelves. Honestly, given how many of my friends run in publishing circles and read as voraciously as I do, I'm surprised it took so long for me to get an invite to one of these (but, then again, many of my friends aren't as plugged in as I am so I guess it's not that much of a shock). At any rate, I created an account, logged in, and added maybe 5 books to my shelf before I stopped dead in my tracks.
Whoah. Whoah. Whoah. What the fuck am I doing?! I am putting every thing I read, everything that influences my thought, everything, in other words, that I hold most dear and private and central to what makes me tick, online for the entire fucking world to look at?! Librarians and people in both democratic and tyrannical countries have fought tooth and nail, in some cases to the death, to keep reading material private, and I am just blithely putting it up for anyone to take a look at? And not just putting it up there, but storing it so any one could retrieve it and parse it any time? Compare my reading habits to similar and not so similar people?
This may sound crazy, but I literally felt sick when I realized what I was doing. I feel kind of sick describing it now. I really felt like I was just running my ass down the street with no clothes on. I thought of the multiple strongarm attempts the FBI has made with libraries through history to "Red flag" reading material so they can, you know, keep a good, friendly eye on any suspicious people, and I thought I must be absolutely fucking crazy to be putting my shit in this system.
I like the idea of sharing reading suggestions with close friends and confidants, or the occasional recommendation I get from shoulder surfing an interesting book on the subway from a stranger, or overhearing some folks talking about some fascinating tome they've been digging into while standing in line for my morning donut. I like the idea of a personal system shared and run just between friends, with no third party intermediary. But I don't think I can ever bring myself to log back in to Goodreads or other similar systems.
I'm curious to hear if any of my readers feel the same way. Any social networking sites you refuse to use? What do you consider private and what do you consider fair game for the public domain? Am I nuts for thinking that what I read is more sensitive than the movies I like or who I hang out with or even personal intellectual struggles I have (many of which probably make me look like a complete dumbass, but which I have no compunction posting on this public scratchpad)?
Comments (2)
(academia, books, culture wars, history, whiny illiterate derivative unimaginative fuckers — )
21 Jan. 2008
You know, if I have to read one more single fucking article or hear one more whiny lament about how reading is dying, I am just going to pull out some batshit crazy whupass on the mother fucker that dared to snivel out that ridiculous platitude yet again.
- Books are not the only form of reading, you fucking dipshits.
- Not everyone in the world has the leisure time to sit around reading all day. Some people have to actually work for a living doing all the things you rely on having done but are not able or willing to do yourself. When you learn and actually begin to do every single one of those things, come back to me and we'll rediscuss why reading is more important than all of those other things.
- Please note that historically, reading by the dirty unwashed masses was done as a means of personal and economic betterment. In other words, necessity and personal gain. Reading by the rarefied few was done for fun. The same is still true.
- Please note that both types of reading in point three are just that - reading.
- Stop only counting "acceptable" forms of reading in your bogus studies. It makes them painfully meaningless.
- Stop conflating change in reading habits with decline in reading habits.
- Pick a line in the sand and stick with it. Twats like you were decrying the death of reading over a hundred years ago. Then they were doing it 80 years ago. Then 60. If you are all to be believed, no one left in the world even understands the concept of a letter, much less has the ability to actually read it. Pick a definition of "death" that you can actually quantify and prove to me - one that doesn't involve comparison of others' reading to your own.
- Read a book on the history of reading, for the love of god.
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(books, nyc, to do — )
20 Jan. 2008
I've been pestering S. for this list of cool used bookstores in NY ever since I left Portland. It is from the special 2006 25th anniversary issue of Cometbus (issue #50), and I haven't been able to track down a copy of my own, or even another copy of the list online. Thankfully, she finally found her copy buried under thousands of books of her own.
My goal is to visit everyone of these as a start to compiling my own list of used bookstores here in NYC. Please e-mail me ('holla,' at this domain) if you have any personal favorites to recommend).
- Skyline Books
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13 W. 18th St
- Bookoff
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14 E 41st St (near NYPL)
- Community Books
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143 7th Ave, Park Slope, Brooklyn
Uncertain if this is the same one referred to in Cometbus, but looks promising either way.
- Clovis Press
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Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Closed. One story says it's been turned into a wine bar by local gentrification efforts.
- Spoonbill and Sugartown
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218 Bedford Ave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
- 7th Ave Books
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Park Slope, Brooklyn - Closed
Brooklyn seems to be hard hit in the book realm.
- Park Slope Books
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Park Slope, Brooklyn - Closed
Another gentrification fatality.
- Junk
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197 North 9th St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
- Alabaster Bookshop
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122 4th Ave
- Westsider Rare and Used Books
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Broadway between 80th and 81st, Upper West Side
- Unoppressive, Non-imperialist Bargain Books
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34 Carmine below Bleeker
- Accidental CDs
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location unknown, probably defunct
This used to be on Avenue A but then moved around the corner to St. Marks to squat in "the Cave." The landlord evicted the entire building with a sledgehammer about 5 months later. Unclear what happened to Accidental after that, but their original location is supposedly now a bakery that makes dog treats.
- Gotham Book Mart
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Closed!
After roughly 87 years in business, this one closed in summer 2007.
- The Two in One Shop
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52nd near 9th Ave, Times Square - closed?
I can't find any reference to this online or in the Yellow Pages, so I'm thinking it might be gone.
- Mercer Street Books
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206 Mercer St, NYU
- 12th Street Books
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11 E. 12th St., Greenwich Village
UPDATE: Moved to 179 Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn in July 2008
- 86 Books
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276 12th St, Park Slope, Brooklyn
Unclear if this is the same store mentioned in Cometbus.
- Housing Works
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126 Crosby St near Houston
Always a winner. Beautiful, delicious, charity.
- Heights Books
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109 Montague St, Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
- The Strand
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I should not have to tell you how to get here
Ah, a classic. Probably the first used bookstore I visited in NYC, all the way back in college. Because of its size, The Strand is great if you are looking for something specific, but it can be claustrophobic with all of the traffic and definitely isn't the place to go if you are looking to get lost in quiet stacks of books.
- East Village Books
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99 St Mark's Place
- The Thing
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1001 Manhattan Ave, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
- The Vortex
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222 Montrose Ave, Bushwick, Brooklyn
This used to be around the corner from The Thing and was (is?) run by the Thing's wife
List additions:
- Adam's Books/Unnameable Books
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456 Bergen Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn
Tiny but enjoyable selection of art, history, philosophy, and lit books. They also have a nice rack of what look like artists' self published zines? I went here looking for an obscure title by Jenny Perlin that they carry. Very cool.
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(books, google, metadata — )
6 Sep. 2007
Err...okay, well, it would appear that literally as I was typing in the last post, Google updated book search to use subject headings! I searched for something, and then 5 minutes later searched for the exact same term again and poof! there was the option to use subjects. Now if you try a search for "fiction" it'll ask if you want American or German fiction. Yowza. Didn't exist at 4.16pm, does exist at 4.30pm.
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(books, google, metadata, search, spider — )
5 Sep. 2007
Poking around Google Books a little more, discovered the following path from which metadata can be snagged to compile full details of item:
On results page, click on "about this book." Yeah. That's it. Duh. Of course, you still can't actually search on metadata, but at least it's there...you could automate a search and retrieve everything for certain keywords, then use the metadata to do a secondary "weeding."
Or, you could do this:
Google Books, search only "full view" to find complete e-books ->
On results page follow "Find this book in a library" for OCLC results ->
OCLC site, retrieve metadata for object.
Oops, is my face red. Sort of. At the same time, really, if the metadata is there, if each record is already tied to an OCLC record, is it really necessary to prevent users from searching the fields directly? Still, at least there seem to be workarounds.
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(books, google, metadata, search — )
29 Aug. 2007
All I wanted to do was write a spider to steal all of the public domain books off of Google. But I can't. You know why?
You can't specifically search the metadata on Google Books.
That's right - no metadata. For you non-library/non-tech geeks out there who have no idea what I'm talking about, that means you can't do complex searches on the "aboutness" of a book. The text of a book is just text, but the metadata includes keywords on who wrote it, where it was written, when it was written, what it is about. Since a bazillion words appear in a book, it is often useful to search strictly on human-created, trusted metadata....it takes out the extra cruft and minimizes false positive results. But without that ability, you can't go "oh, Google Books, show me just the fiction," because the word "fiction" might appear in the title of an academic paper about fiction, but which itself is non-fiction. Google, as a machine, doesn't handle the difference between those two concepts very adeptly. It also doesn't appear to appreciate the difference between a book and a journal, and you can't search for items published in a particular country.
God, I hate Google more and more with each passing day.
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(books, form, hypertext — )
14 Aug. 2007
Even as I am trying to save money for moving to NY, I couldn't help but peep into Daedalus on Saturday (seriously, this is one of 5 things I will actually miss about Portland - I don't think there is a better bookstore anywhere). I ended up carting off 3 books, including Pessoa and Zenith's The Book of Disquietude, Picard's Affective Computing, and Ullman's Close the the Machine.
I've started in simultaneously on all three. At this particular moment, though, I'm thinking of Pessoa's (of course, in another two hours, it'll probably be Picard). It's an interesting form - throughout his life he worked on this semi-autobiographical prose piece...almost like a diary, random thoughts, text snippets, and scribblings on envelopes, ledgers, papers, journals, or whatever was handy, and which he would then throw into a trunk, rearrange periodically, put some bits together in an envelope, others languishing in the trunk, others elsewhere. The book was never completed in his lifetime, and so he basically left behind these....pieces. Snippets. Thoughts.
Then the editors found them and had a field day, putting them together this way and that, rearranging, choosing, sifting. Every version of the book now published is a little different. Different order, different message, different focus. Given this, there's no reason that the reader has to go in this order - you can read it however you want and get a different story, but still the same history, every time. It's 1920's hypertext.
Normally I find hypertext fails to live up to the hype in the name. It's poorly written, the story itself doesn't gain anything by being non-linear. It's just a tired gimmick stretched thin. But in this case, I'm intrigued by the form. Given some of what I was discussing earlier on how the mind makes connections between different events and bits of information, I think such a form of prose offers interesting possibilities. As just one example, I think it'd be awesome to design a system where each of the snippets is exploded out in a database and the user can actually rearrange the story into the form that makes the most sense to them, save it, and order a print on demand book from the results.
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