Today I attended BookCamp Vancouver at SFU. It’s was a well-run, well-organized event that frequently featured an engaging exchange of ideas. It probably could have used a few more of the unconference features that make BarCamp so special. I expect some industries are more comfortable than others with this kind of open, egalitarian model, so better baby steps than none at all.
Throughout the day, I recommended a number of articles to various writers, editors and publishers. I figured I might as well gather them here in case they’re of interest. Long time readers have probably seen me recommend one or more of these articles before:
The Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow - From 1994, but still pretty relevant today. Extremely prescient for the time. “Even the physical/digital bottles to which we’ve become accustomed - floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other discrete, shrink-wrappable bit-packages - will disappear as all computers jack-in to the global Net. While the Internet may never include every CPU on the planet, it is more than doubling every year and can be expected to become the principal medium of information conveyance, and perhaps eventually, the only one. “
The Next Economy of Ideas by John Perry Barlow - Six years later, and even more insightful. I’ve been saying this next sentence ever since I read this piece: “Art is a service, not a product. Created beauty is a relationship, and a relationship with the Holy at that. Reducing such work to “content” is like praying in swear words.”
1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly - I recommend this to every artist I meet, regardless of medium. It’s an extremely elegant way of thinking about fostering community and building an audience. For some reason it reminds me of the central metaphor in Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird”. “A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”
I wanted to offset those first three from the next two because the former are truly remarkable, visionary pieces. The next two are smart thinking and worth reading, but might pale a bit by comparison.
The 10 Principles of Lean Publishing by Peter Armstrong - Some very useful thinking about what publishing can learn from software development. Includes concepts like “fail fast” and “a book is a lean startup”. Now, Peter, go write a great, simple manifesto, instead of a waffly top-ten list.
We were in the McNally Robinson bookstore in Nolita yesterday. It’s an excellent store, full of great books. As it turns out, it’s Canadian-owned (other stores are in Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Toronto) and shares a space with a tea house owned by Moby.
Inside, I noticed a couple of book-selling ideas that were new to me. Neither was particularly original, I guess, but they struck me as clever ways to repackage the dead tree tome.
The first was a series of tree thematically-linked books, pre-wrapped as a ready-made-gift. Very handy for the lazy gift buyer (and wrapper):
I also spotted these attractively-packaged bundles of a DVD and the book on which it was based:
Neither idea is earth-shattering, but if I were a book seller these seem like to handy ways to sell more product.
This, incidentally, is an ancient but still very useful marketing tactic. I’ve written about it before: visit country X, steal clever ideas and implement them in country Y.
We’re on our way back to Panama City tomorrow. I’ve read some more books, and will spend my first hours in civilization desperately seeking English language literature. Following on from part one, here’s what I read:
Little Brother - This is a Cory Doctorow novella for young audiences. It tells a gripping, Orwellian tale of terrorist attacks, hackers and civil disobedience in our uber-surveilled world. It’s a righteous indictment (from a Canadian, I’m proud to point out) of torture, police brutality and how 9/11 has restricted personal freedoms in the US. It’s also full of cogent mini and micro essays on a slough of digital rights issues: file sharing, online privacy, cryptography, DNS and so forth. They read a little like EFF propaganda at times, and only present one perspective on these thorny issues. I almost always agree with that perspective, but it’s so vigorously argued I’d want young reader to consider some alternative points of view.
Next - Michael Crichton’s novel was one of the bloated, mouldering books on the shelf here at Punta Laurel. I hadn’t read a Crichton book since Jurassic Park in my adolescence, so I thought I’d give this one a try. He might as well have skipped the novel and gone straight to the screenplay. That’s what the book reads like–action sequences interspersed with a lot of pseudo-science. I did appreciate that both Doctorow and Crichton included extensive bibliographies at the end of their books–I wish all novelists would do this.
Everything’s Eventual - In the past, I’ve found Stephen King’s short stories to be his creepiest work. Not so much with this set of 14 stories. Most of them seemed a little flawed, or incomplete, or wrong-noted somehow. I was pleased to read “The Little Sisters of Eluria”, which featured Roland, the gunslinger from King’s excellent “Dark Tower” series of books. I kept hearing Leonard Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” in my head while reading it. I haven’t seen the movie made from the stand-out story “1408″, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. While I often find that short stories lend themselves to novels, there isn’t really enough meat on the bones of this one for even a 90-minute movie. Judging from the trailer, the screenwriters fleshed things out quite a bit.
Tribes - Seth Godin’s latest book is, to quote Stephen King, “a little fingernail paring of a book”. It’s his bite-sized take on leadership, and largely feels like a distillation or tweaking of the ideas from his previous books. One of Godin’s gifts is, I think, identify truths that should be self-evident, and articulating them in an inspiring and consumable way. His ideas are worth revisiting (”safe is risky and risky is safe” is a mantra around Capulet), and Godin does make some astute observations about leadership in an Internet-enabled world. However, the book feels a little rose-tinted, under-structured and incomplete for my liking. I think it under-estimates the difficulties of leadership, and is pretty light on the how-to’s. Still, many should find it inspiring, and I’d recommend it as a quick primer in Godinosity.
The Interloper - A first novel by Antoine Wilson. It’s a mixed bag, really. There are some terrific bits, and some lovely characterization. On the other hand, the diction feels overly fussy in places, and the plot is pretty predictable. I’m often frustrated by the work of young artists when it’s too concerned with the process of their art form. Full of letters faked by the protagonist and rambling diary entries, The Interloper seems overly interested in the act of writing. I did like a quote in the novel that apparently comes from another source “writing is like trying to dance with a bear who only wants to wrestle”. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it somehow resonates.
As we’re kicking it Robinson Crusoe style in a remote corner of Panama, I’ve got an unusual amount of time for reading. I brought several books, but I suspect I’ll be through those before we get back (my FOLORM, fear of lack of reading material, is kicking in). Fortunately, there’s a bunch of books here at Punta Laurel, swollen with the humidity. Some of them even look quite promising. There’s a memoir by Nicholas Sparks, for example. Or, if I’m looking for lighter fare, there’s Julia London’s hilariously titled The Hazards of Hunting a Duke.
In any case, I wanted to write some brief blurbs about the books I’d read. I always feel out of my depth when this site touches on literary criticism, but bear with me:
Foreskin’s Lament - A memoir by Shalom Auslander about growing up an orthodox Jew in New York. If you’re a regular listener to This American Life, you’ve probably heard Auslander tell stories of his ultra-conservative upbringing. It’s a quick read, and terrifically funny. Here’s a quick excerpt:
My family and I are like oil and water, if oil made water depressed and angry and want to kill itself, so Orli and I decided to hire a doula to help us with the birth. Her name was Mary, and she came over a few afternoons later to get acquainted.
“We don’t speak to our families,” I said.
“That’s sad,” said Mary.
“Not as sad as when we do,” I said.
Netherland - A masterfully-written novel by Joseph O’Neill. I first head about it via the gang at the Slate Audio Book Club, who fell all over themselves in praising the book. Stephen Metcalf called it “the best English language novel I’ve read in years”. I’d have to agree. It’s an extraordinarily well-observed story of a troubled marriage, post 9/11 New York and a passion for cricket. O’Neill’s writing reminded me of Nabokov more than once. Consider this sentence that opens a chapter early in the book:
As a teenager I often bicycled into the center of The Hague, a half-hour’s effort of pedaling made both more difficult and more pleasant by a girlfriend who, in accordance with local romantic traditions, sat leggily sidesaddle on the rear seat and accepted this modest transportation with a stalwartness that has, I’m sure, stood her in good stead in later life.
It’s a fantastic idea, to apply the navigation model of Google Maps to other virtual representations of atoms and bits. I include ‘bits’ because Zoomii will no doubt extend to MP3 downloads and ebooks, which have no real-world equivalent. I’m slowly reading Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. I wonder how he feels about a virtual representation of the space-limited physical world? Besides the obvious retail goods, what else could we Zoomiize? Voting records for Members of Parliament?
As I zipped around the Canadian version of Zoomi, I note that an author named Stephenie Meyer has no less than five books in the top 20 bestsellers on Amazon.ca. Can I get a WTF? They’re apparently vampire love sagas for the young adult crowd. Them kids–no accounting for taste.
I assume there are two or three basic types of readers. I haven’t done any research into this, but there’s probably the serial reader, who only reads one book at a time. And then there’s the parallel reader, who may have any number of books on the go simultaneously.
I’m the latter case, and things are particularly muddy at the moment. I write this blog post as much for me as anyone, to clarify in my head which books I’m currently working on:
Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger - Just started this one. This feels like one of those “I know this stuff, but it’s an entertaining read and nice to have one’s assumptions confirmed” books.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan - There are few novelists that I admire more than McEwan. He’s such a fine stylist. I just started this one as well, because I didn’t want to haul Weinberger’s hard cover book to Vancouver and back.
How to Live Off-grid by Nick Rosen - Somebody sent me this book. I probably won’t read it cover to cover, because I don’t actually want to live off the grid, but I’ve dipped into it a couple of times and it has some charming anecdotes about alternative ways to live.
I just read that the final Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Hollow Medley, will actually be split into two films, making a total of eight:
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” will hit theaters in November 2010, followed by “Part II” in May 2011, a decision that is being met around the world with fans’ cheers but also plenty of cynical smirks. The publishing industry is learning to live without new “Potter” releases, but Hollywood just pulled off a trick that will keep its profitable hero on his broom into the next decade.
Can I get a kerching? Sure, that last book is pretty thick, but book five is actually longer, so I’m confident in chalking this one up to the studio’s desire for an extra $300 million.
The films have gotten better (the childrens’ acting is no longer atrocious). The movies have become entertaining if unremarkable fantasy romps. I do, however, object to the tedious structure that each films follow. It goes something like:
Harry is miserable in London.
Harry has madcap adventures on the way to school.
Harry cheats death, battles nefarious forces and struggles to maintain a B average over the course of the school year.
Harry bids everybody farewell for another summer of misery.
Revise the Story Arc
After seeing the third movie, I decided that the studios should have reached higher.
The movies didn’t have to map exactly to the books. The producers could have taken Harry’s entire story arc and divided it up in a different, more exciting way. There could have been five movies, or nine or twelve. This would have freed screenplay writers from the bonds of the novels’ formal structure. The result probably would have been a far more diverse set of movies.
The natural comparison here is how The Empire Strikes Back is a considerably darker film (thanks largely to its plot) than the other two (well, five) Star Wars movies. The same goes for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Of course, such a move would have come with considerable risk, and might have alienated the films’ core audience. And studios are famous for being risk-averse.
Here’s an idea for a massive fan project. Re-edit the eight movies so that they start and end in different spots. Move some scenes around so that you end with a richer, more diverse set of movies.
While hunting around for a Farley Mowat quote for the preceding entry, I encountered this Flickr set. It’s 52 scans of book covers–some old, some new. It’s unclear from the description whether the person who scanned them actually read the books, or just has a bit of a scanning fetish.
Scrivener is a OS X tool for writers (thanks, James). I haven’t tried it yet, but I promise not to judge it on the lousy name. I just remembered that I grew up with a girl whose last name was ‘Scrivener’.
The folks from GiveMeaning have started a blog which looks useful to anybody engaged in online fundraising.
Steve mentions a new show by Ronnie Burkett (more info and photos). I saw Burkett’s extraordinary Tinka’s New Dress about a decade ago, and it blew my mind. It’s on my top five lists of theatre-going experiences.
I haven’t read any of the books, but I’m interested to see how long it takes before the ending is ’spoiled’ for me (I use quotes because, well, I feel fairly ambiguous about learning the outcome). How long before I get, uh, Crying Gamed? A week? A month? Never?
I suspect it’ll be a week or too before I accidentally read something online, or see it satirized in a Saturday Night Live sketch and more or less guess at the book’s denouement. It’ll help, I suppose, that I’m living on a rural Maltese island.
I’ve seen the movies, and will continue to watch them (assuming the fourth one ever comes to Malta). So I’ll eventually learn of the outcome.
And, of course, I’m kind of Heisenberging this test by blogging about it.
