Priceless.

I was browsing Amazon’s Kindle Store the other day, and I noticed a book that I’d read about in the New Yorker a few weeks back. It was Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Wired editor Chris Anderson. The basic idea behind Free is that information wants to be free, and with the Internet, mostly, it has to be. “In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win,” Anderson writes. I haven’t read the book, and the New Yorker review by Malcolm Gladwell, was not entirely positive for reasons I won’t go into here. (Incidentally, the review’s available online in its entirety. For free.)

But. The point is, I was browsing Amazon not long after reading about this book, and there it was, the digital Kindle version. Selling for, you guessed it, nothing. And I thought, “Ha! Clever book marketing! See the book’s called Free, see, and, get it? It’s free! And that was the end of it. I continued browsing.

It turns out, that it was indeed clever marketing, but the $0 price tag has little to do with the title of the book. An AP story I came across today revealed that a number of publishers are giving away e-books as a promotional tool. Say, for example that an author comes out with a new book. The publisher might offer the digital version of the author’s previous title for free to boost actual sales of the new book. Apparently it’s working. It would seem that Chris Anderson was onto something.

I thought back to that free version of Anderson’s book, and it occurred to me that despite the fact that it was absolutely free, I didn’t download it to read on my iPhone. (No doubt there are economic principles at work here, but alas, I dropped out of my college econ class, so you won’t be hearing them from me.) After reading the AP story I wondered whether I’d made a mistake not downloading Free since the price of information is an issue that will no doubt affect me in the future as an author and/or journalist. I went back to Amazon, and found that the “force of economic gravity” had been reversed and the book was now selling for $9.99 like most other Kindle editions.

On a somewhat related note, it looks like Kindle is getting a rival. Sort of.

books, daily.

Wired magazine had a blurb on Daily Lit, which will send you books by installments in your email or by RSS. The books seem to be mostly classics — stuff that’s in the public domain.* Still, if you’ve always wanted to read, say, War and Peace, now you can work your way through it on a daily basis … for two years. It comes in 675 electronic installments.

* As a random side note, I must say I am amused by J.M. Barrie’s My Lady Nicotine, which I discovered while browsing the Daily Lit library. Check out the first line:

CHAPTER I. MATRIMONY AND SMOKING COMPARED.
The circumstances in which I gave up smoking were these: I was a mere bachelor, drifting toward what I now see to be a tragic middle age.

J.M. Barrie of course being the Scottish creator of Peter Pan and the subject of the (excellent) film, Finding Neverland. The writer of a popular children’s tale, also a writer of a book about smoking. Who knew?

To Facebook or not to Facebook

I was reading Written Road, a travel writing blog, this morning, and now another of my life principles (besides Math is Evil) has been called into question: Stay Off of Facebook.

I have avoided those sites — Facebook, MySpace, Friendster — because, well. Because.

And now this, which seems to indicate that there are good professional reasons for writers/journalists to be on Facebook. Even the Poynter Institute is coming around.

I don’t mean to sound stodgy and old before my time, but I don’t know how I feel about this… I can see that social networking sites could be good ways to market yourself and your work, but… Really?

to laptop or not to laptop….

I’m about to leave for a vacation and there are long flights ahead. For me, a plane is a great place to write… You’re trapped in a seat and the Internet is out of range = no distraction. (Assuming your row is baby free, and your neighbors are quiet, keep-to-themselves sorts, of course.) And so, whenever I begin packing for trip like this, I wrestle with whether to bring my laptop.

Recently I’ve been spending too much time in front of the computer, and there’s a part of me that wants to leave the thing at home; to take a vacation from that part of my life as much as any other. But the thought of doing so makes me twitchy, so addicted am I to working on my laptop, surfing the web, and playing in Photoshop. Then again, I don’t want to have the hassle of pulling my laptop out at security, of carrying that extra weight, and worrying about its safety in a hotel room.

But.

Yesterday I read a post on Red Ravine on the power of journaling...a lot of which happened to coincide with some of my recent thinking on the topic. As I’ve written here before, I often have several notebooks/journals going at once. Having a computer hasn’t stopped me from keeping a notebook. But it has slowed down my use of them. My journaling is fractured. This blog is a kind of journal, and I have a collection of Word documents on my hard drive organized by month and year that are another kind of journal. And then there are the notebooks, which fill in the gaps and serve as places to record writing ideas.

It’s hard not to think about what would happen if I contained all journaling on paper. I certainly might enjoy the process more. There’s something about looking back over the handwritten pages. The handwriting, the pen marks and the doodles around the edges make it more personal. I do like writing and drawing whatever comes to mind on an actual piece of paper. And would keeping all of my ideas and thoughts in one place produce better writing? More writing?

But. When it comes to writing a full essay, something more polished and complete, a notebook isn’t enough. I can’t write fast enough, I can’t edit, cut, and paste. I get frustrated. Which brings me back to the laptop decision… what if I want to work on a longer piece while I’m on the plane?

I’m really tempted to do an experiment and leave my poor laptop behind. Instead, I’d bring two notebooks: one for a travel journal, and one for simply writing… Oh, but my typing fingers get twitchy just thinking about it….

Begging for retirement

The end is nigh for my faithful little iBook. I guess the thesis is getting to it, too, because it has begun showing its 4 years. In the form of corrupted documents.
Now is so not the time. Yesterday I finally made some progress on rejiggering the last couple of chapters. I put the computer to sleep, went to the gym, and headed directly to my local cafe to continue my work. I ordered a coffee and a nice chewy cookie. I was all ready to put in some time on the book. Except that my computer had eaten the document I had been working on.

Thereafter followed a frustrating afternoon of trying to retrieve it, trying to get Billy’s computer up and running, and other tech-related woes. So much for the afternoon of progress.

This unfortunately is not the first time this week my computer has eaten something I’ve been working on. And there have been other clues: a skipping cursor, crashing programs, a whirring fan that sounds like a 747.
Alas, after consulting with my friend and computer guru Mitch, the conclusion was this: It’s time. My iBook has been somewhat like a third arm for me, and so this development is …well, sad. I’ve been putting off getting a new computer…I’m attached to this one! And the expense, and the inevitable distraction of getting a new one set up. I have 16 days to finish my thesis! There’s no time for shopping and and moving files and so on.
For now, anyway, I am attempting to use Billy’s desktop PC. I’m embarassed to say I have forgotten the ways of Windows, and so I find myself stumbling around clicking on things, making menus pop up that I don’t understand. And then growling a little. I hate Windows.  But I will say that the PC retrieved my supposedly corrupted document, and for that I am grateful.

I’m in love with Library Thing!

I just came across this awesomely geeky playground for booklovers, Library Thing. I am in love, love, love. A way to keep track of all of my books and reading online! It’s sharable, searchable, highly indexed, and great for coming up with new reads. My favorite part is being able to look at all the covers of all my books at once. Sigh. I am a dork, I know.
I have no time to update my library at the moment, however — we are headed out to sign innummerable documents related to our new house — though I have thrown some favorites up for now. I am giddy. I can’t wait to put all of my books up. Especially since they seem to be rapidly disappearing into boxes.

overdosed on James Frey and Cubis 2

Yeah, yeah, I know. I haven’t posted in a while. Between not feeling so hot and an addiction to this, I haven’t been doing much writing at all. The game is a total time suck that I am helpless to resist. Luckily for me, I can only play so long, because the heartless people who make it don’t make it for Macs. B. and I downloaded the full-length Windows version on his laptop and I ended up playing for something like five hours straight the other night while he was at a Celtics game. And I still wanted to play more. Despite the fact that my eyes hurt and my tendinitis was starting to come back in my hand. Really.

B. took said laptop back to SF today, which is probably good on a number of levels.

I have actually been working a bit on a chapter, or perhaps it is turning into a stand-alone essay, I am not sure. I got some flak last workshop for the relentlessly chronological nature of my chapters, and so I decided to write one based around a theme. In this case, the theme is food. So I am all over the place in time. I’m certainly enjoying writing it more than I have been the last couple of chapters…i have been feeling pretty constrained by the need to document everything that happened in the order that it happened. So whether this food piece turns out to be a chapter or a stand-alone essay, it’s probably a good thing.

What else? I got a package of two DVDs in the mail today. This would be unremarkable except that I didn’t order them, and I don’t know who did. They are both Korean movies. Whoever bought them paid with an Amex card. Which is interesting since I don’t know anyone who has an Amex. Our house is a Visa household, for obvious reasons. So, um, interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I like Korean movies, and these look good. It’s just a little mysterious.

I’ve been reading some interesting stuff for class, notably Amitav Ghosh’s In An Antique Land , which is like history and a travel memoir and a research quest involving linguistics, anthropology and religion, all in one. It’s a fascinating read, and it’s beautifully written (though it can be a bit dense). I’m also still plodding through Best American Essays 2005. In general, I am loving these pieces. But the relentless theme of nostalgia, loss and growing older is starting to get a bit, well, old. I think Susan Orlean (the editor) must have been going through a mid-life crisis, or a loss, or a nostalgic fit when she selected these. In any case, my favorite so far has been “Storm Country” by Paul Crenshaw, an essay about memory and the beauty of tornados. I’d say “Dog Troubles” is a close second…the title kind of says it all.

I suppose I should make some kind of comment here about the whole James Frey hubbub, but frankly, I am kind of James Freyed out for the moment, as his embellishments to his memoir and the Oprah bloodbath that followed have been the subject of classroom debate, work debate, email debate, casual dinner debate, and —well, you get the idea. At some point I am hoping to motivate and write a rant here, but the summary version is this: I think what James Frey did was wrong. What concerns me more is that the whole fiasco has given everybody — journalists, Oprah, fiction writers, poets, fiction writers, other memoirists, did I mention fiction writers? –the opportunity to talk about the “low standards” and “lost credibility” of the genre that I happen to write in, creative nonfiction. Stay tuned.

new notebook

To take a break from writing my paper (I’m on page 14!!) I decided to go to Harvard Square and do a bit of Christmas shopping. For obvious reasons, I can’t say what I bought, but let me tell you, it’s some good stuff.
I also bought myself something. I know, shameless. But since I am going to Thailand and I am not bringing my computer (gasp! cry!) I decided to buy myself a nice new notebook. My laptop is like a third arm for me, but I just didn’t want to lug the thing and have to worry about its safety all of the time. Plus, I think the poor thing needs a break from all of the hard work this semester. It has begun acting kind of strangely, and I had to reinstall all sorts of programs. For some reason I can’t seem to use Firefox anymore. It’s so unstable. I even downloaded a new version, but it still crashes all the time. I don’t know if my computer just doesn’t have enough memory available or what, but I am back to using slow Safari which many websites don’t work correctly on. In any case, the laptop needs a break, and perhaps a visit from DiskWarrior to make things right.
So I bought a new notebook. It’s a Moleskine. I have a smaller Moleskine, which is great for keeping bits of information, like addresses and phone numbers and lists, but it’s not big enough for writing much more than notes. And I thought it would be nice to have a new, spiffy notebook for my trip to Thailand. I decided to get the lined one. I feel kind of ashamed of this, as if it’s a crime to need the structure of lines. But my other little Moleskine is the sketch version, without lines. And it’s just not really working for me. I was looking through some older journals and realized that many of my more successful ones had lines. By successful I mean that I wrote a lot, in complete sentences. In the notebooks without lines, I tend to record only notes, things to write more about later. But the thing is, later never comes around. So, lines.

To properly inaugurate the notebook, I took a look at Moleskinerie for inspiration.

I was pleased to see that they’ve quoted Joan Didion. However, they have quoted her incorrectly: “Keepers of notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with a sense of loss.”

What Joan wrote was this: “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

It’s so obvious when someone misquotes Didion, because the rhythm of the sentence is so noticeably off.

Anyway, it’s time to write in ink, for once.

more lost files

I discovered yesterday that it wasn’t just the one file that was lost, but 5 or 6 files, all of which I had updated recently and most of which I hadn’t backed up yet. Argh! Completely demoralizing. It feels like someone is trying to tell me something about this book. Something like, “Hey, don’t write it. Write something else.”

lost files

I hadn’t worked on my Korea book in over a week, so yesterday afternoon I went down to my favorite neighborhood cafe, and thought I would get to work. Ten days earlier, I had written about 5-6 pages of a new chapter about my students in Korea and their views on women. I have been struggling to write about my classes, because it is very difficult to recreate the dialogue that took place. I finally decided just to write and to worry about the strength of the content later. So I did. And I was feeling pretty good about the result.
Anyway, yesterday I started Microsoft Word and and opened the file, only to find complete, corrupted, gibberish. The file had somehow mutated in one of those computer mysteries that just can’t be explained. Let’s just say my file contained one sentence of the original writing, and 60 pages of y’s with umlauts on them and other weird characters. :(
I was so demoralized I gave up on writing for the day. That file was the only section of my writing on Korea that I hadn’t backed up. The only one! And the one that showed the most promise and possibility for future writing. I know I need to just sit down and start writing again, but so far, I can’t seem to. Bleh!