Ever tried, ever failed

From Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA):

e-book conversion

Slowly, but surely, e-books are becoming a fixture in my reading life. I’m not particularly wedded to hardcopy, paper books – I’m used to reading electronically – but a physical book is more convenient to pick up and more pleasant to hold... but, but, but. The advantages stood out like a sore thumb on my recent trip to the States. Instead of carting around one or more books to read, I had half a library’s worth in electronic form. That 700+ page door stopper of Justin Cronin’s (The Passage – fantastic read) wasn’t weighing down my hand luggage, I read it on the screen. Reading China Mieville’s The City and the City meant I didn’t have to reach for a dictionary for all those words I don’t know, I just highlight with a tap and the e-dictionary tells me the meaning. Bored, and look for another book, I just browse through genres, categories, authors and find books to sample instantly. If I like it, and the price is right, I might buy then and there.

Amazingly simple and convenient.My friend browsing the e-reader displays at a New York Barnes & Noble store. Note how large the display is, and that is located front and centre of the store.

Contrast this with books I have bought in physical form recently, and I am completely in love with sampling. Any chance I have to avoid shelling out $20 for a novel that just doesn’t hold me past page three, or page fifty, is money saved, paper saved, shelf-space saved.

I had many discussions with friends in the States about e-books, and their disbelief that it could ever replace paper books, and was generally playing devil’s advocate, but more and more I was advocating my own opinion that e-books are an overwhelmingly positive phenomenon for readers and authors. With them, authors can potentially make a reasonable living and control their own creative brand. With them, readers can sample books, enjoy their choices at a much reduced price, have the convenience of a virtual library in their bag, buy books anytime and anywhere there is an internet connection. The main downside is the loss of a physical object, the tactile pleasure of holding a book, turning pages, smelling the paper and ink, running your fingers over a glossy cover. But paper books won’t disappear. Vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs are all still with us. Paper books may be marginalised to collector’s items, or speciality goods or a reduced niche market for holdouts, but they’ll always be around. If there is a quality version of a book I love, I’ll buy it.
Jeff VanderMeer's The Steampunk Bible - an example of book that will always be better in hardcopy. Here shown on the shelf with other "bibles"...
David Cornish has written three volumes of his YA fiction “The Monster Blood Tattoo” series and his publisher has a hardcover version complete with additional illustrations (by the author), attached ribbon book-marks and expanded appendices. A beautiful package and well worth the few extra dollars. This type of book-as-artifact product will always sit on my book shelf. The rest will likely be a mixture of cheap imports from The Book Depository and e-books sitting on my reader.

Five day impressions of NYC

This is either Manhattan, or a strange steel and concrete fungal growth of montrous proportionsMy few days in New York City are something of a blur. They were then, and are more so now. It's a city that I didn't like, but that has gotten under my skin, such that I am writing about it. I haven't ever felt the need to put pen to paper about Paris or London, though I could imagine doing so for Berlin, amazingly cool city that it is. But in this case, for this big city of big cities, more specifically for Manhattan, I want to.

The impressions and images that remain with me aren't just the stink of a big city, the human urine in the corners of stairwells, the pervasive acridity of dog pee along the apartment streets where a hundred apartment-sized wanna-be dogs have marked their territory. They aren't the claustrophobia of the endless buildings, skyscrapers, streets, cars, taxis, tourists, advertising imagery. I was a minuscule cog in the city's machine, tiny and insignificant but still a part. And I found that very surprising. New York has a harmony to it that surprised me. An endless patience for multitudes. Everything was smaller in my sight than in my imagination: Central Park a beautiful yet conceivable oasis, the Empire State building immense but not crassly so, iconic sights reduced in size simply by being real somehow... but not the city itself. That I can't conceive of and the city therefore feels larger than its parts.

Central Park Bubble Services: this guy specialises in transporting children to other dimensions by surrounding them with magic detergentAnd ridiculously smaller. There was a woman sitting, melting, in a subway elevator near Columbia University, Upper West Side. She sat behind a barrier in the industrial sized elevator, water bottle in hand and she showed me the esky she brought to work with her every day for her refills. Her job was to press a button, up or down, for the commuters. That's it. Her view of the world during her day was the endless faces entering and leaving her oppressive box. So too the doormen who sit patiently behind the entrance doors of apartment blocks, uniformed and waiting. The inescapable queues for food, tourist attractions and transport, more waiting. The rats darting beneath the subway tracks, catching the eye, while waiting for the next monstrously loud train. Being told by my friend to keep the apartment door closed at night to keep the rats out. Watching him handle his own rats in his laboratory at Columbia University. He showed his a daily kindness such that they would go to him easily, but told me of colleagues who did not and had to be vigilant not to let theirs escape.

More portals, this one between streets in New YorkI visited MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, and saw a drawing in the German Expressionism exhibit, drawings of artists following the loss of hope after World War I. A man and woman were collapsed against each other, parents grieving for a lost child. Collapsed into each other, joined completely in a grief that is a complete horror for me as a father. Nearby was a painting by Jackson Pollack that resembled a Pro Hart original, surrounded by admirers and the brand-curious. Immediately beside it, mostly unremarked and unnoticed was a stick thin metal sculpture of a woman that seemed to watch the crowd wryly, watching the obsession with brand names, famous names, infamous names. Anything with a name. The Statue of Liberty, Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Trump Tower. Lists of things to do and see in a Lonely Planet guide.

Finally I felt New York City's, Manhattan's, creativity. I wanted to write while I was there. I didn't. The city was aggressive in its noise, heat, smells; it was exhausting. Bookstores, little more than retail outlets for me in Australia, became safe havens of quiet and reflection, places to sit and recharge, to feel other worlds within the strange world outside. After being assailed by the city each day, I wanted to return to the quiet of my friend's apartment and write. I could imagine being there for that purpose.

The Lego jungle of SohoI met an Australian lady in Los Angeles who said she hated New York. That you either hated it or loved it, as though she were an authority on this. I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I flew out of JFK airport on my fifth day. But I keep thinking about the place.