Fewer than 50 links about That Book

Fifty Shades books on sale at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

I read Fifty Shades of Grey. Hey, it was for my job! So I could discuss the most popular book in the nation with patrons! Nothing to do with dirty bits and kinky sexual practices. Honest!

And I’m afraid I’m late enough to this show that I don’t have much say about the book that hasn’t been said. No, it’s not very well written. But neither, in my opinion, are many other bestselling works of fiction (I’m still waiting for the International Court of Literary Justice to convene and give me back the four hours I spent reading Angels & Demons). Mostly, it struck me as oddly retro, a throwback to the romances referred to these days as Old School — of the Kathleen Woodiwiss/Rosemary Rogers 1970s-80s school. No rape scenes, thank God, but a lot of the touchstones were there. The heroine is virginal and insecure. The hero is dominant (literally, in this case), but tortured by his past, yet still able to recognize virginal heroine’s stunning beauty when no one else had noticed. And also induce her to multiple orgasms the first time out. And like a lot of the older romances, it’s epic in length — three books at more than 500 pages each. And I feel confident that the vast majority of its readers understand this is a fantasy. Lots of us think of ourselves as insecure but goodhearted people — and wouldn’t it be nice if the one person who recognized our qualities was an incredibly goodlooking billionaire who flies his own helicopter and practices global philanthropy and is extremely good at sex, even if he has some serious issues — that only you can help him get past? Like I said, fantasy. Just like vampires, dragons, elves and whatever that guy does in all those Clive Cussler novels that fly off the library shelves. (5/23 update: See last link below for an opposing view on this issue.)

So instead of opining further about the book or trying to diagnose the social factors behind its unlikely and astonishing success, I’ll simply share a few links worth reading if you’re curious.

• First up, there’s the bizarre action of the Brevard County Library where they yanked their 19 copies of Fifty Shades off the shelves.
• My favorite response came from Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches Trashy Books who had this to say about the Brevard County decision.  (Warning: that last link contains explicit selection from books that are in the, wait for it, Brevard County Library collection).  I’m sorry to report that we don’t have any of those, um, Longarm books in the Monroe County Public Library collection. Though one of my colleagues had the brilliant idea of requesting them via Interlibrary Loan. From Brevard County.
• Wendell has had a number of interesting posts about the Fifty Shades phenomenon - she’s as good as anyone about discussing the appeal of certain books and how romance, even erotic romance, is different from porn.
•  In case you were wondering, yes we have all three Fifty Shades books in the Monroe County Public Library collection, both as an ebook (it’s the whole trilogy at once; sorry it was just far more affordable that way) and as individual titles on paper. And yeah, there’s a waiting list. For all of them. Fun fact: Overdrive, our ebook service, places the Fifty Shades trilogy in the Literature collection. That’s them, not us.
• Another good piece on the Fifty Shades phenemonen was posted over at Bookriot where they read and discussed the book in two parts — the second part is here. I liked their take on it, which was realistic (some of the lines ARE hilarious) without being cruel to either the book, its writer or its many, many readers.
• And finally here’s a more critical take from The Rumpus pointing out that maybe these books and their popularity is not all harmless fun after all.
• 5/25 update — really finally — one last link.
• 10/1 update — OK I shouldn’t claim really finally because this puppy has legs but this one from Dear Author was too good not to share.

Ebooks for everyone! At least everyone who wants them

Photo courtesy of teclasorg, via Flickr Creative Commons

I wrote a piece about ebooks and libraries that appeared in Sunday’s edition of Solares Hill. If you are not a Citizen subscriber, or you didn’t happen to buy a copy of Sunday’s paper, I’m afraid I can’t tell you a way to look at the piece.

I can, however, give you a little explication on my attitude toward ebooks: If you like them, great. If you fear them, relax. No one, at least in the world of the public library, is going to force you to use them instead of old-fashioned print books. And I think all the doomsayers who predict the end of Civilization As We Know It are wallowing in their own bitterness and I just don’t see the point. Sure, civilization as we know it is changing. That’s what it does. Some of the changes are good, others not so much. But constantly calling out all new developments as harbingers of evil is just tiring. And sad. Who wants to be angry all the time? If you only want to read books on paper, knock yourself out.

And what about libraries? We could be in for some rocky times as the digital tidal wave that has already swamped newspapers now reaches us. But we’re trying to do what we’ve always done, which is provide people with reading material and information for their edification and entertainment. Already, in the world of reference, online is the way to go. And as the world goes online, public libraries play an increasingly important role in providing online access and guidance for those who don’t have or can’t afford computers and internet access on their own. Possibly general interest books will go largely digital, too. But I think it will be awhile. The Monroe County Library’s ebook collection, as of this writing, is 549. Our collection of physical books numbers around 150,000.

A couple interesting developments that have come to my attention since I wrote the piece. One is that charging as much for an ebook as for a hardcover may not be as outrageous as I once thought. This piece from Digital Book World made me reconsider and I certainly favor publishers spending money on important things like author advances, editors and marketing. However … it’s one thing to charge $30 or the hardcover equivalent of a book. It’s another to triple the prices for libraries (and libraries only) like Random House has done. Their theory seems to be that elending at libraries is just too easy so more readers will borrow instead of buy; but surely they realize from decades of experience with physical books that frequent book borrowers are also frequent book buyers, who may well be inclined to snap up a writer’s backlist or recommend a title to their friends? Like many librarians, I was also unhappy with HarperCollins’ decision to limit library checkouts to 26 per license. Some library books fall apart (or go missing) sooner than that. But others hang around for years and years.

I’ve been waiting for someone to figure out the appropriate model for library ebook lending … and I think a good candidate just appeared. The folks over at Pottermore, the J.K. Rowling empire, are licensing the Harry Potter series as ebooks (yep, we’ve got all seven of them in the Monroe County Library digital collection). They cost $28, around the price of a quality hardcover. And they expire after five years, which seems like a reasonable length of time for a popular title. In fact, such expirations based on time rather than number of checkouts could serve as a sort of self-weeding mechanism for libraries — popular titles would, one presumes, be re-licensed while others would be quietly allowed to expire, much as we do today with weeding the shelves. Only without all the cardboard boxes and magic markers.

Now someone just has to figure out how to loan ebooks on an interlibrary basis. And how patrons can donate their copies if they wish. I have faith that somewhere in libraryland, someone smarter than me is already working on both tasks.

Happy Banned Books Week!

Banned Books Week is here — an issue about which the American Library Association likes to make a big honking deal every year — and with it will come, predictably, a bunch of people pointing out that censorship is not quite the issue here in the U.S.A. as it was in, say, Soviet Russia. This issue is already being debated on our library’s website (check the comments on the linked post).

And while it’s true, the event would be more accurately if less alliterativey called Challenged Books Week, and it’s true most challenges come from individuals concerned about what their kids are reading, not government agencies trying to keep information from the populace, I’m still OK with the American Library Association making a big deal out of this and getting some press and attention to the issue of freedom of information.

A report from Library Land

I recently attended the American Library Association annual conference in Washington, D.C. — the mother of all library conferences. According to an ALA news release, there were 19,513 attendees — and I believe it. The gathering was so huge that I knew my college housemate was there — and never saw her once in three days (she is a university library dean and operates on a whole different level of librarianship).

What did I learn? For one thing, from the moment I stepped into the Convention Center to pick up my registration packet, I realized this was my tribe. Everyone looked a little familiar, even though I didn’t know any of them. This conference was one of the first times I’ve felt real regret for not going into this field earlier in my career — even though I value everything I learned from journalism and other jobs.

To have and to … whatever

Imagine our delight here at the Key West library when we saw that our inaugural One Island One Book program , featuring Ernest Hemingway’s Key West novel To Have and Have Not, had made the pages of American Libraries, one of the premiere professional journals of libraryland! And it was the issue with library god Neil Gaiman on the cover, even. How cool is that!

Until … we turned to page 12 and saw the nice write-up that explained our book of choice was Ernest Hemingway’s … To Have and To Hold. Huh?

Having written for publication for many years I understand how this sort of mistake happens. Once in awhile your brain just takes a little timeout — and next thing you know, the action of your misfired synapse is set in type. If you’re lucky, you have a smart editor whose brain is working better than yours that day and she catches the goof. If not … it’s mortifying. One of my favorite things about blogging is that you can go back and fix these kinds of screw-ups as soon as you, or someone else, notices them.

Unfortunately for the good folks at the American Library Association, and for us, you can’t do that with print. So there we are, for eternity, with Hemingway’s To Have and To Hold.

By the way, there is a novel with that title in our collection — we came across it the other day while moving the large print novels. It’s by Fern Michaels, the prolific romance writer. It’s probably a fine piece of entertainment — but it’s unlikely to be chosen as a One Book One Island title. (And not to be confused with To Have and To Hold by Jane Green, which it looks like we used to have in the collection but no longer do.)

Best of the best

I’m a sucker for those Best Books and various awards — and wouldn’t you know the fine folks at the Williamsburg (Va.) Regional Library, in their really impressive blog, Blogging For A Good Book, have created a megalist of the best of the best. Check it out — and if you’re in Key West you can check out a lot of them from the library. I’m not going to go through and figure out exactly which of these titles we have but most of them look mighty familiar. I can tell you for sure that we have the top fiction title, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, and the top nonfiction book, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers.

One of the real pleasures of my job is coming across blogs like this — it’s so great to see there are librarians — and readers in general — out there who love books, love reading, and love sharing what they know.

How do I love my local public library? Let me count the ways.

The great, smart, public spirited, hardworking people at the Monroe County Public Library aren’t letting budget blues or holiday overload get them down — instead they’re keeping up great public service, like this online display of books by writers who will appear at the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar (spaces still open for the second session! free Sunday afternoon sessions both weekends!). My man Christopher, owner of the increasingly essential Voltaire Books, just stopped by and told me they have books by all the seminar writers — what a great Christmas gift!

And if that’s not enough reason to love this library, here’s another: Saturday is the season’s first book sale in the Palm Garden. Woo hoo! Lord knows I don’t need more books in my house but these are still irresistible bargains for any bibliophile (and you never know when you might find, say, a signed first edition Elizabeth Bishop in there). It has happened. As a weekday gal, it’s also good to see these events back on Saturdays.

Review and reading

My review of Quiet, Please, Scott Douglas’ memoir of working in a public library, is in today’s edition of Solares Hill and on The Citizen website. I liked the book, but not as much as I’d hoped to. But it’s still a great behind-the-scenes look at life in the library. And definitely check out Scott’s blog.

I also FINALLY finished Samantha Hunt’s The Invention of Everything Else, a historical novel about Nikolas Tesla and a young hotel chambermaid. It’s mostly set in the early 1940s in New York though it contains extended flashbacks, mostly to Tesla’s life. I liked it a lot and hope we may see Hunt down here for the 2009 Literary Seminar. It’s going to be a great one, and there’s lots of reading to do. Lots and lots.

And some really great news: We’re getting a lot of new titles onto the shelves at the college library, from donations and other sources. Every day I go in and find a new book I just have to read. Since I don’t finish a book a day, this is a bit of a problem. But at least they’re library books so I have to give them back and they won’t add to the book storage issues already occupying my house. (And I always assume people know this but many don’t: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A COLLEGE STUDENT TO BORROW BOOKS FROM US!!!!!)

 

A few notes

After a good start to the year, my reading pace slowed considerably — but I wanted to make a few notes. 1) I just finished “Quiet, Please” by Scott Douglas, which I’ll be reviewing very soon for Solares Hill. I found the book an enjoyable read, though my expectations were raised a little too high because I so like the author’s blog, Speak Quietly. Still, good to see young librarians out there telling stories. I’m about halfway through The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt, which I like a lot so far despite the fact that the author seems to be the hot new thing, went to my high school, is a couple years younger than me AND lives in Brooklyn. (Also, check out her website from the link on her name — it’s very cool.) And last weekend, I accompanied a bunch of birders to the Tortugas (for more on that trip, you can read my husband’s column in the Citizen) — the trip reminded me of a book I liked a lot and reviewed for Solares Hill a few years back: “Assassination Vacation” by the multi-talented Sarah Vowell. Vowell writes about being seasick on the trip to see Dr. Mudd’s cell at the Tortugas but the really good parts of the book, to me, were about lesser-known assassins, namely the guys who shot McKinley and Garfield.

Let’s eat … food!

Just can’t get away from the book reviewing habit — recently I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan’s most recent book, In Defense of Food, at work (yes, it’s in the collection of the FKCC Library!) and found it a quick, engaging and interesting read — so engaging I started taking notes. Next thing I knew, I was reviewing it for Solares Hill and the review appears in the current edition (that link takes  you to a PDF of the entire issue). The review is also available on the Citizen’s website, where Solares Hill’s book review appears each week, down at the bottom of the page.