MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

Don't give up on bookstores!

The sad news in Ottawa last week was the impending demise of yet another independent bookstore, Collected Works. The store is up for sale at $1 and if no buyer, or infusion of cash, presents itself before Christmas Eve, the store will close. That’s the third one for this city, this year. Nicholas Hoare closed earlier in the year and our other wonderful indie, Books on Beechwood, will follow suit in January.

A columnist in the morning newspaper seemed to think this was inevitable, what with the electronic world taking over our lives. But, you know what? I don’t agree. I truly believe there will always be a place for bookstores and although the numbers will not be great, those that remain will be serving a faithful clientele, one that could even see growth as this fascination with all things electronic whittles away to the norm and readers look back to the ‘good old days’. Even vinyl LP’s are making a comeback!

Did you turn on your radio this morning? Remember when that new gadget, the television was supposed to obliterate radio? Television was also seen to be the undoing of newspapers, too although they’re still around. I know, many are hurting, some have closed and others are cutting back…sounds like a pattern, doesn’t it? But will they totally disappear? I doubt it. Community newspapers, at the very least, will survive. And I that radio will always be with us. As will bookstores.

Flying home from Victoria the other night, I noticed several passengers continue reading their paper books while others of us had to shut down their e-readers, iPads and smart phones in preparation for landing. It’s those unforeseen advantages that are out there and will aid in the future of books.

I subscribe to the newspapers, have my radio on for much of the day, watch some television at night, read a book on my iPad when traveling, and have stacks of books throughout the house…many of them with bookmarks part way through them. These can co-exist!

So far this morning I have read the newspaper and read a few chapters of a paper book while enjoying my second espresso, before starting to work. And, this past weekend, I bought a book, a manual on how to use my iPad!

Long live the book!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase

READ AND BURIED
Berkley Prime Crime, now available
A KILLER READ, also available at your favourite bookstores and online.

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

Barnes & Noble says they sold a million e-books on Christmas Day 2010. If you tried to use your WiFi that day, you probably noticed everything was slow, due to the high traffic volume. Naturally, on the same day, they sold zero regular books, as the stores were all closed. eBooks have been around for many years, so why this sudden leap into eSales?

Many people were waiting for the hardware to become useful, as in affordable, right-sized, and right-weighted. That seems to have finally happened, with the Sony eReader, the Kindle and the Kobo. Or everybody who was interested finally met someone who had an eReader, and got a personal report. Or many baby boomers are finding they need to get something with slightly larger print. Whatever the reason, the stars aligned and the eGods made it so.

We have a friend with a Sony, a Kindle, and an iPad, so we got a tour of the relative merits. After much discussion, we went with the iPad.

I love it. Yes, it was more expensive than a Kindle, but it can do so much more. It is like a stripped down laptop. It can surf the web. It can YouTube. It can bring my mail, and let me answer mail, but it won’t let me create an address book, so I can only reply to messages, or write to people if I know their email by heart. It can deliver books in seconds, and will let me adjust the font size, screen brightness, and choose either white paper or sepia.

Used to be I would have breakfast every morning and then go to my office, boot up, and wait for 5 to 20 minutes for my computer to go through its virus-checking, update pasting, and whatnot. Now I go to the kitchen, put the kettle on, start up the iPad, put the toast in, and before the toast has popped, I am reading my fantasy hockey team score and my email.

And then there are the apps. I immediately downloaded free Sudoku, free crossword puzzles, Freecell, a Tim Hortons finder, a Starbucks finder, a piano, a guitar tuner, several newspapers, a kick-the-can game, and air hockey. There is even an app that will listen to the music playing on your stereo for 10 seconds, tell you what it is, who the artist is, give you the lyrics, the chords, the artist’s bio, and by the way, do you want to buy this from iTunes right now? There is no end to the apps.

My objective was to read a few free books to get the feel of it, see if I liked reading on a screen or if it hurt my eyes, always an issue when you have eyeballs that aren’t lined up properly. There were a heap of books to choose from. Only thing was, they were pretty old and/or boring. Walking by Thoreau. Walden Pond. Moby Dick. Gaak, I read Moby Dick in university and will not read it again. I started reading Winnie the Pooh, but interest soon faded and I found I was having more fun playing crokinole or bowling.

Finally, I downloaded The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. It’s old, but it’s free. And I started enjoying the story, and totally forgot to notice if I liked the eReading experience or not. So I guess I do.

People who object to eReaders often say either they like the feel of a real book, or the hardware is not up to par, or eBooks are expensive.

The hardware is up to par now, all of the devices currently on sale. eBooks are cheaper than real books, but not dirt cheap. And who among you can deny paying the author for his/her work?

Yes, real books feel nice in your hand, the firmness of the cover, the crisp smoothness of the paper, the sound of the pages turning.

The iPad feels nice, too. It is silky smooth beyond imagining, is gently warm, and it will make page-turning noises for you if you want.

Nobody is asking you to give up real books entirely. Just find a little place in your heart for eBooks.


Vicki Cameron is the author of Clue Mysteries and More Clue Mysteries, each of the 15 short stories based on the board game Clue. Her young adult novel, Shillings, appeared in 2007. Her stories appear in the Ladies' Killing Circle anthology series and Storyteller Magazine. Her young adult novel, That Kind of Money, was nominated for an Edgar and an Arthur Ellis.