Classical Bookworm

Pictorial Webster’s by Quercus Press

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:57:00 +0000

Watch as John Carrera of Quercus Press transforms engravings from 19th century Webster’s dictionaries into a handmade work of bookish art.

The handmade editions are expensive, naturally, but a trade edition is available from Chronicle Books for $35. Chronicle Books is also giving away one of the leather-bound editions—enter the contest here before November 15th. See sample pages and more about the project at Quercus Press.

via phantasmagorical

Library building, Dutch style

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:20:00 +0000

Sanja Medic: De Batavier (De Boekenkast), 2006, Amsterdam.

This is not a mural, those are ceramic books on brick shelves in the side of the building. The spines bear the names of Dutch writers and poets after whom many of the surroundings streets are named. See more at the artist's website: Sanja Medic.

via Bookshelf

Middlemarch: That Annihilating Pinch

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:24:00 +0000

It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshipping this husband: such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but the husband in question. Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

"No, indeed," he answered, promptly. "And therefore it is a pity that it should be thrown away, as so much English scholarship is, for want of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world. If Mr. Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble."

"I do not understand you," said Dorothea, startled and anxious.

"I merely mean," said Will, in an offhand way, "that the Germans have taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a pocket-compass while they have made good roads. When I was with Mr. Casaubon I saw that he deafened himself in that direction: it was almost against his will that he read a Latin treatise written by a German. I was very sorry."

Will only thought of giving a good pinch that would annihilate that vaunted laboriousness, and was unable to imagine the mode in which Dorothea would be wounded. Young Mr. Ladislaw was not at all deep himself in German writers; but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.

Poor Dorothea felt a pang at the thought that the labour of her husband's life might be void, which left her no energy to spare for the question whether this young relative who was so much obliged to him ought not to have repressed his observation. She did not even speak, but sat looking at her hands, absorbed in the piteousness of that thought.

Will, however, having given that annihilating pinch, was rather ashamed, imagining from Dorothea's silence that he had offended her still more; and having also a conscience about plucking the tail-feathers from a benefactor.

"I regretted it especially," he resumed, taking the usual course from detraction to insincere eulogy, "because of my gratitude and respect towards my cousin. It would not signify so much in a man whose talents and character were less distinguished."

—Middlemarch, George Eliot

Oh Mary, how well you know our twists and turns and petty vanities!

Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:35:00 +0000

This is my first time participating in Blog Action Day, a global campaign that harnesses the power of blogs to raise awareness about important issues. The topic this year is climate change, something most people are already aware of, but about which much still needs to be done.

Today I heard about the United States’ first “climate refugees,” an entire village that must move because the sea ice that protected their shoreline has melted and storm surges have eroded the shore right to their doorsteps. To make matters worse, the permafrost is also melting, so their homes are gradually sinking into the ground. In fact there are several villages in Alaska that are now in the same situation, and hundreds more that are threatened. Rather ironic for a state dominated by “drill, baby, drill” climate change deniers.

I think that most of us who live in the real world know what climate change is all about. Burning millions of years worth of stored carbon, in the form of fossil fuels, over a couple of centuries has increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere far beyond its natural levels. Carbon dioxide holds in heat from Earth that would otherwise radiate into space, and so the climate is warming, which is causing massive changes, mostly negative ones, in the Earth’s ecosystems.

It is the rate of change that is so devastating to natural systems. Most species can adapt to slow gradual changes, which happen naturally all the time due to the wobble in our planet’s rotation and changes in the intensity of the Sun. It is sudden changes that exceed nature’s capacity to adapt. The dinosaurs, who had survived 160 million years of natural climate variation, were likely wiped out by sudden climate change after a space rock hit the earth. The impact would have filled the sky with dust, shading the sun and slowing plant growth enough for the large herbivores, and their predators, to starve out.

Obviously what is happening now is warming rather than cooling, but the consequences may be no less serious. Tropical rainforests, which contain about 80% of all species, are at risk of drying out and being replaced by species-poor savannahs. This would comparable to the greatest mass extinctions in our planet’s history, with the unique distinction of being wholly caused by a single species.

So what can we do about it? This is a painful question because almost every aspect of our lives is now dependent on fossil fuels. Science and technology make our modern lives possible, but fossil fuels make them happen. If we want to cut back on fossil fuels we either have to cut back our consumption, or how many new consumers we produce, or both. Certainly much can be done by promoting efficiency, but as long as we keep producing more goods, and more kids, any efficiency gains will be swamped by growth just as surely as Arctic coastal villages will be swamped by the sea.

The touchiest subject here is population, but there are ways of dealing with it humanely. Decades of humanitarian work in the developing world has revealed a very simple equation: educating girls and women results in smaller families. It’s already happening, but more can be done by supporting NGOs that work specifically with girls and women in the developing world. I like the Global Fund for Women, but most development agencies have programs aimed at educating girls that you can earmark your donations for.

Westerners already have a low birth rate, but we consume so much more than the world’s poor that having one child here is the same as an Indian woman (theoretically) having over 30 children! Since we are all competing in the same globalized food market, and there are already a billion people malnourished or starving in the world, having children in the West has very real consequences for children elsewhere. Luckily we have the freedom to choose whether or not to have a family, and have many other options for finding fulfillment in our lives.

For us, reducing consumption is critical. The easiest way to do this is to simply buy less stuff. Everything we buy takes fossil fuels to make, transport, and sell, so the less we buy, the less fossil fuels we burn. Putting off purchases, making do, borrowing, or buying used are all ways to reduce our consumption. If you’re worried about the economy, spend your money on human-powered things like live theatre or a weekly massage. Reducing our direct use of fossil fuels is also good, and I think we all know how to do that by now: drive less, fly less, turn off the lights, turn down the heat, etc.

But if you really want to make a difference, and save even more money, become a vegetarian. It may be the single most impactful thing one can do to stop climate change. The production of meat in industrialized countries is not only cruel, it is extremely energy-intensive, consumes large amounts of grains that could be used to feed people, and used and pollutes vast quantities of water. Eating meat is also very unhealthy, and only necessary in places where there is no access to a variety of plant foods (e.g. the far North). So you can stop animal cruelty, save the environment, feed the hungry, stop global warming, live longer, and save money on groceries and health care all in one fell swoop. If you don’t believe me, just Google “vegetarianism and the environment.”

Speaking of Google, did you know that Google has committed to going carbon neutral? I was quite happy to discover that since this blog lives on their servers. Not long ago I asked my previous host, Typepad, if they were doing anything about their climate impact, and I was told that have no plans whatsoever to do anything about it. Meanwhile, Google has enacted a detailed program of increasing server efficiency, using more renewable energy, and buying carbon offsets. Yet another reason to be glad I moved my blog!

Just in case there is anyone still reading, I’d like to plug one organization that is geared specifically at offsetting the carbon footprint of our beloved books. The US alone uses about 30 million trees each year to make books, so it’s not a small issue. While trees are a renewable resource and are theoretically carbon neutral since they fix carbon, that is only true if they harvested sustainably and replanted. I know from working on forestry issues that this doesn’t always happen, even where it is required by law. Climate related drought, fire, and insect infestations make it even more doubtful that all the trees felled to make books will be replaced.

Enter EcoLibris, an American organization that works with partners in the developing world to plant trees that not only take CO2 out of the atmosphere but provide wildlife habitat, restore water flows, and do all the other wonderful things that trees do. The price is quite reasonable, just a dollar to plant a tree to offset one book, with volume discounts if you want to do your whole library at once. Planting trees is one of the best things that can be done for both people and the environment, so it’s hard to go wrong. Ideally, all of our books will be some day be printed on recycled or tree-free paper, but until then it’s nice to have a way to lessen the impact of our favourite pastime.

If you still haven’t had enough climate change talk, check out the Blog Action Day website to see some of the other ~~10,000~~ 13,000 blogs from ~~153~~ 155 countries that are blogging about climate change today. If you’ve blogged about it too, do leave me a link!

Speaking of Museums…

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:53:00 +0000

This Saturday is Museum Day in the United States. You can get free admission to participating museums by downloading a free admission card. If you’ve ever been curious about the National Museum of Dentistry or are brave enough to try the Atomic Testing Museum, now’s your chance! Seriously, there are some very interesting museums on the list, and if your local museum is not on it, go anyway and show your support for the preservation of culture and knowledge in your area.

via @IHahn

Treasures and Two British Museums

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:57:00 +0000

It was with great excitement that I finally made it to the British Museum exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum. Treasures: The World’s Cultures from the British Museum is a diverse collection of objects from every continent representing numerous cultures from prehistory to the present day. It’s been here since May but I cleverly managed to put off going until the last fortnight of the exhibition. I’ve made two trips now and thought I would share the bookish highlights. (As always, click images to find larger versions.)

Starting in the Egypt room there was a funerary papyrus sheet from The Book of the Dead. It would have been entombed with the mummy and contained incantations to assist the deceased in the afterlife. You have to admire a culture that provided the dead with reading material!

The highlight for me was definitely the cuneiform tablets. I’m sure I saw scads of them when my parents took me to the BM as a child, but I have forgotten them. After reading up on Mesopotamia last year I was really looking forward to seeing some again. The first tablet dedicates a new temple to Nininsina. The writing is large, even, and very legible (assuming one can read Old Babylonian).

Next was a compact tablet which turned out to be a letter from king of Egypt to the king of Babylon, kindly requesting tribute (“send more gold!”).

Contrast those with the somewhat larger, crowded, but precise tablet from the magnificent library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. This one is a medical text, part of a treatise on treating coughs (very topical in light of the H1N1 flu that is already sweeping the Island). The British Museum describes the writing as “very close but clear and neat Assyrian character,” and indeed the cuts look as sharp as if they were made yesterday, not 2500–3000 years ago. The image below is roughly life size, so it gives you an idea of how small and detailed the writing is.

That was the sum total of the literature displayed, apart from some pages from illuminated Islamic texts, which I can’t find pictures for (perhaps because they depict living beings which is controversial in Islam). Literature was also represented in stone by two magnificent classical busts of Euripides and Marcus Aurelius. That was it, though. Not a single scroll or book from the last 2500 years. Perhaps they are all at the British Library? Here’s hoping they start a road show too!

I also wanted to post a couple of the drawings from the exhibit. There was a mini-gallery of drawings and prints from the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and two of them really stood out to me. The first is a chalk drawing of Saint Francis by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). I think the composition is very effective and I’m impressed by the confidence of the strokes. It’s hard to spot any restatements—every line is where it is supposed to be.

Another chalk drawing that caught my eye is of a woman drying her foot, by Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). You can see that Renoir repositioned her left hand and perhaps her right foot, but otherwise it is a masterful drawing. I think the natural subject makes it especially beautiful. In a way it is a foil to the Rubens—one forms an angular triangle facing upwards, towards higher things, the other forms a softened triangle facing downwards, engaged in a humble task. They don’t have much in common but I love them both.

Cushing Academy e-Library Update

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:47:00 +0000

I found an online transcript of a live chat with the headmaster of Cushing Academy, Dr. James Tracy, talking about their transition to a bookless library. Here are some highlights:

We at Cushing LOVE books - so much that we want our students to have access to millions of them anywhere on campus, not just twenty thousand in the library.   We also are not eliminating books altogether.   Teachers can still assign printed books in their courses and students are encouraged to read printed books for pleasure.

Cushing is a laptop school.   Every student has a laptop for use in the classroom; those on financial aid are provided laptops free of charge.   Every classroom also has a Smart Board, with direct access to the Internet.
All of the books, journals, and data that our library will have available electronically will now be immediately available via wi fi to every student instantaneously in every classroom - and, in fact, anywhere on campus.
We also are providing Kindles and Sony Readers for students who want to read in a more eye-friendly format.   Currently, we are providing 18 of those, because we think students will do most of their research on their laptops.   We will purchase as many as we think the community needs as we get a sense this year of the demand for Kindles and Sony Readers circulating from the library.

One of the biggest challenges ahead is to work out the copyright issues that are holding up some of the access and standardization, especially for new material.   Cushing hopes to work with Amazon and other companies to build models that are profitable for them and feasible for schools.

We are providing all of this free of charge to each student.   Cushing is admittedly an affluent private school with extensive resources, so we are in something of a privileged position in this regard.
We do believe, though, that pioneers like Cushing will build the paradigm that, as costs come down with technological progress, will make this available to even the poorest schools in the developing world at accessible cost.

All of Cushing's administrators spent the summer testing Kindles and Sony Readers.   We fell in love with them and read all of our novels on them now.   It is great to be on a plane with hundreds of books in your hand!

We believe that the costs will actually come down dramatically in the coming years and that the models which Cushing and others are now fine-tuning will make it easier for public school students to have cheap -even free - access to all of the great literature and cultural achievements of human civilization on a scale many orders of magnitude greater than what they can garner from a tiny school library today.

I give the headmaster points for acknowledging that they can do this because they are richer than God, as the saying goes. I do wonder whether encouraging students to read books for pleasure carries much water when you’re getting rid of your book collection. Teens are notoriously adept at spotting when grownups are not walking the walk.

I recently read about another laptop school in much more humble circumstances. Actually it’s a whole laptop school system. As of this month, every student in Uruguay will have an XO laptop of their own and wifi at their school. Under Plan Ceibal [English link on this page], Uruguay’s government has bought a laptop for every student and is connecting every school to their educational network to provide them with internet access and educational materials, including books. Compare this with Chile’s Maletín Literario, in which cases of books are sent to needy families. It will be interesting to see how all of these experiments turn out.

“say everything” by Scott Rosenberg

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:28:00 +0000

say everything: How Blogging Began, What it’s
Becoming, and Why it Matters
Scott Rosenberg
Crown Publishers, NY
9780307451361

When I discovered blogging some five and a half years ago, I finally found my niche in cyberspace. At the time I had been sick with M.E. for a few years and was looking for ways to interact with the outside world using a minimum of energy. The other online options at the time were either too flighty and flammable (listservs and bbs) or too disconnected (the personal home page) for my liking. In the blogosphere I found the best of both worlds: my own home base where I could say what I wanted to say and also be connected to a whole world of other bloggers doing the same thing.

That’s exactly the kind of blogging that is celebrated in Scott Rosenberg’s say everything: How Blogging Began, What it’s Becoming, and Why it Matters. Rosenberg painstakingly charts the growth of blogs, from the very first custom-coded online diaries, right up to the election of President Obama, using the stories of notable blogs and bloggers to illustrate the many faces of blogging. Don’t get the impression that the book is mostly concerned with the “big” blogs, though. This is a social history, and the author makes it clear that what is so wonderful about the blogosphere is the totality and diversity of the human voices it contains.

Rosenberg spends some time dealing with the anti-blogger backlash, making short work of just about every criticism you’ve ever heard about blogging. The chapter “Journalists vs. Bloggers” is particularly good, and when he compares the recent record of investigative bloggers to that of the mainstream media (WMDs anyone?), the journalists come off looking pretty incompetent. Unfettered by editors and the news cycle, bloggers can and do dig much deeper than journalists could ever hope to. Before I read the book I would have said that bloggers could never replace reporters; now I am not so sure.

At its heart, though, this book is about the “small” blogger, the one who just wants to say something and hear what others have to say. The critics who say blogs lacks quality miss the point entirely, according to Rosenberg. He uses a quote from blog pioneer Dave Winer to illustrate:

It was a mistake to believe that creativity was something you could delegate, no matter how much better they were than you, because it’s an important human activity, like breathing, eating, walking, laughing, loving.

Just as it is a mistake to stop creating because you are not a Picasso or Vivaldi or Austen, it is a mistake for established artists and media creatives to think that we are after their jobs. It is only journalists who ask whether bloggers are journalists; most bloggers couldn’t care less. The same question gets thrown at the litblogosphere. Professional book reviewers periodically get out of their chairs to thump their chests and declare their vast superiority over book bloggers, and we happily go on talking about books with each other.

The last section on the future and legacy of blogging was the weakest part of the book, but who can predict the future? “Now that we have begun, it’s impossible to imagine stopping” says Rosenberg in an earlier chapter, but given the rapid rate of change of internet technologies, I would hesitate to declare blogging immortal. Some have already said blogging is dead, replaced by less-demanding social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (though these are also notorious revolving doors). They point to the millions of inactive blogs as proof that the fad has passed. That only tells me that many who tried it found it was not for them. Writing is not everyone’s thing, and as Rosenberg says, “the act of blogging is fundamentally literary.” Those who are left behind are the ones who genuinely enjoy writing and reading the writing of others, and I don’t see that impulse ever changing, whatever technological platform is used to accomplish it.

I definitely recommend this book to any blogger interested in the broader context of what they do. This is your story. The book is very well written, and I think it will stand the test of time as a chronicle of the first 15 years of blogging. For a taste, see the book’s website for links to the many blogs mentioned in the book. Perusing them will give you at least a glimpse into blogging’s past. It’s up to us to create blogging’s future, one blog at a time.

UPDATE: I just discovered that the chapter on journalists and bloggers can be read at the say everything site. It's worth reading if you are interested in media issues. Click the "print" link if you don't want to read it with an orange background!

Something is Stirring in the Literary Graveyard…

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:52:00 +0000

Just as Homer and Dante and Shakespeare and the lot were getting pretty peaceful in their final resting places, Rebecca of Rebecca Reads is trying to teleport them into the blogosphere. She started with a guest post at the Book Bloggers Appreciation Week site, in which she encouraged book bloggers to read and review the classics. There is some excellent advice in that post, such as blogging about long works in sections, and just using your own style to blog about the classics. But she has really stirred things up with her proposed “Dead Authors Blog Tour.”

I’m not entirely sure what a blog tour is, but I gather it’s something like the web rings of yore, and in this case would involve linking blog posts related to a specific classic book, or perhaps a group of related works or themes in classic literature. It’s all pretty much up in the air right now, including the title. I’ve proposed it be called the “Undead Authors Blog Tour”–classic authors may have shuffled off their mortal coils long ago but they are living among us still!

Do check out Rebecca Reads and join the lively discussion. If nothing else it will convince you that the classics are by no means dead.

After Digital Libraries

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Maybe history will repeat itself…

Is a Library Without Books Still a Library?

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:57:00 +0000

I think by now most bibliophiles have seen this:

This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine [Cushing Academy] campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

You heard it here first, folks. After a mere 2,300 years the book has now become obsolete. It would be laughable if it wasn’t part of a well-established general trend to push books further and further down the library totem pole that I’m sure you’ve all see in your local libraries. As Stefanie recently blogged, libraries, or at least some of them, are giddily embracing new technologies. Some of these seem appropriate—I can access newspapers, databases, and all sorts of reference works through my library’s website, an experience that greatly improves on the analog equivalent. I can’t tell you how much I hated spending days on end sifting through scientific journal indexes in university and I’m glad students don’t have to go through that any more. But there’s a difference between gathering information and reading.

I don’t know if advocates of the digital library have really considered the economics and ergonomics of reading. As Stefanie points out in her post, the costs of digital technologies seem to get overlooked. There is this idea that once you digitize a book it will be free and useful forever. Who pays for the data servers, computers, reading devices, database subscriptions, software upgrades, hardware upgrades, IT support, electricity, and disposal of toxic e-waste is a question that is never asked let alone answered. When you consider all of the costs of maintaining constantly changing technology, buying a book once and sticking it on a shelf for a few decades seems like an incredible bargain.

I also wonder how people are supposed to read the books in a digital library. I can’t imagine reading a whole book on screen. It’s simply not that comfortable. With a book you can curl up in an armchair or stretch out on a sofa, read it over breakfast or sitting on the bus. You can change position as often as you like, cuddle with the mammal of your choice, or (as is usually mentioned in these discussions) read it in the bathtub. Of course you can do all that with an e-reader (provided the batteries are charged), but do we expect every man, woman, and child to shell out hundreds of dollars for an e-reader every 3-5 years? Obviously that is not going to be possible for a great many library patrons, and if libraries can’t even buy books now they are certainly not going to be buying thousands of e-readers to loan to their patrons.

There’s also the question of quiet. Reading and thinking require quiet. The human brain has not changed with our changing lifestyles, and the science is clear: more distraction equals poorer reading, thinking, and learning. As libraries add coffee bars, video games, big screens, and other interactive amenities, where are we supposed to read? You would think that in this noisy, infinitely distracted world we would value quiet places even more than before, but the opposite seems to be the case. Just about every news article about libraries that I read makes fun of the “shushing librarian,” as though quiet is old-fashioned and we’ve evolved beyond it. Quiet reflection is out, and manic distraction is in. Unless something changes, there will soon be no place in public life for quiet thoughtfulness at a time when it has become the rarest of commodities. All things considered, if the goal of libraries was to discourage reading, going entirely digital seems like a very good way to go about it.

I think libraries feel that they have to do something. The days of “build it and they will read” are clearly waning. Funding is weakening dangerously and circulation (of books, at least) continues on its downward slide. Libraries have responded by going multimedia, but is this what libraries are for? The one thing libraries traditionally had that you couldn’t get anywhere else was a wide selection of books that are free to read, and a peaceful, quiet place to read them. That is still a combination you can’t get anywhere else. The first rule of marketing is to state what makes your product or service unique. Why aren’t libraries promoting themselves as a way to get away from the rat race and media frenzy, a place to relax, recharge, and just be you for a while?Instead, librarians seem embarrassed by their books and quiet and are eager to assure patrons that they can be as noisy and distracted in a library as they are every place else.

Who knows, turning libraries into public rec rooms might keep overall circulation up, but it will rob society of something it needs, whether it knows it or not. I think society actually does know it, or else it wouldn’t be stampeding in search of quiet and wisdom from yoga, tai chi, meditation, and retreat centres from every branchlet of every tradition you can think of. Aren’t quiet and wisdom what libraries do best? Maybe that’s something they should be making noise about.

Blogs: Just a Passing Fad

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:11:00 +0000

Weblogs are a ‘revolution.’ They’re ‘journalism.’ They’re ‘art.’ They’re, again and again, the next New Thing. To which the only possible response can be: come on, people. . . . How can you not boggle at the level of self-delusion, of self-infatuation, it takes to declare that…the concept will be alive and well a decade from now? That weblog readership will increase a hundredfold in that time?

—Greg Knauss, November 1999 [In say everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters]

Heh.

Happy International Literacy Day!

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:35:00 +0000

Each year, International Literacy Day is an occasion for worldwide mobilization for literacy. Today, I call upon governments, intergovernmental organizations, development partners, employers, trade unions and civil society organizations everywhere to stop the neglect of youth and adult literacy and to strengthen their commitment to literacy. Literacy is not just about reading and writing, it is about self-respect and human dignity and about opportunities that give hope to individuals, families, communities and entire societies. Literacy, an integral part of the right to education, has shown itself time and time again to be a vital tool of empowerment. It is time for the right to education of all persons, of whatever age, to be realized in practice.

—Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO

I don’t think I have to tell other bookworms about the value of literacy. Reading and writing are not only useful skills, but they bring us great joy and satisfaction in life. I don’t think we can imagine what it’s like to be one of the three quarters of a billion adults in the world without basic literacy skills. Not only are they deprived of the joys of reading, they are shut out from the means to improve their lives, exercise their rights, and participate in their societies. As a result they are liable to life-long poverty, exploitation, and a terrible sense of helplessness.

There is much that we can do to remedy the situation. One of the most obvious is to support literacy charities operating domestically and internationally. I have a few of my favourites featured in the footer of this blog, but there are many others. I would suggest using a reputable donation portal like Canada Helps or Charity Navigator (USA) to search for literacy programs.

You can also help every time you shop for books online by using the new Bibliotarian website. At Bibliotarian you can comparison shop for new and used books, and when you make your purchase the relevant affiliate fees are sent to charity. Half goes to the Book Wish Foundation, which runs Bibliotarian and supports literacy programs for Darfur refugees in Chad, and the other half goes to the (U.S.) charity of your choice. It’s a great way to give the gift of literacy while you are enjoying your own literacy.

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

—Frederick Douglass

Classics… en français

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:24:00 +0000

I was very fortunate as a child to have been enrolled in French Immersion in my middle grades and then advanced French in high school. I spent a full third of my public education entirely in French, and more years with French tuition than without. French is one of the two official languages of my country, and although I didn’t think of it this way at the time, knowing both languages makes me a better Canadian and in a small way contributes to the unity of our country. It also opens up to me the world of French literature… at least in theory.

I confess I haven’t made much use of my French since high school, and it has naturally deteriorated. But I remember, at the height of my fluency, reading Voltaire’s Candide, with much help from footnotes and our teacher in order to penetrate the 18th century French. It seemed impossible at first but little by little we worked our way through and before I knew it I was not only reading it but writing essays about it, in French. Seeing Candide at the Oxford World’s Classics Audio Guides site reminded me of it again, and I thought I should get a copy to see if I can still read it.

As often happens when book-shopping, one thing led to another and I discovered a very impressive series of classics published by Hachette, specifically the BiblioLycée imprint. These are classics meant for high school students in academic streams and they come with an impressive array of pedagogical materials:

complete annotated text
reading comprehension questions
analytical questions
texts/artworks from other sources with comparative questions and writing assignments
description of the life and times of the author
discussion of the nature of the work and it’s literary context
glossary of literary terms

And did I mention that BiblioLycée editions use footnotes? But of course! The French have class.

I haven’t seen anything comparable to these books in English. Even the Norton Critical Editions, which do supply mountains of background material, lack study questions and abridge long works. The BiblioLycée editions are like mini-textbooks—a whole literature course in one volume. Educators can also download free teaching guides with detailed curriculum suggestions and examination questions. Some might see all this as nannying but I’m sure teachers appreciate anything that makes their job easier and I can see the books being very useful for autodidacts as well.

As for Candide, I think I had better start off with a bilingual edition, but I will keep the BiblioLycée in mind. I wish English classics publishers would also keep it in mind and look at developing their critical editions into something more than what they are. A little French might do them some good too.

Oxford World’s Classics Audio Guides

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:37:00 +0000

I stumbled across a nifty new feature at the Oxford World’s Classics website. They are building up a collection of short audio guides by the editors of their new critical editions. I listened to the audio guide for Pride and Prejudice and found it quite rewarding. The collection is small now but is supposed to grow. Alas they don’t offer a feed but you can sign up for monthly email updates. Happy listening!

Cracker Jack Classics

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:24:00 +0000

I’ve been noticing a trend in the book business lately in which vendors of electronic book readers throw in some “classics” with their gadget to sweeten the deal. The iLiad, Elonex, and Sony Reader can be found shipping with fifty to a hundred pre-loaded public-domain books. What’s more, one of the selling points of all the readers is that they can, with more or less digital wizardry, be loaded with countless free books from sites like feedbooks, ManyBooks.net, and Project Gutenberg. It seems as though classics have become the prize in the box of Cracker Jacks—a little something extra with no monetary value that’s fun to find in the bottom of the box.

I have mixed feelings about this. Here we have some of the greatest literature of all time being used as a marketing tool. On the other hand, perhaps it will expose some readers to books they would otherwise not seek. There’s also the question of what ebooks will do to classics in print. Will people, especially students, keep buying paperback classics when they can download them for free? Bookseller.com has an interesting article on the subject, which expresses confidence that the “value added” classic in print, i.e. critical editions, will always do well. However I do wonder about one comment Alessandro Gallenzi of Oneworld Classics: “One of the issues with the [free] e-books is that they are completely rubbish—it's just text.” Well, isn’t that the way they were written? How many first editions had notes and introductions and chronologies of the author’s life? Do we really need editorial content included in the book in order to benefit from reading it? With online resources we are less dependent than ever on a book’s editor for helping us understand a text and its context. Indeed a serious student might prefer to get multiple opinions online than to rely on a single editor.

If I was a classics publisher I wouldn’t sit around watching the ebook ship sail away, I’d climb aboard with my “value added” and see about making classics in electronic format worth something. Extended hyperlinked multimedia notes might be a good start. Bringing together multiple editorial perspectives might be another possibility. Imagine if Oxford World’s Classics or Penguin Classics put all the critical content from all the past editions of a single work together in one electronic package? Something like that might be worth more than a Cracker Jack prize.

Measure of Time by Larry Brady

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:33:00 +0000

Larry Brady, Measure of Time. Watercolor, acrylic, gold leaf, blind stamping, veneer pens on 300lb Fabriano watercolor paper. 28.75 x 14.5 in. Text: Augustine, Confessions. Commissioned by Concordia University, Irvine, California.

This is by far my favourite piece from the 2008 juried exhibition issue of Letter Arts Review. Very appropriate for the International Year of Astronomy, no? I love it because it is so beautiful, it appeals to the scientist in me, and it uses a text from a great Catholic saint. But I also love it because it is legible. I’m afraid that many if not most of the works in Letter Arts Review have moved away from the function of letters, i.e. communication, and focus almost exclusively on their form. Of course anything goes in art, and many of the more abstract pieces are beautiful and interesting, but I want to see beautiful texts not just beautiful letter-forms. It seems odd to me to look at a piece of “writing” and be forced to consult the description to find out what it says. I won’t be renewing my subscription but I am glad to have encountered this work. I’ll have to look elsewhere for more of its kind.

Life According to Literature Meme

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:54:00 +0000

via Pages Turned

Using only books you have read this year (2009), cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title. It’s a lot harder than you think!

[I cheated and included books I haven’t finished yet.]

Describe yourself: Lying Awake

How do you feel: Acedia & me

Describe where you currently live: The Pacific Northwest Landscape

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Historic Houses of Britain

Your favourite form of transportation: Choppers

Your best friend is: Anne of the Island

You and your friends are: Infidel(s)

What’s the weather like: Galaxies

Favourite time of day: Called Out of Darkness

What is life to you: Decoding the Heavens

Your fear: Hard Times

What is the best advice you have to give: The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Thought for the day: Canada Rocks!

How you would like to die: Reading the OED

My soul’s present condition: Great Expectations

Aaaaand we’re back.

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:40:00 +0000

So, how was everyone’s summer? I know there are still a couple of weeks left but the deepening angle of the sun tells me that the end is near. I trust that a good time was had by all. I spent a good part of my summer making some improvements to Rancho Bookworm (i.e. my apartment) and enjoying the company of a certain new member of the pack. I have been reading all the while but nothing especially blog-worthy (with the exception of Lying Awake, which is so profoundly blog-worthy that I don’t know how to approach it). Most enjoyably, I have been wending my way through the Anne of Green Gables books, primarily in audio format. (Right now Anne is busily arranging marriages for all her spinster friends.) Anne’s dreaminess is well-suited to summer, but now that summer is ending it’s time to get a little more serious. I’m sure that Anne the scholar and schoolteacher would agree.

Autumn is probably my favourite time of year. The cool, damp weather is so refreshing after the heat-induced torpor of summer that, paradoxically for a time when nature is winding down, it renews my energy. Add to that the anticipation of back-to-school time and I’m ready to hit the books. I think 17 years of schooling has deeply ingrained in me the connection between September and starting new learning adventures with fresh enthusiasm. Yes, summer has been fun and frolicsome, but now it’s time to get back to learning and studying and doing things that don’t require a trip to the hardware store.

Of course, back-to-school time would not be complete without a trip to the stationery store, and I found something there recently that might be of interest to other bookworms. Staples is selling a handy metal bookstand for a mere three bucks. Despite the low price I’ve found that it does an excellent job. It’s quite sturdy and has rubber tips that keep slippery pages in place. It handles large heavy books and pocket paperbacks equally well. Alas they only seem to be available in Canada, but they are Staples brand so perhaps your local store can get them in.

Staples wire study stand — click image for more info.

Another nice thing about this time of year is that it gets darker sooner, which means I don’t have to stay up past my bedtime to look at the stars. I just found something that will make stargazing even easier. As you may recall, the Astronomy Reading Challenge calls for some stargazing with a guide (EVA1). It turns out the guide doesn’t have to be a book, it could be a laptop with Stellarium installed on it. Stellarium is a free, open source, multi-platform, real-time sky charting program that is easy to use by absolute beginners. There are other free sky chart applications out there, but they tend to be rather technical and geared towards experienced astronomers. With Stellarium you can be stargazing in a matter of minutes. I found it easy to figure out the options and get it set up for my location. What makes Stellarium especially useful as a field guide is that you can switch it to night mode, which turns the display red to save your night vision.

Stellarium has a number of interesting features, such as showing constellations from various cultures. You can also do fun things like zoom in on celestial objects. I zoomed in on Jupiter, which was up last night, and was shown the planet and its moons at their present locations, orbiting in real time. Pretty cool. Even cooler is that you have the option of using a panoramic image of your own back yard as the background scenery for Stellarium. It doesn’t get much more personalized than that! If you’ve ever wanted to learn your way around the night sky, I can’t think of an easier way than Stellarium. Give it a try!

My back yard view according to Stellarium. See more screenshots here.

How to Get Great Delts

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:49:00 +0000

Become a conductor.

Inma Shara leading the Vatican concert celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Listen to the Music of the Spheres

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:47:00 +0000

Today on Sunday Afternoon in Concert Bill Richardson featured music from Tafelmusik’s special concert programme in honour of the International Year of Astronomy. The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres features music inspired by the stars and planets from the time of Galileo (who was himself musical). I blogged about it with envy around the time of the concert’s debut, and so I was completely delighted to learn that it is being streamed at CBC Concerts on Demand. What a perfect accompaniment to the Astronomy Reading Challenge!

If you’d like to save a copy of the concert, at least until the CD comes out, try using the Freecorder toolbar. Try different settings if it doesn’t work at first. Vista users might have more luck with the newer Ask & Record toolbar.

Designer Bookbinders’ First International Competition

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Designer Bookbinders is a British society of bookbinders and they just held their first international competition at the Bodleian Library. Entrants were asked to interpret the theme of water, a very relevant topic as fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce due to overuse, pollution, deforestation, and climate change.

A total of 117 books were exhibited, and you can see the prize-winning books here. My favourite is by George Kirkpatrick. It’s not watery-looking like most of the others but I think it best emphasizes the life-giving nature of water. The idea is that a drop of water lands on the arid-looking front cover, seeps through, and causes a sudden eruption of vegetative growth on the back, including a golden shoot which clasps the book together. Wonderful.

via @asteger

How to Move a Blog from Typepad to Blogger

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:52:00 +0000

When I decided to move my blog from Typepad to Blogger, I went in search of technical information on how to accomplish this. There is no standard format for blog data, and at present Blogger cannot import blogs from other platforms, so I needed to find out how to convert the Typepad format to the Blogger format. What I found was . . . bupkus. I couldn’t find a single page or post on this particular transformation. There was lots of information on migrating from Typepad to Wordpress but nothing on moving to Blogger.

So, armed with congenital stubbornness and everything ever written by Bach, I went through an exhausting process of trial and error. Every time I hit a roadblock I’d search the web for clues and come up with something else to try. Eventually I got the whole thing figured out and I vowed to post the details online in case anyone else wants to make the same move (and I hope they do because Blogger rocks!). It’s my little contribution to the geekosphere.

As it turns out, moving from Typepad to Blogger is not terribly complicated. As the saying goes, it’s easy when you know how. It really comes down to using the right applications at each step in the process. Using the wrong one will get you nowhere, as I found out several times. Here is what worked for me:

Export your blog from Typepad. (Manage | Import/Export | Export) This exports all of your posts, pages, and comments in Movable Type Import Format. This is a simple text file with UTF-8 encoding, which is standard but it shouldn’t be edited in just any text editor (see below). Details on the structure of the file can be found here (you may need this later on).

Upload your images to an image host with predictable file paths. I opted to use PhotoBucket, though I’m not entirely happy with their file management (you can’t view or search by filename). However it does produce predictable file paths which means you can update the image links in your blog with a simple search and replace (see next step). Picasa, Blogger’s image host, generates random image file paths and so you’d have to update each image link by hand if you went that way. Note that after December 15, 2008, Typepad started using randomly generated file paths for images and so any images posted since then have to be updated manually. Boo for Typepad!

Edit your export file with Notepad++. Editing the Typepad export file with Notepad, Wordpad, or Word will do something to the format that prevents it from being converted to Blogger format later. Notepad++ is free and has advanced search and replace features that are crucial for this sort of work. It also handles accented and other special characters (i.e. Unicode), which the others do not. For safety’s sake, save a version of the file at every stage in your editing. This can help with later troubleshooting. There are a number of things you will want to fix:

Image links. Use search and replace to bulk-update image links to your new image hosting location. Before last December 15th, the Typepad image file path was:

http://user.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/YYYY/MM/DD/image.jpg

Use CTRL-R to open advanced search and replace, check “Regular Expr” and “Wrap,” and uncheck “Selection.” Set up a search and replace following this model:

Search: user.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/200[0-9]/[01][0-9]/[0123][0-9]/
Replace: imagehost.com/user/album/
(follow image host’s file structure)

The numbers in brackets represent possible numbers (e.g. 0 or 1 for the first number in a month). Fill in the bolded parts as appropriate. If you’ve been with Typepad for a few years, you might also have images directly in the /uncategorized/ folder. Browse through your export file to make sure you’ve found all the possible locations of your images

Keywords. Keywords in Typepad will become “labels” in Blogger (as will Typepad categories). If you don’t want all your keywords to become labels, you’ll have to delete them. If you only have a few keywords, it is probably easier to remove them in Blogger by selecting all posts and using the “Label Actions” dropdown box.

If you are going to delete your keywords and think you may have instances of “KEYWORDS:” in your text you’ll have to search for them first and alter them in some way so they don’t get involved in the search and replace. Try searching for “KEYWORDS: ” (i.e. with a space after) or “>KEYWORDS:<” (i.e. a separate line in html text) to find these. If you really need to keep them as is you can temporarily append a distinctive set of characters (e.g. $$$) and then remove them afterwards with search and replace.

Here’s how to remove the keywords:

Search (“Regular Expr” & “Selection” unchecked, “Match case” & “Wrap” checked): KEYWORDS:CTRL-M (Note: typing CTRL-M inserts an invisible line break character—you won’t actually see “CTRL-M”)
Replace: KEYWORDS:

This puts the keywords on the same line as the head tag, which is necessary for the following search:

Search (as before but “Regular Expr” checked): KEYWORDS:.*
Replace: KEYWORDS:CTRL-M

Extra line breaks. Until recently Typepad inserted line breaks between paragraphs (and some other tags) in the post HTML, which made editing it easier, but unfortunately Blogger renders these as real line breaks, which creates extra space between paragraphs and and the ends of posts. There can be several of these breaks in a row, so it takes multiple searches to get them all:

Search (“Regular Expr” off): >CTRL-M<
Replace: ><
Search: >CTRL-M CTRL-M<
Replace:><
Search: >CTRL-M CTRL-M CTRL-M<
Replace:><
…and so on until no more are found

Don’t actually put spaces between each CTRL-M—I just did that here so they would be legible. At the end of this process each post should be in one lump of HTML. It’s messy but that’s the way Blogger likes it.

Alternatively, you can set Blogger to ignore line breaks in the post HTML (Settings | Formatting | Convert Line Breaks: No). This just means that if you are composing a post in HTML you will have to code in line breaks ( ) instead of just hitting Enter.

Your comment signatures. All the comments you left on your own blog will be linked to your old blog’s URL or your Typekey/Typepad Connect profile. Use search and replace to fix these as follows:

Search (“Regular Expr” off): URL: http://user.typepad.com/blog/CTRL-MDate:
Replace: http://www.blogger.com/profile/########CTRL-MDate:

Be sure to try alternative versions of your old URLs with and without a final slash. Repeat for Typekey and Typepad Connect profiles if you ever used them. Find your exact Blogger profile URL from your Blogger Dashboard (View Profile).

Anything else you can think of. Now’s the time to make any fiddly changes to your blog content. It’s a lot easier to search through a single text file than to edit posts individually once they’re in Blogger.

Split up your edited export file, if necessary. The blog conversion application you’ll be using can’t handle files over 1MB. If your edited file is larger than this, split it up at the end of a post, which is marked with 8 hyphens. Each file should have “TITLE:” at the beginning and 8 hyphens at the end.

Convert your edited export file(s). (Almost there!) Use the Googlecode Blog Converter for Movable Type to Blogger. As long as your file isn’t too big and the format hasn’t been corrupted, it should work first try. If you get an error, try converting an earlier version of your edited file to see if you can narrow down where the problem happened. Make sure none of your search/replacing has interfered with the Movable Type format. I had one file conversion fail because of a single missing line break! This is why you should save your export file after every edit.

Import into Blogger. If you haven’t set up a new blog in Blogger do so now. Under the Settings tab click “Import blog” and choose the xml file(s) you produced with the blog converter. Once you hit “Import” any number of things could happen. You’re supposed to see a screen with a sort of progress bar and messages about what is being imported. At the end you should get a message saying how many posts and comments were imported. More likely you will get an error message, or a hung progress page, or some half-loaded mystery page with nothing on it. Don’t despair. Go to Posting | Edit Posts and you may find your posts are there anyway. If not, wait a minute and refresh. If they’re really truly not there, try importing again. You may have to try three or four times, but it will work eventually.

That’s the end of the data migration! There are just a few more details to take care of in Blogger:

Theme: If you haven’t already, choose a theme for your blog. This will determine both the look and the layout of your blog. There are countless free themes available for download online—there’s no need to have a Blogger blog that looks like every other Blogger blog! Just beware that older themes may have to be modified to allow embedded comments (comments below the post). This is usually just a matter of inserting a line of code. Alternatively, under “Edit HTML” you can choose “Revert widget templates to default,” though this may reverse some of the customization of your theme. Always back up your theme before making any changes!

Sidebars: You’ll have to manually set up your sidebars, headers, and footers using Blogger’s Layout page. Though it’s a bit tedious to copy and paste your blogrolls, link lists, and other widgets, you’ll find that it’s much easier to edit and rearrange all of that content in Blogger than it was in Typepad.

One tricky point for book-bloggers is what to do about book lists since Blogger doesn’t have an automated book list gadget. One way around that is to use widgets from third party sources like Amazon, LibraryThing, or Shelfari. Or if you’re comfortable with a little HTML you can make your own with a blank HTML gadget. Once you have a template worked out then it’s just a matter of inserting the relevant book details. Here’s an example of simple code for a sidebar book list for someone with an Amazon associates account:

<ul> <!—BOOK ONE --> <li style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0; text-indent: 0;"> <a href=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ISBN/associatesID/> <img src=http://images.amazon.com/images/P/ISBN.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg / style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 15px 0px;"/> BOOK TITLE AUTHOR</a></li>  <li style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0; text-indent: 0;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ISBN/associatesID"/> <img src=http://images.amazon.com/images/P/ISBN.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg / style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 15px 0px;"/> BOOK TITLE AUTHOR</a></li> <!—BOOK THREE --> … </ul>

Simply update the parts in bold and you’re done. Be sure to use the 10-digit ISBN to access Amazon. They have yet to switch to ISBN-13 for their URLs.

Internal Links: By moving your blog, all your internal links will be broken. Every link in your blog to one of your blog pages will have to be updated. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. Use search to find internal links in your Typepad export file (since it’s easy to work with), then find the new locations of both the post with the internal link and the post it is linking to, and update the link with the new address. It’s not fun but hopefully there won’t be too many of them.

Recent images: Images posted since December 15, 2008 will have some Typepad gobbledegook for an address, so you’ll have to update them with the new URL for the image at your image host (see above). Search your Typepad export file for “user.typepad.com/.a/” to find the locations of your image links.

Files: If you had uploaded any files to Typepad to share on your blog—music, home video, documents, etc.—you’ll have to find somewhere to host them because they can’t be uploaded to Blogger. I use the free web folder provided by my ISP. It’s not large but it’s large enough for my purposes.

Tell Google: Sign up for a Google Webmasters account and register your new blog so that Google will start indexing it right away. This will enable people to find your new blog via Google search.

Enjoy the wonders of Blogger! That’s it, you’re done! You can now enjoy the speed, reliability, functionality, and versatility of Blogger. One of the greatest things about Blogger, which is particularly helpful when you are setting up your blog, is the ability to edit any element from the blog itself. If you are logged in to Google you’ll see tool icons below every element of your blog. Just click on one to edit the content of that section and it will be updated immediately without having to refresh the page. Brilliant.

Because I was making it up as I went along, I didn’t follow precisely these steps in exactly this order when I was migrating my blogs to Blogger. I ended up having to go back and edit some things after uploading to Blogger. In doing that I found that while Notepad++ is great for text files, it has trouble with large XML files (which is the format Blogger exports in). So if you want to bulk-edit an existing Blogger blog, try using firstobject XML Editor (foxe). It’s fast and simple, though the search and replace is very basic (no regular expressions or line break characters).

I should mention that I use Windows Live Writer to actually write my blog posts. I started using it after the last Typepad “upgrade” because their “improved” editor was practically unusable. I continue to use it because it is so slick and easy to use, and shows you exactly how your post will look as you’re typing it. It also has some nice image formatting options and helpful third-party plug-ins (including one that automatically posts a tweet when you publish). It’s free, and it’s just extremely good.

Finally, I’ve discovered a handy tool for backing up your entire blog, images and all. HTTrack is a free application that will download every page from a website and download all the images and other paraphernalia that goes with it. This might be a handy thing to do before deleting your old blog just to have a record of what was there in case you need to restore something at your new blog. You can never have enough backups, right?

I hope this doesn’t all sound too daunting. It’s not difficult if you go step-by-step. Try printing out this post (with Internet Explorer; Firefox doesn’t print well) and using it as a checklist. I took a whole lot of notes as I went along and that was very helpful in keeping things straight. It does take time but it is worth it to get away from the cost, limitations, and frustrations of Typepad. This is one case where you don’t get what you pay for! Blogger, despite being free, is a powerful blog host and will let you do just about anything you can imagine. I definitely encourage Typepad users to take a look at Blogger and consider making the switch. You won’t regret it!

Addendum: One thing I didn’t realize about Blogger when I wrote this is that it doesn’t support tags. Using the Compose editor will strip the paragraph tags from your HTML and replace them with two tags. If you have any paragraphs with CSS classes, they get converted to DIVs. This does not affect the appearance of your posts, but it does mean that if you want to style paragraphs either inline or through CSS, you will have to use DIV or SPAN tags to do it. It’s an oddity and I really hope they change it because tags are fundamental to HTML.

“Reading the OED” by Ammon Shea

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:58:00 +0000

I’ve always considered myself something of a dictionary-lover. I have half a dozen English dictionaries, ranging in size from pocketbook to tombstone, all strategically located for specific applications. The smallest ones, both from the 50’s to capture older literary words, are next to my bed for novel-reading. A chunky little Concise Oxford from 1964 does duty in my lectory, and a Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate stands by my study desk. Finally, by my computer desk I have a Canadian Oxford and my big guns, the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (all words used since 1700 plus Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and the KJV).

As it turns out, my regard for and collection of dictionaries is minuscule compared to those of Ammon Shea. He has about a thousand dictionaries (and related books) stuffed in his New York apartment, and has actually read a number of his dictionaries, cover to cover. Dictionaries are simply the love of his life. Obviously, an obsession like that could only lead to one place: the Oxford English Dictionary. Sure enough, he spent a year reading the entire 20-volume OED, and has recounted his journey in Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.

The book consists of one chapter for each letter of the English alphabet, with a short section of prose and a selection of his favourite words from that letter. Shea writes about the OED, his love of dictionaries, and the trials of reading the OED. It takes until G to find a quiet-enough place to read (basement of a college library), and he gets such regular headaches that he comes to regard them as pleasantly familiar reading companions. The headaches abate somewhat after he breaks down and gets glasses, but his task is no less gruelling thereafter. Fuelled by gallons of coffee, he reads for something like 10 hours a day. I don’t think I could read the most engaging novels for that length of time, let alone a dictionary. The best I’ve done is read the Bible for three hours a day one Lent. Pretty paltry compared to Shea’s year-long odyssey.

I must admit I was rather disappointed with the lexicon he collected for this book. For one thing, the only information you get about each word is a short definition. There is no etymology, unless he mentions it in his annotations, and apparently copyright concerns prevented him from including any text from the actual OED, including the literary references that are its hallmark. It seems pretty short-sighted of Oxford not to allow quotations from the OED in what is more or less a book-length advertisement for it. Have you ever heard of a book about another book without any quotations? That is what we have here, and it means that the reader doesn’t really get any of the OED experience. It’s an opportunity lost, I think.

My other disappointment with the word lists is that like A.J. Jacobs, who read the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Shea devotes altogether too much attention to the things that make teenage boys giggle. He has already co-authored a book on obscure naughty words, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Not a letter went by without references to various bodily functions, and drunkenness and raunch were much in evidence also. I could have done without it.

Overall the book is light and breezy (if New York misanthropy can be light and breezy) and a very quick read. In a way it is not really for the established dictionary enthusiast. There is almost no discussion of the kind of technical work that goes into a dictionary, or indeed on the specific content of the OED. He touches on the subject when he discusses “set,” the word with the longest entry in the OED, but that’s about it. This is not a book that will tell you much about dictionaries or the OED, though Shea does provide a short bibliography with books that will.

For Shea it seems the journey is the destination. He simply enjoys reading dictionaries. No sooner had he finished reading the OED than he decided to read it again, this time without a deadline, allowing himself to look up intriguing cross-references or literary quotations. I think he might have produced a more substantial book if he had done that the first time around, but that is probably not what publishers are looking for. Feats of strength sell better than thoughtful sauntering. I guess it is up to us to do our own thoughtful sauntering.

Housekeeping: Links Astray and Stroppy Comment Boxes

islandbookworm@gmail.com (Sylvia) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:49:00 +0000

Moving a blog is not unlike moving house: some things inevitably get broken or go missing. In the case of this blog it appears that some links have gone astray so I am now in the process of going through and checking them all. I’m also updating all 294 internal links so you won’t be sent back to my glacially slow old blog on Typepad (reason #27 why I left).

If you’ve had trouble leaving a comment here, give it another try as I’ve changed my settings to broaden the commenting options. And if you see anything else amiss, do feel free to leave a comment or send an email and let me know. Thanks!

UPDATE: I tidied up the template and that is supposed to solve commenting problems. The template I'm using predates embedded comments so it probably didn't have the right code for that section. Fingers crossed...