New Year's Reading Resolutions

Emily's New Year's Reading Resolutions:

1. Read more non-fiction.  
2. Read 64 books this year... that's 1 book a week for 52 books, plus an extra book per month, for 12 more books.  If the world ends in December, then I'll make the goal 61 books.
3. Try some new genres.  I don't read many thrillers or mysteries, and I don't frequently read general fiction/literature.

What are your reading goals for 2012?

A sad day for booklovers

As many devoted readers of actual paper books are probably aware, Borders announced earlier today that they are closing their remaining stores and going out of business for good.  Store liquidation could start as early as Friday, and all Borders stores will be gone by the end of September.  Given the amount of money I spend at Borders, I sort of feel like my purchases alone should be enough to keep the company afloat... but alas, no.

This is, of course, hugely sad for Borders' 10,700 employees, but it's also sad for those of us who are still stalwart devotees to ink-and-paper reading devices.  Borders has always been my favorite place to buy books... partially because it usually tended to be the more convenient option, and also because I strongly preferred the book shopping experience at Borders to the experience at B&N.  Borders stores always felt more welcoming, and their rewards program was far superior to the one offered at B&N.  With Borders on its way out, my options are either a tiny local bookstore nearby with a really miniscule selection, or a B&N over 20 minutes away (or, of course, ordering books online).  I don't mean to disparage local businesses, but for me a great deal of the fun of being a book lover comes from the book shopping experience... by which I mean browsing.  When it comes to browsing, I love just looking over what's featured on the display tables, or picking a genre and just seeing what I can find.  Probably about 60-70% of my book purchases are unplanned... purchased when I just went into the store to see what was new.  Browsing is more difficult in smaller bookstores, and it's nowhere near as satisfying when it's done online.  Time to get a library card, I guess!  I'm told the libraries here aren't bad, but I haven't gone into any of them in the half year that I've lived here.

More pragmatic people will probably point out that this is the way of things, in business.  In an adapt-or-die kind of world, it's natural for the businesses who don't keep up with changing technology to be the ones who fail.  I'm still sad, especially since I'm still clinging to the old-fashioned technology invented by Gutenberg.  I guess this is the way that I'll be dragged kicking and screaming into the e-book market... which makes me a little resentful, as it's sort of the e-book revolution that caused the downfall of Borders.

So I bid a fond farewell to Borders, and a fond farewell to my days of spontaneous bookstore browsing.  And to online shoppers and e-book readers, I say "curse you, now I won't get my full year out of my Borders Plus membership that I paid $20 for."

On Twi-washing

I think it doesn't need to be said that Emma and I really enjoy reading, and we always have.  As teenagers, neither of us were the type to need coercion to read a good book.  However, it's become increasingly clear to me that perhaps we are the exceptions to the rule.  I certainly think that reading a diverse range of materials is good for the mind... it improves vocabulary and language skills, encourages learning beyond a classroom setting, and often provides important cultural perspectives.  So, it seems like any tool to encourage teenagers to read more would be a good thing.

Lately, however, I've been noticing a strange marketing trend aimed for teenage girls:  Twi-washing.  In other words, making everything look relevant to Twilight.  This trend was most obvious to me when I recently saw some copies of Jane Eyre in bookstores, no doubt released to generate interest in the new movie.

For those of you completely unfamiliar with the Twilight series, this is what the original cover art for Twilight looks like:

To me, it's pretty obvious that Jane Eyre was repackaged for the sole purpose of making it catch the eye of the Twi-hards.  The two new covers certainly follow the same motif... eye-catching red against a monochromatic background.  This change is particularly obvious when you consider what most editions of Jane Eyre have on the cover:

OK, so the traditional cover art is maybe not the most eye-catching, but it at least conveys the idea that this is a period piece, a classic from many many years ago.  The new cover art for the book really doesn't reflect the plot of the book at all.  The motifs worked for the Twilight series... the choice of red as a central color is obvious, and the particular symbols on each installment in the series make sense, when you consider the plots.  For Jane Eyre, however, it seems like the new covers are odd choices.  For example, I'm pretty sure that 1840s working class women did not wear bright red nail polish and lipstick.

Certainly it's a good thing to encourage people to read at least a few of the classics, particularly books like Jane Eyre, which was considered ahead of its time, due to Jane's unusual competence, intelligence and independence (unlike Twilight, with a female protagonist who feels like she came straight out of 1950).  However, implying that the book is much like the Twilight series feels somewhat disingenuous to me.  Despite the fact that both share a theme of love overcoming obstacles, I feel like any further parallels between the two books are lacking.  For the girl who opens Jane Eyre and expects a simple, straightforward story like Twilight, there might be a lot of disappointments in store.  First of all, it's a longer, more difficult read, both because of its content and because of the writing style, which very much feels like the mid-1800s.  And what happens when you consider classics that couldn't easily get the Twilight treatment?  I challenge readers to come up with a legitimate way to Twi-wash Great Expectations, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc.  What happened to encouraging people to read books based on the book's own merits?

I suppose the Twilight craze has some good merits... at least teenage girls are reading something.  And maybe their love of Edward/Jacob/whatever will encourage them to study harder for the SAT (despite the fact that Bella threw away her promising academic future so she could play Stepford Wives for Edward).  It's worrying to me, though, that they're so crazy about Twilight that they'd only be tempted to read material that is essentially a variation on a theme (vampires in love OMG!).  It's also worrying that so many people only read books so that they can be prepared to watch the movie adaptation later (not like that would really help you with the Harry Potter series, which seems to just be adding in whatever they want).

It seems to me that there are a lot of good YA options out there... options that might address deeper subject matter and have more complicated plots and characters.  It sounds like the Hunger Games books are good options (I've never read them).  Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels are good books for teenagers, and no one could ever accuse those novels of being simple fluff pieces.  I know that I was pretty influenced by books that I read as a teenager, and it seems worrying that so many people are looking at Bella from Twilight as a good model for what they want their lives to be, post-high school.

What other young adult novels would you recommend to bring a reluctant reader into the world of books?

Sidenote: Books in a 21st-century world

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an interesting piece, "In Bookstore's End, No Joy for Sidewalk Seller". It's a short article, and worth reading. The subject of the article, Charles Mysak. Mr. Mysak is a street vendor in New York City, selling used books on the sidewalk. His entire inventory fits in his car. Down the street, a Barnes and Noble is going out of business; his sidewalk business with the tiny inventory will have outlasted the major bookstore chain. Mr. Mysak laments the fact that in today's modern world, even Barnes and Noble (pretty cosmopolitan, as far as bookstores go) can't survive. Instead, people flock to the Apple store, and wander by his little stand with their ear buds in and their iPods turned up high, oblivious to everything else.

Given the recent successes of things like the Kindle, the Nook, and other digital book readers, it almost seems like bookstores, large and small, are doomed to a slow death. Actually, given the amount of money that people seem to be willing to spend on movies, music, DVDs, high-tech TVs, cutting edge gaming consoles, etc., and given the constant influx of information available to anyone with an internet connection, you kind of have to wonder if the act of reading-for-understanding is becoming obsolete. Why bother reading something when it's easier to see it in a movie or watch it on television? When you read news on the internet, on most popular news sites like msnbc.com, the articles are short, to the point, and lacking in much detail or analysis. More traditional publications (such as the New York Times) still seem to cling to the belief that their readers should learn something from their articles; newspapers like the NYT are keeping the vital art of investigative journalism alive.

Despite the prevalence of technology and technology-related-entertainment, I don't think I'll ever let go of my preference for books. To me, an important part of the reading experience is having the book itself in my hands. I like the feel of the paper and the act of turning the page; I like the smell of books both old and new; I like seeing how font styles change over time. No matter how advanced the technology in the screens of the e-readers becomes, it won't ever be able to replicate the experience of reading a real book.

In regards to reading vs watching it on a screen, half the fun of reading a story is forming an image of it in your mind. If you're depending on a movie studio to supply every part of the story for you, from the set to the character's faces, a lot of the creative process for the reader is lost. Even reading a book first, and seeing a movie later, involves a fair amount of tainting. No matter how many times I reread Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, I'm always going to have Chris Columbus' vision of Hogwarts and Peter Jackson's vision of Hobbiton in my head. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I sort of miss having a fluid minds-eye vision of my own in my head. Besides, the art of showing the reader a setting or a character through words is a pretty subtle, nuanced art; a lot of that is lost in the translation from page to film. With regards to non-fiction works, detail is everything, and you'll always be able to cram more into the pages of the book or newspaper then you will into a news segment on TV or a documentary. Again, the act of reading for personal enrichment also adds a lot to the reading side of the argument.

The irony of my choice of medium for this blog entry is not lost on me. I'm not trying to condemn progress, or insist that everyone read and never watch television. I just think that people's lives would be just a little bit better if everyone just read a little more, even if it's only a page or two of a novel every night before bed.

The New York Times article ends with a quote from Mr. Mysak. I like the quote so much that I think I'll end with it here:

“It is apparent that we have a real serious issue, that the life of the mind has been in decline for some time now” ... “Ignorance and indolence is the primary problem. If you take care of the mind, everything else follows.”