The iPhone Changed My Reading Habits
May 10, 2012 at 2:32 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 1 CommentThe threshold between books and electronic media has always interested me, and I’ve written about it often. Now that I’ve had an iPhone for about three months, I thought I would weigh in on fantasy versus reality.
In my younger days, I was a Luddite. A cell phone only made its way into my life because a friend convinced me to take over his contract (a dumb move and one I regretted). Words can hardly express how much I hated having a cell phone. I had a bad enough time with voice mail as it was; now people could make a noise inside my purse any time they felt like it. I had a pretty bad track record for returning phone calls, or even answering the phone, as it was usually zipped inside my purse and stuck on the top shelf of the coat closet.
E-mail was even worse. I’ve had the same address for over 15 years, and at no point could I ever be said to be “caught up.” I would regularly get e-mail from various people asking if I was still alive. A two-month turnaround meant I really liked you and felt highly motivated to write back.
During this period, a book was always at my side. There were generally books in every room of my house, except the bathroom, unless I was soaking in the tub. I might leave the house without my wallet, or lose my day planner, hat, gloves, or umbrella, but no way was I leaving the house without literature. I am one of those people who loves the smell of printed books. As a rule, I don’t check luggage when I travel, but the heavier of my two carry-on bags is filled with books, not clothes. I have been known to buy books when there was no food in the house. I often dream in text. I fit the profile of a print media enthusiast in every particular.
Enter the iPhone. The only event in my life to have surprised me more than my incipient smartphone fetish was my sudden passion for distance running. I had hopes that this awkwardly shaped, expensive object would help me become a reliable communicator; I knew my budding career depended on this. I gave it a try, with about the same attitude that many people hold toward their first bite of kale.
I was off and running almost instantaneously. Suddenly I could answer research questions the moment they crossed my mind. I could delete junk e-mail instantaneously. I could see who left a voice mail and choose to delete the ones I knew were spam. Within days I had no scroll bar in my e-mail inbox. I haven’t been haunted by a single voice mail I can’t make myself play. In fact I just found myself responding to an e-mail on my phone while standing in front of my desktop computer. This is not the first time that’s happened.
Naturally, my reading habits have changed in response to the presence of a helpful genie in my pocket. In January, I was maxed out on the 30 books I am allowed from the public library. There are five left, and my 20-slot holds list is almost empty. I have shipped off fully half the contents of my bookcase to Powells.com and I have over $100 in unused credit.
I just love reading on my iPhone. I can hold it in one hand while I eat. I can read and relax, knowing I am not missing any key calls or messages. I don’t have to worry about due dates. I have even started to relax about running out of things to read, or bringing a book in the car. Holding a printed book has started to seem unnecessary, ungainly, unwieldy. The printed page is prone to tears and stains. (Look, iambic pentameter!)
One thing that has changed is that I listen to audio books even more than before. I started with a defunct old CD player, and the scratched, skipping audio books I could check out from the library. When I upgraded to an iPod, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. With my iPhone came a Bluetooth headset that will actually stay put in my mutant, tiny ears. (A Verizon sales rep actually said to my face, “You are a mutant,” after trying and failing to find a headset that would stay in place on me). No longer were my headphone cords snagging on doorknobs or getting tied into macrame in my pocket. Now I could run without the earpiece popping out. I can even walk around the house with no earphones at all, simply using the speaker. Coupled with the ready availability of the MapMyRun app and my desire to impress my Facebook friends, this improved audio book experience has upped my running miles considerably. I even do more housework.
I do read actual books on my iPhone. I love reading in bed at night, because I don’t have to juggle a book light any more. My poor long-suffering husband has been flashed numerous times by my book light falling over and shining into his face. There are no more lost bookmarks in the sheets. And no more ink stains, as I can note down an idea without scrambling for a pen and then falling asleep on it.
What has changed the most is that I read the news even more obsessively than I did before. News aggregators make this so easy – possibly too easy. I always liked reading the news online, because it led to more follow-up and research on my part. One advantage with the phone is that advertisements can be avoided. Another is that it’s possible to read magazine articles without a subscription. This is bound to change, as I’m sure those two conditions are giving Madison Avenue a real headache.
People have asked, “How do you read on that tiny screen?” This could be a real issue for those with vision problems, but it hasn’t been a problem for me. It’s bound to be a question of personal preference. My prediction is that technology will (soon) advance to the point when it’s not necessary to read from a screen at all; the contents will appear as a hologram that can be shaped and sized at will. This might be something projected from the device, or it might appear on glasses or a contact lens.
Since the iPhone got into my pocket, I have found myself reading more – and interacting with the screen more. The dark side of this is that I’ve become one of Those People. I keep everything set on ‘silent’ and most notifications turned off, but my husband accuses my phone of “farting” when it vibrates. ”Silent” still means it can be heard across the room by sensitive people. It’s never more than a foot away (unless I am in the shower, and if it was waterproof I’d no doubt take it in there too). It encourages a greater connection to those who are constantly wired, perhaps to the detriment of friendships with those who are phone- or e-mail-only. For many, it appears to be too tempting to disrupt dinners, blather in public spaces, or risk the lives of thousands by driving and texting.
Despite these issues, smart phones are here to stay, at least until they are outmoded by something even more mind-blowing. E-book readers report increased reading, and once the publishing industry finds a way to harness this, a fountain of dollars is going to start spouting somewhere. If you’ve found yourself holding out in favor of paper books, be prepared to change your tune in the next five or ten years. If it could happen to me, it can happen to you.
Buy My Scrolling eReader!
April 11, 2012 at 5:33 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentThis blog has been full of raves over how much I love my old Palm m500 PDA because I can scroll e-books on it. All of those things are still true. However, I bought an iPhone when my old flip phone died, and now I am reading books on it. So I am ready to pass on my trusty PDA at a low, low bargain price!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140738393833#ht_1258wt_85
This is the eBay listing for my device. It is totally functional. It has a long battery life. You can read it in sunlight. You can turn on the backlight and read it in the dark. You can change the font size. You can set the text to scroll at any pace you like. You can bring the car charger and read while someone else drives. You can download free books onto it and you can still buy e-books and use those. It will fit in your pocket and it is actually smaller than my iPhone.
The best part is, if you break it, it will have cost you only a fraction of the cost of a new e-reader such as the Kindle, Nook, or Sony Reader. As long as you back up the data on your desktop computer, you can simply order another old m500 off eBay for a few dollars and pick up where you left off.
Act now and I will include a Winnie the Pooh sticker.
“Why We Broke Up”
February 27, 2012 at 12:00 am | Posted in Young Adult Fiction | 3 CommentsI didn’t realize, when I picked up “Why We Broke Up,” that the author was the former Lemony Snicket. It seems relevant. Now we know that Daniel Handler can write anything. If you are already a fan of his earlier work, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you enjoy this offering even more.
This book succeeds in conjuring the feelings of young love: the torment, sure, but also the euphoria and the mystical attraction that can arise between people of different worlds. I would have found it hard to write on this topic with anything other than cynicism. Handler makes it fresh again.
The other major treat in this book is that it is lavishly illustrated in full color by Maira Kalman. Personally, I can never get enough of her work. Her style suits the proclivities of Min Green to a T.
“Annoying”
February 18, 2012 at 8:56 pm | Posted in Nonfiction | 7 CommentsI knew at a glance that I needed to read this book. Is it just me, or has the world gotten more annoying lately? Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman explore this in “Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us.”
I want to summarize some points I found interesting, and then talk about things I find annoying. What could be more fun than that? I also want to annoy my readers by deliberately misusing punctuation, but I will refrain, although since this is my first ever blog by iPhone, I’m sure I’ll do it accidentally.
• Annoyance is difficult to separate from anger.
• Initial testing suggests that the higher a person’s body mass index, the more likely that person is to experience annoyance.
• What annoys people depends on culture, physical and mental health status, and gender.
• Listening to half a conversation is one of the single most annoying experiences humanly possible, because we can’t stop ourselves from trying to imagine the part we can’t hear. This is why cell phones are universally reviled.
• Men are more likely to be annoyed by women when they see them as domineering and controlling. Women are more likely to be annoyed by behavior they see as uncouth.
• A baby’s cry acts on the limbic system. Parents are able to tolerate it because they have an emotional, hormonal bond with their child. But to others, it is one of the most annoying sounds possible.
• Fingernails on a chalkboard make a sound reminiscent of a primate alarm call. Our horror of this sound is instinctual.
• Other animals don’t tend to experience dissonance, as in someone singing off-key. (True of my parrot, who finds loud, annoying sounds amusing and loves music though lacking in taste).
• It is difficult to put a finger on exactly what is annoying about an annoying person, but it is clear that annoying people don’t know they are annoying. (To paraphrase Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense.”)
• As a corollary to this, those who are most easily annoyed also tend to be the most irritating. Did someone immediately come to mind for you the way it did for me?
Do you ever have one of those fantastic coincidences that seem designed for blogging? My DH just interrupted me to ask what was for dinner, then peered intently at me and pulled out an errant white hair. I asked him, “For my blog, which one of us was annoying just now?” He said, “Me.” “But my hair! It was just driving you crazy!”
As I was typing this, a kid of indeterminate age and gender ran down our street, calling out operatically for the duration of several sentences. This might have been annoying but was in fact hysterically funny. Why is that? (Possibly because the words were unclear).
I believe our rising level of annoyance is both good and bad. Good, because in the distant past “annoying” behavior often led to overt violence. Bad, because it’s likely a symptom of simple population pressure. There are at least 20% more people around than when I was a kid, and as far as I can tell they all set out to tailgate me.
Compassion meditation helps hugely when dealing with annoying strangers. I find that headphones and an app called “Nature Sound” do a great job of masking noise when working in public. As a high-reactive person, I remind myself that my snit may not be someone else’s fault. I also learned to quit caring about poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling when I married an engineer – a brilliant man who struggles with those things but can beat me at Scrabble. Everyone wins when we learn to take it easy and let it go.
It is my thesis that annoyance leads gradually to positive social change. Personal hygiene is a case in point. Once the majority agrees that a given behavior is not just a pet peeve but intrinsically annoying, social pressure begins to drive the behavior to extinction. Sexual harassment is a case in point. I had a coworker who was over 70 who came up behind me and blew in my ear – something he probably decided was charming back in the 50s. Isn’t it amazing how quickly certain things change?
The social networking world may be a microcosm of accelerated social evolution. Memes such as the xkcd cartoon “Someone is wrong on the Internet” and the term ‘vaguebooking’ spread almost instantaneously. As annoying as your politically ranting friend may be, at least he is expressing his feelings in text. Perhaps in time, maybe even one lifetime, he may learn to relax and regard these matters more meditatively.
The habit of blog commenters who leave long-winded critical remarks and then depart, never to participate in a real dialogue, will probably never die, though. And that’s my pet peeve.
Trolls
November 9, 2011 at 3:14 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 5 CommentsWhile moderating comments, I ran across my first abusive comment and paused before authorizing it. I thought I would check in with my readers and let you all weigh in on this matter of protocol.
The post (“Fat Head”) is one from the past that attracts readers who tend to be of a different stripe than my regular crowd. Almost universally they hate the post and want to weigh in on it. It’s unlikely any of them come back to follow the comment thread. It’s my guess that most of them don’t even read the entire post, much less the comments of the irate readers who came before them.
One could say that it probably doesn’t matter one way or the other whether I approve a comment or not, if nobody will notice or care. The question only really comes up in my mind because I feel some sense of obligation that my site reflect some sort of journalistic reality.
Anyway, what do you think? Approve everything? Blast anything that annoys me? Remove the entire post so I stop hearing from that segment of… humanity?
My Choice for the Man Booker Prize
October 18, 2011 at 2:07 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsI just launched out of bed with the sick feeling that I’d somehow missed the announcement of the Man Booker Prize for 2011. It looks like I have about a two-hour window. Phew!
Okay, I’ve read every book on the entire long list, and I correctly chose five of the six short-listed books, as I’ve done once before in 2009. So I’m confident enough to put myself out there in picking a winner, although I’m torn between what I consider two very strong choices. I mentioned as much when I reviewed them.
When I read The Sense of an Ending, I was positive it would win. Since then, I keep having visions of Jamrach’s Menagerie. I knew it was special the very first time I heard the title. So that’s my pick.
See what I did there? I hedged my bets! Now I can also say that nothing would make me happier than to see the prize go to Pigeon English – the book rescued from a slush pile to take its rightful place among the literary elite.
That’s enough out of me. Hopefully I can sleep now. At any rate it’s somewhat disgraceful to be blogging in one’s underpants.
Happy Birthday, Stephen King!
September 21, 2011 at 4:18 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 1 CommentStephen King is my idol and I want to wish him a happy birthday. His books are one of the reasons I grew up to become the passionate reader I am today. I read Carrie when I was 8 or 9 and I’ve been a faithful fan ever since.
http://www.stephenking.com/promo/11-22-63/promo_page/
If you haven’t already heard, he has a new book coming out on November 8. Let’s all pre-order it so he can buy an extra-big cake.
“The Sisters Brothers”
September 17, 2011 at 12:28 am | Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized | 5 CommentsAt last, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt – the title on the Booker short list that I personally anticipated the most. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy that I loved this book as much as I thought it would?
This book is being billed as a ‘cowboy noir’ – whatever that means – but I would call it simply a picaresque novel set in 1851. There aren’t any cowboys in it and I would also argue strenuously that it doesn’t qualify as noir, either. Something about The Sisters Brothers makes us want to invent a new genre for it, that’s all.
I’m a nitpicker, a nitpicker with a bachelor’s in history, so I want to give this book the usual treatment to show that I don’t play favorites. Many of the period details are more appropriate for a book set in the 1880s, a generation later. The toothbrush – not mass produced in the US until 1887 and no American patent until 1857; not in general use in the form we would recognize until 1937. I haven’t tracked down mint-flavored toothpaste, but I’m willing to bet it’s post-Victorian and I’m thinking WWI-era or later. The cigarette – available in France in 1830 but not in the English-speaking world until 1853; commercial cigarettes in the US, 1865. The other object to excite my interest was the single appearance of an indoor water closet. 1851 significantly preceded the Wild West milieu we know from film.
Speaking of film, the one I would compare this book to the most closely is O Brother, Where Art Thou? It also reminded me a bit of Cold Mountain and Henderson the Rain King, although if you’re familiar with either you’re probably wondering why.
I’m waffling about discussing the book itself, because I doubt anything I could say would do it justice. The graphic nature of the violent scenes somehow transcends the level of crime and adds a spiritual dimension, helping us to identify with Eli Sisters and to see him, ultimately, as sympathetic. The bizarre incidents make an odd sort of sense and cohere in a way that justifies their presence as more than random. Every incidental person has a message of import. Unless we possess a weak stomach, we simply can’t stop turning the page.
I’m ranking this book with the books I’ve loved the most.
“Half Blood Blues”
September 14, 2011 at 4:04 pm | Posted in Fiction | 2 CommentsHere is Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood Blues, the one book I didn’t correctly guess would make the Man Booker short list this year. Now that I’ve read it, I can understand why it was picked, but I still don’t think I would have chosen it over The Stranger’s Child if I had it to do over again.
Half Blood Blues gives us a look at Nazi Germany from a perspective we most likely haven’t seen it before – that of American blacks and mixed-race Germans. Added interest comes from Edugyan’s skilled evocation of pre-war jazz. Friendship, rivalry, failed romance, and an unconventional beauty make this an interesting, unpredictable story.
I confess, though, that I found the dialect tiring to read. While the plot was intriguing, it seemed like the most dramatic moments happened offstage.
“Snowdrops”
September 10, 2011 at 5:40 pm | Posted in Fiction | 2 CommentsA. D. Miller’s Snowdrops seems to have riled up at least a few critics following the announcement of the Man Booker short list. I don’t know what the fuss is about because I thought it was great.
The problem is that it’s a decadently easy read, almost an airport novel. It has many of the elements of a spy thriller: sexy women, mysterious men in suits, fancy cars, corrupt politics. It’s like a James Bond story in which James Bond is kind of a dork and doesn’t have a gun.
It also has a great minimalist sensibility. It made me think of Kawabata’s Snow Country. It’s atmospheric and thoughtful, with that great Russian sense of depressive nostalgia. Granted, it won’t win the prize this year, but I think it’s deserving of its spot on the short list and I’m curious what Miller will write next.
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