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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
About a year ago, I wrote a blog about ebook readers and my
decision to purchase a Sony PRS-505. I have absolutely no regrets, and I still love my reader; I can no longer say, though, that I "wouldn't trade it for anything."
First, I'm thrilled, pleased and tickled to death that after decades of owning ebook readers I'm finally using a product that's likely to become part of the mainstream. I've got at least three obsolete devices sitting around for which I can no longer purchase books. I truly believe that ebooks are here to stay this time. You can't read an industry publication these days without seeing at least one article about the evolving ebook market. Ebooks are the only segment of the book industry whose sales have seen a dramatic increase during the recession, and I know at least half a dozen people who are asking for an e-reader for the holidays this year. (Not to mention the fact that I'm frequently seeing others with these devices on the bus; mine is no longer a novelty.)
Not long ago I awoke in the middle of the night and realized immediately that it had
arrived. The air, when I had gone to bed, was still faintly sultry, the air of evening that comes after a day of golden, soft sunshine. But when I woke in the dark I felt how the temperature had dropped, and the air smelled of autumn. It was like learning a secret, the rest of the city asleep around me, while I felt that I was the first to learn: autumn had come swiftly, quietly, to town. The moment was brief and delicious, and resonant with sudden memories and sensations
that pulled me back into the comfort of sleep, and when I woke it was still there, the edge of the chill, but even more – the faint smell of this change in the seasons.
It made me want to read.
OK, I confess, I joined Facebook. Now, you have to remember I'm a computer geek, and as such, I'm not really all that
good at dealing with people, face-to-face. I'm much happier working with machines; they're logical, they don't talk back, and generally do what you tell them to without argument. (Although I do have one server that I swear wants a blood sacrifice before it'll condescend to behave.) If I have to interact with people over the course of the day, I do everything possible to do it in writing (yes, e-mail is my friend). So, it only makes sense that a medium that allows me to interact with others, without actually having to talk
to them, would offer some appeal.
At first I thought it was kind of silly; I had four or five "friends" (distant cousins and co-workers) with whom I'd rarely communicated in the past and have little in common with now, and I just couldn't understand the attraction. (Sadly, I didn't really care that my cousin spent her evening watching Glee on Fox.) Then, one day, the oddest thing happened – I got contacted by a former high school boyfriend. From there, one thing led
to another, and now I'm in contact with all these people I have had nothing to do with for decades. (Still not entirely sure whether or not that's a good thing – and they probably feel the same way.)
Steampunk: It's not as new, confusing, or weird as you may have heard. In fact, this sub-genre of science fiction is actually quite warm and welcoming - and it's loads of fun. So let's take a minute to talk about what it is, and where it came from.
"Steampunk" is a style (of books, video games, comic books, movies, and more) that hearkens back to the fantastic/adventure literature of the nineteenth century. Jules Verne's stories about exploration and mayhem, H.G. Wells and his
tales of alien invasion and time travel, and Mary Shelley's tome about science gone awry ... in these famous works you'll find the seeds of the modern steampunk sensibility.
I
have a friend who's a very famous author, and the other day I asked her, "What's
the first thing you wrote that you were proud of?" And she said it was her first
novel. Which is a beautiful novel, but it was written when she was in her
thirties. And I thought, What? Because the first thing I remember being
proud of (and I'm talking proud, proud) was a poem I wrote when I was
nine. It ended with the soul-stirring line, "The beauty enchantment now was
broke." I actually submitted this poem to a magazine (where it was promptly
rejected, needless to say).
Never mind. I got proud again, very soon afterwards, of something I wrote in the
third grade. It was a page-long essay about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation
Proclamation, accompanied for no extra charge by a construction paper
silhouette. The essay moved me to tears every time I read it. The last line here
was: "He had always wanted to free the slaves, and now he had." So. There you
are. Don't you have tears in your eyes?
Almost every published author will tell you that they got fistfuls of rejection letters before their first book deal; many other would be authors have never received anything but. First time author Maya Frost explains how stepping off the treadmill of convention not only led her and her family into an amazing new debt-free, international lifestyle (despite putting four children through college in almost as many years) but also led to the publication of her first book (a book, I should add, that I've read cover to cover and back again, and already recommended to at least a dozen friends!) - Davina, BookBrowse editor.
I've spent the last decade teaching people how to pay attention, and it never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to trust our own intuition about what matters most. Whether we're worried about our child's education or our next career move, we tend to stick with conventional wisdom rather than listen to our hearts.
