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Jon Frater

Coming Soon: A Floating Library

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On reading this, I immediately had two questions. First, why has this never been a thing in NYC? The second is, how do I apply for a job there?

From the Gothamist:

The announcement of a floating library makes us wonder why there has never been a library on a boat in one of our city’s rivers before. Seems like Heaven! And finally, after decades of not even realizing we were waiting for this magic vessel, it’s almost here. The Lilac Museum Steamship will host a pop-up floating library at Pier 25 on the Hudson River starting September 6th (through October 3rd).

“The ship’s main deck will be transformed into an outdoor reading lounge to offer library visitors a range of reading materials from underrepresented authors, artist books, poetry, manifestoes, as well as book collection, that, at the end of the lifecycle of the project, will be donated to local high school students with demonstrated need.”There will also be roundtables, performances, a listening room, and rope swings. ROPE SWINGS. ON A BOAT. IN A LIBRARY. Throw in a hammock and we’re never leaving.

I expect they’ll need to hire a bouncer to enforce closing times. This sounds far too awesome to ever want to leave.

METRO Digitization Docs Released to Commons

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From the Metropolitan Library Council (METRO):

Two library-related publications written and edited within the METRO community have been released under Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution licenses.

Digitization in the Real World (2010) and The Global Librarian (2013) are now freely available for download and Internet Archive and unglue.it.

digitizationintherealworld.pngBoth books highlight the innovative work our colleagues are doing to provide online access to digital materials, ensure communities remote and local receive equal access to information, and provide a global context for learning in our increasingly interconnected information environment.

“I’m thrilled that we’re able to reflect the excellent work being done in our community by opening these books to the commons,” says Jason Kucsma, METRO’s Executive Director. “It is our hope that releasing these titles under a Creative Commons license furthers the knowledge- and experience-sharing these publications were intended to foster.”

Considering that one of my own digital projects for the New York Academy of Medicine (The Resurrectionists) was made possible by a METRO digitization grant, I can only wish that we’d had these resources available to back then. We made do with what we had, but still . . . more information on best practices is always useful, as technology changes and application development bring new tools to the efforts of digital librarianship everywhere.

These items are free for the downloading, so read them and keep them around . . . something tells me we’ll be needing them for a long time.

My Books

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Dingo Librarian

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Dave Mauzy and I made a thing. Dave is my backboard for nearly everything I come up with because he’s good at poking holes in the sillier ideas and offers useful observation on the stuff that has potential. He was instrumental in helping me through the rough patches while writing Article 9. But sometimes we get stupid (all right, I get stupid) and Dave is usually good enough to go along with it. This was one of those times.

Thus, I present you with Dingo Librarian.

dingo librarian

I’ll post more as I think of them.

Share this one, around folks. Let’s see if we can make it into a thing!

A New Book Cover

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I’ve been pontificating about a project of mine here for years. I’ve called it the Blockade series because it is a planned hard Sci-fi series about a ring of thingies surrounding the solar system. The first book is titled Article 9, and I’m almost ready to hit the publish button on it.

I’m going through my final pass of the manuscript, managing tiny but important details like chapter length, proper quotation marks, making sure details make sense, etc. The good news is that I fully expect to upload this monster to the world in the next week or so.

And because a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the book cover we got for Article 9. Look at it . . .

article 9 cover
 
The artwork was created by the enormously talented Chrysoula Artemis and it was worth every penny. Chrys is a joy to work with and had ideas rolling around her brain even before she’d gotten more than a fraction into the book itself. The title font is all kinds of awesome, to say nothing of the detail that went into that 9. The rivets, the scoring on the metal, the lines where the plates join . . . brilliant.

And if you’re really ambitious, take a look at the red tipped nose cone and the fins on that missile that’s about to slam into the moon.

We go live very soon. In the mean time, I haz cover!

My Books

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Digital Book Day

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Something that should absolutely, positively concern you–besides the fact that I am trying to do my job on only three hours’ sleep, and the fact that German sports fans will likely be insufferable for the next four years after their team’s crushing defeat of Argentina in the world Cup finals yesterday, and besides the incredible fact that the Griffon Pub in Niagra Falls, NY, has a multi-blend beer named Quadro Triticale which is amazing–is that today, July 14, is (besides being Bastille Day) Digital Book Day.

Unlike that ridiculous opening sentence, Digital Book Day is a surprisingly efficient way of saying that today, hundreds of worthwhile e-books are available free for the downloading in a variety of formats. Two of these books are from HDWP Books, namely Tiago and the Masterless, which I reviewed a few weeks back, and the first of their Theme-Thology Books, titled Invasion. I can vouch for both titles, not because I contributed in any way (beyond the review) but because I paid money for them and was not disappointed with my purchase. Click on the links and download the titles. For free!

But do it today, because at midnight tonight, all those links to free stuff expire.

Why should you be concerned about this? Well, besides receiving the gift of reading (for free!), there’s another consideration. Namely that this particular event is something that cannot be done with print books. Yes, I can give them away for free. I can declare an entire library of print volumes free for the taking, and make no mistake, those books will disappear. But it will take days or weeks to happen at the rate of a few books a day. I know this because we’ve done print book giveaways at the MCNY Library before. The pattern is consistent.  It’s understandable. People who are rushed (and who isn’t) will not really want to have to schlep to a library and pick up a book and maybe browse a cart that looks more and more like a smile with missing teeth as time goes by.

Well, you say, we could print lists of the available titles and salt a few social media accounts with them. Well . . . yes and no. Twitter doesn’t really lend itself to that, although you could use it to link to a web page that had the titles already listed and linked. Neither does Facebook or Linked In. E-mail does, but it presumes that only people whose e-mail address you already have would be interested in your effort, which is at best a limited concept of media outreach.

On the other hand, all it takes is a link posted on each of your social media platforms to send a crowd of people a chance to download free books. That is something that Twitter et al, can do very effectively. (And hey, I have Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus buttons on this blog. Click and share, folks. I cannot make this any simpler.)

Or, you just click on the website of digital books, click on a category or two–or do a basic title and author search–and then click on numerous links to download titles. (For free!)

Fair warning: this is a big deal and a popular website, so you may have to try a few times to get suitable traction. Additionally, the free books are made free by the authors, not the DBD website per se. Some authors may have underestimated the demand for thier work, and some websites may be temporarily unavailable.

But it beats carrying free print books.

(You can haz free! Hurry!)

 

Update 7/15/14: From the DBD website:

Due to popular demand (which crashed the website several times yesterday) we’ll be leaving the site open an extra day.
Please check ALL prices since not all authors will be able to keep their books for free.

One more day, folks. I just nabbed a few promising bits for my own use. (For free!)

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Book Announcement

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theme theologyAnd now, another book announcement.

You may remember my plug for Theme-Thology: New Myths I shared a few weeks ago. That was a cool book. Even better, I’m actually in this one. It’s the fourth book in HDWP Books’ Theme-Thology series of anthologies, titled Real Worlds Unreal, where each story takes place in a real location, but something weird takes place.

The book is due for a July 1 release, and I will link to sites where you can purchase it once it’s available.

 

 
 

My Books

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Hachette Discovers DRM Is A Bad Idea

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Hachette insisted that Amazon sell its books with “Digital Rights Management” that only Amazon is allowed to remove, and now Hachette can’t afford to pull its books from Amazon, because its customers can only read their books with Amazon’s technology. So now, Hachette has reduced itself to a commodity supplier to Amazon, and has frittered away all its market power. The other four major publishers are headed into the same place with Amazon, and unless they dump DRM quick, they’re going to suffer the same fate.

The subject is more fully covered in Doctorow’s article for The Guardian. (You can read the entire thing here.) But the point he makes is valid, and will remain valid for the foreseeable future: the only beneficiaries of DRM are the ones selling the e-readers.

 

My Books

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Inaugural Poem

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A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers–desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot …
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours–your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

–Maya Angelou, January 20, 1993

Libraries: The Dream of Civilization

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Add this to the Quote of Note file:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz:

To destroy a library is to destroy the dream of civilization. To destroy the NY Public Library is to destroy our sixth and best borough; that beautiful corner of New York City where all are welcome and all are equals, and where many of us were first brought to the light.  The Library is the borough I love best and the one we need to fight hardest to preserve —for in its many branches and countless shelves lie our best hope for a better world.  It really is that simple: Save the Library, save New York. Save the Library, save the future.  Write Mayor de Blasio and remind him of his promises and of our covenant with our libraries and with our future.

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Cell Phone Etiquette

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Namely, it should be turned off from the time you enter the library to the time you leave it.

That is all.

no-cell-phone-sign
Or I’ll kill you.

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Creating Canon: When Book Lists Attack

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We had a bit of an outpouring of literary geekery the other night when I found this comment on a friend’s Facebook feed:

Ok most of list I agree with however not being a fan of C.S. Lewis I can say I didn’t get beyond The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I can even agree with The Da Vinci Code being on here, and don’t anyone get all crazy calling me a heretic, The Da Vinci Code was decent fiction regardless of the topic especially when read with Angels and Demons. But check out the very last book #100 I am sorry but there is no way that book can even be considered decently written.

Book #100 is Fifty Shades of Gray.

Learning that tidbit compelled me to look at the list in its entirety, which you can see here. I won’t re-post it here because it’s long and kind of tedious, and frankly unnecessary.

The list is titled “From Zero to Well-read in 100 Books.” I applaud the ideal and the effort that went into it. There’s a lot of extremely high-quality stuff (Twain, Conan Doyle, Chaucer, Orwell, Huxley, Plath, Voltaire, Poe, Dickens, Dickinson, Flaubert) in it. I have some question over the results, specifically the selection process.

The post, written by “Jeff,” is an attempt to define the term “well-read”:

“Well-read” […] has a number of connotations: a familiarity with the monuments of Western literature, an at least passing interest in the high-points of world literature, a willingness to experience a breadth of genres, a special interest in the work of one’s immediate culture, a desire to share in the same reading experiences of many other readers, and an emphasis on the writing of the current day.

The following 100 books (of fiction, poetry, and drama) is an attempt to satisfy those competing requirements. After going through several iterations of the list, one thing surprised me: there are not as many “classic” books that I associate with the moniker well-read, and many more current books than I would have thought. Conversely, to be conversant in the literature of the day turned out to be quite a bit more important than I would have thought.

That’s fine. But to my eyes the list is a jumbled compilation of established canonical literature, non-canon literature, and popular writing. That’s actually what our exchange was about: trying to figure out what the blogger was thinking when he created the list.

I can see C.S. Lewis, because even if Narnia is not your thing, The Screwtape Letters is canon. But Screwtape is not on the list while Narnia is.  The whole list is like that. A few quick examples that got our attention include:

Edith Wharton: Age of Innocence is there but House of Mirth is not.

Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights is there but Jane Eyre is not.

And why Cloud Atlas? I get that it’s an incredibly well structured book but not exactly taught in college lit courses.

Jeff also split up the Bible into The Gospels and The Pentateuch and then assigned them different slots on the list. (#43 and #77 respectively). Yes, it’s alphabetically ordered, but I have yet to find a literary bible study course where the professor makes that distinction. If it’s a study course taught at a religious institution it might make more sense, but it’s still confusing.

More bits: Inferno, but not Purgatorio or Paradiso? The Divine Comedy is a three-book set. It’s not like Dante just sat on the field of ice when he got to the Ninth Circle of Hell. Without redemption and bliss being attainable facets of spiritual life, there can be no value in punishment. Granted, Inferno is the volume most people have heard of, but . . .

Dracula made the list but Frankenstein did not. Neither did Stevenson’s Jekyll & Hyde or anything by Oscar Wilde or H.G Wells.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved made the list but The Bluest Eye did not.

The Illiad and The Odyssey made the list but The Aeneid did not. Yes, I know the Greeks remain more popular than the Romans, but you needed a familiarity with both to consider yourself well-read when I was an undergrad.

Ulysses by Joyce is there but Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is not, which I think is a mistake. Finnegan’s Wake isn’t there either, but to be honest, I’m okay with that.

No William Faulkner. That’s just wrong. No Truman Capote, either. Yes, Capote is an acquired taste, but In Cold Blood is totally canon.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is there (if mistitled), but nothing by Alice Walker is. Has Jeff never read The Color Purple? Spielberg made a surprisingly good film about it and everything.

One of our thread’s contributors figured out early in the exchange that it seemed as if Jeff fostered a desire to be thought well-read by people he imagined to be educated, but didn’t actually know what knowledge that sort of education called for or what the American canon contained. So he put down canonical authors that he remembered hearing about, and maybe read some of their work. And he put down books that he and his social circle liked:

Ayn Ran: Atlas Shrugged. No.

Douglas Adams: The Hitckhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Works for me.

Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook: Not my favorite, but not a bad choice.

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale. Excellent choice.

And of course, E.L. James: Fifty Shades of Gray. I would rather read Atlas Shrugged. Yes, I am serious. At least the sex scenes in that book are interesting.

So, Jeff, if you’re reading this, please pop a reply and defend #100 or any other of your choices. I’d really be interested in hearing how you came up with this list.

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A Shameless Plug

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As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m trying to get back into the game of fiction writing. Along the way, I’ve met plenty of awesome people who got involved in the game after I left, or never left and went on to do amazing things. Charles Barouch is one of the latter. We worked together years ago when we both wrote game review columns for Gateways magazine, which has long since disappeared into the mists of time.

Charles now had his own small press, HDWP Books, and is currently producing an intriguing short fiction series called “Theme-Thologies.” The idea is simple: create a theme for a book then find the best stories possible to fill the space.

I’m not in any of the books currently on the shelf but I am working to get a piece into one of the future anthologies. I do believe in the project and the staff and writers involved, however, so I’ll be putting some cash down for these titles. You may consider doing the same. If nothing else, let’s share this far and wide and get some exposure for these guys.

 Charles’s post as it appeared on his G+ account earlier today reads as follows:
I need $6
You are all nice people. I’m sure if I asked you for $6, just because I needed it — or even wanted it — a lot of you would reach into your pocket. I’m not asking for me. Well, not exactly for me…
Here’s my problem: I need to jumpstart the sales on Theme-Thology. These are really good books but we aren’t visible enough. Can you spare $6 to help 18 authors and artists?A Promise: From now until April 21st, if you buy the first two Theme-Thologies (total: $5.98) and post a review of either of them (on Amazon, B&N, or Kobo, or GoodReads), I will send you the first eBook from our new science fiction series: Interrogative: Tiago and the Masterless. Just post a link to the review at http://www.hdwpbooks.com/books/thankyou and the book is yours.A Prize: Additionally, from now until April 21st, if you buy any of the first three Theme-Thologies ($2.99 each), I will enter you into a drawing to win one of the following eBooks: one of five different Mike Reeves-McMillan books (City of Masks, Hope and the Patient Man, Hope and the Clever Man, Realmgolds, Gu), A Noble’s Quest by Ryan Toxopeus, Adjacent Fields by Charles Barouch, or The Tower’s Alchemist by Alesha Escobar.
Just buy the Theme-Thology of your choice and post at http://www.hdwpbooks.com/books/thankyou.● Already bought them? Post a review (on Amazon, B&N, or Kobo, or GoodReads) and I will send you the first eBook of our new science fiction series: Interrogative: Tiago and the Masterless and put you in the drawing. Just post a link to the review at http://www.hdwpbooks.com/books/thankyou.● Received the Adjacent Fields signed, limited edition print book at Spectrum 2013? Post a review (on Amazon, B&N, or Kobo, or GoodReads) and I will send you the first eBook of our new science fiction series: Interrogative: Tiago and the Masterless and put you in the drawing. Just post a link to the review at http://www.hdwpbooks.com/books/thankyou.

Full Details Here: http://www.hdwpbooks.com/books/thankyou

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