Recently in Reading & Writing Category

I've previously recommended The Oil Drum blog as a resource for all things energy-related, but it also directed me to one of the most enjoyable books I've read in a long time, Mark Helprin's 2006 Freddy and Fredericka. I'll even borrow the blog's summary of the book's premise, if you're not inclined to click over:
The book is, as the Oil Drum writer puts it, a hilarious romp - often bordering on Monty Pythonesque silliness - but it's also a sweet love story, and a thought-provoking essay on what it means to be a servant-leader. The British monarchy is an institution that many believe has no place in the 21st century, and the Royals have frequently been their own worst enemy in terms of public perception. But Helprin manages to bring to life a picture of a would-be king whose human foibles (and boy, are they manifold!) are tempered by a nobility of purpose that's sadly lacking in American politics.

Freddy and Fredericka works on several levels. Read it for pure entertainment and escapism, or look for underlying messages of loyalty and self-sacrifice.

The book is also available in a Kindle edition.

The media is filled today with stories about the impact that J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye made on impressionable [mostly] young readers. For example, the co-hosts of NBC's Today Show shared their recollections of how the book affected them, with Matt Laurer stating that he remembered being proud that Catcher was his first "real book."

I must be one of the few people in America who don't have a similar story to share. I'm pretty sure I've read the book and I think we still have a copy somewhere in our home library, but frankly, it made absolutely no lasting impact on me. I can't recall a single detail from Catcher other than the name of the lead character, Holden Caufield. And all this talk about the author and the book has stimulated no desire whatsoever to find the book and [re]read it.

A friend recently tagged me via Facebook for the "15 Books That Affected Me" meme. While I didn't respond (Sorry, Joe; nothing personal, but I don't do Facebook memes. I don't do much of anything Facebook, but that's another story.), I did spend about thirty seconds thinking about it, and in light of today's Catcher lovefest, it seems appropriate to list at least a few books from my youth that did stay with me.

I was a big fan of science fiction as a kid, and while that ardor has cooled somewhat over the years, the books I remember most tend to come from that genre. Robert Heinlein's New Agey (the term hadn't been invented at that time, AFAIK) Stranger in a Strange Land made an impact on me, as did Harlan Ellison's short story collection, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. And, of course, the list wouldn't be complete without Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel, The Hobbit. (And in the interests of complete transparency, there was that one summer when a copy of J. D. Southern's scandalous novel Candy circulated between beach towels at the Fort Stockton public swimming pool, the "best" passages easily found by their dogeared pages.)

I wish I could point to more intellectually sophisticated reading material - and my reading habits really were more varied than they may seem - but there it is. Salinger and Catcher may have shaped a generation, but I never got on that particular bus.

Is it just me, or has Stephen King gotten grosser in his old(er) age?

I confess that it's been a long time since I read one of his books (Pet Sematary? The Tommyknockers?) but having recently completed the 18,000 pages* of his latest novel, Under the Dome, I confess that I was shocked - shocked, I tell you - by the author's use of graphic language and imagery.

Yeah, I know, he's a master of the horror/supernatural novel and that genre in its modern incarnation seemingly requires language that oversteps all the bounds of propriety (a lesson that Edgar Allan Poe obviously never mastered, poor hack). But I don't recall that The Stand, for example, succumbed to such obvious gross-for-grossness-sake as Under the Dome.

When you couple that with characters that are more one-dimensional than usual (especially those unfailingly über-hypocritical creatures known as Christians) and throw in some plot gaps that defy rationalization, you end up with a book that will make you regret the time you invested in it.

It's a shame, too, because the basic premise was promising. A transparent impermeable dome materializes over a small town in Maine. The sudden isolation of the population and the mysterious source and properties of the dome should have made for a more sophisticated and riveting novel, but King just can't seem to pull it off, giving us instead the junior high treatment, and re-purposing all of his usual conventions (kids with prophetic dreams and visions...who saw that coming?). After all is said and done, I just can't recommend it.

*I'm not exaggerating, because I read the whole darned thing on my iPhone's Kindle application. The Whole. Darned. Thing.

I see a lot of websites during the course of a week. Many of them are design-related and thus represent what should be the most striking, innovative, and creative examples the profession can build. Still, it's not often that I run across one that simply takes my breath away.

This is one.

Andrew Zuckerman is a professional photographer, and his new book has the simple and completely descriptive title of Bird. It consists of a series of gorgeous photos of birds, both exotic and mundane. What sets his work apart from other "nature photographers" is his elimination of any context for the subject; the photo consists of an image of the bird against a pure white background. This makes for a striking image, and allows the eye to focus completely on the details of each specimen.

The website for Bird goes one step further by providing an audio recording of each bird's call. This added dimension allows the visitor to create his or her own context, albeit an incomplete one, although that depends on the extent of one's imagination.

I'm not a fan of websites built with Flash, but this is probably a perfect example of when the exception is entirely justified.

Bird is available via Amazon.com [link], and if you find it appealing, you may also be interested in Zuckerman's previous publications that use similar techniques, Creature [link] and Wisdom [link].

David Ulin has written a thought-provoking article for the L.A. Times entitled Amazon's troubling reach in which he explores some of the ramifications of entrusting our "collective memory" (as expressed via books) to a commercial entity such as Amazon.com.

Amazon had a recent "stumble" in which it unilaterally and without warning deleted a couple of books from its customers' Kindle e-book readers, citing "licensing issues." Amazon's founder and chairman, Jeff Bezos, later apologized profusely for doing this, but the damage to the company's credibility has been done.

Perhaps that's not a fair way to put it, though. More likely, the innocence of consumers has been punctured with respect to acquiring their books electronically, and I think that's probably a good thing. Ulin's article raises a number of interesting questions, but in the end, Amazon (or any other company in the same business) can exert only the control that we permit. As with any other purchase, an informed consumer is the best guard against commercial impropriety.

If we're really concerned that our "shared informational heritage" won't be properly stewarded by Amazon, we shouldn't be buying, er, licensing e-books from them. That's a decision each of us has to make on our own.

The interrobang is a sadly underutilized bit of punctuation, in my humble opinion. That might be because the HTML character entity coding to produce it in web pages is obscure. It doesn't appear in my [admittedly dated] HTML: The Definitive Guide but, of course, the interweb is chock full of references. So, if you want to include one in your website, use this code: ‽

Here's the result of that code, as rendered by your browser in Verdana: