Tag: books

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The Death of Books

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I am sitting in Barnes & Noble, a place I haven’t been in an awfully long span of time. This used to be my hangout, of course, with its rows upon rows of books spread out toward the horizon, as far as the eye could see. So why haven’t I been here in so long? Life happened, and it has taken me along with it. But I’m here now, soaking up the atmosphere and wondering how I can do this more often. A sigh just escaped my lips at the prospect.

Of course it’s not the same, though, not how it used to be. In the old days the side area by the windows was full of comfortable chairs, ambience if you will. And over by the entertainment section there were more soft, cushy chairs that invited people to sit and stay a while. In fact, it wasn’t unheard of to laze away an entire afternoon or even a whole Sunday relaxing in those chairs and reading my life away. So refreshing. Now there are three of those such chairs, and the culprit… the Nook.

In the exact middle of the store now is a section that has been hollowed out, displacing rows upon rows of books, as well as those extra chairs that created such an atmosphere that I thrived on. And I understand why they did it. I do. Obviously books aren’t selling like they used to, those physical behemoths with spines and that fresh book smell. They’re losing out to so many other types of media, including the eBook, and Barnes & Noble saw the writing on the wall. They jumped in with both feet, and the results are evident.

And I mourn the loss of those books that were displaced by the revolution.
Continue reading “The Death of Books”

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A Time to Read

You know, finding time to read has gotten so much harder lately. When I really want to just sit, relax, and unwind, my mind is all over the map, though, and I can’t focus. Instead, I’ve been using mindless television shows that don’t challenge my poor brain like a book does. And it’s sad, too, because there are so many books I have here that are potential good reads. In fact, I have two books I am currently in the process of reading that are essentially on pause while I finish doing this two-jobs-at-one-time experiment that has driven me quite mad over the course of the past six weeks.

Here are the two books that are currently on hold:

Pure, by Julianna Baggott, is yet another one of those post-apocalyptic tour de forces that have become quite popular lately, along the lines of The Hunger Games, The Selection, Prodigy, and Delirium, but for some reason it lacks the push, the impetus that made me inhale those other books like they were the sweetest smelling roses. I’m not saying that Pure is bad, but maybe I’ve just gotten to my limit in the genre and I need to come back to it at a later date.

Deeply Odd is the umpteenth book in Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas series that is just as quirky as the first one. It’s this book that makes me realize there must be something with how my brain is wired with these two jobs that is messing with me, because this is a good book (don’t get me started on the less than stellar 55 Shadow Street that I have yet to finish, and for the first time with a Dean Koontz book, I don’t think I will finish) and a return to form for the master of the supernatural. Continue reading “A Time to Read”

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Personal Library, R.I.P.

“The room was full of bookshelves, from front to back, from wall to wall.”

I haven’t seen a room like that outside the confines of a library in about a month of Sundays, maybe even longer. It seemed like in another era it was common to have rooms such as the one described by a colleague of mine yesterday. And the house that contained such a room didn’t even have to be a mansion, even though those bastions of civility also had large insular libraries. A regular, standard house in the olden days would have perhaps a converted closet as a book repository, but it was still there. What happened? Continue reading “Personal Library, R.I.P.”

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In Media Res

in media res: into the middle of affairs; often used when discussing novels that begin partway through the story. For example, The Iliad starts partway through the Trojan War, not at its beginning.

So many movies and television show episodes don’t start with the traditional storytelling arc anymore. We don’t get so much back story at the beginning, and the pattern doesn’t follow a linear progression throughout. It’s the same with books as well. Famously, The Chronicles of Narnia begins when the Pevensie siblings end up in the magical land of Narnia for the first time, but it is really only the beginning of their journey and not the beginning of Narnia itself. That is finally explained in the sixth book in the series. The Butterfly Effect bends time so the beginning isn’t really the beginning. And the television series Revolution shows a world without electricity, then backtracks in flashbacks to show how it came to be, and what role each person we’ve already been introduced to has played in it.

But why is it so popular now? Continue reading “In Media Res”