This Is Your Brain on the Internet

Sandra Parshall

Is the internet making us smarter, dumber – or, in some weird way, both?

Researchers all over the world are currently studying the measurable effect of internet use on the thought processes, memories, and behavior of humans. What they’re discovering, and what they predict, is reassuring and frightening in equal measure.
 
The researchers all agree on one point: the internet is changing us in very real ways.

On the plus side, brain scans done while subjects read printed material and while they surf the net show that the internet challenges the human brain significantly more than a book or magazine does, with twice as many neurons firing. The longer subjects used the internet, the more brain activity they showed. (These images are from scans done at UCLA comparing beginners and more savvy users.) What parts of the brain get caught up in the web? The areas used for decision-making and complex thought. This could be taken as proof that internet use boosts human intelligence.

But is it also changing the very definition of intelligence?

Some scientists believe we are losing the ability to absorb information and store it in our brains in a static fashion. Constantly switching from site to site on the internet – and back and forth between the web and e-mail – is destroying our attention span. We are losing direction and focus, not to mention our memories. We don’t have to remember information that is always available online.

Not everybody thinks this is a bad thing. As reported in a publication called Ideas and Discoveries, computer technology specialist Paul Jones believes that “once we spend less time on remembering things” we’ll have more brain space for new analytical skills.

Researcher Christine Greenhow of the University of Minnesota, also quoted in I&D, believes we will define intelligence differently a mere decade from now. She predicts we will see it as the ability to “condense widely distributed bits of information into a coherent form.”

Our brains are evolving with every keystroke and mouse click.

How do you feel about all this? Has the internet caused changes in the way your own brain functions?

I’ve danced with a man . . .

Sharon Wildwind

. . .who’s danced with a girl, who’s danced with the Prince of Wales. (Composer Herbert Farjeon)

That was heady stuff in 1927. A lot of young women in England’s upper class had a “thing” about Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor, known for short as the Prince of Wales. To have touched the hand of a man, who had touched the hand of a girl, who had touched the hand of the Prince of Wales was an admittedly tenuous connection with greatness, but a connection none the less.

Eleven years later David Windsor, by then King Edward VIII, would abdicate his throne for the love of Wallis Simpson; a bit of she shine went out of the greatness, but it was fine while it lasted.

What’s happening in Baltimore this week brings up a couple of interesting questions. How long does a touch of greatness last? Should financially-strapped city governments be expected to carry the financial burden of links to the past?

At 203 Amity St. in Baltimore stands half of a squat, plain brick house, which was built in the early 19th century. For a two-year period—late 1832 or early 1833 to 1835—Edgar Allen Poe and three of his female relatives—one of them his first cousin whom he later married—lived in that house. While he lived there Poe began to gain his literary fame.

A few years after Poe moved to Richmond, the left side of the duplex was torn down. The remaining right side remained a private residence until 1939, when the City of Baltimore acquired it. They leased it to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore for a number of years. As the Society’s budged declined, they were unable to maintain the house, and the city took in over again in 1979.

For details about the house, including a pen-and-ink drawing of what the house would have looked like during Poe’s residence there, here’s a link to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore notes. Information about the Society itself can be found here.

It cost the city between $80,000 and $85,000 yearly to have the house open to the public for four hours a day, four days a week. Funds were cut last year and a single employee has kept the house open using private funds raised during Poe’s 200th birthday celebrations last year.

Two hundredth birthdays don’t come around every year and now the city has said that by July 2012 the house and museum must be self-sustaining or be taken under the wing of another museum or educational institution. If neither of those things happen, the house will close. In all likelihood vandalism and/or the wrecking ball will follow shortly.

I, for one, would hate to see the house succumb to either fate, not only because I’m one of the “daughters,” but because I’m a sucker for old buildings. I hope a foundation or museum steps forward in the next year to take over the house.

There is a petition being circulated on-line to save the house. As PDD tries to stay away from taking sides on political issues, I'm not posting a link here. If you are interested, a Google search will turn it up for you.

But the question remains are we dealing with the hand that touched the hand that touched the hand here? Does there come a time to let go? Would this situation be different if, instead of living in the house for only three years, Poe had lived there for over thirty years, as William Faulkner did at Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi? Or if, as Faulkner did at Rowan Oak, Poe had written notes about his work in progress on the walls? I don’t know, but as budgets become tighter and many governments and institutions are faced with this kind of question, I think we are going to see more houses fall.

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Quote for the week:
We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
~ Winston Churchill (1874–1965), British politician and statesman, who would have known the Prince of Wales, perhaps even socially

Snow! Beautiful, Relentless Snow!

by Julia Buckley
Last week we had two historic days of snow (what they're already calling THE BLIZZARD of 2011) and schools and shops were closed. This weekend, just when we were starting to dig our way through the giant mountains of white stuff, it snowed. Again. It's supposed to snow tonight, too, and several times this week, and I find myself thinking "How do they know this is THE blizzard of 2011? What if a bigger one is around the corner?"

The thought is daunting but also rather fascinating. In our technologically advanced world, where so many things are easy because we don't have to think about them (like computers, for example), we cannot avoid occasionally thinking about the weather.

And Sunday morning, when I drove to work (to lay out the school paper) in yet another significant snow, I realized that we simply have no answers at all--we just like to live as though we do. Then some momentous weather event happens, and we have to deal with what comes. Most Chicagoans I encountered during the blizzard had a surprisingly cheerful outlook--even those who were stranded. They decided to enjoy the hugeness of it and call it a reality of their geographical location. But maybe that's because this was the FIRST big snow . . .

When I'm indoors, I can admire the beauty of a gargantuan snowfall. It transforms the world, and even the ugliest street or building becomes graceful, beautiful, under the pure and forgiving snow.

My dog (pictured above) absolutely loves it, which is shocking for two reasons: A) he fears almost everything and B) he disappears inside the drifts--something I would think would be terribly claustrophobic. But he manages to leap out again, lightly, almost skipping across the surface of the snow, and his ears become like little hang-gliders keeping him aloft. I suppose nature understands nature, somehow yearns for the changing seasons, and even a beagle gets that more than we people in the work-a-day world.

So I'm trying to be philosophical and take the snow in stride. I'm even trying to love the snow for its beauty. But at the same time I'm keeping an eye on that Chicago weather forecast and trying to gauge my morning commutes for the next week.

For all my appreciation of nature, I am a city/suburban girl in one key respect. I adhere to the common philosophy: Snow is beautiful, unless you have to drive in it.

This Mystery Came Wrapped in Velvet

by Ellen Byerrum

Velvet. No other fabric is as luxurious, or compels you to touch it and sink your fingers into its deep soft nap, the way velvet does. Velvet is the fabric of royalty, of wealth, of Christmas dresses, of evening gowns, of tufted sofas, and even of theater curtains. Velvet lines jewelry boxes, earring cards, and also coffins.

The fabric is a major focus of my latest mystery, Shot Through Velvet, where the action begins in a velvet factory on its very last day of operation.  The term “shot through velvet” is also a type of velvet in which two colors are woven into the fabric, say, blue and silver. The fabric’s hue changes depending on how the light hits the material; it’s blue one way and then silver the other. It reminds me of the way that the facts, the story, or even the characters can change, depending on how you look at them.

It wasn’t part of the plan to focus on velvet in one of my crime of fashion mysteries, but like many things, it came about unexpectedly when I heard a tantalizing tidbit.


About four years ago, while I was a reporter for a trade press in Washington, D.C., a friend casually mentioned that the last velvet factory in Virginia would be closing in a matter of weeks. Stop the presses! If there was any chance at all, I knew I had to visit. I didn’t even know what I would do with the information, I simply had to follow up. I called the man in charge and told him I would use the story someday, somehow, perhaps in an article, perhaps a blog post. Or I might write about a murder in a velvet factory. Highly fictionalized, of course. He remarked that there would be lots of ways for someone to die in a velvet factory. Who could pass up that opportunity? Certainly not I.

So I took time off from work, traveled to a small town in southern Virginia, and toured the factory in its waning days. I took photographs and interviewed the official. Among the things that hit me was how much hands-on work is required to make that luxurious fabric. At one time the factory employed over a hundred workers who wove and dyed and finished the velvet. Not only did velvet factory workers lose their jobs, other ancillary industries would also suffer, including the ones that manufactured dyes and 
supplied fibers and yarns.  

As I looked at hundreds of bolts of the shimmering fabric in rainbows of colors, the idea for a mystery took up residence in the old thought closet. As the factory official said, a writer could devise many ways for someone to die there. There were humming machines with rows of pointed teeth to grab the velvet and sharp blades to shear the woven fabric. And then I saw the dye vats, giant tubs in which huge spools of velvet are dipped and dyed. So what did I choose? Here are the first lines of the book.

The body was blue.
    Not merely wearing blue, he was blue—and not the blue pallor of death. He was sapphire from head to toe, a deep shade of mood indigo.
    Of course when touring the velvet factory, I had another book to finish. That always seems to happen. Another idea takes hold before you’re finished with the previous one. But that’s the thing about ideas; they have to get in line, jump into the idea pot, and simmer on the back burner for however long it takes. And it can take a long, long time.

While the velvet mystery was cooking, I started wondering: How do people in a small town react when their jobs go away, and there is no other industry, except for service jobs? How do they cope? The dying velvet factory was just one of thousands of industries in danger. My heroine Lacey Smithsonian’s own newspaper profession is in danger, which provided a point of connection. All these questions go into writing the book, perhaps not even consciously. They form threads that work their way into a story, refined in a plot. From velvet to mystery, to a brand-new book.

I learn something new from every book. Now every time I see velvet, I have a deeper appreciation for it.

Thank you, Poe’s Deadly Daughters, for welcoming me to your blog today.

Ellen Byerrum is the author of the Crimes of Fashion Mysteries featuring Lacey Smithsonian. Two of her books have been made into TV movies. She lives in the Washington, DC, area. Learn more about Ellen and her books at http://www.ellenbyerrum.com.

GETTING IT TOGETHER

by Sheila Connolly

I've been following through on my New Year's resolution to get better organized (I'll wait while you applaud). The most tangible evidence of this is the reduction of the number of bankers boxes labeled "Miscellaneous" that have been cluttering our laughingly labeled office.


A couple of the boxes contain financial and tax information, so I can be excused for hanging on to those. A couple more contain drafts of my books--sometimes more than one draft per book. What I think I'm ever going to do with these I do not know. I seem to be saving them so that I can point out to my editor that several copy editors seems to have contradicted themselves and each other on more than one occasion. I firmly believe they do it just to drive us nuts. Every time I think I've mastered a rule of punctuation or capitalization, they change it again.

All right, someday I'll have a nice ceremonial bonfire of all those defunct manuscripts, but at least they're tidy and labeled. What I find hardest to deal with is the truly miscellaneous items: newspaper clippings that look interesting or may relate very distantly to something that I'm curious about (and may want to use in a book someday); book reviews of books I might like to read someday; email correspondence from friends, acquaintances, and strangers; and a lot of printouts about all aspects of publishing, from writing a book through sending a query through promoting yourself and your book to reading a royalty statement.

These last make up the largest component of my multiple miscellany boxes, but I have to say that going through them has been like conducting my own personal archeology. My first observation: wow, I've learned a lot! My second: how outdated some of these sound now, and how quickly the publishing business has changed! I'm talking five years or less since I got serious about writing and started collecting information I thought would be helpful to me eventually. Mostly I clipped it or printed it out and stuck it in one of those boxes, and now here I am marveling at how useless that information really is.

It's both fun and sad to read comments and recommendations from people I didn't know then but I now count as friends. It's like we all grew up together. It's amusing to see the excitement at wonderful new means of communicating, like GoodReads and MySpace. It's hard to recall that there was no Facebook then, at least for the post-college crowd. It does give me some perspective: in hindsight I can watch the writers stampede from one "hot new thing" to the next. Now we know there's always going to be something else new right around the corner.

I've found a few treasures too. Like the obituary of the 103-year-old man named Nelson McNutt (really) who made a pass at me--a memory I treasure. Mixed in among the business items are things like my daughter's last high school report card (boy, did she slack off the last semester of her senior year!), and a twenty-year-old Christmas card from my late father, who for years worked with a local printer to design completely wacky and idiosyncratic cards that the 800 people on his mailing list looked forward to each year. They're a little hard to explain, but suffice it to say they involved golf, gophers and synthetic plaid fabrics.

Sometimes I like to imagine some dedicated biographer looking at the gems I have saved and arriving at piercing insights as to my character and the brilliance of my prose. I lump with that my off-the-wall idea of writing a biography of my grandmother (who lived a very interesting life) based solely on her checkbooks--hich of course I still have in the attic (I have every canceled check I ever wrote too).

I have filled two bankers boxes with paper to be recycled--proof that it is possible to get rid of those things that have outlived their usefulness. Unfortunately I've still got a lot left, but I'm working on it. Please cheer for me.

To be recycled!

Interview with Barbara D’Amato

Interviewer: Elizabeth Zelvin

Liz: Why don’t you start by telling us about your new thriller, Other Eyes I’m only one of many mystery lovers who rushed right out to order it as soon as we learned it was coming out. What’s it about, and what prompted you to tell this particular story?

Barb: The central character in Other Eyes is Blue Eriksen, an archaeology professor at Northwestern University. Her recent book Goddess, a scholarly account of female goddesses, became a bestseller, much to her amazement. In Other Eyes she is researching the use of hallucinogens in the development of ancient religions. In the course of this, she has stumbled on evidence that brief use of psilocybin can prevent or cure drug addiction. Although she doesn't realize it, this threatens an international organization dictating the transportation and sale of illegal drugs.

What prompted me? We have a panicky approach to consciousness-altering substances. I would hope someday we come to treat drug addiction as a medical problem, rather than a moral failing or a crime.

Liz: Some of us, including me in my “other hat,” do treat addiction as a medical problem. Unfortunately, there's a big disconnect between treatment and law enforcement.

I read and loved your Cat Marsala books long before I met you or wrote mysteries myself. It’s one of the series that comes up when avid mystery readers talk about characters they miss. Did you end that series by choice, or was it one of those things that publishers do? Do you ever consider bringing Cat back?

Barb: Thank you for liking Cat. After the ninth book, my editor, the wonderful Susanne Kirk, retired, and I think Scribner was considering dropping the series anyway. I don't see any other publisher picking it up. I'm afraid Cat had nine lives.

Liz: You’ve been president of both Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and won or been nominated for almost every recognized award, not only for novels but also for short stories and non-fiction. Is there any particular honor that meant the most to you, and why?

Barb: The Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction. Good Cop Bad Cop was an homage to The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh. His book was brutal and utterly non-PC, but the humor in it got me through a tough time in my life.

Liz: How did you get involved with Sisters in Crime? Were you one of the original founding goddesses? How important do you think it is to women writers that this organization exists and remains strong?

Barb: I was not at the Bouchercon where the first meeting took place, but as soon as I heard about it, I said "That's for me!" Sisters has accomplished much, much good. It's still important for what it does, and also for the sense of fellowship it provides. Many of my best friends I met through SinC.

Liz: Both your police procedural series and the private eye books were all set in Chicago. What makes Chicago such a great city to live in and write about? I hope it’s okay to reveal that I had a perfect first visit to Chicago, where I was lucky enough to stay in your fabulous apartment overlooking the lake. Or do Chicagoans say the Lake?

Barb: Probably most say lake. Chicago has everything. Every ethnic neighborhood known to the human race, every kind of ethnic cuisine [this is IMPORTANT], You can eat an English breakfast, a Punjabi lunch and a Peruvian dinner if you have the stamina. Chicago is a walking city, a city of neighborhoods. And that's not including the Art Institute, the Shedd Aquarium, Orchestra Hall, the planetarium, the architecture--I'd better stop now.

Liz: In the last few years, you’ve turned from mysteries to stand-alone thrillers. Has the switch made any difference in your writing process? In how you do research?

Barb: They both take research. I used to hang around a lot with cops, which I loved to do. What's changed in the last few years is the Internet. There are many things now you don't have to go see. I'm not sure that's all good, but it's certainly easier. And you don't have to look for a parking place.

Liz: You once told me how much you enjoyed writing your thriller Foolproof in collaboration with Jeanne Dams and Mark Zubro. Can you tell us about that?

Barb: We went into it thinking if it took each of us a year or so to write a book, surely three together could do it in six months. Nun-unh. It took five years. Part of it was the negotiation. Always friendly, but organizing, combining, and smoothing was a real challenge. We'd each bring in our work and read it and once in a while one of us would have made a double-entrendre so hilarious we'd scream with laughter and my husband would run in from his office asking whether somebody was hurt.

Liz: The bio on your website states that you have “worked as an assistant surgical orderly, carpenter for stage magic illusions, assistant tiger handler, stage manager, researcher for attorneys in criminal cases, and occasionally teaches mystery writing to Chicago police officers.” I want to hear about the tiger handling—and the stage magic carpentry too, if it’s as interesting as it sounds.

Barb: I got picked to help handle the tiger--note it says assistant handler--because the stagehands, usually so careful not to let anybody else touch the props, didn't want to get close to him. As to the carpentry, the big illusions get hard use on stage and need constant repair. I could tell you how most magic illusions are performed, but--

Liz: Among your many talents is as a writer of musical comedies. Did you write all of those with your husband? Was it fun? Do you sing and dance yourself?

Barb: I did write them with Tony. He was the composer. I wrote the book, and we argued over the lyrics. I took dance lessons as a child, tap and ballet, but I don't dance now and you DO NOT want to hear me sing.

Liz: You have a son who’s also a writer, Brian D’Amato, whose brilliant speculative novel In the Courts of the Sun explores the ancient Mayan prediction that the world will end in 2012. That’s only a year away. Should we be worried? Did your being a writer influence or inspire him? Do you connect as fellow writers? I ask because I know of parent-child writing duos who range from collaborating under a single name to saying they never talk about writing or read each other’s manuscripts before publication.

Barb: His second book in the trilogy should be out in a few months and will tell whether we should be worried. He's been reading my stuff since he was in junior high, and commenting. He used to draw corncobs in the margins where he thought I was being corny. We still read and help each other.

Liz: Would you like to tell us about your grandchildren? Any budding writers in the new generation?

Barb: You mean Best Female Grandchild on Earth and Best Male Grandchild on Earth? One is math and computer oriented and one is science-oriented. But they are still the best.

Liz: Um, I think you mean One of the Three Best Female Grandchildren on Earth. The other two are mine.

What’s up next for Barbara D’Amato?

Barb: I'm working on a book that just isn't responding, either to pressure or to being left alone to simmer for a while. I'm very frustrated with it, but I'm trying to live by the motto I've used before--"Surely something will occur to me."

Privacy? What's that?

Sandra Parshall

It’s just as we suspected: Google, Facebook, and Amazon really are trying to hijack our brains and take control of our lives.

By gathering information about our habits – where we shop, what we buy, where we vacation, the music we listen to, the books we read, and so much more – they’re building databases that allow them to nudge us toward specific products, restaurants, stores, etc. The collection process is called data mining or “reality mining.” And the best source of information about you isn’t necessarily your computer; it’s probably your smartphone. Data collected from a smartphone can track the user’s movements and build a detailed profile of that person’s everyday habits.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said recently that he believes most people “want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” Google is gearing up to do exactly that.

Facebook may be way ahead of Google, though. FB already has connections to a legion of corporations and organizations, and clicking the little “Like” symbol on their websites delivers information to FB about your preferences and habits. More is coming: Recently Facebook paid a mere $15 million for a competitor, the social network called FriendFeed. Although FF is tiny (1 million users) compared to FB (500+ million), it already has something Facebook doesn’t: a built-in search feature for tracking all user activity. If the programmers plug this feature into the FB site, all your “friends” will be able to see everything you do on the internet. (Oh, look, my old pal Jack is visiting a porn site!) Something to look forward to, huh?

Most of the information-gathering is for commercial purposes, of course. Why would anybody bother with mass invasion of privacy unless there’s money in it? Many people are cooperating by putting FB apps on their smartphones, clicking “Like” on corporate sites, and tweeting relentlessly about their every movement and change of mood. Unless we’ve drilled down far enough to find the opt-out button, our FB friends can already see exactly where we are at all times. This information does not vanish into the ether and it’s not restricted to our friends. It goes into a database, and the data mining continues day and night, in real time.

Maybe we’ll reach the point where we never have to go shopping. Google, Facebook, and Amazon will know exactly what we want even before we do, and they’ll automatically charge it to our credit cards (of course they have the account numbers) and deliver it right to our doors. 

There's a Long, Long Trail a-Winding

Sharon Wildwind

On February 2, 1901 the U. S. Army Nurse Corps became the first U. S. military nurse corps. The Navy Nurse Corps was founded seven years later and the Air Force Nurse Corps forty-eight years later, with the transition from the Army Air Corps to the United States Air Force. Tomorrow marks the 110th anniversary of formal organization of Army Nurses into their own military unit.

It hasn’t been an easy hundred and ten years.

There were problems of rank. Prior to 1901, military nurses were volunteers, contract workers, or members of religious orders. When the Nurse Corps was established, there was a huge reason not to commission the nurses. It was illegal because the Corps was specifically for women and, by federal law, women could not legally hold an Army commission. There was also the popular notion that nurses were handmaidens to the doctor and it wouldn’t do to give them ideas that they were equal to doctors, who did hold commissions.

The Army’s solution was relative rank, meaning that the nurse might be called Lieutenant, Captain, Major, etc. but she would receive less pay and status than a male officer of corresponding rank. In other words she was paid as a woman and a nurse, not as an officer. It wasn’t until 1947 that Nurse Corps members achieved real rank.

Incidentally, when I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the late 1960s, my commissioning order read that by an Act of Congress I was now “an officer and a gentleman.”

There were also problems of gender. The charter specified a female Corps. Men who had graduated from nursing schools were allowed to join the Army as corpsmen, but not as nurses. By the time World War II came along, they had been granted the rank of Technical Sergeant, which was an enlisted rank. It took the introduction of several federal bills before President Eisenhower, in 1955, signed the Bolton Act, which provided commissions for qualified men with nursing degrees and diplomas.

There was also the problem of image. Quick, what are your first reactions to the words Army Nurse?

If you thought of “duty,” “country,” or “highly professional,” more power to you. For a lot of people, the reactions would have been “martinet,” “second-class nurse,” or “the morals of an alley cat.” Sad, but true. Military nurses have always had to fight against negative stereotypes that somehow set them apart, made them different and less than their civilian counterparts. A lot of the time there has been no middle ground. The Army Nurse was either up on a pedestal or down in the gutter. Either one of those is a tough place to be.

Another misconception is that all military nursing is combat-related. While some of the finest trauma nurses in the world are military nurses, that’s not the whole story. Disease has always killed more soldiers than wounds. During World War I, no army nurse died from wounds, but over 200 died from influenza and influenza-related pneumonia, contracted by nursing patients during the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919. A lot of military are specialists in communicable disease nursing.

Where there are soldiers, there are families.

Pick a civilian nursing speciality and you’ll find there is a corresponding military speciality. Some of the finest midwives are military nurses. And pediatric nurses. Public health nurses. Industrial nurses. Researchers. Mental health specialists. Nurse practitioners. Cardiac nurses. Diabetic nurses. Dialysis nurses. They’re all wearing a uniform.

Those of us who have been military nurses eventually give up the uniform, but a lot of us never give up the experience. And I don’t think we’d have it any other way.

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Quote for the week
Help me to offer hope and cheer in the hearts of men, [women], and my country, for their faith inspires me to give the world and nursing my best.
~ Colonel Mildred Irene Clark, 1956

I doubt that Colonel Clark would object one bit to the word I’ve inserted. After all, Army Nurses have always moved with the times.

Skimming: A Crime Against Literature?

by Julia Buckley
I'm in the middle of THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, the third of the Stieg Larsson trilogy. I realize that I am probably the last person in the mystery community to read these books, but as everyone promised, they are great reading. Yes, really compelling reading--except for every once in a while, when Larsson the narrator shines through and gives a sort of political rant. At that point, my eyes glaze over and I start looking for a lifeline that will lead me back to the plot I was enjoying oh, so much.

Yes, even I, a self-proclaimed purist of reading, am occasionally a skimmer. I have skimmed the likes of greats like Ian McEwan and J.K. Rowling as well as lesser-known writers who wander away from their own plots and leave me scrambling to get back to them.

Yet as I admit this to you it feels confessional. Is skimming a sin? And if I do it, am I missing out on something vastly important that the author wanted me to read?

I don't skim with every book. There are some works which are paced in such a way that I would never consider skipping ahead--in fact I linger on each sentence, savouring its construction and style. Other books absorb me to such an extent that skimming is not an option; I need each precious detail.

So what does skimming suggest? Am I, as a reader, just too impatient for some resolution? Or is it a sign that a writer may have spent too much time on something that he or she cares about more than does his or her reader?

Don't get me wrong. I think Stieg Larsson was a genius of plot and pacing. Except when he wasn't. :) In each book there was at least one portion that had me setting the book down, not that interested in picking it up again. And that was after a fair amount of skimming. But I would persist, and get to a large chunk that was so exciting I could barely contain myself. Once, while reading on the El, I actually wanted to turn to a stranger and start talking about the novel--a sure way to be branded insane. But Larsson's books have that magical effect. They are uplifting. And yet I skimmed in every one.

I guess I'm writing this in hopes that someone out there will forgive me my skimmery. Or perhaps they'll even admit to skimming themselves.

As an author I'd like to think that my readers savor every line. But as a reader I know that skimming is a reality of individual taste.

What's your take on skimming? Did you skim this post? If so, where did I lose you? :)

(art link here)

WhajagetforChristmas???

By Lonnie Cruse

Okay, Christmas is now a fond memory (I hope) and we're deep into cold, probably even if we live waaay south, and a new decade is now in full swing. However, it appears that many avid readers received e-readers for Christmas, be it a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or whatever. (I know this because I check e-book discussion lists daily.) I've written about these e-reader beauties before, but given the amount of e-readers given as Christmas gifts, I think it's time to re-visit the issue and talk turkey, assuming you aren't sick of turkey by now.

The good news about e-readers is that both authors and publishers have begun to awaken to the fact that they ARE here to stay AND above all, this is a cheap and effective way to bring out-of-print books BACK into "print." Even better news, many of these books are FREE. Included in those freebies are MANY classics by Austen, Dickens, etc. Wow! And we can carry dozens of these books loaded on our units, in a purse or back pocket, without a huge bulge. Not to mention the weight of multiple print books.

Another plus, at least if you get e-books from Amazon, is the free first chapter, giving readers a chance to sample the book first. Doesn't work every single time because we authors do our very best to make the first chapter a hook that keeps the reader reading, and sometimes it's downhill from there, but at least it's better than not being able to check out a book at all. Meaning if you try to read an entire first chapter of a new book in a book store before buying, you are likely to get harsh stares from other customers, not to mention customer service.

The only downside I see to this e-book thing is paging backwards. Let's say I'm in the middle of a book and a character who hasn't appeared in the story for a few chapters suddenly re-appears. Who IS this person??? In a print book I simply go back to chapter one or two and find out. Being a bit lazy or maybe it's technophobic, I don't take the time to "page back" in an e-book to find out. I keep reading and hope my slow memory will kick in, as in, "Oh, yeah, she/he's . . . . And there are NO page numbers on my Kindle, so I have to judge where I am in the book by the little "slider" at the bottom and the percent of pages read. Not a big problem, but page numbers would have been nice.

Another downside is battery life. Rarely does my battery run down in the middle of a book because I keep it charged BUT it has happened and I'm forced to shut down and re-charge regardless of any cliff-hangers I just came to. Doesn't happen with a print book but it can be avoided by keeping a closer eye on batter charge. The charge generally lasts up to four days or better when reading frequently. Longer if the unit is not in frequent use. It's really my own fault for not watching more closely. And it happens more on my iTouch because I use it to read, listen to, play games, etc. so the battery has less chance of lasting. Sigh.

I've loaded so many freebies on my Kindle that there is nooooo way I'll live long enough to read them all. But it's fun trying. It's fun finding new books. IF you get books from Amazon, check the Kindle discussion area daily. there are a couple of kind folks there who post any new FREE books each day, and links to same, which is a HUGE help to getting new books. I rarely pay for a book, with all the freebies listed. Totally a "so many books, so little time" situation! Ahhh.

So, did you get an e-reader for Christmas? If so, what kind is it? What are you mostly downloading to it? What's your fave read so far? And if it's a Kindle and you are anywhere in the So. IL/W KY area, don't be surprised if I pounce on you when I spot your unit. I've accosted several strangers sporting Kindles. It's what I do.

And if you are a writer, are your books in e-format yet? Four of mine are, and selling pretty well, thankfully.

Happy January, everyone. Stay warm. Enjoy your reading time. Won't be long until warm weather arrives and less reading/downtime with it. Brrrrr. Hot chocolate, anyone???