P.J. O'Brien's Blog, page 2

What He Said (about Discovering Authors...)

This will be a very short post since Richard McGowan, a superb writer with an amazing stylistic range, says it much better here in describing writers he's discovered. But since he's wonderfully modest, I would like to add him to the list. His books are one of my happy discoveries since joining GR a couple of months ago.

Even if he hadn't gone out to look for my books after reading a posting I did on a discussion topic shortly after I joined, even if I hadn't made his list, his books would be on my list to read and reread.

Not only is he an excellent writer, he's unfailingly considerate and encouraging to writers in general. And so I post this to say thanks to him for all of that, but also to encourage the writers on his reading list to read his works if they haven't already. (I'd like to encourage everyone else too.) He doesn't promote himself much, so I'm going to do it for him, here and now. He can write in an amazing range of genres, styles, and subject matter. I've read four of his books already, and loved them all. Contact him at his SROP speak-easy and tell him the kinds of things you like to read. He'll find just the right fit for you.

(Just the tags on his blog postings are hilarious enough. To teach myself to write more concisely, I've decided to use those as flash fiction prompts. In the meantime, I'll pay a little homage to his with mine.)

A Book Review and a Musing on Being Sensible and Moral

This weekend, I'd planned to post on the topic of how choosing what to read has changed for me over time. Then I unexpectedly chose to read something that I'd intended to put off for later. I was struck so much by what I'd read that I decided to put a rambling review of it here, as well as touch on the ideas of fear, logic, morality, and ethics in thinking about our enemies.

I had some hesitation when first considering whether to read Kari Aguila’s Women's Work. The blurb triggered unbidden memory snippets of the Rifftrax of Wicker Man. But perhaps this was because I’d just come across a rash of movies and books where good-hearted innocent survivors had to join together to kill astounding numbers of their enemy in cold-blooded ways. Why? Well because, silly: they were hopelessly irredeemably BAD people or zombies or whatever. Killing them without question or remorse is the only thing a sensible moral person could do.

One would be hard pressed to find any saga, war story, or even any grassroots rising of “normal people who work together to save themselves from really horrific enemies" where actions didn’t ultimately boil down to that reasoning. If popular culture has taught me anything, it's that normal ideas of fairness and compassion must logically be set aside based upon how bad your group perceives the enemy COULD be, not in more objective terms, e.g. actual body counts or whether the person you're about to kill had anything to do with an atrocity that spurred you to act. (No wait, there’s one: I just saw the campy zombie teenage love story, Warm Bodies. It does more to bring up the moral struggle of defense vs decency than anything I’ve seen in years. Admittedly though, other than Sean of the Dead, I’m not much for zombie movies.)

I like to think of myself as sensible and moral, in equal amounts. So at the enthusiastic urging of an unseen GoodReads colleague, not to mention the fact that I’d already bought it, I looked through Women’s Work to see if I should adjust its position in my TBR queue. That was my morally sensible undoing. Perhaps I was just being nonsensible (yes, spellcheck, I know you don’t recognize that word; I’ve just made it up), but I felt drawn to it. It had been a risk buying it in the first place. I generally don’t buy anything unless I can read an excerpt before. But I’d read a bit of Kari Aguila’s blogs and she seemed thoughtful, well-balanced, and not at all like someone advocating mass murder for sensible and moral reasons. I was pretty much snowed in anyway and was bouncing between several books to keep the cabin fever at bay. So I read a little. And then I read a little more. And then I was hooked.

I read it before bed, and the first thing upon waking up. I read it between bouts of snow-shoveling and deliberately hid my Nook from myself whenever I needed to get real work done. I read it before going out for a nice Valentine’s Day dinner with my husband and tried not to worry him overmuch with the plot and its premise.

Why did I like it so much? I’m not sure, but I think it was because Kate, the protagonist, and her children and those in the neighborhood who’ve first endured a gender-divided police state rivaling The Handmaid's Tale, and then survived missile attacks from a horrifying war, are human, likeable, and most importantly, capable of looking beyond their circumstances and their fears to make authentically sensible and moral decisions.

In Women’s Work, adult men have been pretty much wiped out. We learn how and why as we read along, the backstory emerging in bits and glimpses as it deftly emerges in just the right way and in just the right places before quietly receding to let the flow of the story go forward. Beloved husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers were literally dragged off to war or killed in resisting it. A few went into hiding or were too young, but it was pockets of women who emerged when it was all over. We never learn exactly what that particular war was about, but it doesn’t really matter. As it is with most victims of catastrophic wars, it really had nothing to do with them and their day to day lives other than to rob them of family and a hopeful future.

Kate’s new civilization, instituted in the aftermath of the war, emphasizes seven Habits of Humanity (kindness, sharing, hard work, humility, control, patience, and moderation) that were to replace the scriptural seven deadly sins (anger, greed, laziness, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony), which were felt to be at the root of all violence and war. One can’t argue with the reasoning, but it’s notable what’s missing in the seven Habits: compassion, mercy, justice, forgiveness and reconciliation, an unbiased thirst for truth and knowledge, and above all, love in every sense of the word. The seven deadly sins are appropriately warned about in the new school, but the seven virtues from traditional catechism class have been forgotten. (I suppose virtues like hope, justice, and love are nearly always casualties of war, and centuries of learning them hasn’t helped us much in preventing the deadlies from getting the upper hand in the first place. So I guess there was a reason they were no longer taught.) Most all civilizations, religions, and cultures extol the same Habits that the women’s world embraced in one form or another, and have struggled with keeping the deadly sins from getting out of hand. And like the women’s world, most all come up short in realizing that the enemy that they thought they’d conquered was being reborn in themselves.

There are some males in the new civilization: babies and young boys mainly, as well as a few wounded soldiers or old men kept out of the public eye as well as the decision-making process. As rumors spread between the villages about gangs of unrepentant men raiding houses, raping and murdering inhabitants, and kidnapping children, young men coming of age are subjected to Jim Crow kinds of laws. These laws and social repercussions to women family members advocating for equality make it unsafe for men to be out much. An unaccompanied adult male with no one to vouch for him is seen as dangerous and subject to vigilantism and mob violence (though not referred to as that). Surviving men are given kitchen and childrearing duties and discouraged from speaking in public.

This is the world where the book begins and it’s why Kate and her children are so terrified when a strange male shows up at the doorstep of her farm. Its location is far from the town and surrounded by woods. They’re very much alone and have reasons to fear if a raider comes by. But Kate has good memories of a beloved husband, who didn’t survive his military conscription, and she has a son who is already having to be restricted in what he can do. Kate is also wrestling with uneasy feelings whenever she passes the grave of a stranger that her friends in the village have killed not too long before in the sincere belief that it was self-defense.

The heart of the book is not just how Kate must balance her fears for herself, her children, and the town at large against her remaining sense of compassion for her fellow man. And it’s not just a potential “love conquers all story” for those who have reason to give up on the notion of romantic love entirely. It’s about how the interplay of fear and trust in a culture shapes individuals, and how the courage to live out the forgotten catechetical virtues of individuals can shape their culture in return.

Kate knows she’s potentially putting lives on the line no matter what she does. If she does not accurately judge whether Michael is truthful about who he is and where he came from, she risks her children's lives. If she’s not careful about whom she consults or how she does it, she risks Michael’s life and perhaps ultimately, her son's future. None of these risks and fears are glossed over and none are overplayed.

If I have one criticism at all of this book, it’s the too sudden shift to an ending from the crisis point that the book has so carefully taken us to. I had the urge to send the author a message and ask her for the missing chapters that Barnes and Nobles had left out of the epub. I wanted to ask her how the codified fear and hysteria of the townswomen that she had done such a fine job of describing were simply dropped from the story in the dénouement. Yes, we have the general idea why, but call me an unromantic if you will: I’m not overly puzzled how people who love each other can surmount nearly impossible odds and forgive the seemingly unforgiveable. We’ve all seen, read, experienced or heard of it many times. I want to know how villages do it, especially villages of victims of such horrors. That’s much rarer and involves more psychic risk to each of them. But the details and hard work of that, I’m afraid, Aguila has left to our imaginations. (Maybe there’s a sequel?)

Once Upon a Time....

When I was a child I was taught, as I’m sure were many others, that there were magic words that one must use to have a good life. If I wanted to be excused from the table, or have a cookie fresh from the oven, or to stay up a little past my bedtime, the magic word “please” made it more likely that my wish would be granted, particularly if followed up by some other incantations such as “thank you”. There were words that I learned would soften tension and anger: “I’m sorry” or “please excuse me” and since I grew up in the American South, a timely sprinkling of “ma’am” or “sir” helped a lot too.

When I became a parent, I learned another magical phrase. Or perhaps I always knew it was magical since most fairy tales began that way. But my sense of magic had tarnished a bit over the years. Then one evening in a long checkout line, after a very tiring day, with an infant in a sling sucking on my shirt in hungry frustration, and an overtired toddler and a perpetually inquisitive preschooler sentenced to the shopping cart, I learned the magic in the phrase itself.

Just as the tears and screams were about to erupt, some inner wisdom from a sympathetic parental muse made me blurt out, “Once upon a time…” My four year old was surprised away from hurt feelings at being told that he couldn’t go explore and my two year old looked up from the box of cereal he was about to gnaw on. The momentary silence was bliss, but sure to be short-lived unless I came up with something quick.

“Once upon a time, there was a store that was built on top of the home of a sad dinosaur.” (My kids loved dinosaurs.)

“No, Mommy,” my older son said kindly. “Remember that dinosaurs lived a long time ago.” His younger brother nodded, though I’m not sure he actually understood the point.

“Oh, you’re right,” I acknowledged. “But then, whose home was it? It was something big and rumbly. No one had actually seen it, but they’d heard it and it made kind of a roar.”

“Oh, it was probably a dragon then,” said the little kid ahead of us in line. I glanced at my son, who had a vivid imagination as long as it didn’t contradict his scientific scholarship. He looked thoughtful and then agreed that it probably was a dragon.

For what seemed like hours, but was probably only twenty minutes, we wove a story. When mental fatigue threatened to silence me (or I needed to distract my cardboard chewer in the shopping cart with something acceptably edible) my older son, nearby children, and occasionally even another parent chimed in with their contributions to it. It kept everyone occupied enough that the waiting didn’t seem onerous and the sense of being overwhelmed was banished. I could discreetly untwist my shirt from under the sling to let the baby soothe her hunger pangs as a little girl behind us gave a verbal footnote to explain a potential point of contention. Her father continued the story for the others after I checked out and for all I know the tale of the dragon under the grocery store is still going on today.

The magic of Once Upon a Time has rescued us from excessive whining when waiting for late buses, distracted from terror during visits to doctors when immunizations were due, and long car rides when legs were cramped and bladders were full. It has chased away noisy nocturnal monsters lurking in dark corners and became a required bedtime ritual for my perpetually insomniac younger son. Long after his siblings had fallen asleep, he’d lie awake restlessly and unable to relax. I told him stories until his hyperkinetic mind slowed down and his muscles stopped wanting to jump, twist, or wiggle. I was my household’s Scheherazade but instead of telling stories in order to save my life, I told them to save our sleep. Sometimes, I must confess, I must have fallen asleep mid-tale, but it worked out even so. My rule was that I would only tell bedtime stories to someone lying in bed, so he’d wait there for me to stir a little, and then pat my face to whisper, “And then what, Mommy?”

I never knew where a story was going to go when I embarked upon one. It might follow recent events, or thoughts and feelings that fermented during the day and bubbled up when the lights went out, or lessons that needed to be learned in a kind and encouraging way. The less successful stories were those where I rushed things or was too preachy or preoccupied with my own thoughts rather than the narrative. Those stories were met with protests or questions or heightened restlessness. Very interactive stories were fine for daytime, but the best stories for night were those where there was enough to engage the mind but allow it to rest. After a brief interaction to paint the imaginary storyscape together, it was only the storytelling and the quiet listening until sleep came.

During one drowsy rambling tale, serendipity brought us the magic of the “dreamseed” when it emerged as a verbal footnote to answer a “but how did?” point of contention in the universe. From that point on, dreamseeds were a part of our nightly ritual. I may have subconsciously borrowed the idea from David James Duncan and the “dreamfee” from his book The River Why, but I don’t know. They weren’t exactly the same things, but they each helped get a restless and imaginative child to sleep. Our version began with a request by the listener-dreamer for a story about a particular theme or event and hear just enough of it to sow it in the sleepy mind. If the listener stayed relaxed with eyes closed, Bedtime Story Magic would turn it into a good dream.

I was encouraged from time to time to write stories down, but I was never good at it. I found I needed focused time without interruptions to do so and with work and needs of the family, I didn’t have enough of it. If I had to choose between writing and sleeping (or even reading), I seldom chose writing. And even when I did, writing feverishly one day, and then going back the next to try to decipher my handwriting to correct flaws of flow or grammar before writing the next segment, I was never satisfied. Things are better in the brain, I decided. Adaptations are endless there and what’s written was too static. Tangents and links in a mental story were expected and wonderful, but a confusing muddled mess when written down. I was embarrassed enough at the results not being what I wished that during one moment of anxiety, I happened to ask my husband, “If I died suddenly in a car wreck or something like that, would you promise me that you’ll throw all my writing drafts away without reading them?” He’d always respected my privacy and hadn’t looked at them and was unlikely to read my handwriting even if he tried. He pointed that out, but I was so distressed at the idea of anyone seeing something so half done and so full of errors that when he finally said that he didn’t think that was a promise he could make, I nodded in understanding and then quietly destroyed everything myself. I didn’t write anything else for years.

When the compulsion to create stories and worlds became irresistible again, we had a computer and a keyboard. But the stories still came in a Once Upon a Time framework and the narrative voice was meant for being spoken aloud. In my first drafts, it was almost entirely dialogue, with little indication of who said what because I assumed I would be the reader and I knew already. But as a few segments were shared here and there, mainly with those who were exhausted until they got in bed and then were wide awake, I revised them based on the feedback. There were still stories tucked into other stories, wandering off on tangents and backstories to speak to more grownup questions, worries, and fears. There was no real end in mind other than to provide more interesting topics of conversations than what was in the news, or to give an alternate prospective to find a way off the cultural war battlefield, or at the very least, to plant dreamseeds into tired minds and let Bedtime Story Magic do its work. (In fact, until just a few years ago, the Sanctuary series was called Cure for Insomnia because it really was designed to read here and there at bedtime when sleep was elusive and one’s monkey mind needed to think about something entirely different.)

I still cringe when reading over something that I wrote and see word substitutions, inadvertent misspellings or verbs omitted even after I proofread them several times. It seems to happen more often now in the digital age, but I’ve learned to be more forgiving of it in myself and others. Our brains are changing to adapt to their new environment and no doubt our language and stories will evolve along with them. That’s both sad and exciting. I used to worry that these increasing errors meant that I had Alzheimer’s or something. I worried that I would be stuck in a prison of my own mind. But then, as I wrote to my older son when he was ready to graduate and leave home, I had a memory of years of bedtime stories. He’d shared a room with his restless younger brother and a thousand stories had worked their way into his sleepy brain. I imagined those memories altered, I wrote to him, and with me someday in a chair by the window or confined to a bed feeling anxious and afraid, but not knowing why. And then I imagined him a gentle stranger with magic of his own, who would sit close by, but not too close to frighten me, and say “Once Upon a Time….”

Electronic or Printed? Typeset or Handwritten? Ears or Eyes?

When browsing through the Booky Ramblings Group discussion posts (I’m a relatively new member, so have a lot of catching up to do), I saw a question that I’ve frequently seen elsewhere. Essentially, it asked whether we preferred reading printed books or electronic ones.

I never thought I had a preference. I’m prone to follow a string of words wherever they lead when I happen upon them. The bulk of the books I’ve ever owned – and still possess at this point – are bound. As some of those responding to the discussion also noted, I do like to be surrounded by shelves of my books; they're like old friends.

But I must say that everything I've read lately is electronic since the selection is so much broader and I can try them out more easily in advance. I do love libraries and bookstores, so I'll patronize them whenever I'm out and have the time when I stumble across one. Even so, in looking back at my reading and buying habits of the past year, everything I've bought has been digital. It's nice to have it right away without having to brave torrential rain, snow, or traffic. Everything that I've checked out of the library has been digital. Everything I've taken to read when traveling (which has been a lot lately) has been digital.

I've suddenly found it a lot more tiresome in a printed volume that I can't do a quick search on something mentioned previously, or highlight something with a few finger movements to refer to later, or change the font and background if I want to keep reading into the night without keeping anyone awake.

Even so, I'm not opposed to a printed book. It’s easier to lend them out, there are no worries about low batteries, and as I just realized when recently reading The Typographer's Left Shoe, there is craftsmanship that goes along with producing a handsome volume in terms of typesetting and binding. (I program my Nook to display everything in the same font style and size for my ease in reading, so I wouldn’t have seen an alternate font even if the writer chose one.) I realized this when the author of that book, Richard McGowan, kindly sent me the link to a typesetting website to let me know what the original printed volume would have looked like after reading my review.

I think what matters most in books is the content itself. No doubt, there was a similar question about preferences proposed in parlors and academies when the printing press was invented. "I don't like a static typeface," I'm sure someone said. "Authors reveal themselves in their handwriting style. Each is unique and even the same writer’s hand will alter slightly with each change and turn of the story. How can a common font do that? It will destroy literature and imagination."

And before that, no doubt, there was sadness when moving away from papyrus or stone or the human voice. The sadness would have been legitimate in each case. Some aspect of the medium would be lost along with its practice. That’s why I think keeping all the options available as long as we can has a value in itself.

I think we lost something - in addition to auditory attentiveness - when we moved from oral storytelling to writing and then much more recently from households listening together while someone read aloud. I suppose TVs and movies have taken the place of that, so there is some sense of collective experience still left, but it's not quite the same. It demands too much of your sensory attention.

I love to listen to someone reading aloud as I'm folding laundry, doing a puzzle, sorting seeds, or trying to remember how to knit. True, audio books can serve some of that role, but again, somehow it’s not quite the same. That seems designed for individuals unless a family is listening together on a car trip. Jim Trelease’s excellent books notwithstanding, reading aloud seems now like something one would do only for a young child or an invalid. It’s seen as a temporary stopgap until they can read for themselves and not as a way of developing the capacities for collective listening or dramatic reading.

I suppose, though, if nothing was lost when moving from one form to another, there would be no sense of regret when a new mode comes in. That's why I sympathize with those who prefer reading bound books, even if they've suddenly become heavy, page-flippy, and in need of separate reading lights at bedtime. I hope the options and alternatives stay available as long as there are those who are willing to keep it alive for themselves and for the ages to come. Happy reading to all, no matter how you do it.

A world for both formula fans and eclectic readers

I’ve been reveling as a reader in the world of ePublishing. Not only is there an infinite array of books, as I’ve mentioned before in previous postings, but there’s room for the eclectic, the esoteric, as well as the offbeat. Even so, a few things confuse and occasionally frustrate me.

I understand why formulaic writing and editing were important when the cost of printing was so high. It made sense to find the right combination of character interactions and to move the plot in just the right way to appeal to the desires of the greatest number of buyers among the reading public. Those readers were happy, the authors were happy, the publishers were happy, and the bookstores were too. When I’m in the mood for a Tony Hillerman or Iain Pears kind of mystery, I’m happy too. The real world might be chaotic and unpredictable, but finding that particular familiar place to hide in for awhile is a good thing.

And yet, I’m more than a person who needs a hiding place. Or maybe I’m a person who needs a lot of different places to hide in, depending upon my mood. But in reading a number of essays, blogs, and helpful hints for new writers, I sometimes feel like readers are still being patted on the head and told to sit quietly while we’re told what we like.

Even sites that acknowledge that pleasing the reader is more essential than pleasing a marketer or distribution company have told me that the way I choose what to read and how I read is, well, wrong. Or perhaps it’s just contrary to well-known formulas. In order to dissolve into my demographic test tube I should:
- Be dazzled and lured in by a thumbnail picture
- Stay true to a genre and don’t read from a variety of them
- Gasp and hide under the couch if a book has more than a modest word count
- Avoid books that don’t have any reviews to reduce my fear of the unknown
- Have no other senses but visual, and therefore only read in the traditional manner without doing anything else

I have trouble with the formula. I end up an insoluble sediment at the bottom. I’ve always been suspicious of covers, from the earliest days of holding books in my hands. I discovered early on that whoever designed them had probably not read more than a few pages. They might have interesting designs that danced around in front of me but they told me nothing about the book to help decide whether to buy it. The blurbs by reviewers and celebrity authors seemed too general and hyperbolic to be helpful, and I was not terribly surprised to learn that many who wrote them were paid to do so without having read any of the book they were extolling. To me, covers were like commercials or ads in general: designed to distract and sell me something and best ignored.

Instead, I would open the books at random points throughout and read a few pages at each. I would check the “About the Author” section, particularly for nonfiction works, along with acknowledgements and endnotes. That gave me a better indication of whether I thought I might like the book. If it suited my mood or my interests, I took a chance, and often discovered a new genre, learned something new, and added a new author to my lists of favorites. If I ended up not liking it, I blamed no one but myself.

With epublishing, I have a lot more information available. Because those publishing independently often write the book’s description blurb, I can rely on the person who presumably knows best what it’s about to tell me its main features. I can read a significant percentage in preview to see if I like the style (though sadly, many offer only a wee bit at the beginning, with much of it wasted on title page and table of contents). On many sites, particularly goodreads, I can see the books that the writer reads, and any blogs and essays that might give me more of a glimpse of context or perspective. And yes, I can see reviews, as well as posts and comments that the author makes to other people. All that is valuable information, and more likely to sway my choices than the thumbnail marketing image.

I was surprised to read on a much quoted writers blog advocating concern for the reader – and one I agreed with in general – that anyone who said that a marketing image didn’t matter in a reader’s selection decision was wrong. Humans are visually-oriented, we’re told firmly, so I suppose that those of us who may be more verbally than spatially oriented don’t exist. I don’t remember the color of the shirt I’m wearing half the time and can’t always identify faces, even of family members unless they’re up close or speaking, but apparently a little picture that is literally the size of my thumb dictates my choices. The person’s heart was in the right place, of course, and I suppose not everyone has read Oliver Sacks. Perhaps the blogger doesn’t know anyone with atypical sensory processing, or perhaps she knows those who are more image biased. But I suspect that those who are word rather than image oriented are more likely to be over-represented among readers than in the general population. This is not to say we are the majority of readers. We’re obviously not. But we exist and saying that we don’t serves no purpose. You don’t have to make a formula for us. Just don’t pour us down the drain if we don’t fit into the beaker.

I know someone who had trouble with reading comprehension for years until he discovered – quite by accident – that if he listened to an audio version of a book while he read it, he was able to process, absorb, retain, and enjoy it as well as anyone else. The attention deficit diagnosis was put aside and he’s become an avid and voracious reader. Again, most of us are visually dominant, but for those who aren’t, the wide availability of audio selections is a godsend. And even if they are a thin minority of readers, they are readers anyway and surely the possibilities of epublishing have something to offer them too.

Even those who are good visual readers rely on audio books when running, doing the laundry, driving, or any number of other things. I saw a posting recently by an author asking about audio publication possibilities. Unlike other topics with scores of helpful responses, this one stayed lonely for a while. Are there many indie writers going that route, or is it cost prohibitive?

And finally, the publishing conventional wisdom that is most misapplied, cookie-cutter fashion, to the epublishing world is that no reader wants to read anything over a particular length. Again, I will admit that I’m probably in the minority, but I’m fond of a nice long read. I’m open-minded enough to read the short, the quirky and quick on occasion, but generally I like something long and literary. I want the plots to build properly and not take shortcuts to relieve an editor’s fear that my attention span is crippled. I want the characters to be well developed and to evolve. I understand, writers of the world, if you feel the need to keep sentences and book lengths short. But as a nod to those of us readers who think bleak winters are made bearable by warm blankets and big books, could you occasionally offer a compilation of your series rather than making us buy short snippets separately? Our ereaders can hold a lot. And if a plot drags down in the middle, it’s very easy for us to skip pages at the flick of our fingers. It doesn’t waste any trees and we can always return to what we jumped over if we find we missed something plot-valuable. Editing for content is good if the story isn’t sacrificed; but editing to force something to a certain length ought to be a quaint old custom that is happily behind us.

My point in this post is not to take away anyone’s romance, or zombies, or mysteries, or vampires, or young adult forced by a heartless world to battle peers to the death. It’s not to denounce interesting and effective marketing images or to insist that everyone write sweeping epics that would make Tolstoy tremble. All those things work because they provide what many readers want. But this wonderful brave new world of publishing gives new voices and opportunities to readers, just as it does to writers. There is room for the niche book that makes a significant impact on only ten readers as much as there is for the one that appeals to ten thousand. But each of those readers is as valuable as the other. As readers find their voices, it becomes apparent that there are multi-part harmonies in their chorus. That makes the world very beautiful indeed.

Literacy, Life, and Reading to Save the World

I was born into a family of nine. We didn’t have a lot of luxuries, but we always had a roof over our heads, food on the table, and each other. Like every family, we had the occasional sorrow and drama, but we had in addition music, laughter, and reading. There were shelves of books in every corner of the house. If I told my parents that I needed clothes or wanted toys, I generally had to wait for Christmas or my birthday. But if there was a book sale, the checkbook came out immediately.

This was quite helpful since the tiny town library was a basically a room and was open one afternoon a week. (This is perhaps not entirely true, but seemed so to a hungry young reader; the details are fuzzy after all these years.) By the time I was in high school, in a slightly bigger town, I had subscribed to three different kinds of book-buying clubs and paid for them myself with afterschool jobs and my allowance.

The worlds I stepped into when I read probably helped keep me sane during adolescence and certainly gave me reassurance that I wasn’t the only one to ever feel like I was a stranger in my own land, that society occasionally lies to itself about how it acts upon its professed principles, and that more things are possible if imagined together than we each could dream of on our own.

After earning a degree in anthropology from the University of North Carolina, I joined a fulltime volunteer service organization and was sent to Houston to work with those struggling with urban poverty. Urban poverty had some key differences from rural poverty, but ultimately it inspired the same sense of frustration and hopelessness. After a brief time in graduate school in Public Health in a state that spent little to promote it, and Kafkaesque experiences as a mental health caseworker during the Reagan era, I eventually turned to studying electronic engineering for a while to address humanity’s needs through technology. (As you might have noticed, this hasn’t been entirely effective either, but it does pay the bills. And frankly, second-guessing oneself after an unanticipated system crash is much easier on the soul than after an unanticipated suicide.) I dropped out of that after a couple of years when the energy trading company I was interning in offered me a fulltime position. It was hard to refuse: it made it easier to spend time with my young children and they paid for any further training I needed.

It took many years and a thousand miles to be able to get back into working for a nonprofit. Small budgets with no profit margin couldn’t take chances on new ways of doing things until it became more mainstream and justifiably necessary in terms of cost. But now, I’m able to combine a love of troubleshooting systems and a sense of contributing something worthwhile to the world in general, even if I’m just helping out the people who do the real work.

But anyway, back to reading. This is a blog about reading and writing, right?

If I could fold physics and bring the teenage me to the world of now, I wonder what she would think. She would be excited that books could be downloaded in an instant from all over the world. There is no more waiting for The Literary Guild or The International Collectors Library to send their monthly catalog and their recommendation for the month. She’d be excited that when her head was bursting with ideas and stories, she wouldn’t have to write them out laboriously and then hide them in a drawer or under the bed lest anyone see them before they could edited again and again until she could stand them. She’d be relieved that when she had to sit stretches in waiting rooms, she could take an ereader with plenty of books loaded on in case she finished one before her name was called. And there would be a dictionary an instant away to learn unfamiliar words, so she wouldn’t have to carry one around, and be annoyed that the most portable ones didn’t include most of the words she was looking up.

But I think she’d be disappointed that after reading of better societies (in nonfiction as well as sci-fi), her own hadn’t changed that much in terms of essentials. In some ways, things are better, and in some ways, they’re worse. She cared a lot about fairness and kindness, and assumed with technology enabling more instant connections and new ways of accessing knowledge, that things would keep getting better for all. She had a healthy cynicism, but it was mixed with humor and hope. So if she asked me, “Why is there still such a gap in educational opportunities? Why isn’t there universal literacy now? Why is there still a widening gap between those who have advantages and those who don’t? Isn’t knowledge power? And if knowledge is so much more accessible, what happened?!”

The truth is, I don’t know. But I would take her to the various online sites for reading and writing and show her the array of possibilities. All these people have opportunities that didn’t exist before, I’d tell her. They don’t have to get writer’s cramp or hide things under the bed. “Some of them should maybe,” she’d declare at first. “Some of it is really raw.”

Then I’d quote Nick Carraway’s father to her from The Great Gatsby: "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone… just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages you've had." And she, being the sensitive soul that she was, despite an outward bravado, would be ashamed of herself. It might take a moment or two, but she’d remember that she’d had the good example and literary mentoring of two parents and five older siblings. She had a few superlative teachers in her tiny town, and a few that weren’t so good. But the ones that were good made up for all the rest. She had books, and encouragement, and an environment that encouraged her to ask why and how and what if?

The modern me could kindly point out psychological studies that showed that if someone who experienced trauma wrote about their experiences daily for a week, but was allowed to change the story each time, in whole or in part, they could get better. I could show her examples from language teachers that suggested that if children were encouraged to write a little every day even before they learned all the mechanics of style, they understood the functions of grammar a little better. I’d even give her reference links to conversations between proponents of descriptive linguistics and grammatical prescription to show how languages evolve, and how we all might be in the middle of a giant evolutionary leap in English right now.

I think she’d be intrigued. Maybe even excited. And she, being young and idealistic, might say, “Everyone who has been taught to read should encourage everyone else in any way they can. They should also encourage them to write, whether for the whole world or just the underside of their beds.

“And everyone who writes anything ought to be relentless with themselves to improve, but always encouraging to others. Because sites like goodreads and smashwords and kobo and lulu and all those other places are at the heart of a literacy revolution. They're a way for those that didn’t have any advantages to learn reading and writing to get what others had handed to them by family and good schools.

"A problem would be if all those who were trying to write stopped reading. That would make the new writers compete with each other instead of each continuing to read and learn new things and experience a wee bit more of life from another point of view. Another problem would be if those who only read, but never took the risk of writing anything, were sneering and snarky about those who did, especially since they never tried it themselves and saw how hard it can be. Because just to do one or the other could make a person seriously one-sided.”

Then I’d fold physics again so she’d return to the 70s. People who’ve decided they know everything can be annoying. That’s true even if they’re good young folks and earnestly sincere, and doubly so after they grow up to be me.

ePublishing, Imagination, and the Reader-Writer Alliance

Much has been written about the evolution of publishing in the digital age and the unprecedented opportunities for readers and writers to connect with each other. But as I noted in the previous blog posting, there’s a recurring criticism that independent publishing has created a giant slush-pile for the readers of the world to wade through.

As someone who is primarily a reader, I beg to differ. If we take a step back to use our imaginations, we could consider the new ways of accessing books differently and without the old lenses of traditional options. For example, pretend we’ve just arrived from a different planet and want something to read. (C’mon, what else would space travelers do besides look for books upon disembarking? It’s a long way from home and everything brought along was read 1000 times already). If you imagine access opportunities that are first apparent and easiest to acquire from an objective point of view, a new set of expectations and norms, unnoticed by those in the middle of it, might present themselves.

Two characteristics of the epublishing world that didn’t exist with traditional publishing are:

- the creative process is more dynamic than static even after publishing, and thus better reflects the writers’ craft in context of time and culture
- the creative process is more transparent and inclusive to readers, regardless of their physical locations

When I picked up a book decades ago, whether a new release at a store or beloved classic from the library, I was holding something that was frozen in time. Of course, I gave it new life in my imagination, but in terms of the publishing process, it was the end of the line. The book was a product and in a sense, I was a product too. The book was a product of the publishing process and my purchase of it was a product of the promotion process, or at best, a response mechanism that could be aggregated with others to measure the worth of the first product.

What was hidden from me was something that started with a writer’s imagination, a manuscript, multiple revisions, a proposal, perhaps a rejection, perhaps dozens of them, more proposals and more revisions, until eventually there was a printing, a lot of promotion, and some sales. That’s where I as the reader finally came into the picture: at the point where the publisher, writer, agent et al had moved on to something else. It’s as if there was a party, but everyone hosting it leaves just as the guests arrive. Under the traditional model, what was hidden from the writer and publisher was my experience of reading the fruit of all their labor, unless they happened to read a review I wrote. But in those days, unless I was a professional reviewer who could promote a lot more sales, they wouldn’t have cared what I thought. All they wanted from me was a purchase.

Not only has technology changed the writing experience and given the author more control, it has changed the power of the reader as well. That’s critical, because there's been a seismic shift in the way people read, particularly among those growing up as digital natives. I don't just mean ereading here. I mean reading while doing other things (rather than curled up in a chair for long hours without distractions of music, messaging, TV or talking), increased listening to audio books while traveling or working out, and other attention-distractors in their environment that prevent a single focus on the book itself. Ironically, even though literacy rates have increased worldwide, there may be less actual attentive reading hours spent. (Or not; this is a hypothesis that needs testing.) There is so much more to do beside read in one’s non-working time, and more options available to choose from even when one does read. Writers face a lot of competition and if Goodreads profile pages are any indication, they have very little time for reading for pleasure. That’s too bad; my guess is that the most voracious readers traditionally were writers. (More on that later.)

The new world is still evolving in its creation and so have its norms. But some of the old norms are still being assumed, even if they don’t quite fit anymore. Anachronistic terms like slush-pile are still being tossed around, even though readers no longer need a proxy to decide what they’re likely to prefer. What I think we have is not a stack of work where only a fraction would generate a return on investment from mass purchase by a passive reading population with the same cookie cutter tastes. It’s a repository of creative work in a dazzling array of styles and subject matter, in various stages of completion, which needs better tagging and indexing so that it becomes easier for readers to query and choose from, depending upon their inclination at that point.

I certainly agree that there are many works being offered for sale that aren’t finished: they need revision, proofing, editing, or other avenues for sharing that don’t involve financial transactions. So, why are they being offered for sale? Because most support sites for writers assume that the ultimate goal of writing is to sell a product.

But that’s the old way of looking at things. Let’s look at it another way. Suppose I look for books to read on Goodreads or Smashwords or other places I tend to go if I’m in the mood to buy. (I generally read on my ereader but find Amazon or Barnes and Noble prices ridiculous for digital works.) Because there is no approval process required for a writer on those sites, I have a range of books to choose from at various stages in the writing/publishing creative process. To use the earlier imagery, the writer is still at the party when I arrive. We might even talk in a sense.

The writer and I might disagree on the stage a work is in, but that’s where this new dynamic is transparent and beautiful. Epublishing doesn’t carry the same cost burden as print publishing, so the writer is free to revise and adapt at will, even after the work is professionally marketed. The reiteration process itself could possibly become another kind of literary style (epublishing performance art?), and the work is finished when the author, and the readers in turn, decide it is, not whether it’s logistically feasible and marketable.

I don’t buy anything without reading a sample first, and if that and the description are compelling and ready, I’ll buy it unless the price seems unreasonable. If the work reads like a draft in dire need of proofing or editing, I still may download and read it if it’s free and I find it engaging. If the story itself is good, despite the need for proofing, I am happy to give the author kudos and encouragement to keep working at it.

Those who can write a good story aren’t necessarily those who are detail-oriented enough to proofread (especially their own work). They might not have enough distance from the story to edit it, or the design skills to produce a cover, or the savvy to market to the right audience. In truth, a single person who could do all of that is rare indeed, as is an amateur or emerging author who could afford to pay professionals to do what publishing companies did traditionally.

I’ve seen gorgeous covers on works that seem to be in the very first draft stage. This makes no sense to me. I suspect new writers are often led to spend a lot of money on commissioning striking marketing images by those who have no financial incentive to encourage the writer to develop the story first. And once the money is spent on images and marketing packages, the writers might feel the pressure to charge to try to gain some of it back.

I’m wondering if it would make things easier if we could standardize on some stages of process without unfairly labeling people themselves? We already categorize things by genre (which is often unhelpful since life is broader than the categories; Bryn Hammond explains it better here: http://amgalant.com/i-hate-genre/). Why not let writers designate new works by covers that are current-status images rather than for marketing to buyers? If I see a description that seems interesting, and there’s a cover image that gives an indication that it’s still in the Draft (i.e., story concept) phase, I’d be far more tolerant of its shortcomings and would offer encouragement where it was due.

The writer could see how much interest there would be in the story itself and whether to spend more time and money on it or move on to something else. Likewise, there could be a status image for Evolving (i.e., in revision stages), and readers could send in proofreading errors if they’re inclined or questions about areas found to be confusing. Both stages of work should obviously be offered for free since the readers are spending their own time encouraging the writer in the creative process (alpha and beta testers for you IT folks). The marketing image should be commissioned last, after encouragement by readers and a professional-quality proofreader to ensure that it’s ready. Perhaps the revision readers’ indication in their feedback as to how much they’d be willing to pay for it as it existed at that point would help the author decide if it was ready for marketing and what price to offer it at.

For writers not inclined to present the work that way, perhaps readers who take chances on them could use their power to reshape the norms. This is already happening in some ways as peer recommendations on social reading sites become as important as formal promotions. Many readers do offer positive feedback for amateur and emerging writers in their reviews (see some examples from Faerie Godreader’s reviews https://www.goodreads.com/review/list... ) and in their metadata tagging. To my knowledge though, there’s no easily indexed standard for these stages of writing. If there were, it would help those who don’t want to sift through works in progress when considering books, or prevent those new to buying independently published works from being burned by paying for books that clearly weren’t ready to be marketed.

(An important – to me – side tangent; skip if desired & continue to next paragraph) It is a sad state of affairs that access to literacy is still limited for many, even in the wealthiest nations. That doesn’t mean that the people who haven’t had the advantages of good mentors and teachers don’t have stories to tell or ideas to contribute. Traditional publishing leaves them in the cold, but independent publishing and social reading sites don’t have to. People can develop writing skills by reading, and reading skills by writing. The two are complementary. By making connections with readers who can encourage expression and put grammatical structure in context, writers who didn’t have access to good language arts teachers as children can still learn and their overall interest in reading would improve. (It would be a golden age for English majors and language arts teachers if there could be some way of funding compensation for them to pair up with those who are struggling in these areas to teach writing mechanics, or to proofread, edit, or even ghost write for those with stories worth telling.)

Another pressure on even experienced and successful writers seems to be a relentless treadmill of promotion, marketing, and writing the next “product”. The time that authors could spend to just experience life, to muse about it, and to read for the pleasure of it, is curtailed so that they can blog, up the word-count of their WIP for their fans, and generally keep in contact with everyone. It rather makes me sad for them. I want my favorite writers to be able to go into a room and close the door for a few hours a day, or weeks, or year, for time to themselves. I want them to write because they love it and can’t imagine not doing it. I don’t want them to think that they always need to be reaching out to us unless they happen to want to. I promise not to forget them. I’ve yet to read anything promotional about Dostoevsky or Austen, but I’ll still go back and read them because I like the world they created for us, even if we weren’t born yet when they did. And for Howey, Lamott, Kingsolver, Tan, Duncan, McEwan, Murakami, and scores of others, traditionally published or independent, don’t worry. I will go looking for you from time to time. I promise. Ditto for those I’m just discovering. Post when you’re ready, peace to you all when you’re not.

It’s an ever changing world. But for readers and writers with imaginations and vision, a changing world is just another context to explore and respond to.

Happy New Year!

Readers who write, writers who read

A criticism of self-publishing is that it pulls in thousands of amateur writers and encourages them to think of themselves as bestselling professionals. But odds are, most independently published work will never be widely read, particularly if we stick to an often held idea of writers and readers being two completely separate groups that happen to depend upon each other.

Perhaps that idea is looking at writing too narrowly. It’s a holdover perspective from the traditional publishing model where logistics decreed that only a narrow range of those writing and telling stories were worth financial investment. It assumes that one is either a writer or a reader. It also assumes that one must be a professional to tell a story that another person would be willing to hear. I don’t think that’s true. A family member could be a beautiful singer and we could love to hear her voice, even if we didn’t expect her to have gold records anywhere. Not everything has to be bought and sold.

People who like to write are probably also people who like to read. A few are destined to be best-selling authors, but I suspect most are people who had a story inside that they really wanted to tell. For many, telling the story was a compulsion as strong as any other human compulsion and dominated their thoughts and energy for a long time. And then what?

I have nothing against those who choose writing as a profession. Reading the work of professionals has taken me to new worlds, given me new perspectives, and provided me with many hours of sheer joy, with no abrupt letdowns or consternation because of poor stylistics or unintended implausibility. I appreciate the pros, and the editors and agents behind them, and I wish them all the best. I will continue to support them by buying books to read or give as gifts.

But I hope to make more connections among people who would be happy simply swapping stories with another. I want my imagination fired by the stories they tell and I want them to climb into my imaginary worlds for a brief visit too. Ultimately, all we need are forums to share them. Independent publishing sites and shared social media spaces can provide those.

Independent publishing sites are often primarily geared toward helping people market their work, and for those who wish it, I think that’s a great thing. But what they can also offer that traditional publishing can’t as easily is connecting people to new worlds dreamed by those who look at things differently. There’s room here for whimsies, rambles, sagas, poems and ideas that only a handful might love, but would love with the same passion as those enthralled by more mainstream work. The love may perhaps be even more intense: finally finding a connection who shares the passion for that world would have an intrinsic joy of its own.

Books are portals for the imagination, whether one is reading or writing, and unless one is keeping a private journal, writing something that no one is likely to read is like trying to have a conversation when you’re all alone. Readers extend and enhance the writer’s created work, and they deepen the colors of it with their own imagination and life experiences. In a sense, there’s a revision every time one's words are read by someone else, just as surely as there is whenever the writer edits. Nothing is finished or completely dead until both sides quit and it’s no longer a part of anyone’s thoughts. So it seems almost natural that a lifelong avid reader occasionally wants to construct a mindscape from scratch after wandering happily in those constructed by others. If writing is a collaborative communication between author and reader, then surely there’s a time and a place other than writing reviews for readers to “speak” in the human literary conversation.

I suspect that there are many who have ideas and narratives that bubble up and they just want to find others who might be interested in them. And if many of us ended up writing what we might have subconsciously wanted to read, particularly if our tastes are quirky and offbeat, finding even a few more with styles similar - or even more compellingly unusual - would be just the thing.

Invisible Readers

I’d just gotten home from work last week, on a very cold and icy day, when my nextdoor neighbor called and said, “I have 3 coats and 12 blankets. Could you go out with me?” This very fine lady, who is a first grade teacher by day at a very expensive private school, was concerned about those living under the bridges. Years ago, she’d volunteered to help out at her mother’s parish in the inner city, and rode along in the van that visited people where they lived on the streets, in the parks, and under bridges. She’s been at it ever since, meeting people, learning their stories, and seeing the world through their eyes.

It was a Thursday night and already dark. The forecast called for a hard freeze on top of the snow and freezing rain we’d had in the previous days. The church van, which depended upon already over-committed volunteers, wouldn’t be going around until Sunday night. Her husband, who couldn’t go with her, didn’t want her to go alone. So, she called me.

I was waiting for the cable guy to come and fix our signal. I’m not much of a TV person, but our household depends heavily on the internet. It seemed like a ridiculously trivial thing in comparison with preventing hypothermia, but this would be the 4th time waiting for a repair, so I asked her to wait until after he came.

She did, and we went. Colleagues and parents of her students know her well and had given her most of what we’d be giving out. I suspect some had picked up an extra pack of men’s thermal socks while Christmas shopping, or perhaps MC had herself, and she’d had volunteers help her assemble gift bags for women. There are more women than ever on the streets now and many services haven’t quite caught up to their day-to-day needs. So we had a box full of easily carried bags of soap, shampoo, combs, feminine hygiene supplies and other necessities.

As we started, I asked about emergency shelters for nights like this. There were some, MC acknowledged, but not enough and many of those she’d met were reluctant to go. They felt they were dangerous, they were hard to get to, and there was no guarantee of space once there. If there was any issue with substance abuse or mental illness – and both are common, either the cause or the result of chronic homelessness – they’d be turned away.

As we came to a traffic light, MC slowed down and deliberately got the attention of a young woman walking along with her cardboard sign. This was probably a relief to all the other drivers who were studiously avoiding making eye contact. “Get a bag and a blanket,” MC told me as she rolled down the window and asked the lady, “Could you use an extra blanket tonight?”

The lady certainly could. She took one for herself and told us where others were shivering a block or so away. She almost cried with relief when offered a bag of hygiene supplies. In the space of a few moments as we were talking, I began to notice details about her that I probably wouldn’t have if I’d been on my own, even if I’d glanced at her briefly to give her money. She had long wavy red hair, a little dirty and matted now, but probably lovely in another place and time. She was young, perhaps in her 20s or 30s, and was breathless and cold. She took from us only what she could carry and told us where other women were. Then we wished each other well and went on our way.

Our car had been stopped through a couple of light changes in mid-lane with its hazard flashers on, but I noticed that cars behind us weren’t honking impatiently. Most were waiting for a brief opening in the lane beside us to whip around, but I heard no swearing or signs of anger. As we went on, MC noted that those she met seldom took more than they needed for one day or even one meal if they knew she was headed toward others who didn’t have anything. They also tended to share with each other. When things are that desperate, they only had each other. The idea was that if you shared food with someone one day, they were likely to share with you if they got something the next day. Or maybe it was a deep empathy that those of us who’ve never truly wanted for food or shelter simply don’t have.

We looked for the place the young lady had indicated. MC parked the family minivan and called out, “Is there anyone here who could use a blanket or a jacket?” A few voices called back from the distant shadows. A man came out with a thin coat and was offered a jacket. He tried it on and found it didn’t fit. He told us where there was an elderly gentleman who could use it and took a blanket instead. A young couple appeared and was given blankets after agreeing that the jacket should go to the old man. They took some socks, and the woman accepted an offered hygiene bag with the same relief and gratitude as the previous young lady.

While we were stopped, a man pulled up behind us. He’d also brought blankets, and scarves and gloves. I don’t know if he’d done it on his own or representing others. He didn’t have much, but everything went to someone who was glad to have it.

When those who took what they needed went back into the shadows, the man said - almost as an afterthought - that he had a bag of books. He was going to find a place to drop them off unless we thought any kids were there. They were all children’s books.

The couple had told me that they had kids, but they were not with them in the park. They said the state had taken them into foster care temporarily, because they didn’t have a safe place for them to live. They were going to see them at Christmas and were very excited about that.

So we called into the park again to say that we had books for kids if any were interested. The woman called back with almost as much enthusiasm as she had when given the hygiene bags. Her kids loved books, she said. Could she have some?

When he heard this, the man fetched them from his car. After chatting with the couple for a few moments, he gave them the whole bag. He seemed very happy as he drove away into the night. Perhaps it was because handing over the bag of books meant one less errand for him to run before going home, but I like to think it was for the same reason I was surprisingly happy: a devoted reader recognized others when he saw them. For a reader, sharing beloved books is almost as joyous as reading them.

As we drove to the next stopping point, MC talked about the reading habits of the person we’d be visiting next. He was an avid reader, she noted. One hot summer night, she’d found him under a streetlight reading Frommer’s Guide to Italy. He’d never been out of the country as far as she knew, but he loved to read and would sit down with anything he could get his hands on. “He and others like him steal from the library,” she said. “It’s not really stealing though; they always take the books back when they’re done. They just can’t borrow them in the usual way because they have no address, and you can’t get a library card without a verifiable address.”

The man was an introvert apparently. He lived near the garbage dumpster of an office building. MC noted bags of trash on the outside of the metal bin and speculated, “He’s inside. When it’s really cold, he pulls garbage out to make room for himself and sleeps inside to stay warm.” She called to him a few times to ask if he needed anything, but got no response. We went on.

There were a few more stops until we ran out of everything, and as MC predicted, everyone was gracious, concerned about someone else down the block or on the other side of the park, and touchingly happy just to see a bag with a bar of soap and some tampons. Only one guy took more than one pair of socks and when we ran out of gloves just as one resigned fellow with very cold hands was next in line, it seemed ridiculous to hold on to my own. I had several pairs at home, conveniently tucked in various jackets and coats in my closet. Sadly, I had nothing then for the fellow behind him, and the other ones behind that one. No one argued or fought. They thanked us and went back to where they’d been huddling.

On the way home, I imagined a scruffy loner wandering through library stacks on a cold day and a compassionate librarian looking the other way as he left. I imagined summer nights under streetlights with a book and what it might be like to sleep in the shade of a garbage dumpster during the heat of the day. I imagined the couple visiting their kids on Christmas, with the little ones squirming to climb on laps for a story, and then crying angrily and piteously as mommy and daddy had to leave them behind once again. Did those shared stories give them a little imaginary space where they could go to and be together, if only in their hearts? Was it enough to make their lives more bearable?

I wondered if the fellow who’d given the bag of books had had the same sense of suddenly seeing the couple as genuine people as I first had with the red-haired young woman. Had the love of reading transformed each from a nebulous, distant “homeless” category to someone he could identify with, parent to parent, reader to reader? Does he, like me, now wonder when he passes by bridges and park benches: who is here at night? What are their stories? Are they warm enough? Are they hungry? Do they have books to give them a kinder space to be than we as a society have given them?

And the writers of the books they read, have they any idea of what the world they call into our imaginations means for someone who has no home anywhere else? Traditionally, most of the readers of writers were unknown to them. They co-create worlds in imaginary spaces, but not in real time and place. Social media sites such as Goodreads, make it easier for writers to catch glimpses of their readers, but there’s a world beyond where readers are invisible. Even so, we have a responsibility to each other. To paraphrase Dickens: mankind is our business. So perhaps I’ll keep a few paperback books in the car now, along with spare gloves, and hygiene bags. I seldom have spare change or cash on me, and have conflicting feelings about the best way to help a person begging at traffic lights. But I think now I can look at them as individual human beings and simply start with, “I’m done with this book now; would you like it?”