What is an Honest Woman, Anyway?

I'm a book monogamist. With the exception of being able to listen to an audiobook while also reading a paper or digital book, I usually read one book at a time. Here lately, though, I've been slinking around with multiple books at once.

Here's how it happened: I was reading Edith Hamilton's classic Mythology as preparation for the fall. This is a good thing since I have assigned it as required summer reading for my classes. But I've read it before, though years ago, and am already solid on my mythology foundation, so everything was familiar. Dare I say it was a bit boring? (For most of my students, it will be their introduction to these myths, so I'm crossing my fingers. My son loves it and wants me to read him more from it, so there's hope). But it's true. I was bored by my own selection. So, I found myself wanting something else to read at night before bed and chose Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, which someone recommended to me a life ago. It is good. Quiet and good and chewy and thoughtful, and I will have a full set of thoughts on it soon. That's just two, totally manageable books. One for day/work; one for night/pleasure. All was well.

But then, during our recent travels, I was exploring Oyster some more (lots of good stuff there, y'all.) and found Mark Bittman's Food Matters. It's something I could read while the extended family watched TV in the evenings, and though it is not nearly as well-written or inspiring or ... anything as Michael Pollan and others, it does a fine job outlining some basic concepts, and I will try several of the recipes he includes. In fact, I will probably share more on that front as part of Trish's Cook it Up: A Cookbook Challenge. When I finished that, I needed something I could read on my kindle at night because my better half was getting up ridiculously early to volunteer at the Greenbrier Classic PGA tournament, and I didn't want to keep a light on any later than necessary. So, I turned to my most recent download - Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. I knew AKR only as a picture book author, so this book was a surprise to me - on so many levels. Let's just say this book made an honest woman out of me. I dropped all other possible reading options to devour this one whole, and I highly recommend it.

Laughter is a key component in any relationship I embark on, so the fact that I was laughing out loud at the Reader's Agreement before the book even began was a very good sign indeed. And I just kept on laughing - to the point of tears at times. Isn't that feeling tremendous? When you're cheeks hurt a little, and you're trying not to be loud, and your stomach is all tight, and the edges of your eyes get wet? I love that. I also loved the encyclopedia-style brief entries of this book, which still manage to hang together in a thoughtful and cohesive way. AKR creates an odd and comforting intimacy here, and I'm betting I'm not the only one who now feels like Amy (yeah, I call her Amy now) and I could be friends. We have so much in common! We both get anxious about Vending Machines! We both feel strongly about Busy! We both get weird about Clapping along at a concert or other large group event!

But don't take my advice on it. Do what Sherman Alexie suggested and buy this book for your friends. I know I will.

Reading with a Capital E

Can we talk about technology for a bit? I was late to the e-reading game, feeling convinced I did not prefer that particular reading experience. But then, a few winters ago, I got a kindle Paperwhite, and I loved it. I instantly preferred the ease of it all, and especially missed it when I was reading the monstrous Bonhoeffer bio this fall.

A few issues have surfaced recently that have me questioning e-reading in general and on my kindle more specifically. First, I regularly spout the research to my students regarding digital/online reading and how our brains have not caught up with the technology. I remind them of how we don't read as closely on a screen, and how our brains still engage more fully with the tangible, tactile reading experience of a physical book. I experienced this phenomena myself this fall as I tried teaching from my kindle version of The Odyssey. About a third of the way through, I realized that I was not teaching as effectively. I was not able to draw the text into discussion as easily because I couldn't find what I wanted quickly enough, even with a scan of all notes and highlighted passages. It just did not work. This passage (from the Scientific American passage linked to above) explains the problem well:

In most cases, paper books have more obvious topography than onscreen text. An open paperback presents a reader with two clearly defined domains—the left and right pages—and a total of eight corners with which to orient oneself. A reader can focus on a single page of a paper book without losing sight of the whole text: one can see where the book begins and ends and where one page is in relation to those borders. One can even feel the thickness of the pages read in one hand and pages to be read in the other. Turning the pages of a paper book is like leaving one footprint after another on the trail—there's a rhythm to it and a visible record of how far one has traveled. All these features not only make text in a paper book easily navigable, they also make it easier to form a coherent mental map of the text.

In contrast, most screens, e-readers, smartphones and tablets interfere with intuitive navigation of a text and inhibit people from mapping the journey in their minds. A reader of digital text might scroll through a seamless stream of words, tap forward one page at a time or use the search function to immediately locate a particular phrase—but it is difficult to see any one passage in the context of the entire text. As an analogy, imagine if Google Maps allowed people to navigate street by individual street, as well as to teleport to any specific address, but prevented them from zooming out to see a neighborhood, state or country. Although e-readers like the Kindle and tablets like the iPad re-create pagination—sometimes complete with page numbers, headers and illustrations—the screen only displays a single virtual page: it is there and then it is gone. Instead of hiking the trail yourself, the trees, rocks and moss move past you in flashes with no trace of what came before and no way to see what lies ahead.

I am deeply appreciative of this metaphor and deeply uncomfortable with the space this puts me in.

This passage also brings up kindles and iPads as similar experiences, but for a long time, I would have adamantly defended the kindle as superior. For one, the distractions abounding on an iPad make it too easy to choose other interactions than a book; more importantly, I have championed the e-ink technology over the lcd screens for all the reasons like eye strain and backlighting and the attention issues cropping up in our brains (see other linked article). But today, I did something I thought I would never do: I put down the kindle in frustration and picked up the iPad mini. Why? Because for the umpteenth time (even after a restart), my touchscreen just would not respond appropriately, making it impossible to highlight and increasing my reading time because of miscues in page-turns. It just isn't working, and the iPad works beautifully. All of which brings me to the two-month free trial from Oyster I got in my BookRiot Quarterly box (so. much. fun.).

When I originally read about it, I was amped. Then, I looked more closely and realized it was just for tablet devices, making all our kindles unusable with the service. I was frustrated, but now, I'm intrigued. Perhaps I am willing to shift gears more substantially and read e-books on my iPad? Or am I wanting to give up e-reading again and go back to full-time paper reading? I'm just unsure, but I can tell you this: I will give Oyster a try and report back.

The other thing I'm trying right now is Next Issue, something that has made this magazine lover curious for months. Y'all, it is awesome. It's probably not a good idea since I wouldn't normally subscribe to enough magazines to make the $14.99 a month fee economical, but it is a tremendously enjoyable summer reading experience (thank you, 30-day free trial), and the interface and display are great on my iPad.

I will admit to being somewhat of a trend-follower with technology. I am, after all, currently typing this post on my new Chromebook, which I love. I am also a purger, ever-ready to get rid of the under-used, unsentimental and happily unattached from most of my objects. So, what will go and what will stay? And how do you deal with the shifting trends in technology? Feel free to jump into this murky conversation. In the meantime, I'm going to go back and finish that SciAm article that I inattentively jumped from to finish this post. Ah, technology.....