The only thing missing

Someone should start up an online library with thousands upon thousands of ebooks. For a small annual subscription fee, users would be able to "check out" books by receiving temporary passwords, which would "expire" when the time limit (of two weeks or so) is up. (This would probably mean that the ebooks would have to be kept on certain password protected websites and not be available for download.)

Does anyone know if anything like this exists yet? If not, I hope it's only a matter of time. Once it does, my life here will be complete. Imagine--a global lending library!

Privileging the reader

Kassia Krozser makes some excellent points in her recent post about how publishers should be serving readers when it comes to ebooks. A lot of it may sound obvious, but it's amazing how many of these ideas have not been as clearly understood by publishers as one would hope. I particularly identify with her third point:

3. Reasonable Prices — Ebooks are not the same thing as, physical matter wise, hardcover or paperback books. Consumers — real consumers, the ones who talk about buying ebooks, who buy ebooks, and who simply don’t understand why publishers don’t understand the differences in product — don’t like paying hardcover and trade paperback prices for ebooks.

What is even more amusing is that ebooks are priced competitively with physical books that offer a higher degree of flexibility, portability, and readability. What up? Are you trying to build a market or kill a market?

Over the weekend, I expanded my sidebar list of ebook distributors to 21 (!)--but only five of them are actual publishers' websites.

Short and sweet

• The ten finalists for the Iberoamericano Planeta-Casa de América de Narrativa prize this year include two Colombians, two Chileans, one Argentinian, two Spaniards, two Uruguayans, and an Ecuadorian. A $200,000 (USD) prize goes to the winner and $50,000 to the runner-up.
  
• The Guardian examines the state of libraries in Colombia. Aside from the mistake about García Márquez's birthplace (he was born in Aracataca, not Cartagena--although he has a house there and it's served as the setting for many a story), it's a wonderful article that illustrates the various ways the country is promoting literature. (via Conversational Reading)
• Speaking of Gabo, he and Mercedes celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this past weekend. (Beautiful.)

Giving stuff away

Neil Gaiman explains why putting books online for free is a good thing:

I'm currently talking to Harpers about ways we can make the American Gods online reading experience a more pleasant one. And about ways to give American Gods away that would make Harper Collins happy while also making, say, Cory Doctorow happy too.

I was surprised by a few emails coming in from people accusing me of doing bad things for other authors by giving anything away -- the idea being, I think, that by handing out a bestselling book for nothing I'm devaluing what a book is and so forth, which I think is silly.

I like giving stuff away. I think it's sensible. [...]

During one of the interviews recently, a reporter said something like, "Of course, a real publisher wouldn't give away paper books," and I pointed out that 3,000 copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy were given away by Douglas Adams' publisher, with a 'write in and get your free book' ad in Rolling Stone. They wanted copies of HHGTTG on campuses in the US, and they wanted people to read it and tell other people. Word of mouth is still the best tool for selling books.

As he points out in an interview with the Guardian,

"It's much more about gaining an audience than about some one-to-one correlation," he said. "It's a question of how do you find new writers." People often come to new authors in a library, on a friend's bookshelves, or by a personal recommendation, he explained. It "doesn't always begin with a financial transaction. I very much doubt that I discovered a single one of my favourite authors by buying a book." [...]

"The problem is not people who read books for nothing," he said, "it's people not reading books at all. You're fighting the fact that people don't read recreationally [any more]. Anything that can help has got to be a good thing."

I also agree with Bud about the ease of reading PDFs and think that if more books would become available this way, I wouldn't really need an eReader. I'm currently on page 92 of American Gods and it's occurred to me that a lot of people are probably unaware of how much reading online they already do. I've probably read what amounts to thousand-page volumes in blog posts in the past year alone...

Cartagena bookstores

All of the books we bought on this Hay Festival trip were purchased at the Librería Paideia. We discovered another great little place that sold books and music, Forum Discos y Libros (as we were leaving). But most of our time was spent at Ábaco Libros y Café for the following reasons...

Traveling books

I've joined the "sisterhood," because a) I'm desperate, and b) I love its premise:

Are you unable to walk into a bookstore without buying a book? Do you love book clubs, or discussing books with friends? Would you rather save the money and get the book from a fellow blogger, without spending anything more than the cost of postage by sending a book to another grateful reader?

If so, you are hereby cordially invited to join a little project we’d like to call “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Books.”

Check, check, check.

Shelley and Jessica of Readers Without Borders have started a fun and very practical project:

If you are living abroad, or living at home - wherever - and you like to get new books, but want to spend less money, this is it! All it costs is postage, and meanwhile you’ll be receiving books as well. I’ll let you take a look at the new site to read the “instructions”.

In order to participate, you have to donate a book, which just makes sense. But don’t worry, the book will collect a “heritage” of notes and postcards, etc, from the women who read it. Eventually, at the end of the list, it will be sent back to you, and you will see who all has read and enjoyed it.

I think this is a brilliant idea. The month-long mail waits could get to me, but I plan on not dwelling on it and letting the books arrive as packaged surprises. I used to be an avid letter-writer, but have gotten out of the habit due to how far a way I am and the ridiculous cost of merely mailing a letter. This will make up for a lot, though. A wonderful development. Consider this your open invitation to an international book-swapping group! (In spite of the title, everyone is welcome.)

A bibliophile's plight

Well, my light at the end of the tunnel is rapidly going out. I heard back from that bookstore in Bogotá, and of the few books I requested, they only have one: The Raw Shark Texts. The problem? The quoted price is $92,000 pesos, which equates to $46 ($46!) US dollars (and this is before shipping costs). But I'm so desperate for a new novel, that I just might go for it. (Those of you who've read it--would it be worth it?)

Amazon doesn't even ship to Colombia, but Powell's does--if I'm willing to pay $14 for shipping and wait two months. [Correction: Just found out that they do ship here, but we're not mentioned on their country list.]

I've been thinking long and hard about getting an ebook reader, and learned a lot from this ebook reader review--including the fact that the iLiad comes with a stylus (great!) and a $700 price tag (not so great). The pros and cons of the Sony Reader (since it's priced at a more "modest" $350) seem to all cancel each other out. Or do they? Although they don't have many of the books on my overly-optimistic future reading list (and tons of bestseller crap), I did find 5 books out of a starter list of 20. And although they're all basically full price, I can have them immediately and not bother with shipping fees or waiting forever. The fine print scared me ("Use of companion CONNECT eBook Store limited to US residents"), but a user's review explains how this is due to billing purposes. It won't lock me out because of my ISP (as is now the case with Pandora--a tragic loss as far as I'm concerned, which doesn't help the situation).

Meanwhile, all this readerly angst is distracting me from what I do have: I'm really enjoying Laura Restrepo's Delirio and the narrative style, which seems to draw a lot from Faulkner and Woolf (more on this when I finish the book). I'm trying to keep things in perspective, read all I can here, and strategically plan a list of used books that my father can bring on his August visit.

If anything, I hope this situation helps many of you to never take interlibrary loan for granted again. Seriously.

But any advice you could give would be very welcome (even tips on helping me deal with my withdrawal symptoms)...

(ebook review via Conversational Reading)

UPDATE: More conversation over at lowebrow.

Lights and tunnels

Arriving back to work after an uneventful semana santa, a colleague gifted me with a golden ticket: the business card of an English-language bookstore in Bogotá. This is going to go a looong way towards reducing the amount of complaining I do around here about having no access to new titles in English.

Authors looks lovely:

As a direct importer of titles from the US, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa we are delighted to offer terrific prices on any English language titles you may be seeking.

Oddly enough, this has renewed my resolve to make it through the present stack and keep building my Spanish library.

Last Tuesday, A. and I day-tripped it to Barranquilla, where I found Spanish translations of Philip Pullman's Count Karlstein and G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Today I went on an (incomprehensibly) unsuccessful search for José Eustacio Rivera's La vorágine, but picked up the newly-revised edition of Cien años de soledad (which is selling like the proverbial hotcakes around here) and José Saramago's recent memoir, Las pequeñas memorias. I began the latter this evening and am glowing. His wife, Pilar del Río, translated it from the original Portuguese, and the dedication is hers alone:

A Pilar, que todavía no había nacido,
                      y tanto tardó en llegar.

Things are definitely looking up.

Now. If I could only find an affordable bookcase...

When you run out of books

I knew there had to be more of us out there--readers without adequate access to books. In her post "Reading as an Expat," Gretchen of Readers Without Borders (a site I just discovered last week) proposes that the Sony Portable Reader is a potential solution for those of us who can't pay the hefty shipping costs (or wait the extra month) for new books. It sounds like a good idea and has the potential to provide a quick fix for stranded bibliophiles. However, the selection doesn't look all that fantastic and not quite worth the investment at this point. Hopefully, this changes in the next couple of years. It would be amazing to have near-instant access to new books: the perfect motivation for concentrating on getting through my current stacks and not worrying about running out.

That said, there's still plenty for me to read and investigate in my second language. My present practice of always having two books on hand--one in English, one in Spanish--is helping considerably. I'm hoping (as ever) to be able to share some coherent thoughts on John Barth and José Edilberto Zuluaga soon. (I read a critique that complained of certain aspects of the latter, including the fact that after finishing the novella, the reader still couldn't understand what the title referred to. Needless to say, I felt pretty happy about figuring out the title's double meaning by page 15, but that doesn't necessarily mean I understand it any better than he does.)

But for now, there are report cards to do. I let Pandora play as I sit here on the tile floor and revel in my newly-acquired broadband connection. Yes. I am actually typing this from home.

A new leaf.

The apartment I'm renting was sold, and although I'll be here till November, the former owner had her furniture hauled away last week. It's nice, though. Very clean and minimalist. (I am currently typing away on top of a cardboard box.) I regret the loss of the cheap, black bookcase, but my stacks now surround me as I sit here and hope to write some sense into things.

Back to life

Amid the flurry of visits of the past month, my sister brought books (!), including the one I hated to leave behind, Plowing the Dark. After what feels like years, I was able to do nothing but sit in a café tonight and lose myself in words...

"You see? You see? If we can make these...scratch lines come to life, then life is not just some outside thing that happens to us. It's something we come into and make."

(Read about Powers' recent novel in Bookforum.)