reading

The persistence of paper books and bookstores

When you think about it, it makes sense that ebooks did not push paper books out of the market.

Most people only read a few books a year–or none at all. The hardcore book reader is not your average person. What makes more sense to these people:

  • Spend $20 on two paperbacks per year (rounding to $10 each for convenience), or…
  • Spend anywhere from around $80-200+ on an ebook reader, plus $20 for two ebooks

Let’s take the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite as an example. It costs $160 Canadian (on sale as I type this for $125). $160 would buy you 16 books at $10 each. That means someone might need to read for eight years before the Kindle purchase breaks even, so to speak. After that, you get the advantages of an ereader and ebooks. But eight years is a long time. Too long for most people, I suspect, and so they just continue to buy the occasional paperback. And unless you’re content to peruse the meagre selection of books at a drugstore or similar place, the place you go to is a bookstore, hence the persistence of bookstores. Well, there are undoubtedly hardcore readers who also simply prefer paper to an electronic reading experience, too, and they probably play a big part in sustaining bookstores.

Bookstores have the advantage of letting you see piles of books on shelves, where covers can grab you (or turn you away), an experience that simply can’t be replicated by an online store–even one selling actual paper books (though that was how Amazon started, and it remains a successful system for them).

Although I’m nearly 100% ereading these days, I do sometimes wax nostalgic about bookstores and just wandering the sections and seeing what was new, or in stock, or would randomly draw my eye. I tried using the BookBub newsletter for a time to sort-of replicate this, looking over its random bargain offerings, but got burned by too many mediocre novels. To be fair, when I was reading in my late teens and early 20s, the same thing often happened when I picked up bargain books at places like Book Warehouse.

All of this was inspired by a comment about a kind of bookstore that was slain by the rise of the web–the computer bookstore. Yes, somewhere I have a copy of C++ for Dummies. Also, JavaScript, HTML and others. Learn to code in 21 days! As far as I know, these bookstores are completely gone now, since the information in these books is now copious, often free and more up-to-date online. In every way this is better, yet it’s still another experience that I once found enjoyable and is gone forever.

Time marches on.

And now, back to my ebook…

That blue light thing turns out to be a thing

Last week, I decided to change up my nightly routine. Instead of climbing into bed with my iPad and checking social media/tech news before going to sleep, I decided to switch to reading a book on my Kindle and then, as of last night, switching to my Kobo Libra instead (I prefer the Libra, as it has page turn buttons and understands that some people are left-handed, but the first book I read was a Kindle exclusive [boo]).

I use my Garmin Forerunner 255 to track my sleep and while it is not going to be 100% accurate, it usually gets pretty close to reflecting how I feel I’ve slept. It gives your sleep a score between 1-100.

Except for one bad night’s sleep (late to bed, stressed, early to rise), my scores have been consistently in the mid 70s to mid 80s, with plenty of REM sleep. During the blue light/iPad phase in the weeks before, my scores would dip into the 30s and 40s and insufficient REM sleep was a common issue.

So yes, it appears removing blue light as I was getting ready to sleep has resulted in better sleep. Science!

It also means I’ve finished reading an entire book this year. Miracle!

Am I the only one left who likes standalone novels?

As Betteridge’s Law would dictate, the answer is no.

But I remember the olden days when book series were relatively uncommon, and seen mostly in a few specific genres, like fantasy and science fiction.

Now we have zombie apocalypse stories that span 10 books. What is added to a zombie apocalypse story by increasing its length by ten times? More zombies, I suppose.

I don’t need more zombies, though, I just need one really good zombie story that is contained within a single novel, so I can read it, enjoy it, then move on to something else that probably has fewer zombies in it. I like variety, my time is limited. Help me, invisible market forces!

This feels like it should have been a tweet, except it’s too long. Maybe I should start a Mastodon account.

Trains to tubs

At the start of the year I set what I felt was a modest goal for reading books: 26. One book every two weeks. I’m not a fast reader so giving myself two weeks to read a book seemed entirely reasonable, assuming I wasn’t going to read the equivalent of Stephen King’s Complete and Uncut Edition of The Stand each time.

Almost all of my reading is done during my commute to work. It is a long commute–just over an hour each way–and I previously would just zone out and listen to music, which was nice in its own way, I suppose. Switching to reading significantly boosted the number of books I read, though, and I feel this is a better use of my time. For one, it allows me to explore more new authors than I might normally, because I have such a generous block of time set aside just for reading.

I’ve not moved much from my preferred genres, though. Some things are harder to break from.

At the start of this year I was in a bit of a funk. Overweight and struggling to get back on track, unhappy with work life, unhappy with having such a long commute and losing a significant chunk of my day to it, reading or not. The end result is I read less than normal, opting more for the blissful escape of music piped through noise-canceling earphones, possibly the best indirectly-related transit purchase I’ve ever made. Sometimes I put them on and don’t even listen to music, just the velvet silence they provide on an otherwise loud, roaring train.

I was keeping up with my book goal, though only just until mid-March, when the pandemic hit. From March 18th until this past Wednesday my commute was gone (we are now obligated to go in once a week to provide on-site support for the few classes that are still happening on campus). Without the commute, my reading place was gone. Sure, I could just use the same time to keep reading, but that’s not the way most people work, I suspect.

You find your routine disrupted, you make changes and adjust. For me, this meant getting up later in the morning. Not sleeping in, but simply getting closer to the proper amount of sleep. A net positive. For the space where the afternoon commute existed I now exercise. Both of these things have made me feel better and have improved my health. I honestly don’t want to go back to a daily commute. The thought sours my stomach.

But what of the reading? Goodreads tracks your reading challenge and lets you know if you are on track, ahead or behind. I fell behind, by a few books, then by a seemingly insurmountable number. I was eight books behind at one point.

As of today that number is about to be cut in half to four and I now think I can catch up and meet my goal. How did I do this?

By taking baths.

My Kobo Libra ereader is water-resistant, so there’s no danger in getting it a little wet, so it has become my companion in the tub. I get in and read for maybe an hour or so, then tend to the actual bath part. It is a very relaxing way to read.

I re-read almost all of The Amityville Horror in the bathtub. While the book wasn’t really worth re-reading, it proved the experience of reading in the tub was a worthwhile one.

I’ve also started reading more often on my iPad when I go to bed (yes, I know they say this is bad, blue light keeps you awake and so on, but I don’t read for long, honest!) and so I typically have two books on the go.

So far this has been working and it’s getting me back on track on my reading goals for the year (I’m more goal-oriented than I realized, I think). The fatigue of the pandemic has been pushed aside, even as I find myself wearing masks and being more cautious than ever, because I need to get back to just doing stuff. And if that means reading in the bathtub, that’s what I’m doing.

I do need to get more bubble bath, though.

Good news in reading!

It finally appears that Kobo has stopped recommending books by Bentley Little to me.

I have nothing personal against Little. He’s a prolific, award-winning horror author. I’m sure he’s a very nice man. Or maybe he’s a monster. I don’t actually know.

What I do know is that I read his book The Store and did not like it. I rated it one star, both in my Goodreads review and on the Kobo site itself. I almost never rate books on the Kobo site.

But because I had purchased the book on Kobo, it kept recommending his other books. As I mentioned, he is a prolific author, so he has a lot of other books that can be recommended. Perhaps I would like one of them, maybe even several. It doesn’t matter, because the one I did read I DID NOT LIKE AT ALL. This killed all interest in experimenting further with Mr. Little’s oeuvre.

If I am wrong, then I feel an apology of sorts is owed to Mr. Little. I mean, on Kobo, The Store has an average rating of four stars. But even if I am wrong, I am still entirely content to never read one of his books again because The Store was so very not to my liking.

And the good news here is that I have now purchased and read enough books to finally push Little off my recommended reading list on Kobo. The moral of the story is, obviously, capitalism works. Buy buy buy and it will all work out in the end.

The Store is currently available on Kobo for the low price of $6.99.

2013: The Year of Reading Copiously

Thanks to a long work commute I read a whopping (for me) 23 books in 2013, with a 24th finished in the first few days of 2014. 2013 was the first year I did not read any paper books. I still have a stack of them threatening to topple over (the stack is not that high, just poorly arranged). I have to admit I am thoroughly in like with being able to cart around a four pound Stephen King doorstop in an ebook reader that weighs a few hundred grams. And yes, I know I mixed imperial and metric there. I still can’t make myself think in kilograms for some reason.

2013 was also the first year I subscribed to the two magazines I read regularly in digital format. I find the 9.7″ display of the iPad works reasonably well but if someone handed me a larger tablet that didn’t weigh a ton I wouldn’t kick it out of bed, either (Samsung has just announced a 12.2″ tablet, actually, though like much of Samsung’s stuff it seems kind of plasticky and cheap, though it won’t be priced that way). The two magazines are Runner’s World and Writer’s Digest, by the by.

My favorite book of last year was probably the seven volume The Dark Tower series, which I gorged on in the last few months of the year. King going meta almost ruined it but he makes it work and the conclusion didn’t feel like one of his typical “well, I’ve run out story” endings.

I also quite enjoyed Vernor Vinge’s space saga A Deepness in the Sky and the quirky, quaint Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Sussanah Clarke. Rounding out my list of favorites was David Wong’s John Dies at the End, a very silly, juvenile and altogether enjoyable read.

I’m still working on reviews on some of the books I read in the latter half of the year and who knows, I may even update my sad and neglected Goodreads page. Stranger things have been written.

Reading Lovecraft

I like Lovecraft. Yes, purple prose, eldritch this and gibbous that and of course, the latent racism —  but he could spin a good yarn. Warning has started blogging his short stories. Give his reviews a read. Like me, they may leave you wanting to pick up a Lovecraft collection again.