Love her to bits, but Dame Antonia's idea has legs like a chicken has teeth. Awa' wi' ye, foeul herrlot!

BUT the thing that caused me to come backstage and post was George's suggestion that people are quitting reading in "droves" because of the high price of books. Ehrm.... any evidence to back this claim up? Are we sure that other factors aren't more heavily at play in the Death Of Reading As We Know It, if such a phenomenon exists?

I myself read 1/10th of what I used to, but it's nothing to do with the cost of books (I use the library a lot, as well as buying as many books, new and used, as I can)... it's all to do with the amount of time I have, and I burn the candle not only at both ends but in the middle, too. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that others in my "demographic" (*ahem*) are in more or less the same boat: we're all having families, starting and running businesses, working on the side to support the aforementioned two vices, and answering up to a couple hundred emails a day, not to mention leaping onto the Internet when time allows and checking messageboards and book blogs...

If you've got the stats, George, let's see 'em! Otherwise, there are many, many more compelling arguments to throw at A.S. Inine's fool proposal.

Edited by author 02-03-2005 06:47 PM
Sorry, Lee, my argument was that in a time when people are quitting reading in droves [for many reasons], there is not reason to add further impediment. And price is definitely an impediment for me. It doesn't stop me from buying books, but it stops me from buying all the books I want.

G

DIY used books

A Harvard student creates an online textbook exchange. This is why some people get into Harvard. Every campus should have one.



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Factors inflating the price of books:
Those pesky author royalties. A massive increase in the price of paper over the past decade. Skyrocketing fuel costs leading to high shipping costs (in Canada, with its thinly spread population, this is a HUGE problem). An increase in the number of books being published, leading to smaller sales per title on average (smaller print runs mean higher unit costs). And the high-muckamuck champagne parties that publishers hold every evening.

OK, the first and last ones are non-negotiable, but the ones in the middle are rough on readers. Granted.

But I guess my real question (putting aside just how COMPLETELY PEA-BRAINED ol' A.S.B.'s suggestion is) is: are people reading significantly less? Are fewer books being sold? Is use of libraries declining? Is this, indeed, the end of civilization? (If so, less than when? Fewer than what? When did the slippery-slope-slide begin? Which demands the question: When was The Golden Age of Reading, statistically speaking?)
I'm not up on the latest reports, but I haven't heard my colleagues running around like little chickens screaming "The readership is falling! The readership is falling!" either.

All of that sounded more sarcastic and belligerent than I meant it (the scourge of the would-be funnyguy) but I'm just askin'. Is the readership falling?

Lee, you ask if readership is falling.

The question is, readership of what?

I sell a ton of cheap genre fiction, Dan Brown novels, and Harry Potter, and yes, I even sell a ton of glossy magazines that promise to reveal to millions of information-hungry women what the shape of their guy's butt reveals about his personality.

People are buying stuff to read, but are they reading it? I don't know. Maybe they are. Are they reading anything good? Not many of them, not many at all.

Edited by author 02-04-2005 08:25 AM
Ass-phrenology? [No, wait! Assiognamy!]

paul, i have to agree. people are buying a lot, but they are buying a lot of drivel. i sent a quick email survey to some of my friends and here's what they've purchased recently:

the paris hilton biography
a simpsons book
the south beach diet

yikes.

Edited by author 02-04-2005 06:12 PM
And all of this is a new development .... how, exactly? If you read the ancients, they have the same complaints: "The mass of men are philistines! Kids these days gots no respect for tradition!"

As a bookseller, you sell Dan Brown to subsidize Harold Rhenisch. That's the ancient game.

(and of course, there are those who don't play the game and therefore forfeit: the snobby independents -- god love 'em -- who ONLY stock lyah-trah-chah and who turn belly-up after a few bitter years in business; likewise there are the big chains who could give a rat's ass about lit and ONLY stock the crap... and eventually turn into Woolworth's.)

I always wondered how Harold Rhenisch got by - beacuse it's certainly not on his writing.

You said it, Yuck. Read Shakespeare, skip Free Will. Awful book.

/m29

buttology? ... i have to admit it, checking a man's butt seems like a good way to get a grip on his personality

Yes, all that remains is to reach between his legs...

... to gauge his personality?

i'm sorry, this is all just way too funny

"to get a grip on his personality"

A Man: You are well past saucy and border on stalker-without-a-face.

Ew.

I still think assiognamy rules.

G

I picked Rhenisch as an example of the kind of writer who languishes while Dan Brown, improbably, flourishes, though for the purposes of the example below you could name just about any writer - of any nationality - for whom the bandwagon is not bouncing merrily down the washboard track. It's the bandwagon that sells books and keeps bookstores afloat. So in reality it's pretty much impossible to be anything less than ambivalent about the bandwagon, innit?

To veer off-topic here, I feel bound to come to Rhenisch's defence. I have to admit, Free Will is not my favourite of his books. I do think he has written some remarkable - actually, more than that, some brilliant - poetry, which a Selected, if one ever appears, will reveal admirably.

But IMO it's his prose that is his strength. It's astonishingly good. I don't usually appeal to the "authorities," but Rhenisch's reputation as a writer is so far below what he deserves that in this case I will: John Moore in the Vancouver Sun called Out of the Interior "a kind of masterpiece ... In more than 200 pages of prose, there isn't a single cliche, trite image or shopworn phrase, or even a single sentence that doesn't bear the mark of long and careful thought." Reinhold Kramer, in Canadian Literature, wrote that Carnival was "brilliant ... often nothing less than astounding." John Metcalf has called Rhenisch "one of Canada's master prose stylists." (I could go on, but who wants to hear that?)

Out of the Interior, Tom Thomson's Shack, and Carnival are all marvellous books, each in its own way. It's too easy to ignore Rhenisch, for a number of reasons, and anonymous sniping, using different screen names to manufacture consensus (I can only assume that "Yick" and "Yuck" are the same person), doesn't put anyone in the best possible light, does it?