Tom’s Comments (group member since Jan 07, 2010)

Tom’s comments from the Second Wind Publishing group.

With brick and mortar bookstores evaporating, it's getting harder to judge a book for yourself. With shrinking shelf space at a premium, bookstores stock only books with proven records, so we have to rely on others for discoveries.

I trust Janet Maslin in the NY Times because I've read books she's raved about and she rarely hypes me into buying a bad book.

I check out reviews on Goodreads, which has a great feature of letting me know what other books that other readers have liked. If I haven't liked your favorites, then we part company as friends.

Log onto fivebooks.com - a great service that has experts and authors list their five favorite books on any subject. Many of the books I've heard of, but there's always a new discovery.

Go to neglectedbooks.com - I found a lot of cool sounding authors I never heard of.

I've found the book sections of English newspapers like the Independant and the Telegraph reliable for discovering authors. They've got reviews and essays where you can discover new authors.

And I websearch subjects like the 100 best mysteries or best sci-fi or best whatever. While there rarely are new authors on these lists, they have motivated me to try books I've skipped before. I figure that if enough people like a book, then that will up the odds I'll enjoy it.

Happy hunting.

There's a great scene in one of George Orwell's novels - I think it's Coming Up for Air - in which the hero, a young fellow, visits his former classics professor, who is well-read in Plato. The conversation turns to Hitler's recent rise to power. The elderly professor adopts the jaded view about Hitler and the Nazis that there's nothing to worry about because he's just another dictator and they've seen it before because there's nothing new under the sun. The hero politely begs to differ that there might be something different about this fellow Hitler. The 20th Century gave a lie to the notion that there's nothing new under the sun. The folks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki certainly found that out when we brought a new sun down to earth.

Whenever someone sits at a keyboard and types, there is most definitely something new under the sun and I'm curious about what it is.

I get out of bed every day because I'm hoping that this is going to be the day that I discover the greatest book I've ever read.

Cheryl wrote: "The best part of eBooks is that you get to read all of those books that are out of print, many that will never be reprinted again. Most are free through Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org). If ..."

I picked up a copy of a relatively new copy of The Scarlett Pimpernel for 50 cents at my local used book store.

I tried reading a book online. It just wasn't the same as the printed page.

I didn't feel attacked.

However, I am very critical of e-readers and e-books. They will eventually lead to the demise of printed books and I do not want to contribute to that. If you don't understand this, you're not paying attention.

The connection between rescuing my dogs, recycling my trash and recycling/rescuing books, buying only renewable electricity (and paying more for it) and reducing the overall carbon footprint is all part of a lifestyle choice.

In an age where the individual has very little power, these inter-connected actions are what an individual can do to preserve a vanishing way of life. It's a matter of individual choice.

I can't end the insane wasteful and unwinnable Iraq and Afghan wars, restore economic growth and put people back to work, or combat the financial greed of Wall Street and corporate America, but I can do these things.

I patronize a used book store where I can get most mass market paperbacks for 50-cents each, trade paperbacks for $1-$4 and hardbacks for under $5. Most are in perfect condition. That's cheaper and greener than anywhere else. I have 2 dogs. I rescued both. I do the same thing with books. It just requires a little effort.

If you buy an e-reader or e-books, you are contributing to the demise of printed books.

The Pleasures Chest wrote: "Lilly wrote: "I write erotic romance. Once upon a time romance writers were seriously snubbed by all. Now they have begun to be recognized. Unfortunately, erotic romance doesn't seem to fall in the..."

Lilly, I'm always looking for a good read. Could you (or anyone else) recommend some well-written erotic romance novels? I'd like to start with the very best written - if anyone has any nominations for the title. Thanks.

As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to writing in general and fiction in specific, there are really only 3 basic genres: 1) well-written-so-you-recommend-it, 2) not-so-well-written-but-still-readable-and-enjoyable and 3) badly-written-to-the-point-you-can-barely-finish-it.

These are horizontal genres - they cut across all the vertical genres out there.

I think the snobbery, while always present, is diminishing, maybe more in the UK than here in the US. When a Booker prize winning novelist like John Banville writes thrillers (under a pen name) and highly respected writers (and Booker nominees) Julian Barnes writes detective novels (also under a pen name) and Sarah Waters writes a thriller-horror, and well-reviewed writer Kate Atkinson writes literary detective stories, there is more of an acceptance for the "less serious" genre writing.

The great British novelist Graham Greene wrote thrillers, which he called entertainments, and no one thought less of him for writing them, so perhaps there's a more established tradition across the pond. Dickens always viewed his work as entertainment.

I'll match Raymond Chandler against any "serious" writer and Marlowe will always kick butt. And Stephen King is the greatest narrative genius since Dickens.

If the snobs ignore their work, it's their loss.

Nicholas: Curious about loaning ebooks. How does one do that?

Is it on a disc? Can you electronically transfer it? Do you copy (download) it the way Napster got in trouble for loaning , i.e. "pirating", music?

Can't Amazon read your Kindle to know if non-Kindle material is stored or e-books that weren't paid for? So if you "loan" an ebook to another Kindle owner, can Amazon go in and take it?

Here's a coincidence for you. While we were debating e-books v. paper books, Amazon and the major publisher Macmillan were arguing over Macmillan's wanting to charge more for e-books than the 9.99 that Amazon charges. Amazon said it wouldn't sell either Macmillan's e-books or its print books. They've seemed to have resolved the dispute, but the result is that Amazon will sell Macmillan's e-books for more than Amazon's standardx $9.99 price. So the price of an e-book could go up, not down - which is what is supposed to happen as the device becomes more popular. So good luck with your e-readers.

Stacy-Deanne wrote: "Tom you said:

If you own an e-reader, you are contributing to the demise of printed books.

I will just say I find that statement ridiculous. First off, I was given my ereader for Christmas, b..."

After your hysterical temper tantrum, I'm glad that you're dropping out of this thread.

If the Internet is killing off printed newspapers, then e-books will kill of the printed book.

Did you ever watch the original Star Trek. Everybody ribs Captain Kirk for his quaint hobby of collecting printed books.

I'll say it again: if you own an e-reader or purchase e-books you are contributing to the demise of the printed book.

If you find that statement upsetting, good.

Stacy-Deanne wrote: "Hi Tom,

Even though I've found a new love for ebooks, I don't think print books will disappear. There are too many readers who love print books and who will (as many on this thread said), will n..."

No matter how much we may love print books, their survival may not be up to us. I love newspapers - printed newspapers. But they are closing, even though they still have print readers. They reached a tipping point where Internet readership surpassed print readers, but there was no way to make money through the Internet edition. In a few years, newspapers will disappear. The printing costs, the drop in ad revenues will force them - if they can survive at all, many won't - to deliver their content over the Internet or through e-books, as can be done now.

Much of this is newspapers' own fault. They turned news into a commodity by increasing coverage of celebrities and gossip instead of focusing on what they do that no one else does - cover government in depth, cover local news, investigative adversarial reporting.

But now celebrity news is news - although it's fake news - and can be substituted for real news. Newspapers aren't the only medium to deliver this fake news, so who needs to pay for it? The Internet can satisfy the market's demand for fake news and we don't need real news printed in a newspaper - nor are we willing to pay for online news.

Newsday, the respected Long Island newspaper, started to charge for viewing its website. It has only a few dozen subscribers. People aren't willing to pay for what they got used to getting for free.

Only specialized news services like Wall Street Journal and Economist - whose target audience has money - are successful at charging for on-line news.

The migration of news to e-readers will start improving the economics and cost of the devices. Once they become more affordable and use increases, books will follow newspapers to e-readers. Fewer and fewer books will be published.

So it may be hard cold economics that kill off print books - now matter how much you or I love them.

If you own an e-reader, you are contributing to the demise of printed books.

Stacy-Deanne wrote: "I really think that ebooks and print books can continue to be around together. Remember when cell phones first became popular?

It was the same argument. People said they wouldn't last and other..."

EXCEPT ... yes, we may still have landlines in our homes, but pay phones are vanishing. In my state, NJ, Verizon is ripping them out by the hundreds. Part of that is because of the unwinnable war on drugs. But it's also because of the spread of cell phones.

What about people who can't afford cell phones? What about the homeless?

This is comparable to the effect of e-books and computers on the printed word and published books.

Do we really want to go where we seem to be headed?

Amazon was very embarrassed when it electronically deleted 1984 by George Orwell off of Amazon e-readers because people had not purchased the downloaded version from Amazon.

Of all books in the world to delete without the readers’ permission! The irony was not lost on anyone that Orwell in 1984 warned of the government’s control of thought by controlling the actual printed word.

In this case, however, it wasn’t the conspiracy of government’s claim of national security, it was the other conspiracy we face, a corporation’s mandate to make money any way it can – even at the expense of our privacy, including our private thoughts and our access to information.

Amazon attempted to control peoples’ access to 1984 – in my view the most important political work ever written. Amazon’s efforts were blocked – for now.

The history of the printed word since Guttenberg invented the movable press in circa. 1500 has been the ever-expanding availability of information to everyone on the planet.

The Internet was hailed as another major milestone in that march toward universal knowledge.

I wasn’t so sure about that when the Internet was made public about 20 years ago. What I saw was that the Internet was a major advancement in the government’s ability to control not only the dissemination of information - but something perhaps far more threatening, the government’s ability to know what we know - and think.

Because of computerization and the Internet, if you buy books from Amazon or check them out of the library, the government now knows what you know. If you have any doubts about the significance of this, Google the Patriot Act and read up about the major advancement in the surveillance state brought to use courtesy of the Internet. Of course, the government will know you are interested in that subject.

You can also look up the TIA – a program proposed to monitor and collect information on all of our activities. The government claims the project was abandoned because it was considered too intrusive.

Now we have the e-reader. We have corporations eventually gaining total control under the copyright laws of all formerly printed matter. The ever-expanding circle of knowledge begun by Guttenberg has hit an electronic wall and will now start to recede. Access to all knowledge and information – once readily available – will be controlled by the interconnected world of government and the corporations working together.

I go to my neighborhood used bookstore, buy a book in cash (I don’t show the clerk the title, just the price) and no one knows what I’m reading. I do this – not because I am doing anything wrong or because I have anything to hide – because it is nobody’s business what I read. The government and corporations have no right to know what I read. So why should I tell them? I’m not paranoid, I’m informed.

It's not that the government will do anything wrong with information about you. The worry is that the government will not do anything right with it. Bureaucrats can't do anything as simple as count votes. Do you really trust the government to respect and properly handle your personal information?