This and that:The big debate in publishing circles now is on the future of paper books in an e-book era.
At a writers' conference I attended recently, author and former bookstore owner Sonny Brewer addressed this subject in a Q&A session. The short version of his answer was that e-books are a fact of life whether we like it or not, and that's bad news for bookstore owners.

People feel strongly about e-books--you either love them or hate them. Smug Kindle and iPad owners brag about being able to hold an entire library in their palms. E-book eschewers are horrified by these demons of the digital world and counter that nothing substitutes for the tactile experience of curling up with a real book.
I come down on the side of "real" books in this debate, but not for the usual reasons. My reason for favoring traditional books is purely economic.
I'm not a romantic by nature, and I have nothing against the march of progress. I'm okay with reading from a printed page, an electronic screen or even stone tablets, if that's what's available. I want the words--I don't care so much about the delivery system.
But I'm on a tight budget, and don't have a bunch of extra money to drop on a Kindle or even actual books printed on paper. These days I get my books for free or close to it. I get my books for free from the public library, and as long as libraries continue to make books available, I'm a happy boy. I can get just about anything I want from my tiny Suburbingham library. If they don't have it, they can get it for me through inter library loan. I may have to wait a while to get a book, but usually only a couple of days before the robotic voice calls my house to tell me my book is waiting for me. If its something on the bestseller list, I'll have to wait a few weeks. Currently I'm 30th in line for the most recent installment in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum saga but only 8th in line for Carl Hiassen's latest masterpiece (publishing this week). No problem: I've got plenty of other things to read. I can wait.
Most of the books I buy these days come from the thrift store. On a recent trip, I came home with
Glitz by Elmore Leonard and
Hotel by Arthur Hailey. I remember reading
Hotel a long time ago and liking it. Published in 1965 the novels is about the operation of a big New Orleans hotel. I don't know what
Glitz is about, but I like everything Mr. Leonard writes. Each book was under a buck. My copy of Glitz is a large trade paperback, while
Hotel is a hardback in great condition, and appears to be a first edition.
Summer is almost over, but, for thriller fans, I've got two summer "must reads" and one to avoid at all costs.
If you haven't started reading, Stieg Larsson's
Millennium Trilogy ("The Girl Who . . ." books), what are you waiting for? Fantastic plotting and amazing characters come together in a wonderful Swedish stew. The three books about an urbane magazine publisher and plucky but mentally disturbed young computer hacker are the best thing to come out of Sweden since ABBA. Perhaps it's the translation into English, but the prose is merely workmanlike and doesn't sparkle as it could and probably should. But, who cares, when you've got a story this good?
I recently saw
Strip by Thomas Perry listed in one of those must-read lists, and decided to take a chance on it. What a delightful surprise. In this fast-paced tale, a guy moves to LA and is wrongly accused of robbing a shady strip club owner. Hijinks ensue.
Strip is going to make one fantastic movie. The low-life mobster, Manco Kapec, is one of the best drawn and most sympathetic bad guys I've come across in years. Perry's plotting reminds me a lot of the aforementioned Elmore Leonard, and that's high praise.
For my money, the most offensive summer read this year is
Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd. In this unfortunate pile of drivel, a guy goes to London for a job interview and finds himself at a murder scene. Instead of just calling the cops, as any sane person would, the moron poses as a homeless man to avoid getting caught. Why? I have no idea. The first few chapters were so illogically plotted and pretentiously written, I abandoned the book in favor of something that made some sense.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that a story can only work if the reader is able to "willingly suspend his disbelief" and
Ordinary Thunderstorms violated that principle for me from about page three. I didn't believe a word of it. To make matters worse, Boyd is clearly so in love with his own writing that his inability to not show off his mad writing skills ruins what little voice his story has. He frequently gets in his own way by using fancy words and constructions when simple ones will do nicely. That's not a demonstration of craft, it's pretension. How this abortion on paper got on anyone's "best of" list is beyond me.
Teri has smart phone fever. Her old dumb phone is in desperate need of a changeout, I'll give her that much. She has convinced herself a smart phone and media package will improve her life by allowing her to check her e-mail from anywhere.
Like that's a good thing.
I can't argue with Teri's perception of her own wants, needs and desires, but I'm not looking for that kind of enhancement to my own life right now. At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I want my phone to make phone calls; I don't need to do anything else with it. Heck, I don't even use my cell phone for its primary purpose often enough to burn up the 150 minutes a month I have to buy to keep my pre-paid plan active.
Who am I kidding? I love iThings, and if money were no object I'd be in Tahiti and writing this blog from an iPhone.
The writers' conference I mentioned earlier got me thinking of the similarities and differences between a gathering of creative types and the many sales meetings I've attended. The basic formula is the same: meet a bunch of other people in a big hotel, attend sessions in conference rooms, listen to inspirational speeches, eat banquet food, go home energized.
Those were the similarities, but the differences were huge. Salespeople are an outgoing and talkative bunch. Open up the bar and watch the good times roll. Writers, it turns out, are either very social or very withdrawn. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground. Open the bar at a writers' conference and the room is as likely to turn into a melancholy therapy session as it is wild party.
Living in New Orleans as long as I did, I came to know a lot of creative types--writers, chefs, painters, sculptors and musicians. It was always nice to have one or two around to liven up a party. Artists always add spice to the mix. But every cook knows that too much spice can ruin a dish.
So, there I was at a conference composed entirely of right-brained writers. Putting together a group of flamboyantly social and painfully shy artists makes for a weird dynamic.
The nicest part of the writer's conference was the "business meeting" that closed it. If any of these folks had ever heard of Robert's Rules of Order, they were incapable of adhering to them. No motions were presented, no officers were elected, no votes were taken, no issues were discussed. Nobody asked questions or even called for the meeting to adjourn. When a couple of brief announcements were made and some door prizes raffled off, it just kind of ended by consensus and people began to drift away.
It was the most pleasant "business meeting" I've ever attended and led me to conclude that artists should be in charge of all meetings. Nothing would get done, but everyone would go away happy.