Friday Funnies the Kitteh Way

I'm guest posting over at the esteemed Secret Archives of the Alliterati site today, talking about the Fermentation of a Writer.

So, for serious ruminations, check me out over there. For the furry silliness, see below.

Or maybe we'll just let kitteh rest over the weekend.

p.s. pictures from here

Finding Time to Read

I recently discovered Goodreads (see the cool widget on the sidebar -->). I love that it gives me a place to track what I'm reading, chat with other readers/writers about books, and best of all: the TBR list. Finally, I have a spot to keep all those titles that I would love to read.

If only I had time.

It seems that most of my reading these days is blogs, newspapers (yes, I'm an old fashioned girl that way), and Twitter, which I think requires you to have a Commander Data-like ability to simultaneously analyze multiple streams of data. Especially during #yalitchat. Oy! If you're not a Trekkie, see here:

 

Finding time to read fiction is a struggle, even though I am dying to dive into middle grade reads like The Journal of Curious Letters, The Castle of Llyr, and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, as well as young adult tomes such as Shiver, Fallen, and Keeper (what is with the one word titles in YA?). But often the only time to read that I can squeeze between my various committments through the day is when I'm snuggled up with Mighty Mite, reading about dragons or Jack and Annie.

But I wouldn't give that up for the world.

When do you find time to read?

Stories in a Flash

I've been thinking a lot about flash fiction. Flash fiction stories tell a complete tale - conflict, tension, resolution - but in less than 1000 words, sometimes as little as 100 words. Flash is a distillation of plot to its barest essentials. I love this quote: “Plot is the mechanism by which your protagonist is forced up against her deepest fears and/or desires.”

Forcing something into flash form strips away the hubris and reveals the humble truths. Hemingway's classic six word story ("For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.") is ultra-flash, showing that even when the story is almost entirely implied, it can be heart-wrenching.

My wise friend Ink, who accepts on going flash fiction submissions on his blog The Alchemy of Writing, recently suggested that queries can be thought of as flash fiction, causing me to re-think my query for Byrne Risk. After a flurry of re-writing, it still needs work, but thanks to Bryan's suggestion and help, I like it much better. Authors often feel challenged by distilling an entire novel into less than 100 words, but there is much to be learned about the process of story by doing just that.

I've had several ideas for a new boy-centric MG story rumbling in my head, as well some ideas for MG short stories. I've beaten them back, insisting they need to get in line - I have way too many projects going already! But those ideas are stubborn.

Maybe if I give them expression in a flash, I can hope for some respite before that new novel elbows the other ones out of the way and demands to be written.

What do you do with your new ideas to keep them under control?

Queries in Web 2.0

Nathan Bransford, literary agent extraordinaire, recently asked if the query process still works - queries are the one page summary that writers submit to agents or publishers, outlining their book and credentials.

At the same time, I stumbled across the awesome new plaything that is Google Search Stories!

So why not combine the two?

In a Web 2.0 era when even books have trailers, here's a Google Search Query for my middle grade science fiction novel Byrne Risk:



I will be soon querying Byrne Risk (for real), and I doubt I will be able to send out my Google Search Query for it. But I sooo wish I could!

It's so much fun, Dark Omen decided to make one of his own:




Go create your own. Warning: seriously fun distraction.

Also: Thanks to The Year of Reading!

Book Blog Hop

Yes, that's still me ---> see new profile picture <--- The old one was, well, old.

This week, I've joined a wacky blog hop adventure sponsored by Crazy for Books, and if you're a book blogger visiting you know just what I mean:

So far on the hop, I've visited:

Emily's Reading Room (YA fiction)
Imagination in Focus (MG/YA fiction)
Dawn Hullender's Southern Musings (YA fiction)
Super Reader Girl's Book Reviews (YA fiction)
Voracious YAppetite (YA fiction)
Tina Says (YA/MG fiction)
Science Fiction and Fantasy Chat (SF/F)
Librarys Cat Book List (KidLit)
A Blog About Nothing (MG/YA fiction)
Ramblings of a Librarian Assistant (Children's fiction)

I'm looking forward to checking back in the days/weeks ahead!

As I hopped around, I realized that we all had something in common, beyond the obvious book blogging theme. Although we were teachers and librarians, parents, newlyweds, and younglings, we were all writers. Some of us wear that title openly, crafting novels and other stories, but make no mistake: if you blog 500 words every day for a year, you have written 130,000 words, more than most first novels. The craft of writing a serialized string of non-fiction blog posts is certainly different from crafting fiction, but not as much as you might suppose. Each blog post tells a story, even if it is only the story of one blogger's experience of reading a book. The sum total of our blog posts weave a picture of a person, or at least one aspect of that blogger's life.

We are all writers, and I'm glad to join you on our respective writerly paths. :)

Content Warnings for Young Adult Books

Ever wonder what's inside those young adult (YA) books? Well, you might be surprised, probably shocked if you are a parent.

Ink Spells' purpose is to help review books for the middle grades (ages 8-12) with content advisories and ratings. Why? Because advanced readers often read way ahead of their grade level, and finding appropriate reading material became a mission of necessity for me, with my 3 advanced reading boys. But as they rocket toward teenhood (Dark Omen is 11 going on 16), and as I write YA books, I am increasingly aware that the truly shocking stuff is generally in YA.

I don't mean to spark a censorship vs. Free Speech debate here. Suffice to say, I'm I huge believer in Free Speech, and I think parents have a responsibility to monitor their children. But they need help.

Ink Spells is here to help with Middle Grade books.

Teen Reader is here to help with those Young Adult books. I recently came across the Teen Reader website, and accompanying blog, and couldn't be happier! Andye's site is like a teen version of Ink Spells, only more organized and even has a section for guys!

Andye has the right idea about providing information for parents, and teens, so they can make their own informed decisions. And hopefully talk about the material contained in some of the more explicit or disturbing books. We can't insulate kids from every horror in the world, but as parents (and teachers and librarians), I believe we have a responsibility to help teens make that crucial stretch from kid to adult with values intact.

Teen Reader is a great resource to help parents do just that.

Ink Spells Can't Wait for The Red Pyramid!

Fans of Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief will be excited to learn he's starting a new series (The Kane Chronicles) with Book 1: The Red Pyramid, to be released May 4th, 2010.

Dark Omen and Worm Burner both read and loved the entire Percy Jackson series, and are eagerly awaiting the new book, where Riordan tackles another ancient mythology: Egyptian gods. I really can't love Riordan any more than I do for bringing ancient peoples alive for the middle grade set. Plus, the man is flat out funny. We also saw The Lightning Thief movie, and one of my chief complaints (although we still immensely enjoyed it) was that it lacked the humor of the books. I hope Riordan will bring his irreverent pitch-perfect-for-middle-grade humor to The Red Pyramid, where siblings Sadie and Carter battle ancient Egyptian God Set in a dangerous journey across the globe to uncover the truth about their family, and their father who has managed to get himself banished to oblivion.

Interestingly, Hyperion Books has decided to release the hardcover ($10.52) version and the Kindle ($9.99) version at the same time. I would love to purchase the e-book, to save a couple bucks, and because both boys are eager to read on the nook. Sadly, only the Kindle version is available. This dogged war over e-book pricing (which in this case at least is less than the hardback), and not making books available in a wide range of e-formats, frustrates me. I preferentially buy B&N, trying to keep the paper book store afloat, but I will buy the hardback from Amazon this time (eventhough the pricing is identical), just because they tried to make e-books available. Or perhaps they will lose my sale altogether, and I'll see if the library will carry it sometime soon.

Unless Dark Omen wants to add The Red Pyramid to the small library growing inside his closet, there's no need for us to purchase the book, but I would have gladly purchased if it was in e-book format. Soon and very soon, I hope the publishing industry realizes that they need to embrace e-books as their salvation, not their doom.

Le Sigh.

In any event, we will read The Red Pyramid, one way or the other. My preference would be to pay Rick Riordan for the pleasure.

Ink Spells talks about How to Talk To Girls

I talked before about seeing this slim little tome and buying it immediately, intrigued by the young author and the overpowering cuteness of the contents inside:

"If you want to start a conversation with a girl, first you have to say something like "hi." If she says "hi" back, you are off to a good start."



"If you are in elementary school, try to get a girl to like you, not to love you. Wait until middle school to try to get her to love you."

How to Talk to Girls: RL: n/a CSM: 9+ Rating: PG Content: innocent talk about getting girls to like you

It takes approximately 10 minutes to read the book, and Dark Omen whipped through it in less than that. He wasn't impressed, or if he squirreled away any nuggets of knowledge, he certainly wasn't sharing them with his mom.

But the tiny book did make me think about the messages we send our wee ones about love and romance, well before they are old enough to dabble in such things (nor do we want them to!). Girls are inundated with Cinderella type love stories from preschool age; boys largely ignore these things. Many middle grade books dance around the idea of girls and boys being attracted to one another, usually reflecting the age of their protagonists: nascent puppy love is absent from most novels with characters 11 and younger, but 12 and over seem to have some (often barely hinted at) stirrings.

What intrigues me is not the idea that boys and girls might find each other interesting, but how those relationships are portrayed in books. Are boys and girls seen as friends, comrades in the supreme conflict of the book, like Harry Potter? Or are they shown as trying to date (or zounds, kiss!) the opposite sex in a rage of hormones?

Also important: how are the parent relationships portrayed in these books? Often parents are missing altogether, in order to support a young character's independent adventure. Harry Potter again comes to mind in portraying the Weasleys as a happy couple, indeed the ideal parents that Harry longs for.

While I don't want to see a lot of teen dating and angst in middle grade books, I think building the foundations for healthy relationships between the sexes starts in childhood: where that brave amazing sidekick, who happens to be of the opposite sex, turns out to be a really neat person.

And not just "a girl" (or "a boy").

How to Talk to Girls is a cute little book, fine for readers 9+, that may inspire your son to share his thoughts with you about girls. That is, if you're luckier than me.

Free Books for Kids

The wonder that is Twitter helped me stumble across this new promotion by Penguin Books: We Give Books

Essentially, if you read one of their on-line books, they will donate a free paper book to a non-profit literacy center. You read, they read, we all read - it's all good!

You can choose which non-profit you want to support, including literacy efforts in America and around the world. I selected the United Through Reading program, which supports military families with books to encourage literacy. Next, you select the book you want to read. I selected The Little Engine That Could, one of my fav kidlit books of all time. You might want to use a large screen, as the words are a little small, but the pictures are true-to-life.

I think I can ... I think I can ... I think I can ... help literacy!

Go forth and read!

Finding Time to Write

I was feeling a little sorry for myself, that I've not had much time to write lately. Real life activities, a sick kid at home, a neglected to-do list a mile long, and I wondered why I kept trying to jam 26 hours worth of stuff into a 24 hour day.

Then I read about an amazing man and the library he built.

First of all, the library is beyond gorgeous. It is a literal incarnation of the dream library that I've always carried around in my head, hoping one day - if I was rich or idle enough - I would build one for myself.

This father and husband was neither rich nor idle - he spent endless hours overcoming his body's limitations to achieve something that would last well beyond his lifetime. I am in awe of his perseverance and drive. I am certain it was not easy, and yet he still got up and went to his workshop and toiled on his labor of love every day ... for years.

We can't all perform heroic feats, and thankfully my family and I are blessed to not have such physical limitations to overcome. But it gives me a wonderful perspective to see what can be accomplished with determination and grace.

Somehow doing everything on my to-do list seems a little less important, and feeling sorry for myself feels downright scandalous. With determination, I will finish my books and send them out. It will take time, and may not happen as quickly as I'd like. It may even take years of toiling over my labors of love, but that bookcase didn't build itself. And my books won't write themselves either.

Today, I will read to and take care of the youngling. Maybe tomorrow too, if he still needs it. The writing will still be there, waiting patiently for me to return.

Twitter might be Useful after all

I've added a Twitter button (at right), and actually started tweeting (not just lurking). I'm still undecided about whether Twitter is worth the time invested, but there are definitely benefits that I had overlooked before.

Starting with #yalitchat

For the Twitter newbies like me, this is a "thread" of sorts, where a conversation is "hashtagged" so you can follow anything pertaining to that conversation. Last night, Scott Westerfeld and James Dashner were both on #yalitchat, asking and answering questions.

Eyestrain from trying to read 300 tweets a minute? Yes. ADD level aggravation from trying to follow a conversation with dozens of participants? Yup. Having Westerfeld answer my question about making Leviathan a movie, and then conspiring with a fellow twitterer to start a campaign for it? Priceless.

(and that's a "no" to the movie at the moment)

Also: Westerfeld posted this new Steampunk Roadster by BMW. Sweet!

I follow a lot of publisher and author types, and recently threw out a question on Twitter (which was posed to me originally on Facebook - are you following me still?) asking, "Does anyone have a good rec for a book on teen dating etiquette for boys?"

I'm still looking for the etiquette book (hint: it may not exist, perhaps someone should write one?), but a Twitter friend rec'd this delightful gem: How to Talk to Girls by Alec Greven.










Alec happens to be 10 years old and writes things like this:

Tips:

Comb your hair and don't wear sweats
Control your hyperness (cut down on the sugar if you have to)
Don't act desperate

Could he possibly be any more cute? I immediately bought the book, and when I told Dark Omen (age 11) about it, I expected disparagement along the lines of "Why would I want to talk to girls, Mom, that's lame!" Instead, he said, "Well, what does he say?"

Oh dear.

Anyone out there have a rec for a teen dating book for boys? Because apparently I'm going to have one of those teen boy creatures soon.

Island of Dr. Moreau

The buzz of a thousand hidden insects filled the air, but that wasn't the sound Nylee was straining to hear. Her ears flicked in the direction of a rustle of leaves that was entirely too close. Her stripes hid her well against the dappled tree trunk, but even the bio-richness of the jungle couldn't disguise her smell.

She leapt from her tucked hiding spot, hurtled over an enormous fallen branch, and crashed through the underbrush. Sweat bristled out her fur as she tore through the lush foliage, searching for a suitable tree. If the Ngiri didn't smell her, it certainly had heard her now.

Spotting a low branch on a wide, gnarled trunk that looked as old as the forest itself, she scrambled up the side. Her claws found purchase in the tiny cracks left by generations of burrowing creatures, and she quickly reached the limb. As she sucked in gulps of air, the Ngiri snuffled to a stop below her. He snorted and let fly a few quills from his prickly coat, but she was too high for them - or his razor sharp teeth - to reach.

"No lunch for you today," Nylee said. She settled into the crook of the branch and waited for the Ngiri to grow bored and leave. While she recovered her breath, she planned how to get back to The Games.

(Outtake from my short story, The Silent Treatment)

The half-men-half-beast people of Dr. Moreau didn't take over my real-life, and so I'm back, trying to write today, to submit The Silent Treatment to a contest that's due. I just realized how Dr. Moreau-ish the setting was, and so today's posting is some flash fiction fun.

The non-fiction musings will resume tommorrow.

Anyone else out there enamored with flash fiction?

Crazy Town

My real life has gone to Crazy Town, and I need to go help put out the fires. Assuming Crazy Town doesn't turn into the Island of Dr. Moreau, I will return tommorrow with more Ink Spells.

Matt, does this qualify as Scientific Romance? Or is there not enough steam?

Where's the Story?

This weekend I toured Fermilab with a bunch of elected officials from around the country, here for the National School Board conference. Being on the school board, I sometimes get to do cool stuff like that.

One of the school board members asked the scientist, who was leading a Q&A, what happens when anti-matter and matter collide - which is what happens in the large particle accelerators at Fermilab.

It so happens that my novel Byrne Risk has anti-matter engines and the answer is explained thusly in the Science Files at the end:

Anti-Matter Drive


In real science, anti-matter exists and has been produced by physicists in large particle-accelerator chambers, like CERN and HaDRON. Anti-matter is the opposite of matter, just like negative numbers are the opposite of positive numbers. When anti-matter collides with regular matter, a tremendous amount of energy is released, along with meson particles (particles smaller than an atom) and dangerous gamma radiation. Today, only tiny amounts of anti-matter can be made at a time, not enough to fuel a spaceship. Scientists suspend the anti-matter in an electrostatic device called a Penning Trap, so that it doesn't touch any regular matter and explode!


Cool, right? I think so.

The physicist proceeded to answer the school board member's question in a way that was ... well ... less exciting. I am sure that the man does wonderful science and important research. But where was the excitement? The drama? The story?

I was left believing that anti-matter/matter collisions were about as exciting as dust bunnies.

I see stories as the main way that we explain the world to ourselves. We can also use formulas and theories and great rambling scientific papers - but the way that we make it have sense or meaning for our lives is to construct stories around it. They are interpretations of the world, and not just for the non-technically-minded. Stories are especially important for children, to put an understanding of the world into their native language.

When Enrico Fermi was applying for college, he wrote such a rockin' essay solving wave equations on a string that the examiner thought he was a Ph.D. student. Naturally, he took first place. While in college he teamed up with a rascal named Franco Rasetti, with whom he conspired to pull all kinds of college pranks. These two later went on to discover the key processes in nuclear fusion. Not to mention win the Nobel Prize in physics.

Now there's a story. Perhaps my next middle grade novel will need to be a historical fiction ... whatever it is, I'm certain that the science will sneak in and play a role in shaping a story that sparks young imaginations.

Steampunk iPad

Thanks to The Mute Robot!


This was too awesome to pass up, but I leave it to Matthew at Free the Princess to analyze.

Happy Monday!

The Future of Children's Publishing

This great article (thanks Dawn!) talks about how the future of Children's Publishing is also the future of publishing. Just as our future hinges on having our kids grow up and save the planet from our follies, the publishing world depends on young readers growing up and becoming, well, older readers. And perhaps an indication of what those older readers want can be found in this great quote by Jeff Kinney, famed author of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid:

"Great stories are being told that do not rely on violence or sex or those sorts of things that are the hallmarks of literature that is intended for adults," Kinney said. "I think we focus more on storytelling. There are a lot of adults I encounter who exclusively read children's literature."


If adults are reading kidlit, then what are the kids doing? Many of them are going online, and not just the YA crowd. More and more, younger kids are lured by book-related games and online activities to hook them into the printed books. According to Scholastic, they have 760,000 registered users on their site. I know my kids rock Club Penguin all the time. They've just recently decided to tie some books to the popular on-line game. But these multimedia and social-networking enterprises are big money, and usually reserved for MG books that publishers have decided to put their advertising budgets behind.

I still think e-readers will ultimately draw young readers in, once they are common in households. But will they take the 6+ hours of time to read the book? There are many that say kids cannot sustain that kind of attention, but I'm not one of them.

All they need is a good story.

Do you want a latte with your book?

No, thank you. I'll take some of that awesome Starbucks tea, though.

Here's a cool video (thanks Beth Revis!) of the Espresso, which makes books rather than coffee, but is awesome nonetheless. This kind of Print on Demand tech is what's changing the game.

"The Espresso Book Machine can produce paperbacks in variable combinations of trim sizes between 4.5" x 5.0" and 8.25" x 10.5" for a production cost less than one cent per page."

<--And they look like this. How much longer will it be before these are stationed in Barnes & Noble and you can order up and print out your own out of print book before your latte cools? Google Books is already on board. The Economist agrees only experts can tell the difference between POD and offset printing, and that POD printing will likely double (6% of books printed to 15%) in the next 5 years, fueled by university presses and self-publishing. Espresso, and other POD technologies, won't replace offset printing but it might help fuel book sales, making it easier to get niche titles into people's hands (not just their e-readers). And I think that's a good thing.

Books out of Print

The revolution of e-books can't come soon enough for me.

There is a great SF book called Achilles' Choice that I recently pulled off my shelf, intending to use it in a blog posting, but when I searched B&N to link to it, I found it was out of print! Sadly, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes' awesome little 1991 tome is unavailable, except through "special sellers." This shocked me, and gave me pause to think about how short a book's lifetime can be.

It also reminded me of JA Konrath's excellent blog posting, Am I Good Enough to E-Publish? where he strongly encourages out-of-print authors to e-publish their books. Not only is this a boon to authors, it is a fantastic way for readers to access books they normally would have to scrounge through garage sales or second hand book stores to find. And it appeals to my inner free-marketeer as well.

Which made me think of Tom Swift! I am a HUGE fan of these tech-boy-genius books but they are all out-of-print and horribly difficult to find (and pricey if you do). I am sure I could interest Mighty Might and Worm Burner in them, especially if I had them downloaded onto my nook. Even Dark Omen might be intrigued to download the ones he doesn't have, to round out his collection for old time's sake.

So, please, please, PLEASE, publishers of the Tom Swift books (I'm looking at you, Simon&Shuster!), will you PLEASE get with the e-revolution and make these books available for download?

My kids will thank you.

Libraries of the Future

I have a library theme going here ...

With the advent of the iPad and e-readers quickly becoming a reality, it is sometimes difficult to keep pushing the technology in your fiction forward - so that in a couple years, when you are published (we hope! we hope!), the technology will not have already become old hat.

Yet, dreaming up the next cool thing is part of what science fiction is about.

A couple weeks ago I had to imagine what the library of the future would look like (70 years hence). And it was a SCHOOL library, not the Library of Congress, so we're not talking about archiving ancient documents onto digital storage, we're talking how do kids use the library in 70 years?

Given that the way kids are using the library today is changing at a fast clip, dreaming up the Library of the Future was no small task.

I went with a "pod" concept - everyone working in small, subject-focused groups. There would be a multimedia pod, where a small group could access the world wide information source (interwebs of the day) and use it to create their own audio/video presentations. Other small group pods, with kids clustered around an interactive holoscreen, could be used for group research projects. There should definitely be a Literature Lab, where digital representations of great books and ancient texts could be summoned for study, as well as video collaboration with other students around the world and subject-experts. And of course individual work pod stations, for independent studies.

My favorite would be the climate-controlled room in the back, where they store the paper-book relics. Carefully monitored and password protected, these books could be examined in-situ like the revered original sources that they were. Useful for nostalgic history teachers and other types.

What would you see in the Library of the Future?

What I look like BLUE

What the ... ? I look waaay scarier as a Na'vi than I do in real life. Eeek!

Go make yourself blue.

But my Na'vi name, Niktaq'a is all kinds of awesome.

What did you think of the movie?

I was in love with the beauty of it, and bitterly disappointed by the paper-thin characterizations and trite ending. So much gorgeousness gone to waste!

However, this could have been a truly awesome kids movie. Minus the death-and-destruction and the Na'vi intimate relations, it had that epic feel and some really great themes that would have been fantastic as a middle grade epic adventure. Sigh.

That's about all I can manage for a Monday.

Friday Funnies in the Library

Unable to compete with Google renaming itself after a midwestern capital, and Gmail in VowelFail mode, I reserved my funnies for April 2nd.

I love the library. It's not just a source of books and information (not to mention e-books, DVDs, audio books, online access and Story Hour), but a source of entertainment as well.

Thanks to Mary Calhoun Brown for this list of questions Middle Schoolers asked the librarian:

• Do you have books here?
• Do you have any books with photographs of dinosaurs?
• Where in the library can I find a power socket for for my hairdryer?
• Do you have a list of all the books I've ever read?
• Is the basement upstairs?
• I got a quote from a book I turned in last week but I forgot to write down the author and title. It's big and red, and I found it on the top shelf. Can you find it for me?

Me: "Uh, where's the power socket so I can plug in my mini-laptop/nook/blackberry? Did you know there's a wireless blank node in the Fiction section? It's right next to the potted plant overlooking the duck pond. And if I find something I want to copy from Popular Science, can I beam it directly to my nook? Thanks!"


Lest you think the Middle Schoolers don't know how the library works, see these answers to a quiz given on library usage:

• Reference books cannot be checked out because they are too big and heavy.
• Fiction books are just a lot of stories, so they don’t get a rating number.
• The Dewey System measures how cold it got overnight by measuring how much wetness is on the grass in the mornings.
• You can find words with similar meanings in Rogers Brontasaurus.
• Books with the letter R on the label are only for people over 18 years old.
• You shouldn’t eat in the library because there are too many germs.
• Students are allowed to use the photocopier when it is working.
• You can use an author search if you don’t know who wrote the book your looking for.
• Plagiarism is when you copy someone else without them finding out.
• The New York Public Library has two lions outside the front door to stop people stealing books.
• If I see stuff on the Internet that makes me uncomfortable, I should tell all my friends where the website is so they don’t get scared when they go there by mistake.
• Literature is long stories in tiny letters with no fun happening.
• You should not make too much noise in the library because then no one will know you are there when they come to start a fight.

Me: The library is where you go to find: old friends and new friends; that DVD you forgot to order from Netflix; gorgeous picture books for toddlers and the nine-year-old's fascination with chemistry; audiobooks for your husband's road trip; the latest madly successful middle grade novel that has just come in and is now on hold; research for that 5th grade paper on bullying (hopefully in books, not a fight in the stacks).

And occasionally the library is a wonderful retreat from the world, a quiet place to sit and think and write and write and write.

How do you use the library?

Nook and a Haircut, 2 bits

If you are old enough to know that 2 bits refers to two coins which together equal 25 cents, you're probably not reading this blog. Then again, 2 bits has achieved stardom in The Urban Dictionary, so who knows?

Over Spring Break, I trooped all my boys down to get their moppy hair cut (which cost substantially more than 2 bits) and brought my nook along for entertainment. Instead of reading (really, what was I thinking?), I had a fascinating discussion with Dark Omen about Leviathan and the beasties therein. One of the manifold benefits of reading my kid's books has been the great discussions we have about them. Somewhere in the middle of that, a polite young man interrupted and asked to see my nook.

This happens all the time. Wherever I go.

There's always the gadget appeal, where people peek over your shoulder at your new gadget, while trying to pretend that they are not. Since half the fun of having a gadget is showing it off sharing it with others, I happily discussed the nook.

This particular young man was more than just idly curious. He was actively in the market to buy one, and proceeded to grill me (quite nicely) on the functionality and features of the nook. As I mentioned before, the nook has an annoying tendency to freeze up when I'm showing it off (something about rapidly switching between screens that it simply can't handle), and then turns it into a very attractive paper weight (cue: irony). But he and I were undaunted, and continued to discuss the future of e-readers and e-book pricing and the fabulously hilarious nature of Scalzi's blog, Whatever.

Two things struck me about this encounter:

1) Who says men don't read? This young man was late teens/early twenties and clearly thought an e-reader was economically beneficial, given how many books he read in a year.

2) Young people are going to lead the way with e-readers. Just as they lead with other tech, young people are willing to spend their disposable income on the latest gadget, just to try it out. If the price comes down at all, the e-readers will be flying off the shelves.

My fervent hope is that e-readers will actually increase the number of books that get read, as well as more easily connect readers and writers. What's more, e-readers provide a way for people to talk about reading, and books, and writing, by bringing something shiny and new into the musty world of books.

It's books for the new millenium, and it just might save the industry.

Also: I downloaded a 1921 book The Craft of Writing to my 2010 nook, free from Project Gutenberg. It was jarring to hold the scanned replica of a dusty tome I could have checked out from the ancient stacks of my college library. There is something to be said for paper, as Ink says, after all.

I wonder what the kids will think, thirty years hence, when holding a paper book startles their reality and they think, "Hey, here's a paper version of the book I've had on my e-reader for ten years. How odd."

Have you had any e-adventures yet?