Well-Read Life™

Tell me what you hold dear

When I show friends our L-Tech fountain pen and stylus, I like to tell them that they’re holding three centuries of technology in their hand—the 19^th century fountain pen nib, the 20^th century machine-age brass barrel, and the 21^st century silicone stylus tip. Then I like to watch the smile that comes over their faces, as they think about what an old—and new—object they’re holding.

One object, three centuries

This three-century object manifests for me just how lucky we are to be able to tap into such a broad spectrum of technology. I love the feel of the fountain pen as it glides on my paper with the lubrication of liquid ink. In a quiet room, you can hear it, as well as feel it. (Charles Frazier, in his book Cold Mountain, described that sound as the scritch of the pen.) The ink glistens for a few seconds before it permeates the paper with its deep, dark blue.

Then I’ll cap the pen, flip it upside down, and use the stylus to draw on my favorite writing program, 51 Paper. I have a notebook therein where I practice writing, in Spanish, the expressions I read in English. It’s a modern and quite pleasing chalk slate. Bliss!

Now that we can enjoy fountains pens, ballpoints, and digital styli, why would we want to give any of them up?

In the era of virtual, still physical

It’s not just a matter of sentimentality; it speaks to our productivity. For connectivity, breaking news, and immediate communication, you can’t beat digital. But for communication with yourself, nothing beats the quiet pleasures of pen on paper—especially a pen perfectly suited to your hand and writing style, and paper, like an untouched field of fresh snow.

The digital—the virtual—will take us ever farther and higher into the cloud. It’s exciting to speculate on how we will work and create in ways we can’t yet imagine. Yet we are physical beings still, living in a physical world.

Consider the solidity of a strong wooden desk under your arms. It holds your computer ever so steady. Or the touch of a leather case that warmly and securely embraces your smartphone. It is carrying on the long tradition of using leather to give our fragile human bodies purchase on life—shoes, saddles, reins, quivers to hold our arrows.

Now that the heritage technologies we used to construct our civilization—like printed books, notebooks, and ink pens—are technically obsolete, we are free to truly understand their benefits and choose to use them when we desire.

A $100 gift card for the best stories of what you still hold dear

For my new book, Holding Dear: The Value of the Real, I was able to ask some of our customers about the physical object that inspires their thinking and creating. We’ve reproduced some wonderful—and surprising—stories by David McCullough, David Allen, Patti Smith, Ann Patchett and others. I especially liked our technologist friends Paul Saffo and Kevin Kelly weighing in on the analog objects of their affection.

But a book, in its paper iteration, has a finite number of pages, and we need to continue the conversation.

So I’m asking you to share a story with me. Tell me, dear reader, about a favorite box, or a certain painting, or a prized volume of poetry inscribed by a loved one that just wouldn’t be the same as a digital book, no more than a photo of people hugging substitutes for a real hug. Or whatever your object may be.

What thing, when you touch it, touches you back?

For the best stories (in our terribly subjective judgment) that we receive between now and May 19, a $100 Levenger gift card awaits. It’s good for acquiring other objects you hold dear.

Post your story as a Comment to this blog

Just click on the Comments link below with your story. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

We’ll notify the winners by email and announce them on our Facebook page. (Fyi—we may want to share your story in our social media or other Levenger communications channels.)

Gift card or not, each of you will be rewarded as you think back about what physical object you’re grateful for in our increasingly virtual world.

With thanks and gratitude to you, I am

Ever yours,

Steve

 

Capitalism Even My Mother Could Love

At age 32, when I announced on a phone call to my mother that I was starting a business, the line seemed to go dead. My mother, whom I love deeply, is not someone you would call business-friendly. As a retired California social worker and occasional head of her local Democratic Party, she distrusts big business.

She isn’t alone.

Business in America, according to the book I’m about to review, has an approval rating of around 19 percent, two points above Congress.

My father, on the other hand, a retired CPA and mall developer, admires business. When I was still in high school I remember him telling me, “Profit is one of the most beautiful words in the English language.” He regularly complained about anti-business prejudice in the media and academia. As I was setting off to graduate school in sociology, he told me to enjoy myself, “but don’t believe everything your professors tell you.”

My parents divorced when I was six.

My mother had hoped I would become a doctor or teacher, as was customary on her side of the family. My father had already abandoned hope that his journalist/consultant/analyst son would ever become an entrepreneur, and so was delightfully surprised when I made the same phone call to him. He called me his “late-blooming son.”

As a product of both my parents, I set out in business somewhat conflicted. Serving customers felt natural and good, but to survive in business, would I have to be ruthless? With degrees in biology and sociology, my education was devoid of business courses of any kind. Did I miss out on learning how to be hard-nosed?

'Give capitalism a chance'

In the early months of Levenger, working out of our townhouse in Boston, Lori and I had plenty of days with no sales, and one day I shall always remember, with just one sizable return—that is, a negative-sales day.

Was it too late to become a doctor, I wondered?

Yet in our fledgling business I did feel I had finally found my calling. (I discovered this with the help of another book called Minding the Store by Stanley Marcus, who taught me that being a merchant could be a noble thing.)

After a dicey first two years of taking no salaries, success came dramatically to our company. During those early years of success, I would hear business executives speak at charity events about the importance of “giving back” to their communities. I chafed at this. It implied that business was taking and that we business people, like criminals, had a debt to repay.

Yet I watched our own business employ people, help them grow in their careers, make our suppliers happy, keep our accountants busy, and give our customers something that, judging by the many heartfelt letters we received, they had been yearning for.

How could this be a bad thing?

One day a promising young customer service rep at Levenger who was about to graduate from college came to see me. She told me she was quitting Levenger to work for a nonprofit, because she wanted to do good in the world. I said I was sorry to lose her but understood that people must follow their hearts. I suggested that it was also possible to do good in the world while working for a company. I even gave her some examples. But she wasn’t buying it.

As we parted, I said with a smile that I hoped she would “give capitalism a chance.” She laughed, as did I, but she left the company anyway.

From profits to purpose

If the new book Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business succeeds in changing the world the way the authors hope, my remark about “giving capitalism a chance” will no longer be a joke. Because future young people graduating from college will just assume capitalism can do good in the world. They won’t think they have to join a nonprofit to follow their hearts.

They will understand that a “for-profit” company can just as easily be described as a “for-purpose” company, and that profits are one way, and sometimes the best way, to sustain noble work.

At present, though, that future seems far off. 

That’s why John Mackey, the co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, and Raj Sisodia, a professor of marketing at Bentley University, wrote this new testament of business. They named it after the movement they helped found, Conscious Capitalism.

Its credo begins with this sentence:

We believe that business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.

Part of the problem, explain the authors, is an image problem.  Corporate malfeasance, real and fictional, gets lots of play in the news and movies, while the goodness of business does not.

But most of the problem is more invidious.

The noble purpose of business has been hijacked. And this hijacking is not the work of cynical professors and journalists, but of business people themselves who willingly share the myopic belief that business is, first, foremost and finally, about profits.

The economist Milton Friedman, in his widely cited 1970s essay on social responsibility, claimed that profit was the only social responsibility businesses had. Too many people have interpreted his advice too narrowly, to everyone’s detriment. Mackey and Sisodia convincingly demonstrate that it simply isn’t true. Businesses that focus first on purpose, and then expand their view widely to benefit all stakeholders—rather than just narrowly serving shareholders—are better businesses, and better by all financial measures.

Unfortunately, write the authors, capitalism “developed in a stunted way, missing the more human half of its identity.”

The 70% solution

One of the most serious consequences of this dwarfed manifestation of business is that the average engagement of workers in the United States hovers around 30 percent. Some 7 out of 10 workers just aren’t that into their jobs. Think of the opportunities for everyone if those ratios were reversed.

It is the job of business leaders to help engage that lost 70 percent, and to help employees realize that in their hands—and hearts—lies the basis for the positive transformation of societies and communities.

The authors of Conscious Capitalism ask us to imagine a business “built on love and care rather than stress and fear,” a business where staff members are able to “craft a purposeful life while earning a living,” and where employees can experience “the joy of service, of enriching the lives of others.”

Even if you aren’t a doctor or a teacher.

Conscious Capitalism: from good to great

It’s a different way of thinking about business. Instead of viewing situations as tradeoffs (high wages leads to lower profits), the authors advise that we think in terms of mutual wins: living wages lead to happier staff members, which creates happier customers, which generates higher sales, which results in satisfied shareholders.

Conscious Capitalism is a good book. It’s well-researched, well-written and has already received favorable reviews in major publications. But what is exciting is its potential to become a great book—the kind that triggers a fundamental and pervasive change in attitudes.

Could Conscious Capitalism do for business what Silent Spring did for the environment?

The widespread view of capitalism as some sort of necessary evil is a kind of DDT to human potential. Breaking into an enlightened conception of capitalism could liberate human potential, leading to new levels of innovation and personal fulfillment.

But as powerful as Conscious Capitalism can be, it is not an elixir for business success. The most enlightened capitalists must also go through the hard work of developing an effective corporate strategy—that long and difficult process of examining options and selecting the very few to pursue. Then comes execution, a topic that rightfully has filled volumes of business books and launched the careers of untold numbers of business consultants.

Just as essential, in order for Conscious Capitalism to be sustained, it must be embraced by the current generation of young people starting businesses today. Only if they take it up—which they will do in their own ways—does the movement have a chance to change the world.

There are promising signs.

Tearing down the Ivy Curtain

More colleges are focusing not only on entrepreneurism, but on social entrepreneurism. Students will do their own mashups to create businesses that feel like nonprofits, and nonprofits that are run like businesses.

I’m hopeful that students will tear down the Ivy Curtain that for my generation separated the so-called impractical liberal arts from majors like business and accounting. I’m hopeful that we’ll see more business students with their heads in the clouds, and art-history majors who like accounting.

My own sons, college classes of 2010 and 2013, are reading Conscious Capitalism, so we can discuss it as a family. Already they’ve let me know it seems rather obvious to them.

And maybe that’s our best hope—that young people setting off in business today will just assume capitalism can do good in the world. “Like, duh, Dad.”

I hope so. And I hope when they call my mother to tell them about their businesses, the conversation will be anything but silent.

Now to you, dear reader: Does Conscious Capitalism make sense to you? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments.)

My love is like a red, red Redouté

In the few months that have passed since we published the famous flowers of Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840), I’ve enjoyed showing this unbound book to customers and friends, untying the crème ribbon and folding open the linen panels, then asking what they imagined it cost. Their estimates are always higher—sometimes way higher—than our price, which makes me happy that such a beautiful work of art is also such a great value.

Few things are more beautiful, or fleeting, or appreciated, than fresh flowers. What human who has witnessed their beauty hasn’t wanted them to last—hasn’t wanted them to stay as dewy fresh and magical as they are at their glory? 

Redouté may be the closest yet to answering that wish—despite being 150+ years old. In our Redouté collection, we publish 128 of his flowers, gathering them loosely, like a magnificent Valentine’s bouquet, into a portfolio. 

Don Rakow at Green Cay with Redouté

Donald Rakow, the executive director of Cornell Plantations, wrote one of the introductory essays that accompany the portfolio. When Don told us he was coming to Florida to speak at the Green Cay Nature Center just a few miles from Levenger, we welcomed the chance for another conversation.

On a gloriously warm and sunny January day, Don and Mim Harrison, the editor of Levenger Press, sat on a bench overlooking the preserve and talked about the everlasting love of a Redouté rose.

Levenger Press: At Levenger we refer to Redouté as the Audubon of botanical art, since Audubon was not only a contemporary but also an admirer. As a scientist, do you find that Redouté was as rigorous as Audubon in terms of accurate portrayals?

Donald Rakow: There are three qualities that both Redouté and Audubon exhibited that unite them. The first is that they were both absolutely dedicated to anatomical accuracy. Up until this point, objects in nature were not accurately portrayed. Before Gutenberg ushered in the era of multiple copies of the same page, one monk would copy a drawing of a flower specimen, another would copy the first monk’s drawing, and so on—much like that telephone game where the message the last player hears barely resembles the message the first player sent.

Also, throughout much of the Middle Ages it was considered sacrilegious to accurately portray one of God’s objects. The botanical artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reversed this. Artists like Redouté were committed to dissecting flowers, understanding their parts, then reconstructing them on canvas.

LP: So anatomical accuracy was the first quality Redouté and Audubon shared. What was the second? 

Don: They were enamored of their subjects and dedicated to depicting them in artistically beautiful ways. Audubon would place a bird in a tree, even though he would be working with a stuffed specimen. Redouté would often combine different flowers in one illustration. 

LP: They were, in fact, equally artist and scientist. 

Don: Yes, and maybe a bit of alchemist as well. Because the third quality that united them is the most inscrutable component of all: each was able to animate his subjects so that they looked fully alive. Light, color, texture—they used all these to bring the animus to the drawing. Redouté would place dew drops on a petal, or have a butterfly alighting on the flower. Subtle elements like these were part of their magic. 

LP: As a botanist, what do you find the most striking about the Redouté prints? 

Don: They look so contemporary. They don’t look like period illustrations. There is a true universality to his work.

LP: Even with the growth of photography, Redouté’s illustrations never seem to have lost their appeal—or value. Why do you think this is? 

Don: Redouté’s pieces are so artistically beautiful that no photographer or engraver has ever been able to re-create them. Even today, in an age of computer graphics, we still value Leonardo’s hand drawings. There is an intellectual brilliance to art like this.

LP: Do botanists still hand-draw?

Don: Yes. There is an American Society of Botanical Illustrators, which recently held its national meetings at Cornell. The members are hired to illustrate scientific texts and journals. They also exhibit their work as art.

LP: Why would there still be a demand for hand-drawn illustrations?

Don: In a photograph, you’re capturing an instant. An illustration can capture the essence of that flower or fruit over the course of its life. It can show that flower in all its stages—as a bud, in full flower, in its post-flowering state.

LP: You mentioned fruit, and Redouté painted some beautiful fruits. Why is he known more for his flowers? 

Don: I think we as humans are more interested in looking at flowers than fruits. Many fruits are rather similar looking. Flowers are complex, and phenomenally varied—in their petals, their pistils, their stamens. And there is a sexual nature to flowers.

LP: How about the rose, which Redouté is so famous for: what is its enduring appeal?

Don: In part it’s the rose’s role in Victorian society, and the language the Victorians assigned to it. Many flowers were the Victorian equivalent of an emoticon. The small bouquet known as a tussy-mussy that Victorians would often give would basically tell the recipient a story, based on what flowers had been gathered. The rose always held particular meaning, with different colors signifying different emotions. A red rose signaled deep passion; a pink, less so, but still affection. A burgundy rose spoke of unconscious beauty. A lavender rose was a declaration of love at first sight.

LP: So Robert Burns’s famous line of “My love is like a red, red rose” is fraught with passion.

Don: It speaks to how easily we can anthropomorphize flowers because of our deep affection for and connection to them. Consider the number of women’s names that are based on flowers. Besides Rose, there’s Daisy, Tulip, Iris, Lily and, of course, Blossom.

 

Now to you, dear reader: We’ve found that many of our customers have had a passion for the flowers of Redouté. Are there other artists whose works draw you irresistibly? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments). And Happy Valentine’s Day!

                                                                                                     Steve

Does Hand-Writing Matter?

Now that that old bloodhound Writing-by-Hand is banished to the doghouse out back, while the twin white poodles named Tapping and Typing are on our laps at the dinner table, should we care? Is there any evidence that taking pen in hand is somehow better for thinking or remembering? At Levenger we have a dog in this fight, since we sell lots of nice writing instruments and quality paper. So I’ll admit we have a bias to seek out such evidence and share it widely.

With that confession, let me also say that we’re attempting to take a balanced look at the evidence. My biggest fear is that we jettison writing by hand on paper prematurely, without considering its benefits. And one thing is sure—we’re all falling more deeply in love with our smartphones and tablets, me included.

So I’ve asked Mim Harrison, editor of Levenger Press, to do a deep dive into the literature and write up her findings. Here is her report:

—Steve

Richard Mason’s novel The Gilded Curve: History of a Pleasure Seeker is not just a digital book; it’s a multimedia, interactive experience known as an eLumination. Tap onto an illustration of a street or building and it comes to life in video. Tap the gramophone icon (gramophone!) and it’s an audiobook, with one of the cast of Downton Abbey reading to you. Historical context of the story, set in Amsterdam in 1907, is just another tap away.

What you’re really tapping into is your imagination, in ways that an electronic platform can uniquely offer.

There’s one other button to tap, and that’s the one where this 36-year-old author tells you why he wrote his novel—by hand.

“I wanted to introduce something physical to the process,” he says in the video clip. Hand-writing, he says, “encourages concision and briskness and quickness.”

Or, as the novelist Mark Helprin  says, “a pen (somehow) helps you think and feel.”

A number of neuroscientists would agree.

It is all in your head

Humans have been writing—putting their hands to something­—since the Sumerians started chiseling away at cuneiforms around 3500 B.C.

“Handedness is uniquely human,” writes the neurologist Frank R. Wilson in his book titled, appropriately, The Hand. We humans are the only one of the evolutionary bunch to favor one hand over the other.

It’s one of those instances where saying “it’s all in your head” has more than a modicum of truth. “Any theory of human intelligence which ignores the interdependence of hand and brain function…is grossly misleading,” Dr. Wilson asserts.

Brain changer

Our brains are wired in ways not only intricate but specific. We use one set of circuits to add, for example, and a different set to subtract.

Much of this wiring begins early. At the Library of Congress’s international summit on books and literacy, Karen Keninger, the director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, stressed the importance for the blind of learning Braille when they’re young.

“It’s difficult to learn Braille as an adult because of the wiring you have to do between your hands and your brain,” said Karen (who is blind).

Occupational therapist Marion Wilm maintains on her Child and Family Development blog that children who don’t know how to hand-write are compromising the development of their fine-motor skills. These skills provide the kind of dexterity that surgeons and scientists need.

As it is with surgeons and scientists (and plumbers and mechanics), so it is with humans who write: tools matter. Picking up a pen can put in motion a different set of circuits from tapping on a keyboard.

Anne Mangen and Jean-Luc Velay, two European researchers, describe some of these different “neural pathways” in their 2010 study, “Digitizing Literacy: Reflections on the Haptics of Writing.” (Think tactile for haptics; from the Greek for to grasp.)

They cite experiments that showed how Japanese readers would use different sets of circuitry in their brains when they read two different kinds of Japanese writing, kana (used for foreign words, proper names, and grammatical elements) and kanji (which is based on older, Chinese characters).

These different neural pathways were also evident in another study the researchers cite, where some subjects hand-wrote characters and others typed them. Magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI (the f is for functional; it measures changes in blood flow in the brain) revealed that different parts of the brain kicked in, depending on whether someone was hand-writing or typing.

How, then, does this different circuitry affect how we think and remember and execute?

Write, memory

A 2010 study at Indiana University showed, again through an fMRI, that children remembered letters better when they wrote them out than when they merely studied them. Adults have been shown to respond in a similar way, particularly when learning a new set of symbols or characters.

But does hand-writing have the upper hand over typing where memory is concerned?

There is some evidence to indicate that it does.

On a keyboard or typewriter, every letter or symbol is exactly the same touch (those haptics again). With a pen or a pencil, as University of Washington educational psychologist Virginia Berninger has noted, your hand is acknowledging each stroke involved in making that symbol or character. Your brain seems to pay more attention when your hand is so invested. Her studies, often conducted with other researchers, have found that schoolchildren who hand-write have better recall.

“The physical act of writing or tracing provides an additional layer of memory,” write three other researchers from the University of Central Florida, Timothy J. Smoker, Carrie E. Murphy and Alison K. Rockwell. Hand-writing involves distinct, specific movements. Typing is the same, repetitive movement. Handwriting, say these researchers, “creates more context, thereby increasing retention.”

This results in more than simply remembering the letters you wrote. It can make you a better note-taker.

Take note

Philip Hensher, the author of The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting, is also a frequent classroom lecturer. He can tell you which students do the worst and the best in his classes:

“The students who make no record…do worst….The second worst are the ones who plonk a tape recorder on the desk….The worst ones after that are the ones who get out their laptops, and type furiously as you speak….because typing as someone talks encourages transcription without much thought.”

And the best?

“The very best students are the ones who take out a piece of paper and a pen, and write down the things that they think are interesting as you talk, making sense of it as they go.”

A 2011 study conducted by Tina Weston and Randy L. Newman at the University of Manitoba corroborates clinically what Hensher found empirically. Taking notes by typing on a laptop worked better than hand-writing notes if the students were tested immediately, but this advantage disappeared if testing was delayed.

“Handwriting,” write the Manitoba researchers, “is more likely to withstand the test of time.”

Brain craves

In a virtual world, then, there is still virtue—and value—in the physical. And, says technology forecaster Paul Saffo, “it isn’t just the ink. It’s the interaction of ink and paper and stylus.”

He is using stylus in its ancient reference to a writing utensil. But what about the new definition of stylus—the kind you use to tap an iPad and a smartphone? How will writing and learning and memory change, the more we use a 21^st-century stylus to write on a 21^st-century tablet?

In The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, author Charles Duhigg tells us that for an activity to become a habit, there must be not just a cue and reinforcement but also a craving.

Many of us came quickly to crave email, then smartphones, then e-readers and tablets. We’re teaching ourselves new habits as far as how we read as well as write. Our brains have apparently readily engaged with the digital.

So does it really matter if we no longer write by hand, even if it can be beneficial? Most of us can’t easily read Middle English, either, but we can readily find a modern-English version of The Canterbury Tales.

True. But here’s the thing: we have a unique opportunity in this decade to use both these skills, hand-writing and digital printing—whether the latter be keyboarding or texting or writing through voice-recognition software. Why not leverage all our assets? Use all of our tools—and more of our brains?

We do eventually lose the skills we don’t use. But why relinquish something that’s so easy to hold onto?

Especially since we now know that the kinesthetics of writing by hand affects how we think by brain.

“I think, therefore I am,” wrote Descartes long ago. Perhaps today he would say:

“I write, therefore I think.”

What think you?

—Mim

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Seven Practices for Finding the Time to Read

It’s easy to find more time to read: all you have to do is pick up a book you can’t put down.

Then repeat.

Sounds like I’m kidding, but I’m serious. So how do you find those books you can’t put down? Start by picking up books you think you might like, and just start reading. If you don’t love it, set it aside and try another.

Pick up enough of these candidate books, and you’ll never again have trouble finding the time to read. Unless, of course, you have to work. But at least you’ll be dying to get back to your book—and that’s the formula for a well-read life.

Moreover, it’s never been easier to find those books you think you’ll like. Here are seven practices, including both tried-and-true traditional ways as well as practices newly enabled by technology.

Practice One: Jump on your friend’s book. Friends often—although not always—love the same kind of books. When you find a friend reading something, read a few pages yourself. Reading books together is one time-tested way to get more from your reading, and from your friendships.

Practice Two: Listen to what wise readers recommend. Down through the centuries, wise young people have asked wise old people what books they have liked. This works as well now as ever, but today it’s easier because we have access to a long pantheon of greats. Here, for example, is David McCullough’s Jefferson Lecture, in which he tells us what books as a young reader led him to his calling as a historian. They are as great today, he assures us, as they ever were.

Better yet, listen to David read his 38-minute talk, and feel as though you’re at the dinner table with him.

Practice Three: Watch the movie first. At Levenger, we call these movies-to-books boovies.  Many people think they’re cheating if they don’t read the book first, but this is mistaking precedent for reason. The truth is, a movie can be a pleasing portal to the longer treatment of a book—even if the movie is bad.

Consider these facts: Most movies last about two hours and are based on a script of about 100 pages, whereas most novels are 250 to 350 pages and take from 8 to 20 hours to read. Plus, while movies excel at action and special effects of the visual kind, books allow readers to experience that unique special effect of mind reading—when the author conveys what a character is thinking.

Reading the book first can naturally have you expecting to see all the characters and scenes of the book, so it’s easy to be disappointed. A screenwriter and director must toss out whole chapters, and even characters, to create movies people want to watch.

So what if you do watch the movie first but leave the theater disappointed?

Mitchell Kaplan, the owner of Books & Books and partner in the film company Mazur-Kaplan, explains why movies often fail despite being based on a great book:

“A good movie depends both on an excellent treatment—the screenplay—and excellent execution of the movie itself. That’s very hard to do, and bear in mind that producers don’t get paid unless a movie is made, so sometimes compromises are made.”

As for the original book?

“As a matter of course, you can’t go wrong choosing a book that has been made into a film,” Mitchell says. “There is something attractive in it—story, mood, texture, a character, or the world it created.”

If you actually like the movie, it’s almost a sure bet you’ll love the book, and be richer for the double experience.

Last year saw big-budget remakes of Les Misérables and Anna Karenina plus debuts of The Hobbit and Life of Pi. This year, we’re in store for more luminous popcorn burners:

• “Ender’s Game,” based on the popular science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, starring Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley.

• “The Great Gatsby,” another filthy-rich attempt to screen The Great American Novel, this time starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, with Toby Maguire as one of the most famous narrators in literature. You can watch the trailer now. Think it will out-luster the movie made 39 years ago with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow and Sam Waterston?

“Paranoia,” based on the deliciously dark corporate espionage novel by Joseph Finder, starring Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and the very busy Harrison Ford.

What a red-carpeted year in books it promises to be.

Practice Four: Try audiobooks—again. Some people tell me they don’t like audiobooks. When I ask how many and how recently they’ve tried, I often hear they tried only one or two, and years ago. News Flash: Today’s audiobooks rock!

From their sketchy cassette-tape commercial beginnings in the 1970s, audiobooks have blossomed into beautiful art forms that garner their own awards and fan clubs for narrators. Narrators (usually stage actors) are reviewed ceaselessly by listeners, and only the great ones read today.

Audiobooks are, in my experience, best for novels, histories and narrative nonfiction. They are one of the blessings of our age—an unsurpassed way to get more books in your life. Don’t tell me you don’t like audiobooks unless you’ve tried at least three, and recently. One more thing, now that I’m lecturing: they’re not just for driving.

Check out AudioFile Magazine for award winners and reviews. Let an audiobook change your life.

Practice Five: Browse shamelessly. No bookstore, physical or virtual, will kick you out for browsing. The more books you taste, the more books you’ll eat up with gusto. Technology has paved our book streets in gold; we just have to know it.

Practice Six: See your way into books. I loved Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. But don’t take my word for it. See her TED video, which 3.5 million introverts have already quietly done.

See or hear the brilliant Steven Pinker explain his masterpiece, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, as he presents his Long Now Foundation SALT talk in San Francisco. After his presentation he’s interviewed by Stewart Brand. Wow!

Before spending hours reading Sherry Turkle’s rewarding book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, see her seven-minute interview with Stephen Colbert.

Thinking about reading Warren Buffett’s newest? Start with six minutes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Can you see yourself laughing your way into new books? I can.

Practice Seven: Listen to a podcast. Today it’s easy to download podcasts and feel as though you’re on an intimate phone call with very interesting people. Here are three of my favorites:

1. Steve Mirsky, a beloved editor at Scientific American, is like a great jazz musician: he’s a master at asking just enough of the scientists and authors he interviews, and then stepping out of the way. Listen to him interview David Quammen about his latest nonfiction thriller: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.
2. Jeff Kline interviews business leaders on the future of Conscious Capitalism (a bright future, indeed). Listen to his interview of author Cindy Wigglesworth on her new book about learning spiritual intelligence.
3. Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness—mild-mannered book salespeople by day, celestial book mavens at night. After listening to their Books on the Nightstand, you’ll want a bigger nightstand.

Okay, I’m stopping at seven. And I haven’t even mentioned book reviews, blogs, and our treasured librarians.

It may seem counter-intuitive, given that we’re trying to find more time to read, to first spend time surveying and sampling books. But remember that chefs who wish to prepare a sumptuous feast rise early and go to the farmer’s market.

So let us get our coffee or tea, my friend, and start walking the book aisles, with morning’s golden light at our backs.

And now to you, dear reader: What would you suggest for Practice Number Eight?  I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Kate DiCamillo’s mouse that soared

When author Kate DiCamillo addressed the American Booksellers Association’s award luncheon a couple years ago, I was smitten. Few authors speak as powerfully in person as on the page, and Kate is one of them. She told of how, as a young girl, she discovered books in her town’s small local bookstore, and how it changed her life forever.

Years later, Kate DiCamillo would change the lives of countless young readers herself. She did it with the help of a very small mouse.

The Tale of Despereaux is the book that not only won the most prestigious award given to children’s books—the Newbery Medal—but also gave to children and adults a story that will likely endure alongside those from Hans Christian Andersen, A. A. Milne  and E. B. White. Despereaux, you see, is a little mouse with the big ears and bigger heart who is desperate to save a princess.

Despereaux went Hollywood several years ago, with a full-length feature film from Universal Studios. In 2012, Kate and Levenger conspired to bring him into 3D as a bookend. And this bookend itself tells a story.

Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison spoke with Kate about Despereaux’s morphing from an idea in her head to an object on her shelf. Here’s their conversation: 

Levenger Press: What has it been like to have a two-dimensional mouse made into a three-dimensional bookend?

Kate DiCamillo: It is an odd and humbling thing to sit alone in a dark room in the early hours of morning and try to imagine your way into the heart and soul of a (smaller-than-average) mouse, and then to watch him come to life in so many different ways. It truly seems like a dream to me.

LP: How is it different from seeing him being made into an animated film?

Kate: There is something wonderful about being able to reach out and actually touch the top of Despereaux's head. It was grand to see him up on the screen. And it is comforting to think about having him on my bookshelf.

LP: When you’re first creating the characters for your books in your head, do you see them in 3-D?

Kate: I do!  They are whole, complete, multi-dimensional, complicated and confounding in my mind.

LP: Despereaux is a children’s book—the recipient of the Newbery Medal for children’s literature, in fact—and yet you use grown-up words like coda in it. How do you write to appeal equally to children and adults?

Kate: I just work on trying to tell the story in the best way I am able. That is, I try to get out of my own way and let the story tell me what to do.

LP: For readers who haven’t read Despereaux (cripes, as Despereaux’s brother might say), what would you want to tell them about why there’s a spool of red thread on the bookend?

Kate: Something like this: that red thread is there to remind us all that there is a way through our troubles.

LP: Your message on the bottom of the bookend says, “Reader, I hope you found some light here.” What did you mean by that?

Kate: Stories are light to me. To read a story comforts me. To tell a story comforts me. The reading and the telling both illuminate. And that is a grand, grand thing.

And now to you, dear reader: what was the book where, as a youngster, you found light and comfort? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

The whole earth, ca. 1507

If you’re a boomer like me, you may remember that high-octane java jolt when you first encountered the cover of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog from 1968. There was Earth, seen from the unearthly prospect of space, a vantage point never seen before. It was a whole new way of looking at the world. 

When I look at the two Renaissance maps we’ve just published, I wonder if those who encountered them back in the sixteenth century had a comparable shock. Because clearly, the world would never be seen in quite the same way.

The maps are two of the treasures in the Library of Congress, which was our partner in this publishing project.

The creator of the maps, a German humanist living in France named Martin Waldseemüller, is someone most of us haven’t heard of. And yet his 1507 map was the first to put the name AMERICA on a map. Even more radically, the map showed an ocean to the west of North and South America, where one had never been placed before.

His 1516 map is called the Carta marina, or “Sea chart.” It draws liberally on iconography to demonstrate that no longer would world views be guided by the guesswork of the second-century Greek cartographer Ptolemy, as all maps up to this point had been. Instead, Waldseemüller took his cues from someone who’d actually been there: Christopher Columbus.

The title of our book is Seeing the World Anew. What strikes me when I read the captivating text by John Hessler and Chet Van Duzer is how similar a time to Waldseemüller’s we now live in. It’s a much different world from 1507, of course, but comparable upheavals of the status quo and radical shifts in knowledge are taking place. Things that seemed immutable in a pre-digital world are no longer. In an era of GPS and Google maps, the creased paper map in the glove compartment from 2002 seems almost as ancient as Ptolemy.

The editor of Levenger Press, Mim Harrison, worked along with John and Chet on the making of Seeing the World Anew. Both men are cartographic scholars, and each is the authority on the map he wrote about—John on the 1507, Chet on the 1516. I asked Mim to share some of their ongoing dialogue about how Waldseemüller was able to see the world as he did.

John (L) and Chet presenting their book at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.

Levenger Press: John, you’d mentioned early in our conversations that what the 1507 World Map said about the world was the modern-day equivalent of being told there was human life on Mars. Was it because Waldseemüller showed North and South America as having an ocean on their western coasts?

John Hessler: I was really looking for a dramatic way to describe what was, essentially, a geographic revolution. The discovery of the New World, just a few years before Waldseemüller’s great map, was an event that changed the way the Old World perceived itself. It was a revolution not only of information but also of identity. No longer were the people of Europe, who of course this had the most effect on, alone. No longer did they have a special place. Waldseemüller uses both new and old information, and I think he is trying to draw a deep contrast between the geography of the ancient world as embodied by Ptolemy and that of the new discoveries. He is really trying to graphically portrait radical change.

LP: And yet nine years later, Waldseemüller essentially backpedaled on the Carta marina and did away with that western ocean. Why would he have abandoned this knowledge?

Chet Van Duzer: Two factors need to be taken into account in considering the absence of a western ocean on the Carta marina. First, in that map, Waldseemüller adopts Columbus’s view of the newly discovered lands, which is that it was part of Asia. We can see this clearly in a legend in North America, which labels that area “Land of Cuba, part of Asia.” If the newly discovered lands are part of Asia, there is no ocean between those lands and Asia. Second, in the Carta marina Waldseemüller has created a more practical map that shows the areas of the world where Europeans sailed, and where trade was conducted. Hence the long list of trade goods available in India in the lower right corner of the map. Waldseemüller’s focus on creating a more practical image of the world in the Carta marina also likely played a role in his omitting speculation about a western ocean on the map.

LP: Waldseemüller radically changed the history of how we saw the world. Why is it, then, that most of us never read of Waldseemüller in our history books?

John: One of the most exciting things about Waldseemüller’s maps is that they were very understudied as few as fifteen years ago. Almost all of the modern scholarship that has been produced on the maps has come in that time period, and we are still making new discoveries about the maps even now. There are many things that for one reason or another become canonic stories in our history, some of which are very difficult to overcome. History as a series of real acts is very complicated; the writing of it must simplify and select.

Chet: Large wall maps do not survive well over the centuries. In the case of the 1507 and 1516 maps, if copies of the maps were glued to walls like wallpaper, which is probably what Waldseemüller intended, they were destroyed during renovations. Even if they are not glued to anything, the large sheets are difficult to store, which means that they are more readily discarded. The fact that no copies of the maps were known for many years prior to the discovery in 1901 of the copies now in the Library of Congress means that these two maps were unavailable for study during the nineteenth century. I hope that Seeing the World Anew, together with the increasing scholarly and public interest in maps, will do something to make “Waldseemüller” more of a household name.

LP: One thing that’s striking on the Carta marina is the iconography that you describe so vividly in the book, and some of it is the stuff of science fiction. Doesn’t it seem ironic that this rational, scientific thinker would also believe that in certain parts of the world, there were human creatures who just inhaled the aroma of apples for sustenance and never actually ate?

Chet: Waldseemüller was dependent on the sources available to him. He made less use of Marco Polo on his 1516 map than he had on his 1507 map, perhaps because in part because he had decided that Polo was not entirely reliable. Also, he had access to accounts by more recent travelers and geographers. The information about the “monstrous races” of India that he used on the Carta marina came from Pierre d’Ailly’s Ymago mundi, which was written in about 1410, and published in the 1480s. So this information would have seemed relatively recent. It is also possible that Waldseemüller thought that the curious images of the “monstrous races” of men would help sell copies of the Carta marina.

LP: John, in your spare time, you’re an alpinist, and you’ve said that “there has always been something about a mountain that makes it appear mappable.” Waldseemüller essentially lived tucked away in the mountains in northern France. Do you think these inspired him?

John:  Our fascination with mountains and their beauty is a very modern invention. It’s most likely that in Waldseemüller’s time, these places were to be avoided. Waldseemüller did produce a map of his home region, which shows the mountains of the Vosges quite clearly. But if you look at that map closely, or at any of his other maps for that matter, there is really nothing shown happening in the mountains. It’s as if for people of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, there was really no geography going on in these places to speak of.

LP: For those of us who are new to appreciating old maps, how should we look at them in order to best enjoy them?

Chet: In making world maps during the Middle Ages or Renaissance, cartographers had much less information at their disposal than modern cartographers do. Thus, these maps contain more in the way of speculation, guesses and extrapolation, and from the cartographers themselves, more about their assumptions, cultural influences and learning. I personally enjoy looking at the  use of sources for clues about the cartographer’s character. But it is also important to mention the aesthetic qualities of maps: it is exhilarating to see the whole world at a glance, and also to be able to explore the details so easily, merely by shifting one’s eyes, without the burdens of travel. And the Waldseemüller maps are works of high art, both in their design and in the expression of that design by the cutters of the woodblocks from which the sheets were printed, that abundantly repay study.

John:  I think one must try, as best as one can (even though for historians this is pure fantasy), to put oneself in the place being mapped. Attempt to look at the conjunction between the actual landscape being mapped and the mapmaker himself, and for just a moment, try to grasp how difficult it must have been to make a map, to construct it accurately, before it was possible to get above the surface of the earth and look at it from above. Even though I have been involved with cartography, either as a mapmaker or historian for most of my adult life, I still marvel at the skill and geometric insights these early mapmakers drew from such limited information. I still wonder about what has been called the hidden fourth dimension of cartography, where the mapmaker’s mind interacts with a place, and forms a graphic and symbolic image that others can understand.

And now to you, dear reader: What has happened in your lifetime to make you see the world differently? I'd love to hear about your java-jolt moment. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you're reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments.)

15 Minutes to a More Creative You

Frankly, I was skeptical. Partly because I’ve always preferred an open sheet of paper when allowing my mind to wander, hoping to go outside the usual boxes of my thoughts in order to be creative. So my eyebrows arched when I spied Todd Henry’s structured-looking layout of shaded boxes with words like “nutshell” and “assumption” and little letters and numbers. It looks vaguely like an ancient Hopi Indian pattern. But I wanted to give him a fair test, so I read not his book, but just the short instructions that come with our new Circa Idea Book. In other words, I did just what customers would do if they were adventurous enough try this unusual new page layout. I grasped one of my favorite fine-point pens, slowed down to print my neatest, and gave it a go.  

Fifteen minutes later, I was amazed. I had written as the challenge in the center box Levenger launching a case for Apple’s rumored mini iPad (which, in our best-of-both technologies designs, would also hold paper) and have it ready for the holidays—a record development time for us. Working by Todd’s methods, I discovered that, ironically, we would have to slow way down (on some things) if we wanted to move at light speed here. But it could be done. The exercise gave me confidence to float this concept to our team, and they grasped the torch and ran it ahead. You’ll see the result soon.

So read below the interview of my new creativity guru, Todd Henry, as he spoke with Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison: 

Levenger: Is there really such a thing as creativity on demand?

Todd Henry: There is no formula for creativity, and there’s no “magic bullet” that will ensure great ideas when you need them. There are, however, practices that can better position you to have the energy, focus, and time you need to zero in on a problem effectively, and to be able to recognize a great idea when it appears. The punch line of the book is that if you want to be brilliant at a moment’s notice, you need to begin far upstream from the moment you need a brilliant idea. My goal is to help people experience more frequent moments of serendipity because they’ve instilled purposeful structure around their creative process.

Levenger: You have a three-part formula for creativity: prolific + brilliant + healthy. Many of us would say it’s easier to be healthy than prolific and brilliant.

Todd: I think it depends on your organization. There is an expectation in many companies that you will be prolific and brilliant, regardless of what it costs you. My argument is that this is not a sustainable way to exist as a creative professional, and that if you ignore the healthy piece of the equation, you’ll eventually be less capable of producing great work consistently.

The path to getting all three (prolific + brilliant + healthy) is to structure your life in such a way that you’re prepared for the demands of the create-on-demand world and better positioned to have ideas when you need them most. This means establishing practices that support and fuel your creative process, rather than expecting creativity to happen in the cracks and crevices of your already-busy life.

Levenger: You recommend that people keep weekly, monthly and quarterly checkpoints. How do these help keep us on creative track?

Todd: Over time, the problems we need to solve change, but we love to develop permanent solutions to temporary problems. Those once helpful, but now obstructive, solutions become residue that we have to navigate every time we tackle a project. Having frequent checkpoints in your life to think about the best way to approach your work, and to re-commit to practices that unleash your creativity, is the best method I’ve found for staying purposeful about work instead of slipping into drone mode.

Levenger: One piece of advice you give is “don’t be a cover band.” What does that mean?

Todd: Cover bands are bands that play other people’s music. They earn their living by imitating what others have already made. Many cover bands enjoy a run of success, but because they haven’t developed a unique voice or a platform for their own music, they’re quickly forgotten when a better cover band comes along. I see a similar thing happening a lot in the marketplace. There are individuals and companies that are quick to jump on the latest fad or to imitate what is popular, but there’s a kind of shallowness to their work because it’s not rooted in something authentic and unique to them.

One of the most poignant thoughts about this came from the twentieth-century mystic and monk Thomas Merton. He wrote, “Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such a hurry to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves.” We need to take the time to allow our voice to develop, which means being purposeful about how we engage our work, trying to add value, and not settling for shortcuts.

Levenger: At a time when digital dominates, why did you want to create a physical notebook for budding accidentals to use?

Todd: Digital tools are helpful for so many things, but often “soft connections” are lost when they’re not worked out in a physical space. By “soft,” I mean connections between concepts that may not be apparent on the surface because the concepts aren’t directly adjacent, but that become intuitive over time.

By working on a problem on a sheet of paper, you have every possibility in front of you and are more likely to notice connections that could be lost in the digital ether. Additionally, something about the tactile nature of pen on paper seems to root the mind in the problem at hand.

Levenger: What do you feel is the most helpful element of your Circa notebook?

Todd: Most great creative ideas are the “smashing together” of existing concepts into something new. The Circa Idea Book is designed to help people play with ideas and concepts and see connections they may not have otherwise noticed. By engaging in free association, they will look for solutions in places they otherwise wouldn’t, and will increase their chances of generating more novel ideas.

Levenger: What’s been your most creative thought today?

Todd: If all goes as planned, I haven’t had it yet.

Now to you, dear reader: What’s been your most creative thought today? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments). And if you decide to own Todd’s Circa Idea Book, come back to the same question and see how you answer it then.

Turning the Page on How We Read

While sitting in a waiting room recently, I observed an elderly couple, both reading on e-readers. The man tilted his head toward the woman and asked, “What percent are you?”

“Fifty-two,” she said.

“Eighty-five,” he responded.

For this baby boomer, born in the middle of the last century, it’s disconcerting to lose such basic navigational aids as page numbers. The electronic reading storm has cut their cables, setting proud old page numbers adrift, sinking to the bottom or wallowing in the currents, destined to be cast up on some distant shore called long ago.

Will page numbers even be denied their traditional role in footnotes?

As I write this, I am gazing at a handsome hardcover of The Iliad resting rather weightily on my desk, admiring its glossy black dust jacket with its elegant gold type, the black ribbon bookmark extending languidly from its creamy pages. I have not read the print version but have listened to the audio recording. So come to think of it, percentage might be more relevant than page numbers here as well.

My copy of the Iliad

I felt particularly justified in listening to this great work, since it was originally oral and was committed to writing only when it was already an old story. Today, owning the printed version is an affordable luxury I indulge in—and there is no better way to dip into its river of thought than to leaf through its beautiful pages.

But getting back to that couple in the waiting room—it’s actually a marvelous thing that two people can so easily read a book together. Of course, we could do this when books were limited to print, but it wasn’t common. Both readers could have their own copy. Or they could share one. A few years back during a plane trip, I watched as a couple read together. The man ripped his paperback in half and gave the first half to his wife. (Even I, who likes to get physical with books, was a bit disturbed by that move.)

For years I’ve asked people what they’re reading; these days, I’m also asking how they’re reading. I’ve been hearing some intriguing things.

Virtual book tastings

One woman, who has always been an avid reader, told me she reads even more books now just because it’s so easy to get new books on her e-reader.

And e-readers do appear to be causing a growth spurt in reading. The Association of American Publishers reports that in 2010, when e-readers were gaining traction, the market for trade books in all reading formats grew nearly six percent from 2008, to $13.94 billion.

Most of us have had the experience of just finishing a book and not wanting to say goodbye. Now, with a few clicks, we can be reading another book by that author in minutes. What’s not to love?

I asked another reader whether he consults The New York Times bestsellers list in choosing his books. He looked at me as if I were a simpleton.

“Oh, the Times is way behind,” he explained. “I see what’s popular online and read a sample for free. And besides, there are all these really cheap books available that are great reads.”

Sampling books with ease may be my favorite aspect of electronic books. When I wrote The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: How to get more books in your life and more life from your books back in 2004, I encouraged people to sample many books and be willing to put them aside. I explained the 50-page rule—that is, give it 50 pages and then give it the heave-ho if it doesn’t hold your interest.

Too many readers are still stymied by the clean-your-plate mentality—a feeling of guilt if they give up on a book. But I say, if you’re not giving up on at least 10 books a year, you’re not sampling enough—not truly opening up yourself to your rich inheritance as a reader that awaits you. Electronic books make sampling marvelously easy (although now we’ll have to substitute a 15 percent rule for the 50-page).

In an ingenious reversal of showrooming (that practice of walking into stores to touch the merchandise, only to go home and order online), I heard from one man who says he samples books at Amazon, decides what he wants, and then walks into his bricks-and-mortar bookstore to buy the print versions.

The books (still) on the bookshelf

Another blessing of electronic books is that they have solved the space problem. And I’m not referring to the advantage of taking an e-reader on vacation instead of a satchel full of books; I’m talking about your home library.

In the print era, many book lovers only with regret culled books from their library. “I can’t add a book unless I’m willing to give one up,” lamented Stanley Marcus when we visited his elegant home in Dallas years ago. And he had a huge library, amassed over his long, well-read life.

But now that we can keep track of what we’ve read in a virtual library, such as Good Reads,  Library Thing or Shelfari, we can also keep our notes on those books in the bookish cloud, and see them on our virtual shelves; it doesn’t hurt so much to say goodbye to some of the ones less important to us.

Besides, if you ever wanted a printed copy again, you could easily find it—a blessing we now take for granted in our post-Internet world.

One of the very best practices for a well-read life is to avidly build a library of books you might like to read—your Library of Candidates, as I call it. It allows you to make better choices of the right book for you to read right now, and helps ensure that you can always be in book love.

With electronic access, you don’t have to actually buy these books ahead of time and have them on your shelf, beckoning to you (although it’s a sweet luxury if you have the space for it). Instead, you can depict them in your electronic library—your wish library—and then get them virtually in your hands in minutes. How heavenly.

So today you can, with an easy mind, fill your home library of printed books with only your very favorites. Today we can each build a privately curated museum of printed treasures.

Making your mark (because it matters)

Leaving footprints in the Iliad

I realize many people are still reluctant to write in their books—Preservationists, I call them, as opposed to Footprint Leavers, like myself.  I say: bless you, Preservationists, for your thoughtfulness in imagining that someone else may want to read your book in its original condition someday. But I urge you to turn the page on that particular noble sentiment; with eBooks, people can always read unmarked books.

Instead of showing what Anne Fadiman calls courtly love, indulge in her carnal love. Get physical with your physical books—mark them boldly with your name and quirky marginalia; add the dates of when you read your books and where. Upon review, these marks will bring your reading experience rushing back to life and help you retain what you wish to hold in your mind and heart.

My personel Iliad time capsule

Interleave ephemera such as ticket stubs to the movie adaptation. Tuck printouts of emails you exchanged on the book, or your own typed review, inside the dust jacket (which makes such a nice little folder). Your hardcover books become personal time capsules—compact, beautiful, and lasting.

Know that it’s your personal marks in your books that not only make your book a unique artifact for your own enjoyment, but for the enjoyment of your family members who may outlive you, and for your grateful descendants.

The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

In his award-winning history The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Stephen Greenblatt tells the story of how a canny librarian purchased a marked-up, 1563 Latin edition of On the Nature of Things for a few hundred pounds. When the librarian’s hunch proved correct, the value of the book, both monetarily and historically, was immense. That marked-up book was none other than Montaigne’s personal copy.

Of course, most of us will not be historical figures, but we are beloved by our own families, and especially by our survivors. Let’s give them something to talk about—hidden inside the cherished antiques your hardcovers will become.

Support what you love

Printed books are declining faster than any projections, according to a major book printer. Bowker Market Research reports that the market share for hardcovers dropped from 46 percent in 2009 to 39 percent in just two years.  By the first quarter of 2012, eBooks had racked up more than $30 million more in sales than printed books, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal: $282 million for e, $250 million for p.

So vote with your dollars and buy hardcover editions of the books you care about most—for the same reason we should send handwritten notes via first-class mail: to support the commercial arts we love. In the words of author Lynn Twist, “what we appreciate, appreciates.”

Besides, what do you actually own with an eBook? Not the book. That hardcover, on the other hand, is yours to hold and love and hand down.

At a dinner party last week, my table mate was telling me about a toddler she saw who ambled up to a coffee table book and swiped her finger gently on the page in an attempt to make it turn.

Will we have to teach new generations what pages were, the way we wonder how buttonhooks worked? When we say to a group of young people, “Let’s all get on the same page here,” will they gaze back with a quizzical look?

Call me romantic, but I hope the page metaphor will linger. After all, we still speak of turning down the lights (harkening back to gaslight, I suppose) and dialing phone numbers.

But it’s not just the metaphor of the page that I hope will live on. Like The Iliad, some pages—physical, bound, well-turned and even annotated—still belong on our bookshelves.

How about you, dear reader? How are you reading now? What observations can you share with me? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you’ll connect to Comments).

All aboard to Key West: the true tale that reads better than fiction

Here’s the plot line: One of the richest men of the Gilded Age decides to build a railroad through hundreds of miles of Florida coastline, creating luxury hotels along the route, then go one better by taking his train across hundreds of miles of water. He would take it to the place where America either begins or ends, depending on how you set your compass: Key West.

An impossible feat, he was assured. Advice he would wisely—or not—ignore.

This is the true tale of what Henry Flagler, the man who made John D. Rockefeller and himself Croesus-rich through Standard Oil, determined to do in the early 1900s. Ask a Conch, a native of the Florida Keys, about Flagler’s Over-Sea Railroad, and he or she may tell you where you can still see some of the grandly arched bridges, or how to find the one work camp still standing.

But for most of us—even those of us who have lived in Florida awhile—the story was unknown until Les Standiford decided to tell the tale. His book, Last Train to Paradise, first appeared in 2002, sold some 200,000 copies and this year was selected for Palm Beach County Reads. 2012 makes the one-hundredth anniversary of the completion of Flagler’s impossible dream.

Les is a longtime Miamian, a captivating novelist, and a brilliant non-fiction storyteller whom I’m honored to call a friend. He has, in fact, agreed to inscribe copies of the centennial edition of Last Train for Levenger customers. (If you hurry, you can get one inscribed for Father’s Day.) 

Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison just finished reading this edition. She talked with Les about his writing of the feat once known as Flagler’s Folly. Come sit in on the conversation.

—Steve

Levenger Press:  There is much talk these days about enhanced eBooks, where videos and other links are embedded in the electronic book. I found reading your centennial print edition just as satisfying because of the preponderance of maps and vintage photos. Maybe more so, because of the immersive experience that print books engender. How did these old photographs influence you as you were writing the story?

Les Standiford: When I am writing, I am pretty much living inside my head, reinhabiting my own memories, and imagining being in another time and place. To me the archival photographs are an interesting complement to the words in the book, but to tell you the truth, I sought out most of them after the book was finished. I think some of the photographs are really spectacular illustrations of places and people referred to in the narrative, but what primarily influenced me during the writing were the written accounts of workers, storm survivors, Keys residents, etc.

LP: Even though many people who’ve been to Key West find it paradisiacal, did you intend your title of Last Train to Paradise to have a certain irony?

Les: Not really. While I understand the laments of some who have witnessed the T-shirtification of Duval Street over the past decades, there is no erasing the essential physical beauty of Key West. I think the enduring appeal of the book is attributable to the fact that most visitors still find the Keys and Key West a paradise.  

LP: That famous Key West resident, Ernest Hemingway, makes a cameo appearance in your book. Why do you think he never wrote a story that brought in the building of the Over-Sea Railroad?

Les: That's an interesting question. I can only guess that it is because Hemingway was never much of an historical novelist and was always drawn to subjects that he had personally experienced. He wrote powerful journalistic accounts of the demise of the railroad in the hurricane of 1935, but even that never turned up in the fiction so far as I am aware. An interesting modern-day novel that uses the ‘35 storm and references the Over-Sea Railroad is The Cypress House, by Michael Koryta.

LP: You knew the general story before you started your writing. What were the biggest surprises as you got into your research?

Les: For one thing, I did not realize that Henry Flagler had been the number 2 man in the making of Standard Oil. And I had no idea, really, of the immensity and difficulty of building that railroad across the water, nor did I really appreciate the terror of the night the Labor Day storm swept across the Matecumbes [Keys]. Researching and writing the book made me appreciate this aspect of history—and history in general—far more than I ever had. Trying to recreate such events with the same force and power that I have always tried to bring to my fiction has made me a better writer and a more fully informed person.

LP:  If Last Train were a movie, who would be the stars (other than Key West herself, of course)?

Les: Another interesting question. Maybe George Clooney as Flagler and Johnny Depp as Theodore Roosevelt, Flagler's arch-enemy. Kate Winslet for Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, and Charlize Theron for Ida Alice Shourds Flagler. Robert Downey as Hemingway. Roll ‘em!

Now to you, dear reader—have you been to Key West, and had you heard about the Over-Sea Railroad? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).