Well-Read Life™

A Reader’s ThinkAbout, or: What’s your verb?

Our good friend Andrea Syverson has just come out with her second engaging book for businesses that want to boost their brands, called ThinkAbout. In it she encourages companies to think about how different verbs can help them better define who they are.

Andrea is also an avid reader whom I featured in my first book, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life. Levenger Press Editor Mim Harrison talked with Andrea about how thinking in verbs can help us get deeper into books.

                                                                    -                 Steve

Levenger Press: We readers often describe ourselves through adjectives---serious, avid,
incurable, inveterate. Are we missing something by not being verbivores?

Andrea Syverson: I love the idea of readers as verbivores! Indeed, those adjectives capture the voracious personalities of readers, but verbs really illuminate what readers feel when they immerse themselves into their books. Depending on the stack of books I am enveloped in at any one time, I can be provoked, encouraged, comforted, confirmed, educated and/or nurtured by what I am reading. I love the diversity of experiences between books, and it’s why I keep that “library of candidates” Steve talks about around me at all times. As a verbivore, my reading appetite is constantly changing, which I imagine is true for many avid readers (those adjectives again!).

LP: Do active or passive verbs come to mind when you think about reading?

Andrea: Reading is so very active. In my mind, the only passive thing about it is the prone position you are often in as you engage with the book. William Styron wrote, “A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” Isn’t that just so true? I also find myself communicating with the writer as I underline phrases in the margins, or ink in exclamation points, or ponder with question marks.When we read actively,we befriend the writer.

LP: What are your top five picks for reading verbs?

When I thinkabout all the types of books that I enjoy—literary fiction, memoir, business, creativity and spirituality—my verbs would include inspire, imagine, grow, challenge and luxuriate. I read to learn and to dream, but I also read to savor. I love diving deeply into new worlds and participating in new experiences that transcend the everyday. But reading actively can also mean slowing down the reading process, which I do at the end of many books because I simply do not want them to end. It’s a lot like a great travel experience—we may be, as Styron says, slightly exhausted at the conclusion of a book, but we’re also thrilled to have partaken in such a rich experience.

LP: Louis L’Amour has that famous quote, “Read, read, read. Do, do, do.” How do you connect the two?

Andrea: Reading prompts me. As I read about an issue and become educated, I am compelled to turn that knowledge into action. Sometimes that action is simply sharing what I’ve read with others in conversations; other times it’s much more assertive, like becoming personally involved in creating change or donating to a particular charity. Books change us, motivate us, compel us. I am so grateful to
authors who open my heart.

LP: What book has had that kind of effect on you?

Andrea: Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, opened my eyes and heart to the devastating trauma of human trafficking. Their book, in turn, started a global movement to prompt change. Reading is both educational and  inspirational, but it can also be an impetus for good.

LP: A recent study found a link between a person’s capacity to empathize and reading literary fiction. Does this surprise you?

Andrea: “Empathize” is another great reading verb. We only get one set of personal experiences in this life, so we cannot possibly understand all that others may go through in the course of their lives. Reading expands our world of understanding both joys and sorrows we may not have experienced ourselves. I have often learned as much from characters in beautifully written literary fiction as I have through memoir and nonfiction.

LP: What characters were your teachers?

Andrea: There are so many literary fiction characters that have been my teachers…both teaching me how not to be, and inspiring me how to be. Characters like the ones Elizabeth Strout created in Olive
Kitteridge, or Lisa See wrote about in Shanghai Girls. Jane Hamilton and Oscar Hijuelos are two other writers who have given me the gift of empathy. It’s as if they hold a mirror up to our souls through their characters and draw us into their lives—even if their worlds are far from our own. I believe writers can sometimes get closer to emotional truths in this genre. And, as a reader, I may be able to absorb these truths in story form more profoundly, too. Perhaps this is like a reader’s version of Daniel Goleman’s EQ, or Emotional Intelligence—RQ, for Reading Intelligence. Learning life lessons through the literary characters we read about helps our own development.

                                                                                                -         Andrea

And so to you, dear reader: something to ThinkAbout…and SmileAbout. What’s your reading verb? 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).

Letters from Camp

“Today was very long and a month of camp is a little overkill. It is almost triple the time we were here last and I miss you so much it’s hard to stand one day. I know it’s for my own good though. And if you can please send me my flashlight and a big blanket. I just can’t wait till this whole month is over. Gosh I just miss you so much I have tears in my eyes sometimes. So say hi to the poochi for me!” 

Recently I read through the decade-old letters from camp that our sons wrote to Lori and me. It brought home just how important those letters—and the paper that conveys them—can be. When they were written, those notes looked like ugly ducklings. With the passage of time (and the proliferation of email and texting), they have become beautiful swans.

"Well I’ve been getting a lot of reading done I finished Catcher in the Rye & I also finished the book about Lance Armstrong but Im having a hard time getting into to kill a mockingbird. Its starting slow and kinda written weird for example instead of saying someones young they say 'he is 5 years to my junior' so I don’t think I’ll like it as much. My councelor Mattt said I can write short letters to you & he will type them up & email them for me.”

(How glad Lori and I are that the letters home were improved by neither man nor machine.)

Letters from camp often contain an extra helping of feelings. As parents, we can be granted a window into our children’s trials and triumphs as described by them, not as seen by us. Camp contains more physical challenges, more encounters with nature, more connections with strangers, more raw contact with the world—in short, more life. It is a time of separation and often homesickness, but also of coming of age.

Parents, for their part, are also coming of age, often with their first experiences as empty-nesters. For the first time, they may be composing paragraphs to their children. In our family, in fact, our two young campers received letters from two generations of parents.

“Hope you’re having fun. We haven’t rented out your room yet…. What’s it like with 6 people sleeping in one room? In some countries families live like that every day.”

Letter to her 9-year-old camper from his mother, Lori Leveen

“I received your letter the day after I wrote mine. You sure do have a full schedule--make sure you leave time for drinking, smoking and gambling.”

Letter to his 13-year-old camper from his grandfather Len Leveen

Letters to and from camp can become some of the most meaningful communications families record. Pressed into these papers from Highlander Camp is the childish shape of our sons’ handwriting and the pause, signaled by different inks, as they resumed writing after a visit to the dining hall.

The envelopes, stamped and addressed in their mother’s handwriting, show the letter-writing training wheels she supplied. The faded postal cancellations provide the dates our sons didn’t think to add, and the hastily torn-open envelopes show the young parents we were, too impatient to reach for a letter opener.

Facebook photos and YouTube videos can give us precious memories, too, so very much easier to share this instant. But original physical documents are something worth hanging on to—not just the artifacts, but the practice.

I hope children and their parents keep the tradition going far into this century.

If you have a favorite handwritten letter from camp, I’d love to share it here. 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).

Today’s Carbon Paper: It’s Probably in Your Pocket or Bag Right Now

In my old paper files, pre-1983, I have some artifacts not seen much since: genuine carbon copies. For those younger than 40, that little abbreviation of cc, ever-present in email options, may only be a computer field for copying someone. But for those of us who used typewriters, we remember actual carbon copies: those often smudged and shadowy paper copies of our originals.

In the mid-1980s, when the personal computer arrived on the scene, it became as easy to print two copies as one. The once-ubiquitous carbon paper—that tissue-thin, inky paper you’d insert between two sheets of paper—began its slide into obscurity.

Not that I care. I miss the old carbon paper about as much as I miss leaded gas and powdered milk.

But today there’s a new carbon paper—of sorts. It’s called your smartphone.

Sharing a letter through a snapshot

Today most correspondence takes place virtually, through email, electronic greeting cards, Facebook and its kin. But still there are times when many of us want to connect on a more physical level, putting pen to paper and paper in  hands. Happily, digital technology can now help us gain more from our heritage technologies of paper and ink, and savor them in new ways. Lately I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a picture on my iPhone of my handwritten notes before I seal them in an envelope. I arrange a little still life, with the addressed envelope, the note itself, my pen, and whatever else nearby catches my eye. I create a montage of the moment, a snapshot of my letter just before it begins its physical journey to its destiny.

Later, if I hear from the recipient that he or she enjoyed the card, I can call up my photo from my pocket and revisit with accuracy what I wrote, and zoom in to see whether I signed off with “Yours” or “Your fan” or “Love.”At other times, the letter deserves to be shared with a mutual friend so that three of us can enjoy a moment.

The digital carbon copies on my smartphone allow me this rewarding ritual in my life and set in motion a positive feedback loop that has resulted in my hand-writing more notes, and with more enthusiasm.

Here are some examples:

   

In a switch, I’ve also taken photos of cards I’ve received to share with others. For example, we received a sweet little thank-you for a donation that my father made in person to a small library in Florida. I sent the photo to my father just moments after I opened the letter in my office. My father enjoyed it moments later.

Here’s the card:

A picture that’s worth its words

Last year, in response to my blog on the satisfaction of forcing your mind to recall trivia rather than Googling, I received a most unusual gift.

I had used the example of not being able to remember the name of a particular actor. In a show of remarkable generosity, one of the readers of that blog, the autograph dealer Ron Weeks, sent me a photograph of the actor, Alec Guinness, along with his signature—both beautifully matted in blue and ready for framing. I decided to send Ron our book on Thoreau in return.

Before I sent Ron the book and my note, I took this photo on my phone:

In this one photo are both gifts and both letters—far beyond the carbon-paper capabilities of yore.

Creating an artful photo is layering art upon art, and can become a rewarding ritual in itself.

Have I inspired you to take carbon-copy photos of your handwritten notes? If so, please post your photo to our Facebook page and the rewards might multiply.

And if you’re inspired to send an actual handwritten card to me, I’ll write back. But before I drop my return letter in the post office box, I’ll shoot a photo of our correspondence.

I look forward to reading, and viewing, your notes very soon.

Steve Leveen

Levenger

420 S. Congress Avenue

Delray Beach, FL 33445

Tell me what you hold dear

Special message to all who commented on this blog through May 19 (thank you!). We have selected six winners of our Holding Dear contest (see the announcement on our Facebook page). But we were so moved by these many entries, we wanted to find a way to thank each one of you. So I would like to extend to all who sent in their story this special offer. If you would like to purchase a copy of Holding Dear, take $10 off the purchase price, May 21 through May 27. (This applies to new purchases only.) Just enter code HDBLOG at checkout. Click here to go to the Holding Dear page. With my thanks, best wishes, and admiration. —Steve

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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

 

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).

Best 12 tech gifts from Levenger, and why they’re doubly good

It’s the holidays, so forgive me as I swing into full Merchant Mode. But I just have to tell you why I’m excited about technology gifts from Levenger that give you more. We call them BOB-Tech, which is our shorthand for Best-of-Both Technologies: thoughtful marriages of high and heritage technology, where electronics come together with the venerable technologies of paper, pen or textile, to work smarter for you.

On the high tech side: the power to search, explore, share. On the heritage tech side: the invitation to reflect, immerse, contemplate. As important as it is to connect and be social, it’s also vital to disconnect and be personal. We use our brains best when we do both. This is the digital life that Levenger is committed to bringing you.

So here are my favorite BOB-Tech gifts that I think will help bring out the best in you and your loved ones:

A stylus fit for pen connoisseurs. The result of a year of serious R&D gave birth to our hefty L-Tech stylus pen. It plays both ends of the digital domain beautifully. One end is a replaceable stylus for your tablet or iPhone. The other is a fine writing instrument of your choice—fountain pen, rollerball or the smaller, sleeker, yet still weighty ballpoint.

Passport and iPhone 5 at the ready. Customers have pinned 5 stars on our Pocket Briefcases with their 3x5 note cards since the last century. Our new International Phone-Pocket version holds an iPhone 5 (and earlier models), a passport, plus those ever-handy cards for instant hard copy.

Lab book meets iPad, in leather. In this luscious folio, the familiar composition/laboratory notebook gets a high-Q facelift with archival-quality paper that’s sewn in for greater durability. In the accordion pouch goes your iPad, Nook or Kindle.

Bomber Jacket mission: shield your iPad. Rugged Bomber Jacket leather means plenty of pleasing padding for your iPad, plus room for a small notepad.

See, scroll, write: eyeglasses, smartphone, pen. Our Blink & Ink Phone Holder holds all three of these important, often interdependent, tools. (And yes, the iPhone 5 fits.)

The case for a larger phone case (to fit some notes, of course). The iPhone 5 fits here as well, with room to spare for some 3x5 note cards and pen. The Bomber Jacket leather is a customer favorite.

iPad in a pocket. This pocket being our popular Pocquettes protective case. Santa’s elf has tucked an earbud holder inside.

Free to write on paper and work on iPad. Do them side by side in our Freeleaf folio, which works for right hand or left.

Circa and iPad: two icons of BOB-Tech, together at last. Circa, our award-winning note-taking system, is the physical embodiment of the virtual: eminently flexible and movable, amazingly changeable and rearrangeable. It has the brain of pixels and the soul of paper. Pair it with your iPad and productivity wins.

Where to park your minis. Whether it’s the iPad Mini, Kindle, Kobo or Nook, park it on our teeny-tiny Thai Pad. The design harks back centuries, and it’s made by hand by Thai village women. For their big brothers, get the full-size Thai Pad.

How to hug an iPad. Snuggle it in one of our soft bookrest pillows, the Bouclé iPad Pillow or the India Cloud Kantha Pillow.

The 16th-century GPS.  How do you map the world even though you can’t see it from above? Witness the extraordinary technology that resulted in the first map to name America as well as the first nautical map of the world. Both maps were created by hand, using woodblocks, but it’s thanks to high-resolution digitizing and hyperspectral images that we can experience it. Not available as an e-book, and when you hold this beautiful book, you’ll see why. It’s the heritage view of Seeing the World Anew.

Tell me, dear reader: are you a devotee of Best-of-Both Technology? How does BOB-Tech work for 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).

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).

Have yourself a Google-less Christmas

Have you ever wanted to Google something and not done it just to see if you could remember? Recently I couldn’t remember the name of a famous actor. I’d even read his memoir, which I could visualize: on the white dust jacket was his black silhouette ambling away with a cane. The title of the book (ironically) was My Name Escapes Me, and he starred in that famous movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. I was frustrated with myself, feeling my brain going to mush, so I refused to pick up my phone or ask anyone. I believed I would remember with enough attempts and decided to let my brain struggle. Three or four times I thought on it.

Then, on the morning of the third day, after my first cup of coffee, it suddenly snapped in—Alec Guinness! Reflexively I seized the dome of my head with my right hand and beamed my biggest smile. It felt so good!

Will the neuroscientists in the room please explain this?

Don’t we all delight in the ease we now have to find facts? Yet does this also give us a renewed appreciation for how good it can feel when you make your mind do its own internal search?

Likewise, mobile, virtual gaming is exploding in popularity. An estimated xxxx million people (I would tell you how many, but I’d have to Google it) the world over now play mobile games, mainly by tapping the tips of their fingers on small glass screens. There’s no arguing how captivating these games can be, yet should they also give us a renewed appreciation for how good it can feel to play with our full hands as we manipulate real, three-dimensional objects?

We believe so.

That’s why here at Levenger we’ve been elfishly busy all year developing this season’s harvest of heritage gaming technology to delight your senses.

They are designed to connect mind and hand, and to activate connections between generations. Go ahead and Google, but not all the time. Play, also, with your full human, physical powers to connect with your loved ones, and yourself.

I love our Shut the Box,  Game Room in a Box, Domino-a-Go-Go  and Solitaire Times Two for the warm wood they put in your hand. The same is true of the Mancala game, which I also like because of its ancient origins that still connect us after all these years.

Even our puzzles—one of a Churchill painting, the other of a 14^th-century illuminated manuscript—are all wood, with the images created on archival paper.

I’d like to be like the Ghost of Christmas Present, invisibly watching generations old and young as they banter and tease and guess the answers in our Dickens Christmas Carol board game. (If you want a not-so-unfair advantage, read this edition of the book first. Some of the multiple-choice answers are found in the introduction…and would be hard to find even on Google.)

After hearing David McCullough say that he doesn’t write histories or biographies but rather, he tells a story, I want to better appreciate the storyteller’s craft. So I’m going to try out my storytelling skills using our Scheherazade Storytelling Game.

Tell me, dear reader, have you recently decided not to Google? Can you share a story of renewed appreciation for your full human capabilities? 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).

Giving Thanks

“Still must I very thankful be

For things that are a part of me.”

—E.B. White, 1926

 

Still, in this twenty-fifth year of Levenger,

I am so very thankful for what is

so much a part of me—

you, our customer.

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

Steve