Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Books are tightly wrought arguments borne of a single mind. When two people have read the same book, they have a touchstone. It is a shared experience. Few things compare to the touchstone power of a book.

It takes a single mind thousands of hours to produce a book.  The book is a compressed spring. It is potential energy. When it is read, the ideas are sprung, the energy is unleashed. This is the inherent power of a book.

What other touchstones do we have that contain so much power? What do we experience quickly that lasts, and lasts?

The Olympics. The moon landing. A presidential election. (Also: terrible events that stop a country cold – Katrina, 9-11, Oslo, the Haiti earthquake).

To reach olympic-level athleticism, a competitor must invest thousands of hours in personal training. The resulting performance packs that same punch. The storm cell, brewing. The sprinter, toning muscle. The madman, plotting. The author, writing. Thousands of hours, all compressed into a single experience. Some for good, some otherwise.

Books are vessels of compressed time.

The Submersible. On your kindle. Flabbergasting!

Click the picture to get it:

I wrote this article for Flavorwire about two books that take full advantage of their paper natures.  I’m not against the e-reader.  It serves a good purpose in information delivery.  But sometimes a story needs paper.  Tree of Codes and House of Leaves are two books that don’t properly translate into an electronic medium.

(photo courtesy of Visual Editions)

Lane Smith illustrated Stinky Cheese Man (one of my favorite children’s books). His latest work pits a book-reading Monkey against a laptop-using Jackass.  This 1-minute book trailer says it all:

Lane Smith is interviewed by the Wall Street Journal here.