Third Entry for From-The-Stacks

Formal Entry for From-The-Stacks Challenge (#3)
The Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World

Title: The Splendor of Letters
Author: Nicholas A. Basbanes
Publication Data: 2003 (original publication in hardcover); 2004 (trade paper); [See information at LibraryThing]
Length: 442 pages
Category: Non-Fiction

Summary: Basbanes completes the trilogy he began with Gentle Madness and Patience & Fortitude. I believe Basbanes' ultimate intent in writing this book was to emphasize the importance of the printed volume in communicating human constructs of self and culture to later generations and make clear his concern that, were we to lose the printed book by embracing too rapidly the digital information environment, we would incur great loss for future readers, scholars and researchers. The blurb on his website indicates that the text focuses on the "efforts to preserve books and other printed matter from the ravages of deterioration, destruction and obsolescence" while a review quoted from the Washington Post indicates, "Basbanes focuses on the transmission of texts, whether on clay tablets or compact discs, and ranges up and down history. He discusses University Microfilms, the Warburg Institute, the deacessioning of books from libraries, acidic paper, the need for new editions of classics, archival storage, e-books and much else." He writes well, and I found the book to be instructive even as it irritated me because Basbanes addresses all but one of the most significant issues facing the institutions he praises and criticizes. Libraries, museums and archives are resource-intensive operations whether you're discussing staffing, operations, or public access. Basbanes never discusses how we're to pay for all of this; he only notes that it is worth paying for.

Extract: (Selected at random) "Written in black ink with a split-reed pen on sections of bark that had been glued together to form long strips, the fragments, sixty altogether, represent about twenty-five texts, including some sermons of Siddhartha Gautama, the religious philosopher and sage known as the Buddha, who died about 485 B.C. The texts are thought to have belonged to a long-lost sect that dominated the region of Gandhara two thousand years ago, and helped to bring the religion derived from Buddha's teachings into central and east Asia from India, where it has since disapppeared. Pushing back the calendar as far as possible is of particular significance since so much of Buddha's instructions were memorized by his disciples and passed on orally for close to five hundred years before being written down in the first century B.C." (page 55, Chapter 2, Editio Princeps).

He writes with complex sentence structures and with incidental detail crammed in. Appropriate to the thoughtful reader who is actually considering his arguments, but apt to slow someone lacking background in the field.

Also Relevant: This book seemed dreadfully one-sided to me. Of course, anyone with an interest in books recognizes that they represent a specific experience for the user not found in any other format. Electronic full text downloaded in PDF file format from Google Books just doesn't offer anything like the experience of a leather-bound edition of an old favorite like Rebecca or Don Quixote. Basbanes' discussion of the importance of the book as historical record as well as cultural artifact is absolutely on target. But preserving and archiving physical artifacts takes a *lot* of money -- money for expertise, money for storage space and proper environmental control, money for mounting public exhibitions and other forms of public access. Libraries, museums and archives would gladly provide all of those services but right now, money for these institutions is largely an issue. Budgets are tight. Basbanes takes private and public institutions to task throughout the text for discarding or selling off portions of their collections but never recognizes the economic constraints that put the institution in that unfortunate situation. He seems to think that de-accessioning books is a wicked, thoughtless activity. He seems to suggest instead that librarians and archivists should carefully preserve and provide access to everything, just because the published work exists and because some day someone might have an interest in it. He finds fault with microfilm as a means of providing access (and I would certainly acknowledge that drawbacks exist) but he never acknowledges that limits exist on how much storage space a single institution can support physically and financially. It takes far less physical shelf space to store a roll of microfilm than it takes to store seventy volumes of a bound periodical.

Libraries in this country can be very good, but they can also be very poor. So much depends on funding. At present, all libraries (public, private, research, etc.) are expected to provide access to content via a myriad of avenues, including print, audio, electronic and video. At the same time, neither their funding nor the space allotted them expands at the same rate as the information. Everyone expects their needs to be satisfied by the local library because it is supported by taxes, but no one stops to consider how those needs change over time.

I don't argue with his message, but I think this man lives in a lovely ivory tower. Those fighting in the trenches have to make hard choices.

In the Shadow of the Law (A From-the-Stacks Entry)

Formal Entry for From-The-Stacks Challenge (#2)
In the Shadow of the Law

This was an addition to my published list for the challenge. I offer a monthly book talk/group session at my local library and this was the selection for that session in November. My selected theme for the second half of 2006 was courtroom mysteries/thrillers and according to Amazon, I've had this book on my shelf since April of this year.

Title: In the Shadow of the Law
Author: Kermit Roosevelt
Publication Data: 2005 (hardcover, ISBN 0-374-26187-3) 2006 (trade paper)
Length: 368 pages
Category: Fiction

Summary: In the Shadow of the Law exposes the working lives of eight lawyers at Washington DC law firm, Morgan Siler. Three young associates, Mark Clayton, Ryan Grady and Katja Phillips, have responsibility for pushing a death penalty appeal and a class-action suit through the appropriate legal processes to final decision. Over them are law firm partners, Peter Morgan, Harold Fineman, and Wallace Finn, each with an individual attitude as to practice of the law. Threaded throughout are the activities of two more practiced associates, Walker Eliott and Gerald Roth. Eliott is a former Supreme Court law clerk and Roth has risen from lowly status as paralegal to associate status via the channel of graduating from law school at night. This is *not* truly a legal suspense novel nor is it a courtroom drama; its value resides in being a character-driven, fictional portrayal of the legal profession. As a first novel, it is certainly more sophisticated than most. The narrative style is very complex, slowing the pace of the story. The overview of how the practice of law has changed in the past four or five decades is interesting and there are excellent moments of real humor.

Extract: Random House has posted an excerpt from the audio-book here. In my estimation, the writing style here in terms of vocabulary and sentence structure is not all that difficult with only occasional unfamiliar words popping up. (Quick, can *you* define "velleity" and use it in a sentence? I couldn't. Google defines it this way.) It is the narrative style that makes the book challenging.

Also Relevant: The book group at the library hated it, by and large. Of the seven brave souls who came out last night, only one of them had actually made it through the whole book; everyone else gave up at some point in the first third of the book. Now this is quite unusual for the regulars in this group. Most of the time, as participants, they show up having read the full text even if they don't like it. Of the seven, only one had finished it and actually said she had liked it. The others looked at me with expressions that conveyed a muted sense of bewilderment at and dislike of my selection.

The formal reviews that I could find (a normal part of the way I prepare for a book discussion) were mixed. The Christian Science Monitor said it "combines satisfyingly intricate puzzles with plenty of bite and some musings about the nature of the law" but did acknowledge that the resolution might have been a shade too tidy for realism.

What makes this book satisfying on one level is that the lawyers figure out "whodunnit" without resorting to unlikely detecting activities. Lawyers deal with paper and these lawyers resolve their cases using the paper trail engendered by legal activity. One case is resolved according to the spirit of the law and the other through the use of the letter of the law.

The author's aim, as indicated here at Findlaw, was to provide potential law students with a better understanding of the practice of law as exercised by professionals in a variety of roles. Assuming that he succeeded in his own estimation, I can read Shadow and use it as a gauge to determine whether I would enjoy the law as a profession. Frankly, I wouldn't like the environment, as portrayed by Roosevelt, but I certainly know more about the practice of the profession now than I knew before I read the book. I can even make a guess as to why my older sister *does* enjoy her chosen profession rather than making a face and muttering "because she is just that sort..."

I also think the character development in the novel is fairly strong. You believe in these people; they're not stereotypes. There is the drawback that only one or two are even faintly sympathetic, but they are delineated well and have idiosyncratic aspects. Having said that, his naming conventions bothered me initially in that the names Walker and Wallace are too similar. The eye processes W-A-L fairly quickly, but the next letter is either a lowercase "l" or "k" and that slows the identification process by the reader down. (Personally, I wish authors would think about that as they're writing, but I've read enough interviews to know that the creative process for many doesn't allow that.) But that is clearly nit-picking.

Personally, I still think it was a worthwhile read. It was not a great book, but it was an interesting one.

A "From The Stacks Challenge" entry

The Well Educated Mind
An entry for Michelle's From-The-Stacks Challenge

More on reading as an activity and The Well Educated Mind:

Professionally, I work with both content providers and libraries. In a period when Google is digitizing and indexing books, I have a vested interest in figuring out what underlies reading as an activity and in observing how readers think about books and their various uses in educating and entertaining. Usage behaviors are the underlay for decisions regarding user interfaces in digital environments. We're transitioning between print and fully-electronic delivery, so these issues are critical to both librarians and content providers (publishers).

Ideally, an author and a reader don't need a mediator. In a perfect world, the mind of the author reaches across time and touches the mind of the reader. As an example, I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley for the very first time as a working mother, about two years after giving birth to my youngest son (just now turned 18). That reading experience actually helped me to clarify what my emotional anxieties were at that point in my life. I could so easily relate to the level of exhaustion and the overwhelming burden of responsibility and guilt that drove Victor Frankenstein's actions. I too was intimidated by the requirements of parenting; doubtful that I could live up to this creature's needs. Shelley's mind and mine met across a span of more than 150 years. To my way of thinking, that's the sign of a great work of literature; I, as a reader, had no doubts as to what Shelley was talking about. I knew instinctively that it had little to do with the misuse of technology or science and I remember telling a friend (another woman with young children) that I thought Frankenstein was the most subversive piece of literature by a woman that I had ever encountered. In fact, I warmed up to the theme and told her I thought the 1931 Boris Karloff movie classic was just about the worse bastardization of a novel's intent that I had ever encountered. I didn't pound my shoe on the table, but I was pretty emphatic.

I think that kind of interaction with a book is what Susan Wise Bauer is trying to encourage in readers of The Well-Educated Mind. As I said previously , Bauer's book is a detailed outline of how to gain the most benefit from reading beyond superficial entertainment and/or distraction. Given the importance associated these days with lifelong learning, I think there may be a growing need in the marketplace for works that can bolster our acuity or even remind us that we shouldn't just stop exercising our curiosity. If Google's digitization project does anything, it makes it a tad easier for readers to find something that might intrigue them as a topic. Bauer looks at five forms -- the novel, autobiography, history, drama and poetry -- in the hope of inculcating the adult reader with a sense of the value associated with the individual in Western culture. The development of those forms mirrors the development of that value in ourselves. The questions that she advises the reader to ask in studying each of these forms are designed to provoke more than a cursory response. You can quibble with her selected bibliography of works that she sets forth for each form but they are deliberate choices for the purposes of shaping a thought process. Were I constructing such a bibliography, I might have chosen differently but that isn't to say that her recommendations were faulty, given Bauer's intent.

My only real irritation in assessing the book was the lack of preface or introduction. I understand that one might not want to intimidate the very reader that this book is aimed at supporting, but a trained information professional expects to be able to quickly scan such front matter to determine whether or not a book satisfies a particular need. If there's a major failing in this book, I think it was that lapse in publishing practice, although nowadays you can't always know whether such an omission was the fault of the publisher for financial reasons (ie. page counts, marketing, or whatever) or the author's intentional omission by choice. The book's website doesn't exactly address my concerns either, so I am assuming it was the author's decision.

I think it's interesting that Web-based feedback on this book range the spectrum (between this and this). Clearly, not everyone will find this book appropriate to their need. Some business readers, for example, will think something on the order of this article will be more than adequate. I was reading Well-Educated Mind particularly for the manner in which Bauer broke apart the mental process rather than because I felt a need to supplement my education. I am not necessarily motivated to immediately follow her recommended course of study; I will however keep the book as a reference work, useful for keeping my own reading process sharp.