Another book to remember...

A Better Pencil by Dennis Baron

I cannot say this was a page-turner. Many books were able to leapfrog over it when I would curl up for bedtime reading...why? Baron has chosen a fascinating subject - the transformations wrought by changing writing and reading technologies - but his book suffers from an unusual condition: too much reasonable thinking. When the conclusion of your book includes the sentence, "The effects of the technologies [forcing changes in how we write, read and circulate text] have typically been positive, with some negatives inevitably mixed in  - the plusses and minuses owing as much to the vagaries of human nature as to the advantages or disadvantages of the technology itself", you're being a little wishy-washy.

While the book includes flashes of imagination (a good section of Ted Kaczynski as author, an imaginative and inclusive overview of writing technologies form clay tablets to forgotten early word processing programs, a thoughtful meditation on global citizenship in the information age), Baron seems to have written a book that would be better discussed over dinner than actually published. His informal, conversational tone contribute to this impression.

All of this perhaps says more about my expectations than about Baron's book - an effort to consider the ways we are being manipulated by our own communication is a valuable opportunity for reflection. I wish I'd gotten a little more to reflect on here.

Back up your Kindle...

I loved this project by Jesse England (described on Hyperallergic and tweeted by Kenneth Goldsmith) that involves copying an eBook and binding it. Those who remember the story about copies of Orwell's 1984 getting removed from readers' devices (can you make this shit up?) will take special pleasure in this work...

Book club

Note: I have been trying to get soem reading done on this break. Here is a short review of The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers and Inventors who make American Great by Alec Foege. More reviews posted from time to time...

"The Tinkerers" raises an interesting question - what do you expect when you sit down to read a book (as opposed to a magazine article or newspaper feature). Foege was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and senior writer at People and it shows in this under-researched book about a fascinating idea. When he's writing profile pieces - as in chapters on Dean Kamen and Gever Tulley - he's entertaining and pleasantly readable. But when he tries to write about the historical sweep of the topic, his weak storytelling skills get in the way. The chapter contrasting Washington and Franklin and setting them up as paradigms of American tinkering is so meandering as to be pointless.

But more disappointingly, the book suffers from the common sins of the genre of business literature - it's fixation on validating an idea or term (in this case, tinkering) prevents and serious, critical examination of that idea. A quick review of the notes cofirms that Foege got most of his information from business journalism, Wired magazine, the New York TImes and the New Yorker. This explains why is book reads like a second-hand analysis of ideas that have been discussed in these magazines and newspapers.


So what should one expect from a book rather than a magazine article or newspaper feature? A book can go into greater depth and engage more complex sources than these other forms, and I think readers are right to expect such depth and criticality from books. We've seen some very thoughtful writing like that in the last few years, from authors like Glenn Adamson and Richard Sennett (on crafts) and Matthew Crawford (on how changes in the education have affected ideas about work). Sadly, "the Tinkerers" reads like something you'd read on a long flight - a largely superficial attempt to identify a new trend that is principally about trying to stake out that new trend, not thoughtfully analyze it. It's something someone will mention in a meeting or when griping about the state of education in the 21st century, but there's no 'there' there.