ZapTown

It’s difficult to pull yourself away from the hammock in the Summertime and lay down some thoughts, but given all of the beach reading that goes on in the season, it’s a perfect time to record some thoughts about reading that I’ve had recently.

I mentioned John Connolly’s very fun novel The Gates in my last posting, and since then, I’ve read several more books. Of special note I’d like to single out China Mieville’s twisting detective story The City & The City about a murder in a fictional city that’s part of a divided pair with a secretive and torturous history. Mieville’s prose  continues to mature, but it’s still the crisp, energetic writing of someone who loves what he’s doing (that is, building imaginary worlds) and is very good at it. The distinctive geography and legal issues raised by Mieville’s setting make for some good, thought-provoking twists and turns.

I also was very struck by a novel called Almost Dead by a writer named Assaf Gavron, who I’d not heard of before (sometimes it’s good to pick books up on a whim). The front cover of the book bills it as a comedy in the vein of ‘Catch-22′, and that seems apt, if a little overly confident on how much of the book’s focus is on the jokes. Not to say it isn’t a funny book, at times, in a blackly deadpan sort of way, but it felt like a serious story when I was reading it, and the book’s final chapters are quite tense and dramatic. The story is set in Israel, and follows two narrators, each first-person, in alternating chapters.  One speaks primarily in the past tense and is nicknamed ‘Croc’, a young Jewish yuppie from Tel Aviv who survives several terrorist bombings, and becomes a hapless symbol of resistance in the Israeli media. The other is Fahmi, a young Palestinian who drifts back and forth between the hospital bed where he is confined, and the past, and who increasingly, in the past that he is recounting, finds himself drawn into a collision course with Croc. Several tragedies occur that I won’t spoil, in case any of you pick up the book, but I will note that for someone like myself, who is not an expert when it comes to Israel and the West Bank, the setting and characters of this store were vividly described, and compelling. It felt like a minor miracle, but the characters were sympathetic across the board, and in contrasting Croc’s point of view with Fahmi’s, and making both individuals well-r0unded and compelling, Gavron has crafted a novel that demands to be digested thoughtfully, and lingers long after you’ve finished reading it, regardless of what one’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are.

It’s also quite notable this month that Amazon.com, the online bookseller, announced a first-ever milestone. For the first time ever, e-book sales for the Amazon Kindle surpassed hardcover sales to customers. Longtime readers will be aware that I’ve been…..suspicious of e-books in the past, to put it kindly, but I can see the writing on the wall: Clearly, this isn’t a fad. Electronic texts have reached the point where they’re as viable as paperbacks–and possibly would be as common if they were a little bit cheaper.  As an interested reader, this leaves me with several questions–first of all, if I am going to get a Kindle or other E-book reader, what should I buy, and why?  And secondly, what does this mean for people who make their living from books?

Bookstores have become an increasingly endangered relic over the past few years, and I imagine that, as hardcovers become more of a boutique item, that will only continue. At the same time, I’m curious as to how widespread use of kindles and other e-books is affecting how we read and how we share books. For instance, I know that if I’m sitting in a cafe scribbling in my notebook, and I look over at the next table where someone is reading a hardcover, I can make a note of the author and title, make a snap judgment about who that person is and why they’re reading that book, even perhaps strike up a conversation.

If, on the other hand, the person is reading a kindle, I’m out of the loop unless I broach the silence with a quick ‘What’re you reading on that thing? There are numerous other differences between a book that’s a physical object, of course, and a book file that’s stored on an electronic device–lending to friends, for instance. As the E-Book reaches maturity, however, I guess I’m going to have to start getting accustomed to those differences sooner, rather than later.