Love For Books

Look for books in the January sales

January is often the time when you can pick up lots of bargains on clothing, furniture and electronics, but you can also pick up some bargains on books. Books are pretty expensive to get hold of even if you do find them incredibly rewarding.

All the big book shops and online retailers have large scale sales in early January to boost their own sales figures. You can take advantage of this by making a list of the books you’ve wanted for a while and then checking out their prices in the sales. You might even be able to pick up a load of them half price, keeping you in great literature for the next few months.

Mini Modern Classics range is great news for the short story

The short story is a format that was embraced by American audiences a long time ago and writers from all over the world have produced some of their best work in this form. However, British readers have taken a long time to warm to the format which means they are missing out on some fantastic literature.

However, Penguin produces a number of ‘Mini Modern Classics’ which give readers the chance to discover works in short story format by a selection of truly remarkable authors. This gives people ready access to some great short pieces of fiction and allows them to sample a way of reading that is completely different to the novel.

Weighing up the advantages of modern e-readers

If you are an avid reader then you’ve probably already faced the question of whether or not to buy an e-reader. Devices like the Kindle are enjoying a certain amount of popularity, but for book lovers they represent a real quandary.

On the one hand e-readers open up all sorts of opportunities. They are perfect for reading books when travelling and they are obviously more environmentally-friendly than physical books – but they evoke none of the romance of reading, render your lovingly amassed collection somewhat redundant and equate fiction with technogeekery.

It’s hard to determine whether the Kindle and its competitors are friend or foe in the literary landscape. A measure of balance is required in the debate. There’s certainly no shame in buying an e-reader for its practical advantages and the selection of free classics at online book shops is a major plus point.

However, you may have to content yourself with the odd snide remark about how it compares with ‘the real thing’, just to stay true to your reading roots!

Threadless T-shirts: Nude No More

If you like books, and you like funky pictures, quirky slogans and groovy text, check out Threadless T-shirts.

Although they aren’t books, there are plenty of literary references on them, and there are many that would make us literary types have a chuckle or two, whilst leaving others confused as to what the joke is.

Here are a couple of examples of the text – obviously, not being quite so delicately designed as the actual t-shirts:

“Shakespeare hates your emo poems”

“Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator.”

“Movies: ruining the book since the 1920s.”

There are also plenty of literary references in picture. One is of Edgar Allen Poe in his grave, with a raven on his tombstone above, and another is a picture of books putting on jackets (get the joke there?).

Threadless only have certain numbers of each Tee printed, so if you see one you like – buy it!!

Is the Apple iPad killing off other eBook readers?

As with most things Apple, the iPad has already caused quite a stir. It is stylish, slim, sophisticated and has gallons of memory, so should be pretty up there as a way to read eBooks. There is, however, a big downside: the iPad has a glossy 9.7inch colour screen, great for watching films and looking at photos. This, though, isn’t so great for reading. Our eyes suffer far more eye strain when looking at any kind of computer screen, as test upon test upon test has shown.

Most eBook readers come with the e-Ink screen, whereby it is proven to cause your eyes no more harm than reading a real book, in any light. This will be a major drawback for any avid eBook reader thinking of the iPad. Also a downside is the battery life. Standard eBook readers have a battery life of about 18 hours, allowing you to read a couple of hours a day for over a week. The iPad’s battery lasts only 3 hours. Not so great if you’re travelling in the car from Scotland to Cornwall.

There are other positives and negatives for the iPad, but these alone sway me to think that it’s not going to be pushing the other eBook readers off the shelves just yet.

Frank Warren, the world’s confidant

If you haven’t heard of Frank Warren or PostSecret, I suggest you google it right now.
Frank started an art project by sending out blank postcards with instructions on the back.

- Take a postcard, or two
- Tell your secret anonymously
- Stamp and mail it
- Be brief – the fewer words the better
- Be creative – let the postcard be your canvas
- Be legible – use big clear bold lettering

He invited people to confess a secret which has never been revealed. It could be regret, shame, desire, excitement or betrayal.

There were thousands of responses. Frank started a website with these secrets on and the response has grown and grown and grown. He receives hundreds of thousands of postcards a year, and updates them on his website weekly.

There are now 3 books, with previously unpublished secrets in, the newest Confessions on Life, Death and God released last Autumn. Go into Waterstones and have a look, buy one, and open it every now and again, finding a new secret.

Document scanning is a blessing for books

A technique known as document scanning has been making more and more of an appearance over the last few years. The process involves using advanced digital readers to scan printed or written text and convert it into a digital format.

It is mainly used in business to switch from paper-based filing to computer-based filesystems, which for obvious reasons are preferred. The technology is so up-to-date it can read many different styles of writing and text with a high level of accuracy, saving thousands of hours of manual translation.

The reason I am talking about document scanning now though is because of what it brings to the world of books. There are many handwritten books and journals out there, that can become potential novels or fully published books in the future. Previously, these handwritten texts would have been manually, and therefore slowly, typed in to a computer. Now, however,  this can be done automatically using specialist scanners designed to recognise the writing. This may well entice more and more people to try and write books of their own, knowing the work cut out for them is much less than before.

Who knows, we might have another Charles Dickens any time now.