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I don’t always set New Year’s resolutions, but this year I’ve got a couple. The first is one I started before Christmas, already — to get seriously gluten-free with my diet. (I’ve been mostly gluten-free for the last number of years, but now it’s time to get serious and weed out the hidden sources of gluten and also, oh, stop cheating when presented with a delicious baked good at a party or some such)
The second is to go to bed on time. That is, before midnight. Ideally, before 11 p.m. So far I’ve accomplished this both days this week! The reason this is so hard for me is that my schedule is flexible, and I work from home a lot and I rarely have to be out of the house before noon. That makes it easy to set the alarm for 9 or 9:30 a.m. when I meander to bed at 1 a.m. or later.

The last is one I came up with this morning. I’m going to keep track of the books I read this year. I tend to think of myself as “not much of a reader,” but lately I realize that’s only because I tend to hang out with ridiculously voracious readers (my mother, for example, can easily polish off three or four a week). I’m keeping a list — we’ll see how I do. I’m on GoodReads; you can friend me there if you like. Here’s my little badge thing.

Currently Reading

Jenny’s favorite books »

Do you have any resolutions?

NB: THOSE WHO ARE NOT NERDS FOR BOOKS OR FANTASY IN GENERAL CAN SKIP THIS POST

On Tuesday, for the first time since 1995 (or 1996, he can’t quite recall), Neil Gaiman came to Winnipeg. (Click here if you have no idea who this guy is.)

And we came to Neil Gaiman.

He did a reading from his newest book, Odd and the Frost Giants, which I regret not buying, because it involves Norse god characters and I’m a sucker for that sort of thing (which is why I went out on a very cold Tuesday night to see Neil Gaiman in person, I suppose). He was quippy and answered pre-selected questions with with and grace and flair.

Quotable Neil:

“Nobody can stop me! They’ve handed me the microphone. I am now king!”

-On his acceptance speech for the Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book at the Indies Choice Book Awards, where he announced, off the top of his head and spur-of-the-moment , a continent-wide contest where the independent bookseller that threw the best Graveyard Book Halloween party would receive a personal visit from him. McNally Robinson was one of the winners; the other was a store in Decatur, Georgia.

“If I pick randomly, it’s not going to be Winnipeg in December.”

-On his decision to visit both front-runners in the competition instead of flipping a coin or picking “randomly.” Over 40 parties were held throughout Canada and the U.S., but none in Alaska or Hawaii. Neil expressed his great disappointment there were no submissions from the latter, and with temperatures like ours, who can blame him?

“I don’t know if you have been at a signing at 10 o’clock at night with hungry eight-year-olds, but trust me, the right thing to do is get them to bed.”

-On why the kids in the audience would get their books signed first.

“I was fascinated by the way women would fall in love with him and he would not notice.”

-On Richard Curtis, whom Gaiman says was the basis for the character of Richard Mayhew in Neverwhere (though the character’s appearance as described in the book is that of the actor who played him in the simultaneously produced/written BBC miniseries).  Gaiman went on to claim that Hugh Grant’s entire public persona is basically that actor “doing Richard Curtis,” who directed Grant’s star turn in Four Weddings and a Funeral. He suggested we watch interviews with Grant from before that movie for proof of the change.

“I hate the expression ‘be good.’ It implies, ‘You sit there and don’t cause trouble’… I think people should make a mess.”

-In response to the question, “What do you feel it means to be good?”

“She’s like that, but turned down.”

“I’m convinced the Amanda Palmer who gets on stage is unembarassable.”

-On girlfriend (and Dresden Dolls singer) Amanda Palmer in real life, as opposed to her stage and public persona.

“Audiences expected someone who talked in flawless iambic pentameter.”

-On why, after his 1999 book tour for Stardust, Gaiman started blogging — to strip away the mystique surrounding him as a public figure.

“You can pour them, like pizza sauce.”

-On bees. Gaiman is an amateur beekeeper, a hobby he put off taking up for years due to his assistant Lorraine’s fear. He told the story of how his first shipment of bees arrived in the mail on a day he was out of town (as Lorraine had feared). Gaiman’s friend and co-beekeeper poured out the first package of bees (they in a docile state when transported) while Lorraine watched. She insisted on pouring out the second packet and ever since then, Gaiman says, has been “one with the bees.”

Another question concerned his response to the amazing dolls and sets created for the film adaptation of Coraline. Gaiman said that at first he felt guilty about all the work that went in to creating a visual representation of what originally formed effortlessly in his mind. This changed, however, after he did a signing at Laika, the film’s production company. He met a carpenter who had seen the DVD extras for the film version of Stardust, where Gaiman tours the sets and remarks on his “guilt” surrounding the thousands of hours and millions of dollars that go into bringing his ideas to the screen. The carpenter said he shouldn’t feel guilty, because “If it wasn’t for people like you, I’d be making shelves!”

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In summary: what a treat.

We stuck around for awhile after the reading in hopes of getting our books signed; while Neil and Co. promised that every single person who wanted a book signed would get it (and I believe them!), we weren’t sure we wanted to spend several hours in line to make that happen. For us, a fleeting face-to-face moment and a scrawl of ink wasn’t the main draw. The reading itself, and the excitement surrounding it, was the nerd-rush we were looking for!

Other highights:

- seeing lots of friends and familiar faces

- overhearing a couple of super nerdy guys (you know, the kind who would correct you on a small detail from panel three of page 45 of Watchmen at the slightest provocation) pronounce Neil’s surname incorrectly (it rhymes with “layman,” not “pieman”).

-the families with younger children who were in attendance, and their varying levels of hippiedom (Long hair. Beards. Embellished felt vests. Plus some Scatterbained Professor types).

This is a post in praise of ebooks. With a twist ending!

The Late, Lamented Palm V (QEPD)

Saleema wrote about using her iPhone as an ebook reader, and I related strongly to her feelings of delight. My story of love with regard to ereading goes back a few years, though. I bought my first ebook in February, 2005. Originally, ereading was a way for me to consume trashy* books, I now buy many books in this format — not just the ones I don’t particularly care to display on my bookshelves. Even with its puny memory capacity, my hand-me-down Palm V with a monochrome display could hold about 15 ebooks — perfect for a trip to Europe I took later that year.

Palm Tungsten: Not As Good

When my beloved Palm V went to the junkyard in the sky (I say that figuratively, because I still keep its lifeless corpse tucked away in a drawer somewhere), I replaced it with a Palm Zire, which, despite its larger memory, colour display, and iPod-knockoff design, was but a poor substitute for the late, lamented Palm V. And then I spilled water on the Zire in a Fargo hotel room and my dad, once again, saved the day by giving me his Palm Tungsten — he had ditched it in favour of an iPod Touch. There are problems with the Tungsten, though; more on that later.

Anyway, all these Palm devices inevitably seem quite quaint in comparison to the current generation of wireless PDAs, where you can download books right out of the ether onto your device. But, as we learned earlier this year, magical wireless transfers can go both ways, like in the case of Amazon’s Kindle. This summer, Amazon took a lot of heat for deleting purchased copies of George Orwell books from people’s devices without warning, following a request from the books’ publisher.

As a “long-time” ereader, I’ve hoped ebook newbies don’t lump all ebook platforms together in the wake of this, since most of them give you ownership of the digital file you purchase. All the ebooks I’ve purchased are located not only on my mobile device, but on my computer hard drive. Sure, we live in an age where having to connect your device to your computer with a (gasp!) USB cable and press a “sync” button seems terrifyingly archaic in a wireless age, but I’ll take that over Amazon reaching, ghost-like, into my device from afar.

I understand folks’ aversion to ebooks when they feel such deep affection for and attachment to the book as artifact; a similar physical/digital divide exists among music fans, and in that realm my philosophy is similar. When it comes to books and albums, I appreciate and enjoy cover design, album notes, etc. But my bookshelves and CD racks are already full to bursting. I want to read and listen to music, and if I can do that without further cluttering up my living space, that’s an attractive option (now, my cluttered hard drive is another issue entirely. But hey — extra gigs are cheaper than extra square footage, so…)

Like Saleema, I like ereaders best for reading-in-bed (I’m one of those people who has to read a few pages of something — anything — in order to even contemplate going to sleep), and as you probably know, hefty hardbacks or even chunky paperbacks can be a pain read when in a supine position.

But here’s the thing. In recent months, I’ve had consistently more trouble falling asleep. Sleep latency hasn’t always been a huge problem for me, though other sleep problems have. Anyway, anyone who has sleep problems knows the doctors’ consistent advice for lifestyle adjustments to improve one’s sleep. Make sure your bedroom is peaceful and dark. Don’t do work in your bedroom. Don’t have a TV in your bedroom, and avoid watching TV or using a computer for at least one hour, preferably two, before your head hits the pillow.

I thought I was safe — I don’t watch TV or use my computer for at least an hour before bed! In addition to my other bedtime rituals, I spent about half an hour reading, and… oh. Wait. That reading time, right before I go to sleep, is spent STARING AT A COMPUTER SCREEN. And, with my new(ish) Tungsten, a pretty bright one at that! (It’s the light of the TV and computer monitor that keeps your brain active when it should be shutting down for a dormancy period.)

Kindle: The Future? (Disembodied Hand Not Included)

I felt like an idiot for not realizing it before. But the thing is, it wasn’t a problem at the start of my ebook love affair. The Palm V’s screen was monochrome and only backlit if you pressed a button to activate it. Useful if you were sharing a room, but if you were alone and in control of the ambient light, no backlight was needed.

This brings us back to the Kindle, which (along with some other devices) uses a technology called “electronic paper,” or “e-paper” to create its displays. This display is NOT backlit and is meant to mimic the appearance of real paper.

All this time I’ve been keen on the use of platforms like Palm for my ereading, due to its lower-tech and more reliable infrastructure, when, in fact, the Kindle may be better suited to my personal needs.

Clearly this matter requires further investigation.

In the meantime, I’ll keep my Palm for daytime reading purposes only. And perhaps even take to using it as a PDA and keeping phone numbers in it.

*if you’re wondering about the exact nature of the “trash,” I’ll admit I use that word somewhat disingenuously. I don’t think the stuff I read is “trash,” and I actually love some of it a lot. What is it? It can be summed up in two words: TV tie-in. There, I said it. And I’m not ashamed. Well, I’m sort of ashamed but unapologetic.

My Actual Bookshelf