Sign here

When I was in elementary school my family took a vacation to Orlando. At that age, Orlando was synonymous with Disney World. No matter the other attractions- Universal Studios, Parrot Jungle, our gorgeous hotel- Orland (really, Florida) meant the land of Disney. My parents bought me a puffy red rectangular autograph book and a chunky pen. Over the course of the week I filled each white page with a different character's signature: Mickey Mouse, Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin. I still have that book somewhere. And I still have that fascination with autographs.

I've touched before on the disappearance of practiced handwriting. One con I omitted was the depreciation of signatures. I've met celebrities before, but the only physical evidence I have of any of the encounters is a goggle-eyed picture with SNL's Maya Rudolph. In high school I had the Broadway cast of Rent sign my Playbill, and I have plenty of signatures of people I consider superstars (my high school drums teacher and Tina Turner's former drummer; preeminent Penn professors), but none eBay-worthy. Nonetheless I agree with Rhys Tranter on A Piece of Monologue literary blog:

"Writers' signatures hold a particular grip on me, not least for the romantic idea that they bring us closer to the personality of the writers themselves. If we feel close to an author's work, there are times when the printed word can feel like a barrier between us and the original manuscript. A signature offers a stamp of the writer's character and humanity; and in this sense, a signed book can feel like a personal validation of the work."

In our Google culture- it was named the word of the year by the American Dialect Society- authors need not rely on the pen for any writing, let alone their signature. Mobile book authoring, including writing, editing, and publishing on the go, is becoming a commonality more than an innovation. At my office, the publishers have all adopted electronic signatures to authenticate contracts and other financial documents.

Reliance on electronic writing has its obvious downsides: imperfect spell-check, for example, or "spell-Czech" as Wordnik titles its hilarious list of word processor spelling errors. But what about the downside, really the tragedy, of losing the magic of a favorite author's autograph? It may seem hard to fathom that snaking-out-the-door bookstore lines filled with neck-craning fans will ever become an anachronism. But isn't that what we once thought about cellphones, and laptops, and portable MP3 players? I would never have thought, as a fifth grader with tongue poked out, painstakingly forming my cursive letters on blue dotted lines, that by the time I was an official member of the adult workplace the most handwriting I would need would be to jot Post-It reminders for myself and occasionally address an envelope.

I don't want to relinquish the power of authors' signatures to the past. Like Tranter writes, they sparkle with the connection they forge between you and the signer, like no celebrity's Twitter feed can do. This is one area of the old/new publishing divide in which I'm not willing to compromise.

Mastering the art of 21st century cooking

I grew up on a diet largely composed of Velveeta, Hebrew National hot dogs, Ramen noodles, Shake&Bake Chicken, and family-original MacToeBeef (MacaroniTomatoBeef. Figure it out). Somehow I emerged from the nest with a love of cooking and baking, and one of the requirements in my apartment search post-Penn was a nicely furnished kitchen.

Cooking, I think, is an underexplored area with regard to the digital revolution's effect. How I approach my culinary efforts has changed dramatically over the past few years. For one thing, I've stopped buying hard copies of cookbooks. Recipes abound online: my go-to sources are Foodnetwork.com, Allrecipes.com, Cooks.com, and Sparkrecipes.com, supplemented by food blogs like 101 Cookbooks, Chocolate & Zucchini, Bakerella, Cooking Light, and others. Once every few months I'll consult the five cookbooks propped on my kitchen counter, but generally I hunt online or use my AllRecipes, SparkPeople and BettyCrocker iPhone apps to find a recipe, either print it or bookmark it on my phone or as a Google Doc on my computer, and then have a ready-made, portable list of ingredients to take to the grocery store. The browsing function of Internet recipe repositories lets me stumble upon fresh ideas I wouldn't otherwise think to look up in a cookbook's index- just the other night I was searching for a curry chicken recipe to make for a few friends and instead wound up making apricot chicken, a dish that wouldn't have occurred to me. I also like the creative collaboration born of food blogs, in that other home cooks' input can help a given recipe crystallize into a version specific to you (use olive instead of canola oil, add an extra cup of water, cut out the green peppers- ick). The infinite depths of cooking sites, too, promotes their use over the purchase of paper-and-glue cookbooks, which even if generalized à la The Joy of Cooking could never hold such endless content.

With this efficiency, convenience, and cross-pollination comes, however, the loss of the cookbook as a rich artform. Some people, like The Millions blogger Sarah McCoy, read cookbooks as any other book:

"The truth is, I read cookbooks like novels. Cover to cover, page by page, the dedication, the acknowledgments, the indexes: I devour everything. Like the literary works on my bookshelves, I can give you the plot, characters, themes and favorite scenes; however, ask me a recipe and I’d be hard-pressed to name one I’ve personally prepared."

McCoy is not alone in celebrating the aesthetics of food writing. The site RecipeLook.com encourages people to hand-illustrate and post their favorite recipes, rendering beautiful a list of ingredients and directions.

I've never felt the linguistic magic of cookbooks as McCoy has. When my house in college had living room shelves lined with them, when I'd bring one or two home over winter break to make dishes and desserts for my family, or when I'd browse my mom's mini-collection in envy, my appreciation was for the access to cuisine they would give me, not for the writing or even the sometimes stunning photography. So I can't relate to McCoy's cookbook-as-literature passion. But I can relate to the lamentation of the loss of a concrete compilation of recipes, in that my collection now consists of sauce-spattered print-outs, documents on my computer and saved screens on my cellphone. One 21st century option is a service like TasteBook that lets you upload your personalized recipes and photos to craft an individualized physical cookbook. But what happens when you find two more pasta recipes you want to add, or when you discover that an extra teaspoon of cocoa powder in your brownies makes their chocolatiness just right?

Perhaps this need for cohesion will find accommodation in the iPad, as GrubStreet blogger Helen Rosner posits. Hard copy recipe content could migrate on-screen more comfortably "with the possibility of iTunes-style individual recipe downloads and recipe-specific instructional videos".

Just as I'm saddened by the diminishing use of physical books in favor of Kindle downloads, I'm not praising the gradual devaluation of the cookbook publishing field. But I think the benefits of digital recipe adaptation are vast and, as always, my opinion is that mixing and matching tastes and samples from both the old world of publishing and the new is the safest and surest path to take. Kind of like cooking.

Cafetaria: book-related brain snacks

I've written before about incorporating books into my living space as decor. My point in discussing the positive aesthetic of books-as-interior-design was to celebrate the presentation of books not just for their appearance, but for their contents. I want to display my collection not for its colorful geometric assemblage, or its connotation of intelligence, but for the personal resonance of each title.

So what better way to highlight the conflux of old and new publishing than to compare this idea, of using authentic books as decorative material, with the idea of using the opposite- imitation books- as decorative fooder?

Kate Spade's fall 2010 preview included, literally, book bags.

Each clutch resembles a classic text, with cover art designed in-house. Creative Director Deborah Lloyd imagines women collecting the purses to display them throughout their living space. Lloyd said of her inspiration, "We wanted to pretend we had our own publishing house." They, and the rest of literary society. With the gradual dissolution of traditional publishing, the means by which readers can obtain books have spider-webbed. There is no longer a linear progression from manuscript to publisher to bookstore.

I also can't help but note the metaphor of the book as an empty shell, created as fashion rather than with true literary quality. But as a gimmick, the bags are cute- disregarding Lloyd's statement, I can appreciate the project.

Another option for faux-books-as-decor, contrasting with my notion of readers turning their finely-curated book collections into interior decor, is Anthropologie's book wallpaper. The screenprinted paper is billed as a display of "towers of titles", the corny alliteration enough to insinuate the phoniness. But, again, taking the piece at face value and assuming it's not aimed at squeezing out its real-life counterpart- a physical bookshelf- I can avoid taking my literary inclinations too seriously, and laugh.

I only hope my peers, rather than buying into cheapened products like these, are doing the same.

Tweeter: the generational reading gap

A few months ago at the gym I was reading Anna Karenina on the stationary bike. Not your typical recreational reading, I suppose- which prompted the elderly gentleman pedaling next to me to strike up a conversation. It turned out he was a classic lit lover himself, a retired Political Science professor craving intellectual stimulation. We talked books for 45 minutes and exchanged email addresses.

Since then we've had more literary conversations- both in person and electronically- which are mutually satisfying in their symbiosis of two bookworms, but also in their enlightenment regarding today's reading habits. He finds it fascinating that any Millennials ("Your generation only knows ten words"), subscribers to technology like Facebook and "Tweeter", would invest time in the world's literary canon. I, in turn, find it a fresh surprise to be able to connect on an even plane with a generational superior. Our tech-driven society is over the speed limit in the fast lane, Internet axons firing like fireworks to connect people, but when we readers really slow down, embrace traditional media, and make room in our brains and our lives for quality literary material, that's when the real engagement can begin.

Some statistics are hopeful: in a post entitled "Good News About The Future of Reading," GalleyCat cited a New York Magazine survey of 100 Manhattanites in which only 10% of interviewees hadn't bought books in the last year. And that doesn't mean that that 10% didn't read any. But The Guardian's Books Blog notes how "time for serious reading appears to be getting more and more pinched" as entertainment media enacts "the very theft of our thinking space". The word "reading" itself has shifted in meaning, from connoting a dedicated task to, now, a scattershot experience as our eyeballs flick from one piece of text to another.

Conversing with the old professor has made the value of true reading resonate with me even more in the context of my generation's loosening grip on traditionally published material. Operating in a workplace devoted to shifting text from print to digital has also heightened my appreciation for this old media. I blog, I have Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, God knows I email. But I also check books out from the library, get Barnes&Noble gift cards as birthday presents, and read print magazines.

I've grown up around reading- my mom used to read to me after tucking me into bed, our living room has always had stocked shelves, my dad's home office is a veritable library. So perhaps the contrast between my generation's reading habits and those of my elders is even more poignant for me, my job and personal inclination toward reading aside. In any case, I think society's efforts toward digital conversion, often focused on seniors' acclimation to computers and the Internet, should be focused at least as energetically on print conversion for my age bracket, encouraging adherence to quality reading. I've said it before, but: what a novel idea.

A strange case indeed

Today I finished the first complete book I've read in a digital format: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. I read it in Google Books. And I hated every minute of it.

As Sandra Aamodt, a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, says in a New York Times forum on eBooks,

"People read more slowly on screen, by as much as 20-30 percent. Distractions abound online — costing time and interfering with the concentration needed to think about what you read. Reading on screen requires slightly more effort and thus is more tiring."

Each of these troubles came into play for me, totally detracting from my enjoyment of the material. I chose the title for its compelling storyline and short length, in an effort to fortify myself against the enemy. Didn't work.

I've acknowledged a resignation to the fact that I'll eventually buy an eReader. All technological innovations with staying power become mainstream and thusly lose their classification as an "innovation", easing into an assumptive part of our lives. I never thought I'd have one of those cell phones that lets you check email on the go- texting wasn't even prevalent until I went to college; never thought I'd have a DVR to record TV shows and movies- growing up, if you didn't watch a show real-time, you didn't watch it. That is unless you taped it on a clunky VHS, whose agonizing fastforward and rewind functions made it near impossible to find the segment you were hunting for, or else you miraculously caught the show on re-run.

Some day, quite probably, eReaders like the Kindle will be ubiquitous. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said of the Kindle's success in a Slate interview,

"The business is growing very quickly. [But] this is not just a business for us.There is missionary zeal. We feel like Kindle is bigger than we are."

Bezos goes on to say that he never reads "books on paper" anymore "if he can help it". Granted I didn't read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on a Kindle, but rather my computer screen. My reading experience consisted of scanning a table of contents and scrolling up and down. I could search for a word or phrase within the book if I wanted- but when have I ever recreationally read a piece of fiction and wished I had the capability of locating every mention of the main character's name, or the word "night"? Maybe students would appreciate that function, but my current perspective is that of an average reader. Even for my job as a publishing assistant I can't imagine having to parse a passage- we're concerned with the life of the material after its composition.

Beyond Google Books' reading enhancements, gadgets like the Kindle offer (pseudo)annotation, bookmarking, collaboration with other readers, etc. But "if i can help it" I still won't be reading another "book on screen" any time soon, even with the debut of devices like the iPad and the two-screen eReader enTourage eDGe, or any of the other products publicized at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in January- see a slideshow here.

This Christmas marked the first time Kindle eBooks outsold physical books on Amazon.com. Digital reading is here to stay. But so are traditional readers like me. And I'm not moving an inch just yet.

Cafetaria: book-related brain snacks

Something Up My Sleeve

My sister, after visiting me, pointed out that a lot of spots in Philly are pithily named: a grocery shop named Grocery, a bar named Bar, a flower shop named Orchid. Taking a page out of the succinctness book is... well, Book.

Designed by two bibliophiles in Minnesota, it's a book-like sleeve for digital reading devices. Books blog The Millions queries,

"Do you have an ereader but miss the look and feel of a gorgeous hardcover book? Do you want people to think you’re all about print when in fact you are riding the digital wave?"

I can't say the $89 price tag- handcrafted, 100% wool felt or not- is justifiable, but if I make the iPad/Kindle/Nook plunge I can do so with readerly pride intact, inasmuch as I'll be fooling neighbors with a clever disguise. There's a Twitter feed called CoverSpy that documents New Yorkers' reading material on subways and streets, in parks and bars. Each day, the prowling photo team posts real-time snapshots of such book covers, or else a standard image of a Kindle. With this Book sleeve, we can deceive the pesky CoverSpies and maintain the illusion of loyalty to traditional book publishing.

Another path to deception: the BookBook laptop cover.

The vintage leather-bound case by Twelve South is $79.99, $9.01 in the right budgetary direction but steep nonetheless. It's hand-distressed, akin to the manual labor applied to Book- it seems a lot of trouble is being taken with products like these to generate the artifice that we could accomplish by actually reading books. What a novel idea.

The white perimeter

From "Marginalia" by Billy Collins:

"We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge."

I'm going to avoid the term "neat freak". Also "OCD" and "anal retentive". But I like things neat. My files at work, both print and electronic, are organized into sub-sub-categories, and my apartment is always uncluttered. My mom got me in the habit at a young age of making my bed every morning, and that fastidiousness grew to translate into every other corner of my life.

I've gotten better. These days a little jumble adds welcome color. My bedroom desk is besprinkled with Post-its, an odd paper clip and stray flyers or tickets, and well-thumbed magazines are drunkenly accordioned on my coffee table. Gone are the days of the rainbow-coordinated sock drawer and the oh-so-ginger transportation of books to avoid creases or crumpling. I remember when a classmate doodled on my empty notebook page in middle school before the teacher started class, I flipped to a fresh sheet when the time came to take notes.

But when it comes to annotation- or marginalia, as coined in 1832 by the keen margin scribbler Samuel Taylor Coleridge- I've always been a subscriber. In an eloquent post on the Guardian's Books Blog, Toby Lichtig expresses his fondness for "defacing" books with the smears and scrawls that herald ownership of that book. He writes:

"I'm not just talking about highbrow jottings: notes and queries, references and witticisms, the literary art of "marginalia". No, in my library anything goes: doodles, numbers, addresses, lists, recipes and the ensuing food stains."

I wholeheartedly endorse Lichtig's contention: your imprint on a book connects its flesh to yours. Your jottings, relevant or not, and your "mutilation"- Lichtig talks about torn covers, bathtub-submersions- will be forever bound to your experience of the book. In the manner of the if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods commonplace: if you don't leave your thumbprint on a book, what does it matter if you've read it?

My annotative habits include underlining resonant quotes, dog-earing pages with provoking passages, occasionally scribbling a phone number if the open book on my lap is the only available writing surface. I, too, can claim responsibility for a coffee stain or two, a dirt smudge from a book riding around in my purse. Needless to say, neat freak or not, leaving traces in a book I own is an inextricable part of the reading process. Not all readers and writers agree:

But I'm with Lichtig, and Coleridge, and the herds of twitching-pen-armed readers eager to eat the books they read. I know eReaders like the Kindle have annotative capabilities- I made my friend show me how she organizes notes on the psychology journals she reads for her grad school program- but what does a computerized list of remarks have to tell me about who, or where, I was when I read something? Or my mood? Or what was going on in my life? The organic nature of reading a real book owes much to this practice of annotation, in my mind, and I'm not giving it up without a fight. Or, at the very least, a considerable price reduction.