I’m thinking I’d like to talk this week about a subject that tends to be somewhat neglected in public discourse these days: books. As I understand it, there was a time in America — probably that fabled mid-century period following World War II and preceding Watergate, when architecture was googie and kids still respected their elders — when books were the major driving force of our popular culture, not movies or television or the as-yet-uninvented Internet. The controversies that office workers debated around the water cooler, the fictional characters that everyone knew and loved like their own flesh-and-blood friends, originated on the printed page, not the silver screen. I think it’s pretty obvious that those days are far past us now. It isn’t that books are irrelevant or that people don’t read anymore — I personally believe those claims are overhyped and just a tad hysterical, and if you don’t believe me, walk down to your local Barnes and Noble store sometime and ask yourself how this place could stay in business if people were no longer reading — but the cultural emphasis has definitely shifted away from the oldest of our media. Where once the movie version of a best-seller was considered the spin-off product, now it’s more like the pay-off that everyone is really interested in. The book often seem to serve as a warm-up for the featured act. Further, the movie is most likely the version that will be remembered in the future — do you know anyone who’s actually read The Godfather? I didn’t think so. The book has become the ancillary product now.

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As the title suggests, I’m having a giddy fanboy moment. You may wish to avert your eyes.

Still looking? Okay, fine, it’s your funeral…

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You may recall back in August when I announced that my friend Ruthie Ellenson’s first book had just been published. Well, there’s been further news regarding Ruthie and her book. I’ll let the message I just received from her husband, the irrepressible Cranky Robert (as he’s known in these parts), speak for itself:

Hi everyone,

 

I’m very happy to announce that Ruthie’s book *The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt* has won the *National Jewish Book Award* for women’s studies!!!!

 

I’m sure everyone joins me in wishing Ruthie a very *big congratulations* on a truly great achievement!!

 

All the best,
Robert

So now not only do I know a published author, I also know an award-winning author. Props to me! Oh, and, of course, to Ruthie…

Seriously, this is a very cool development. I’m sure the rest of my tiny little following here at Simple Tricks will join me in giving Ruthie our most sincere congratulations.

It’s the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, during which we remember the immortal words of Dr. Henry Jones, Sr., as portrayed by the immortal Sean Connery:

“…gooshe-shtepping morons should try reading booksh inshtead of barning them!”

“Barning” is, of course, Scottish for “burning.”

I don’t know about you, but I find the very notion of banning books deeply offensive. I resent well-meaning busybodies taking it upon themselves to tell me what’s good for me or my children, if I had any. I resent authority figures that would presume to tell me or my hypothetical children what we should think. I resent the implication so often made by the self-appointed forces of morality and/or political correctness that reading something — or viewing something or listening to something — that they dislike somehow makes me a sinner. Mostly I resent the fact that the books that most often come under fire from Those Who Would Protect Us From Ourselves are so frequently the ones that have the most value, to me personally as well as to society in general. Of course, there are also plenty of cases in which the targeted text is utterly innocuous and the whole thing leaves me scratching my head and wondering what anyone could find wrong with that. Case in point: Where’s Waldo?, which appears on the ALA’s list of the top 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990-2001. Where’s Waldo? And they say Trekkies need to get a life.

If you, like me, shudder at the thought of somebody like Ned Flanders — or Pat Robertson, if you’re looking for a real boogeyman — dictating what you can and cannot put into your brain, take a look at the ALA list. I’ll reproduce it below the fold, so just click on through. If you’re like me, you’ll recognize a lot of these titles from your childhood and young adulthood. Think about those books and ponder what they may have meant to you, even if they meant nothing more than a good read or something you were exposed to in one of your English classes. Let yourself get pissed off at the foolishness of trying to keep a book like S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders out of the hands of the kids who most need to read something like that, to have it speak to them and assure them that someone out there understands what they’re feeling and thinking, that they’re not freaks. Then select one of these horrible, evil, sinful titles that you haven’t read and pick it up from the library or bookstore in the next five days. Read it proudly, in public. Maybe one of those goose-stepping morons will dare to say something to you about it, and you’ll get the chance to do your Connery impression…

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In case you were wondering, you can indeed find my friend Ruthie’s book, The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt, here in the Salt Lake area. Anne and I went shopping last night at a local Barnes and Noble store and located it with no trouble at all. There were, in fact, two copies available. And we weren’t even at the big store downtown. We were out in stiflingly dull, virtually monoethnic, suburban Sandy. The book was located in the Judaism section, which is next to the Bibles and around the corner from the LDS stuff.

So who would have thought there was a Judaism section at the Sandy B&N? I was stunned…

My friend Ruth Ellenson has just emailed me with some very exciting news: her first book hits the stands today! (How ironic, in light of the previous entry‘s gloomy assessment of modern American reading habits, but this isn’t the time for pessimism…)

Yes, it’s true, I happen to know a published author. (Imagine me gripping my lapels and looking smug as I say that.) Actually, she was the editor of this volume rather than the author, since it’s a collection of essays, but hey, it’s still her name on the cover, right? Close enough to famous for my money. Here’s the message she sent me:

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Say what you will about the French — and I know people who will say plenty — they are the clever folks who brought us the wonders of the self-cleaning street toilet. And now they’ve come up with another “duh, why haven’t we had this before?” invention: the Maxi-Livres book-vending machine. Five such machines, stocking 25 titles that range from The Odyssey to a French-English dictionary, have been installed in various locations around Paris. According to the linked article, the books cost only $2.45, an incredible bargain these days, especially when you factor in exchange rates. And the thing that makes these machines really cool?

…Maxi-Livre’s distributors were designed to bypass the characteristic vending-machine-drop, which can be punishing for books.

 

“We knew that French bibliophiles would be horrified to see their books falling into a trough like candy or soda,” [Maxi-Livre president Xavier] Chambon said. “So we installed a mechanical arm that grabs the book and delivers it safely.”

While my first choice will always be a quirky, independently-owned bookshop — preferably one with a live-in cat or other animal mascot — I really like this idea. If nothing else, it would solve that nasty problem of what to read on the train-ride home if you finish your book during your lunch break…