Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. –P.J. O’Rourke

This year, my mom gave me a book cover made from fabric for one of my birthday presents. It said “travel-reading” (or something along those lines) on the front; it felt nice and squishy compared to the average binding and was generally a nice way to accessorise the book I had asked for in the first place.

Come to think about it, I couldn’t help but associate travel-reading with

a)    reading mind-numbing trash (because who can be bothered with Foucault when frying in the sun?); or

b)    reading something without being judged by others. 

Chances are that travel will lead you some place where nobody speaks your language, so might as well whip out anything your heart desires. And with the squishy book cover, nobody will ever know what lies beyond the purple fabric anyway.

People always say to not judge a book by its cover. However, we usually aremore than happy to judge our fellow human beings by the cover of the book they’re reading. Self-help book? – Wow, they must have ISSUES. Poetry? – Must be a daydreamer. Cheesy romantic novel? – Desperate housewife for sure. Consequently, anytime I visit someone’s house or room for the first time, my eyes inevitably roam the bookshelves –you are what you read, right?

Late last year, Japan’s literary scene was put in a flurry. A list of books borrowed from a High School library by Haruki Murakami, award-winning and best-selling author in Japan and internationally, had been published.[1] While the newspaper that published the list argued that information on literary celebrity Murakami’s reading were clearly in the interest of the general public, others countered that people should never have to fear that their reading habits will be publicized.

In Murakami’s case, one of the more “sexually frank” titles included Joseph Kessel’s Belle de Jour, a tale of a housewife gone prostitute. Clearly, Murakami would be judged for his reading. To make things worse, his teenage reading. The squishy cover of privacy was removed from all the books he had read, or even just borrowed, decades ago.

Embarrassing, right? Well, I don’t think so. I believe that what we read, particularly while growing up, can change and influence us. It could turn us into better people – it could, however, also not change us in the slightest. Who can claim to have read every book he or she ever started cover to cover? Sometimes we give up on books, we learn that we don’t like them, that we disagree with their message or style.

With Murakami, nobody knows whether or not he even read Belle de Jour. He might as well have used it as a door stopper for 4 weeks and returned it, unread and unchanged.

Of course privacy in general is something that we give up, sometimes deliberately and sometimes without even noticing, on a day-to-day basis. In times of “anti-terror-surveillance”, who is to say that your private reading list is not suddenly in the public interest? With the Patriot Act in place, for example, borrowing a Quran and standard works on chemistry from a US library might already put an end to your private reading.

With the squishy book-cover, however, you can at least be sure to keep the person sitting opposite you on the train in the dark about you re-reading 50 Shades of Grey for the 49^th time.

How would you feel if your life’s library records were on display for everyone to see?

Have you ever felt judged for a book you read?

[1] http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-haruki-murakami-library-books-20151202-story.html

To Read or Not to Read, that is the question (Alternate title: WTF George?)

Whenever there is a choice of either reading the book or watching the on-screen adaptation, I tend to prefer reading the book and let imagination build my own creative world. However, when I first started watching the TV series Game of Thrones I had to reconsider this aim. First of all, I hadn’t really heard much about the novel series by George R.R. Martin, A Song of Fire and Ice. Second, as I had come across the TV series first, I really saw no need to read the novel afterwards. However, after watching series 1-3, I had grown too impatient to wait another 9 months for the series 4 to premier. Therefore, I decided to go to our local bookstore and buy the actual  volumes that were meant to tie in with the latest on-screen events. But while reading A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, I became more and more disappointed with the books. Neither Martin’s writing style nor his language appealed to me. Somehow I had expected the novels to be written in more refined style, using the various devices of the English language to enhance the thick and complex plot-lines. Furthermore, I was really annoyed to find out that the actual books differed considerably from the TV series. For one, there were storylines in the novel concerning characters that didn’t even appear in the screen adaptation. In other cases, the storylines concerning characters that were both in the book and in the TV series were changed so much, that they didn’t relate any more (e.g. in the case of Sansa Stark/Alayne)[1].

George R.R. Martin. Look at his smug face.

For obvious reasons our perception of literature differs individually. So too does our preference for film adaptations. If we look at various books and their screen adaptations, e.g. Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, John Buchan’s Thirty-Nine Steps, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, John LeCarré’s The Constant Gardener etc. there is plenty of room for agreement or disagreement, approval or disappointment. Naturally, there will be readers claiming the book to be better, while others prefer the screen adaptation. Our individual perception will always differ in one way or another from that of others, e.g. from that of film directors or scriptwriters. Consequently, this difference in individual interpretation or even criticism can also lead to disappointment. (I am still wondering whether I should watch the screen adaptation of John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman or not.)

Coming back to the Game of Thrones series, the initial reason why I started reading the books was so that I could follow up the storylines without having to wait for the launch of the next part of the TV series. Though the experience of reading Martin’s novels influenced my view of both the TV series and the book series considerably. Due to the high amount of contextual disagreements, the mutilation of storylines and the lack of refined language, I started judging both versions negatively. My discontent has only increased, since I finished the last available volume of the book series, A Dance with Dragons, and the promised sixth volume, The Winds of Winter, still unavailable. Although I didn’t really like the book series, I still fought my way through them, expecting to find some closure for the various plots and subplots. However, nowI am still waiting for the next volume to appear. Though despite his sincere promises, George R.R. Martin has not even finished book six yet. There are recurring updates on his webpage that keep postponing the actual publication of the next instalment. For true fans this must be extremely annoying, but I fear that Martin’s publisher doesn’t enjoy this ongoing delay either. As the next TV series is due out in April this year (and obviously people have been working on the production of the TV series for the better part of last year) the appearance of volume six seems to have become somehow redundant. From my point of view, the delayed publication of the sixth volume in close correlation with the launch of series six of the on-screen adaptation clashes quite negatively. But who will suffer from the obvious disadvantages of this development besides time-pressed fans? I am afraid Martin’s publisher will suffer via a reduced interest in the books and consequently lower sales figures.

I therefore wonder, whether there should be some further restrictions that could help avoiding these sort of developments. Even though I didn’t really enjoy the novels, I would have read them just for the sake of finding out what happens to the various characters. However, with Martin not being able to produce the next volume before the TV launch, I will probably reconsider reading The Winds of Winter, and I am sure I won’t be the only one. But I feel that this is the wrong development. Is it not more beneficial to read a book and engage your mind than just to watch TV? Even though I can recommend both the Harry Potter films as well as the books, I know of some people who just watched the films. When I asked them if they’ve read the books, they only shook their heads. Why read the book if you can watch the film?! I feel that people miss out by only watching the screen adaptations of certain books, for example the Harry Potter series or Eco’s Name of the Rose. Reference George R.R. Martin’s Songs of Fire and Ice this is a very different story.

1)     Why do publishers take on the production and publishing of (unfinished) book series when the rights for screen adaptations are sold initially?

2)     How has the accelerated pace of screen adaptations changed book publishing? What are potential effects of this change?

Some news regarding the (non)publication of volume 6:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/the-winds-of-winter-release-date-2015-george-rr-martin-hints-at-spring-with-a-promise-of-spring-a6713396.html

http://www.inquisitr.com/2533925/winds-of-winter-release-date-george-r-r-martin-drops-hint-that-books-already-in-the-publishing-house/

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[1] In this case it is interesting to take a look at Martin’s excerpt from volume six The Winds of Winter to the TV series. http://www.georgerrmartin.com/excerpt-from-the-winds-of-winter/. The plot-line concerning Sansa/Alayne has become incoherent. 

Spinach, 15th Century Almanacs and Me: The Beauty of the Useless

I have been studying history for many years and often I find myself confronted with a question that every humanities student has been confronted with at least once in their life, in one variation or the other. It is the inevitable - What's it good for? It is a simple enough question to which the either clueless or devious questioner may expect an equally simple answer. Of course, the issue is much more complex than the simplicity of the question may suggest to an unsuspecting interlocutor. Since it touches upon multi-layered and somewhat philosophical justifications of a whole academic field, a layman may be immediately at loss with a reasonable answer that lives up to the actual complexity of the question. The questioner then struggles to come up with something short and concise and usually fails.

That, and, well, maybe the questioners do not know themselves really. Maybe they never really thought about it or they don’t care. Maybe their subject is just something they like, even love and then never thought much about further. Just like some people like spinach and eat it all the time, the question “What's spinach good for?” just never occurs to them, other than that they like it, even though they may well think of some form of "The iron and the calcium are quite healthy!" if someone keeps pestering them.

What is the study of history good for? What is the study of book history good for? What are the practical applications of these fields? What can they teach us? Cicero famously once said, historia magistra vitae est (History is life’ teacher). That certainly makes sense to a history student or enthusiast but your Average Joe might not be satisfied with that explanation when the trigger for the question was the practical use of, say, Organisational structures of mercenary companies in fifteenth century Hesse. Or it may not be immediately clear to Joe (or Jane) why Possibilities of political participation in Greek poleis of the pre-classical period should be relevant for his struggle to find a job or a spouse. And maybe they are not.

So what do these after all not altogether deep considerations have to do with anything? Enter The British Library. It is the largest library in the world with about fourteen million books. One of its highlights is the Digitized Manuscripts section on its homepage and one of the biggest treasure troves for every book enthusiast out there. Among other things it contains large numbers of medieval texts, the most famous probably being the Harley Scripts:

The Harley Science Project, funded by William and Judith Bollinger, makes available images and descriptions of 150 medieval and modern scientific manuscripts from the British Library’s Harley collection. (...) They comprise texts relating to early scientific knowledge, such as astronomy, astrology, the computus, mathematics, physics, botany, medicine and veterinary science.

Wonderful! Every enthusiast thinks, and happily starts clicking his way through all these old manuscripts and illustrations. First of all he will notice that the site and the manuscripts themselves are easy to navigate. There is a search function for those who know what they are looking for, and a highlights section for those who don't. Every document is cataloged with date, title, information about language, a physical description of the text, its ownership and a little bibliography with relevant texts. Most importantly perhaps, as we are about to discover in a moment, is a short summary of the content of most of the pages and illustrations. When an enthusiast starts clicking their way through all these old texts, they will notice that navigation is exceedingly easy and fluid. One can freely zoom in and out of the high-resolution image to assess even the tiniest of little spots and stains and marks time may have left on the page. Information about the content is always readily available; the content can be easily accessed. The enthusiasts’ hearts may thus beat a little faster than it should while one skims through all these old pages and looks at them from all kinds of angles. Alas.

If other enthusiast is anything like me, they may end up rather sooner than later with a hollow feeling where his excitement has been just moments earlier. What's it good for? Or in this specific case: What the hell am I even looking at? Naturally, the content summary will give one some idea at least but that is hardly comparable to being able to read the text yourself. Reading, however, is out of the question for us mere mortals, encountering pages that may look like this: 

Most of us won't be able to decipher the letters, read Medieval Latin or Old English fluently (if at all) or make sense of the images in the scripts. Unless one is a highly specialised expert, there is simply not much one could actually do with these scans other than appreciate them. And appreciating them we do, still. After a moment of being dumbfounded and feeling a sense of loss, like witnessing something really beautiful that we may always be excluded of, we continue clicking. We may not understand fully, but we may get a sense of the sheer weight of the compiled knowledge, of the beauty of the typeset, the brilliancy of the colours, the gravity of the historical document.

So when the British Library just recently announced that they had entered ten of their 15^th century Almanacs on their Digitized Manuscripts site, I rejoiced, even though I knew I would never be able to actually use them for anything, to find any practical application, hell, I wouldn’t even be able to read them. Yet I clicked my way through almost all of them. Had someone found me thus, slowly clicking my way through these scripts while sipping a cup of coffee, turning a page around here, zooming in there, he may have asked What's it good for? Well, frankly, I don't know. I do know that what I look at is somehow important. And that it is also beautiful, even though, for me, it is the beauty of the useless.

What do we accomplish in making these texts available at anyone with an Internet connection when the vast majority cannot access the textual content?

Does the inability of most people to read and understand the content of these texts lessen the importance of a digitized archive?

Does this type of archive make sense for these types of texts? What sort of texts does this sort of archive make sense for, if not 15^th century almanacs and Medieval texts?

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/12/all-manacs-on-line.html

What you gonna do with all those books, all those up in your library?

Happy holidays, fellow book studies travellers! We in the BAPS program hope it was magical and awesome (or at least relaxing). This was supposed to be a short post, but book nerds tend to nerd out.

Over Christmas, I had a friend visiting from São Paulo who used to work at a bookshop there. We were talking about this Book Studies class (book nerds of the world, unite!) and she was talking about the different things that went on in this bookstore, the different things people bought, and the ways they bought them.

First, she told me about a specific customer. Every month, the different workers at the bookshop would compile a list of thirty books, using published bestseller lists, the shop’s bestseller list, their own preferences, and word of mouth of various genres, fiction and non-fiction. They would put these books into a box for this customer, who would then buy these thirty books. Every month. Thirty books. Apparently he told my friend that he had a separate apartment for all of these books, he never read them; he only kept them. She figured he couldn’t have read them, unless he was a freakishly fast reader. He never let people borrow them, and apparently didn’t even break the spines. He seemed to be building a person library of un-used, unopened books.

This first story left me with a lot of questions:

Why buy books that you will not or could not read?

What is the point of warehousing books in such a way?

What were they for?

Was he actually building a library of recommendations from this bookshop? Why?

What will happen to these books when he dies? Who will get them? Will anyone?

If you can afford to buy all these books monthly, why not make them available to those who are reading them?

While this story left me plotting a way to learn Portuguese, get to Brazil, and break into this flat, there was another thing she told me about. One of the services this bookshop offered was selling books by the meter. Customers who were decorating their homes or real estate agents who were staging homes would request a certain length of books, sometimes with a specific colour, size, or theme in mind. These books could also be used for TV, film, or commercials. These were all actual text-filled books. They were just decorative, set pieces for someone’s home or potential home.

I wonder if they ever read them, considering they are decoration. Anyone who’s ever been in a house with a lot of decorative pillows knows those are NOT for sleeping on. When the house is finally sold, does the buyer get the books? Do they just move on to new homes?

I looked into this ‘books by the meter’ (or foot, for our friends still using imperial units). Some are a rental service; some specialise in rare and old-looking books (basically the ones that would fill Dumbledore’s office). But on my googling adventure, I found this line from an Australian company that offers this service:

“Our selections will please the eye and lend an intellectual, cultured air to any space they occupy. Books represent accumulated knowledge. Books more than furnish a room, they positively bring it to life.”

Now I’m left with more questions. While I can understand why books can be symbols used this way, what does it say when this symbol is emptied out of meaning and replaced with just the form (simulation much)? Why do we place such a heavy emphasis on the ownership of books to prove a rich intellectual legitimacy? Why is this ownership sufficient? If a book is never to be read, can we properly call it a BOOK or is there something that it loses when it will never encounter a reader? I’m not referring only to the text, but interplay between text and book. Is there a point when book-formed objects stop being what we understand as a BOOK because this function is taken away?  Or is decoration part of the function of books?

Sex sells... even books

Two hundred years ago, female writers like Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë masked their gender on their works in order to have any chance to be taken seriously as writers in a male-dominated literary world. While Jane Austen published anonymously “by a lady”, Charlotte Brontë veiled her gender completely, writing under the pseudonym “Currer Bell”. 



At this point in the ongoing process of women’s emancipation, we would assume that women should not have a problem with authenticity and authority as writers anymore. However, the contrary is observed by organizations like VIDA: Women in Literary Arts that track representation of women in contemporary literary writing and their “unreliable“ critique as they are still primarily associated with fiction, written and read predominantly by women. But is it only women that face problems concerning their gendered voice when it comes to sales as it appears that now it is the market that determines a writer’s worth rather than their literary talent?

In 2014, the book review site Goodreads carried out an investigation which revealed that readers tend to prefer their printed evening entertainment written by their own gender. If we consider the fact that roughly half of the population are female and, consequently, the other half male, we should lean back in our armchairs and relax because there should be same number of writers and readers of both genders - if there was not the fact of an enormous majority of women reading fiction - preferably by women. But do not be fooled: Only because an author’s name on your new book seems to indicate it’s written by a woman, this does not necessarily mean we are dealing with a female writer.

There are several examples of male (and female) writers that use gender-neutral pseudonyms or even a name of the other gender in order to reach higher sales numbers -so we can say that gender certainly matters. It is very likely that a male writer’s female protagonist’s voice might be not taken as seriously as if the same character would have been created by a woman.

It is argued, whether authors like JK Rowling and EL James might have chosen their gender-neutral initials on their book spines hoping to reach as well boys and young men with their manly Harrys or Christians - or not. Of course, it is only speculation whether their bestsellers would have been more or less successful if it listed Joanne Kathleen Rowling or Erika Mitchell as the authors. We can also simultaneously ask if EL James seriously thought that Mr Grey’s “soft grey eyes“ would have attracted more men by only using her name’s initials. Moreover, after the tremendous success of The Harry Potter mega-series JK Rowling started using a male pseudonym for the “after-Potter-works“.

As we can see, there is much to be discussed about authorship and sales figures through the lens of gender.  Sean Thomas aka Tom Knox aka SK Tremayne is quoted as saying “Does it help to be identified as a woman, or to have no gender at all? […] And given that every ‘debut’ novelist wants to give themselves every possible chance, why take the modest risk that using a male name might bring? Why not just use initials? Get rid of gender altogether?”

Will "getting rid of gender" solve any of the problems surrounding gendered readings of literary texts?

Do we read the author or the story? 

Is there a problem in women only accepting female writers narrating female voices?
 
For further reading:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/31/male-writers-hide-gender-sell-more-books
http://www.vidaweb.org/about-vida/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-adler/why-do-women-read-more-no_b_5830852.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/25/readers-prefer-authors-own-sex-goodreads-survey

A Ravenclaw's Report

This past weekend, December 5 and 6, the German ComicCon took place in Dortmund in the Westfalenhallen. On approximately 20 000 square meters, 30 000 comic, manga and film fans met for two days to celebrate each other and their respective fandoms. And believe me – they had a blast. Two halls, 20 star guests from the realms of TV and cinema, more than a hundred different booths and thousands of costumes made sure of that.

Of course this wasn’t San Diego Comic Con. Or Dragon Con. Or any of the gigantic American conventions that take place every year. And it wasn’t the first German convention of that kind, either. Last year, fans of Star Wars were able to see their favorite actors and characters at a convention in Essen. For years, both Ring*Con and HobbitCon, being more specifically about fantasy (especially J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings), have been organized in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia. But the German ComicCon was the first to offer this kind of fair for comic, film and TV fans from all kinds of genres here in Germany. And the fans embraced it wholeheartedly.

It all began on Saturday morning, at 9 sharp. That is, for those with the VIP tickets. The smallfolk was allowed in half an hour later, but it seemed that the organizers had not anticipated a crowd that size – at least not right at 9. Because when I arrived (together with my sister and my partner), the line was ENDLESS. We got off the subway and had to walk back to the station before because the line was so long. It took us an hour to get in; fortunately it did not feel like an hour, though, because we were so excited.

See? And that’s only from our perspective, when we were almost inside.

Once inside, we got rid of our jackets and the real fun began. We went past a weapons’ check where the cosplayers (for those who don’t know, this is the term for the people who dress up as certain characters) could have their weapons approved – and some of them had GIGANTIC weapons! Then we entered the first hall. The place was overcrowded. Booths after booths with narrow paths in between, and hundreds of costumed and un-costumed people strolling past them. It was difficult to get oriented at first.

First, we went past the booths of the manga and comic artists. They sat there and drew, had artwork on display, and you could buy a drawing of you (or whatever you like) from them. Unfortunately, my knowledge of German or European comic artists is lacking,  so we did not recognize anyone. They had some pretty amazing artwork, though! The rest of the hall was filled with merchandise. A lot of it was actually in the Asian manga style, but you could buy Steampunk clothes and accessories, games of all kinds, old and new comic books, comic figures… the list could go on and on. And almost everything was covered – there was stuff from The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Marvel and DC Comics, Star Wars, Doctor Who, just to name a few of the most famous. You could buy Targaryen Christmas balls, tiny Lego figures of Luke Skywalker, comic books about X-Men or Fantastic Four or Wonder Woman from the last ten or more years, little plush dragons that you can put on your shoulder, posters, buttons, and, and, and.

 A gigantic money making machine, yes. But also a place where all the nerds, all the people who would like to be someone else sometimes, all those who identify with characters from all kinds of works, can finally step out and be this character.

Because at ComicCon, when you dress up at a character, people see you as that character. See this guy? 

He cosplayed as Thranduil, the king of Mirkwood in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel (and Peter Jackson’s movies) The Hobbit. I have no idea what his name is, because everyone called him “Your Highness”, or “King Thranduil” or just “Thranduil” (depending on how much of a fangirl/-boy you were). From Middle Earth, Galadriel also roamed the halls, alongside Gandalf, Fili, Kili, and quite a few Bilbos.

 From Star Wars, there were many Stormtroopers, I saw a Padmé Amidala, some Darth Vaders, a few Reys from the upcoming The Force Awakens, and a myriad of Jedi Knights of various alien races. There were Spider-Men, Iron Men, big and small Captain Americas, Black Widows and an enormous number of Deadpools, eagerly anticipating the new film. Thors and Lokis were there, and both in their male and female versions. There were Batmen and  Wonder Women, but the majority of DC cosplays seemed to focus on the Joker and Harley Quinn. I saw two or three Cerseis (from TV show Game of Thrones/ novel series A Song of Ice And Fire) and one immensely realistic Khal Drogo. After a while we started a fun little game called “How many Daeneryses are there?”, because there were many, and all of them so beautiful and different that you could tell them apart enough from each other to count them And there were many people (including me) who simply donned whatever they had from the world of Harry Potter.

That’s my Ravenclaw-self with an amazing Captain America. Nearby him was also a replica of Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir. Of course I tried lifting it! But yeah, probably not worthy. There was also a (rather bad) replica of the TARDIS from Doctor Who, and of course we had to take photos with it! This was all in the second hall, together with much more merchandise, and a stage, where a cosplay contest took place! It was utterly amazing to see all those great costumes on stage, even though I didn’t know half of them (as they came from Asian manga culture). All the hard work that those people put into their costumes! I don’t know if this comes as a surprise to you, but most of the cosplayers (even those of male characters) were female. There was an astonishing Petyr Baelish (or Littlefinger) who only looked different from the original character with regard to height, and you wouldn’t have known he was actually a female body in a male costume if you had stood directly in front of her.

Oh, and the star guests! Look who attended this con!

It’s Sylvester McCoy, from Doctor Who and The Hobbit! He played the seventh Doctor, and the wizard Radagast the Brown from Tolkien’s stories. I got his autograph, and he was so lovely to all of his fans. I am so grateful that I got to meet him.

German ComicCon 2015 was one of the best weekends of my life so far. And although there were many little things that could be improved for next year, I think most of the visitors had a great time. It’s a commercial machine, of course, and everyone is aware of it – but nowhere else do you meet so many people who share the same enthusiasm, the same passion, the same love for something that is often disdainfully called pop culture.

See you next year.

What is the effect of these conventions on the sales of the books of their respective fandoms? How do they work together, how do they diverge? 

Do these conventions remain a part of the book/comic book/cultural production industry or do they take on a life of their own?

Have you ever been to a trade fair or a convention? What were your experiences? And if you could dress up as any character, who would you be?