Category Archives: Books and Writing

Vook is made for the iPad

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Alice in Wonderland on Vook

I just bought Alice in Wonderland from Vook, a website that sells multimedia books (price: $2.99). When you view a “vook”, you don’t just read text as you would on a Kindle, you get video on the side explaining aspects of the book, the location, the author’s biography, a history of the place. In the case of Alice in Wonderland, which is an illustrated book to begin with, you see the gorgeous illustrations on the screen and you watch beautiful video clips made by filmmaker Emma Heald. I love Vook and recommend it to anyone who likes to read and experience the greater depth of a book. I read Alice in Wonderland when I was a child and reading the “vook” is a vastly different experience. You can also buy Vook for the iPhone. My only complaint is that if I want to see the Alice in Wonderland “vook” on the iPhone, I have to buy it again.

Why not have a subscription model where I pay a monthly fee and can view my “vooks” on whichever platform I choose?

Where Vook will really shine is in the world of cookbooks on an iPad. You place your iPad on the kitchen counter, go to a recipe, watch the author making it or giving you tips on how to braise, make a meringue, or a terrine.

Vook takes books to the next level and I can’t wait to see it on the iPad. The publishing industry is NOT dead; it’s just moving on to another platform. There will always be a place for paper books, which I love, especially those made with great care and artistry. But even for a paper book lover like me, the richness of the experience on Vook is something to celebrate. As long as there are good storytellers – whether in print or video – people will want to see their work.

www.vook.com

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John Cheever on fiction

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John Cheever is my favorite writer. His short stories are masterpieces. Here is what he says about fiction (from The Paris Review Interviews, Vol III):

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction. One never puts down a sentence without the feeling that it has never been put down before in such a way, and that perhaps even the substance of the sentence has never been felt. Every sentence is an innovation. [my emphasis]

Recommended reading:

The Stories of John Cheever

The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III

Highly recommended summer reading: Julian by Gore Vidal

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I am reading “Julian” by Gore Vidal about the Roman emperor Julian (known by many as Julian the Apostate) who lived between 331 and 363 AD. Although it is a work of historical fiction, Vidal had meticulously researched his subject matter (unlike many writers today who play fast and loose with history). The novel is written as a fictional set of memoirs by Julian, with commentary from his teachers, the philosophers Priscus and Libanius. What is most striking and impressive about this novel is Vidal’s scathing attack on the Roman Catholic Church from the perspective of Julian who turned his back on the Church and during his short reign, tried to bring back the Hellenistic gods. If you want to immerse yourself in the politics and mores of the 4th century AD, in Roman history and the early Roman Catholic Church, you must read this book. I am a big fan of Gore Vidal’s work. I’ve read his memoirs, Palimpsest and Point-to-Point Navigation. I also have a collection of his essays, which are among the very best I’ve read. Certainly among American essayists, I think he’s the best.

Strunk and White's Elements of Style offers stupid grammar advice, says professor

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The Bible of American grammar and style, Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, has come under attack on its 50th anniversary. Geoffrey Pullum, head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh, says:

The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.

Pullum goes on to say that much of the book’s grammar advice is just plain wrong. The obsession with not splitting infinitives has been taken too far and he anxiety and self-consciousness created among American writers completely unwarranted. English, Scottish and Irish writers have been spared the horrors of Strunk & White because the book is largely unknown outside the United States.

I recommend listening to the podcast on Fresh Air: 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice

Read the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

I have read Elements of Style at least twice in my life, but I could never memorize the grammar rules. What I do remember is the authors’ insistence on writing as clearly and concisely as possible. That is valuable advice for any writer in any language. As for the command “don’t split your infinitives”, I don’t care. Sometimes I split them, sometimes I don’t depending on how the sentence sounds. If the great writers got away with splitting their infinitives, so can I.

Elements of Style, Strunk & White (the beautiful illustrated version)

April is national poetry month, so I wrote a poem: The ATM

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I wrote this poem on a Virgin America flight from San Francisco to Washington DC. It’s not Wordsworth, but I thought I’d take a stab at celebrating National Poetry Month with some verse.

The ATM

A woman pulls cash out of a wall
The sirens scream as the heavens fall
Helicopter Ben drops money from the sky
Far away in Iraq, the soldiers die.

The streets of San Francisco are paved with gold
But you can’t scrape and you can’t hold
Merchants of false hope, the bankers lie
Like plastic surgeons, for a piece of the pie.

Talk politics to me and whisper in my ear
None of the things I need to fear
Approach the gallows one and all
The mighty dollar is about to fall.

A billion here, a trillion there
It matters no more, not even where
When every shelf in the store is bare
Our only response is not to care.

The people marched with purple rage
Black, red, yellow and sage
An eagle soared and fell out of the sky
A tank drowned out its piercing cry.

As darkness falls, the shadows rise
An eerie echo of heaven dies
The waiters count their paltry tips
And we, in bed, shrink from the apocalypse.

- April 2009, Esme Vos Yu