Weekly Writing Check-In: Christmas Squee Post~

All  I wanted for Christmas was a Kindle Fire and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

I got both!

First, obligatory YAAAAY about another Fairy Boy game that I will not be able to finish before I leave for Japan again. Playing so much Zelda is good for my imagination because it makes me want to write lots of fantastical stuff. Booyeah.

But nobody cares about my feelings for blonde boys in tights swinging swords and getting collagen lip injections. You care about my feelings for the Kindle Fire.

I've only played with it off and on all day - and by "played with it" I mean adding a last.fm app, syncing up my twitter and email, and buying one book, Amy Tan's novella "Rules for Virgins". But thus far it's super shiny, very bright, and OMFG I will have so much fun. Too bad you have to like, spend money for some stuff on it.

Tonight I'm ordering this fantastic sleeve and an equally fantastic bigger sleeve for it tonight. I have to order them tonight to make sure I get them in before I go back to Japan. As soon as I finish reading the two paperbacks I have with me I'll start delving more into the books on the Kindle. I figure that will be around February-ish. Until then I'll have fun with the wireless capabilities in places where my little laptop is just too much to use.

So, that all said, any good kindle recs? I'm particularly looking for writing-centered books at the moment, including grammar books and self-marketing. The freer the better.

Merry Christmas! It's certainly merry here~

This is my sad face: :(

I know I'm super late to this club, but that's what happens when you live in a foreign country that doesn't give a flying seagull about this sort of thing (granted, Japan has more pressing local matters to put in their news at the moment) and are pretty much internet-less when you finally get the news.

You know, the news that your favorite bookstore chain is closing.

Let's just get this right out of the way now: I was always a Borders fan moreso than Barnes & Nobles. There. Said it. Picked a side. Moving on, shall we?

Coming from super-duper rural Oregon, where the nearest bookstore of ANY kind is over thirty miles away in either direction (there are only two directions in these matters, you know), and the only bookstore that carries the titles and authors you actually WANT are three HOURS away...Borders was my friend. Borders was in malls and on convenient street corners when I bothered to be in those sorts of oh so big towns that had MALLS and STREET CORNERS *gasp*. A couple of Barnes & Nobles were there too, but were usually out of the way from where my family was driving so I never visited them much.

Borders was where I got almost my entire manga collection. And when I went through a phase where I didn't buy books at all, when I did buy books I bought them at Borders. Even the books I bought online were from the Borders website. I was a very loyal Borders customer. They pampered me with their rewards card. When I was a super poor college student (still the same, just no longer a college student *sigh*) I used to cash in my rewards for a super cheap book to keep me entertained. Borders stores were always within walking distances in our college towns. (Barnes & Noble not so much) and I actually preferred their stores in the long run because they were smaller and cozier and quiet. Usually I would be the only person in there (a sign of things to come, apparently) and would just stare at the fantasy wall until I finally found something I wanted to read. ...and then I would use my super cool rewards card to get super cool books.

When word got out back in February that Borders was closing a bunch of their stores, I worried a little but then felt better when I learned that none in Oregon were closing. Then I moved abroad, and just a couple of weeks ago I learned that Borders was closing for good.

It was a sad, sad day.

Many people, including myself, saw this coming, especially after all the stores that started closing back in February. I could sit here and wax and wan about why this might've happened, from management practices to an inability to keep up with the times, but if you want that kind of commentary you can go to just about any other blog post about the disappearance of Borders. Because all you're gonna get here right now is a budding author shakin' and cryin' because her favorite bookstore is going bye-bye.

Oh, doubtless I will find another one I love just as much. For now I have Amazon to fill the internet shopping void, but I do love picking out books in real life and taking them home at that moment. (I'm the same with CDs and clothes and well everything.) Plus no shipping fee! I'm too old-school still to get an e-reader (plus they're way out of my budget still) so until that day inevitably comes...well, for the moment I still live in Japan, and I'm happy enough to have a bookstore an hour away that has an ENGLISH section, haha! But there is also that sad little feeling when something that's always been a part of your life goes away. And since we live in such a technological age, it's not too far-fetched to picture a world where bookstores as we know them may not exist at all, and even for those who love change that can be a weird feeling.

But in the end there's one thing about all of this that really, really makes me mad.

I'm in the wrong country to be enjoying all the damn good going-out-of-business sales! Argh!

"Seems like these days anybody can just upload their novel to the Tubes, like they're Hemingway or some crap."

Books take up space.  Viable space.  Space I could be using to store my multitude of CDs because I think they're nifty.  Also, books are made out of paper.  You know what that means?  If you're a voracious reader, you're killing a lot of trees.  As an Oregonian I am programmed to tell you that you are SICK.

But my biggest beef with books is that paperbacks are so easily ruined.  I get pretty OCD about keeping things looking new for as long as possible, and this includes my books.  Mends in the spine, dogeared covers...so gross.  People go on and on about "well loved books" being beautiful, but I want mine to look like they just walked out of Borders with a top hat and tails.  Because I paid money, that's why.

So you'd think I would be all over this E-reader stuff.  After all, I love my little electronics like my Preciouses, and think that the more things we can convert into digital the better - that means less "wasted" resources and more free space in my physical life.  (Says the woman with 300 CDs.)  And if I had an E-reader, I would name it Spock, because come on...they're so...Spocky. 

But I'm not.

When MP3 players first came out I was all up in that shiznit.  Cell phones are cool for convenience.  And yeah, I get why E-readers are so cool, because you can't use braille and we all know that the idea of John Milton trying to bask in his own glory with an E-reader would be hilarious to witness.  Plus the files are so cheap most of the time that it's almost criminal.  It makes buying the Penguin Thrift Edition of The Old Man and the Sea seem like a ripoff.  And yet I can't stand the thought.

It's all for purely selfish reasons, I assure you.  Do I want to live in the age when books become totally obsolete and everything is digital?  (I know, unlikely in my life, but humor me.)  Ever since I was a kid I was obsessed with books.  As in the actual physical aspects of them.  My love for the shape of a book was so hardcore that when I wrote my own stories, I would cut pieces of printer paper in half and handwrite on those...because then it was like a real book!  I loved going to the library and determining where my books would appear on the shelf.  I do not, however, like going to Amazon and determining where I would be on the search page.

I'm old fashioned, kids.  Books piss me off in their impracticality, but I have deeply ingrained into my subconscious that it's the ultimate form of my work.  I'll know that I'm achieving my dreams once I pull the first hardcover copy of my debut book from the box sent to me by the printer.   All those copies will then go into the trunk of the car and I will begin to loathe their existence, but damnit, I wrote a book!  I can look at my work in digital form whenever I want - all I have to do is open the original Word documents.  Actually seeing the dead trees and used ink means a lot more to me.  Those trees died for my novel.

But I'm not stupid, because obviously digital is the future and yadda yadda yadda.  Yet even when I see people reading from E-readers when at the park or on the bus, I think, "Man, would seeing somebody reading my novel on one of those things be as cool as seeing them read an actual book copy?"  I dunno.  Probably.  I guess it depends on how bored their faces look.

So what say you, readers?  E-readers.  Have one?  Want one?  Sworn them off and still using a pager to sort your life out?  As a reader have they changed the way you read?  As an author have they changed your view of your future publishing career?  Do you even know what an Amazon Kindle is?  I need to know, because I am nosy.

PS:  I am totally probably going to ask for one for my birthday.  In before anyone calls me a potential hypocrite, because I totally know.