Walt at Random

I didn’t find evidence of a Facebook page or Twitter account for the Woodsville Free Public Library in New Hampshire–and that’s the last of a scan that began with Aaron Cutler Memorial Library on Tuesday. (Aaron Cutler does have a Facebook account with 125 likes, the most recent update on the day I checked, the fifth most recent within the last quarter but not the last month, and clear community engagement. But no Twitter account.)

Since I was looking at New Hampshire public libraries this week–following a major weather situation–I was reminded once again that most public libraries, even (or especially) the smallest, really do serve as centers of their communities.

Now on to Ohio–just one more library/library agency than New Hampshire, but roughly nine times as many people, so I’m guessing the patterns will be different once more.

When, in the first part of the manuscript (devoted to the initial 25 states), I discuss possible regional bias, I noted that–at the time–the Northeast wasn’t very well represented (including New England). Now that I’ve added Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and will definitely add Rhode Island and Vermont (and probably Pennsylvania), that won’t be true for the larger set of results.

Hmm. I also turned around the fifth revision of The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing (to take into account proofreader’s notes and another round of copyediting). So I guess it hasn’t been a wasted week. (By the way, the people in Information Today, Inc.’s book division are not only a pleasure to work with but excellent at what they do. The fifth revision of the book is significantly better than the first submitted version, as I anticipated it would be.)

As for C&I…still no writing, still no urgency. I should do the second part of the Relevance and Reward series of posts..maybe soon.

Update Sunday, November 6, 2011: Partway through Ohio, I’m realizing that I really would like it to be the case that nearly all PLs have FB pages and Twitter accounts–it’s faster for me (than attempting to be satisfied that they don’t), and it’s a lot more fun to look at how PLs use social networks than whether they use them.

(The first 16 Ohio PLs–alphabetically–all have Facebook accounts. The string runs out there, although I continue to see a healthy percentage. Even there, only half of those 16 have obvious working links to their Facebook pages on their homepages.)

And I’ve gone far enough to see that, while Multnomah has the most Likes of any public library in the first 25 states surveyed, it’s definitely not the most of any PL in the nation (nor, as far as I know, does it claim that distinction). Columbus Metropolitan has more than half again as many Likes. But then I checked a library that won’t be in the expanded survey–New York just doesn’t have the downloadable spreadsheet of library names and LSAs–and there it is: NYPL’s primary Facebook page has more than 42,000 Likes. Is that the highest? If not, I’m sure someone will let me know what library has even more.

If there’s anyone out there who wonders why Cites & Insights hasn’t appeared for five weeks now (and isn’t likely to for quite some time), and who doesn’t read posts such as this one, here’s an update of sorts.

Massachusetts down…

I’m currently interleaving work on the draft text for Libraries in Social Networks (working title, from ALA Editions, some time next year with luck) with work on expanding my survey of actual public library presence on Facebook or Twitter from the current 25 states and 2,406 libraries to a total of 38 states and 5,957 libraries (or, if energy runs out, 36 states and 4,963 libraries).

I’m doing the remaining 13 states (all of them I hadn’t already done and that have readily-available spreadsheets of library names and population served) in alphabetic order–except that, regarding the parenthetic note in the previous paragraph, I’ve now moved Pennsylvania and Texas to the end, since those are the two with the largest number of reporting libraries.

I’d already done Alabama and Indiana. A few minutes ago, I finished Massachusetts (and the first three libraries in Maine, since I stopped at a “20 multiple” convenient spot).

Which means I’ve looked at the websites and other evidence of social networks for all the public libraries, memorial libraries, free libraries, incorporated public library associations, city libraries, town libraries, just plain libraries, reading rooms, citizens’ libraries, social libraries, athenaea (what’s the plural of athenaeum?)…and, last but not least, the Young Men’s Library Association in Ware, which has both Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’ve even managed the cases where two libraries in two different communities have exactly the same name (I think there were three of those), with a little help from Wikipedia.

Now on to Maine (and Chapter 5)

So now I’ll start in on Chapter 5 of the text…and interleave that with Maine’s libraries. (Odd coincidence: The number of reporting libraries/library systems in Maine is exactly the same as the number in Nebraska, which will come next. Whereas the numbers for New Hampshire and Ohio, the next two after that, differ by one.)

And that’s the news from South Livermore…in the heart of one of California’s lesser-known (but also one of the earliest) wine countries.

For many years, I said “I’ll keep writing as long as people keep reading what I write.”

That may be a bad formulation. Here’s a better one:

I’ll keep writing (in a particular area, in a particular manner) as long as it continues to be relevant and rewarding.

“People keep reading what I write” is one measure of relevance and reward, to be sure, but it may not be one that works very well at this point. It worked fine when I earned my living doing something else that was both relevant and (usually, and always financially) rewarding. It worked great when the combined package of paid columns and articles, paid speaking invitations, citations and discussions based on what I was writing, and other linked measures made it clear that my writing (and speaking) was relevant to a reasonably large group of library folk.

Now? I’m wondering.

Relevance?

I hadn’t thought about it explicitly, but when I lost my full-time position, I was as much concerned about remaining relevant as I was about financial rewards.

At that point, Cites & Insights still seemed pretty clearly relevant to a fair number of people (based on feedback and the extent to which items were cited elsewhere). While speaking invitations were on the decline, there were still some of them–and I still had two paid columns in print magazines.

And I was offered a part-time position that, while never well paid, yielded results I considered highly relevant and valuable to the field, doing something I thought I could do exceptionally well. So, all in all, I was happy enough with relevance, and there were enough rewards overall to keep me reasonably happy.

Rewards…

The last 18 months or so have been a little more difficult. The part-time position went away and, in the process, the work I’d done was scrapped entirely, as though it was of no importance to anybody.

Look: My day job was library systems analysis, design and programming for five decades. I knew that very little I did would survive long after I left. I doubt that any of the code I wrote anywhere is still being used; I’m not sure much of the design work survives in any fashion. That’s OK–it comes with the territory. Abruptly deciding to deep-six an entire interlinked body of professional literature with no real warning, two or three months after updating of that body has ended: That’s something different.

Cites & Insights has always been a little tricky. It was sponsored for several years (continued thanks to YBP!); it was clearly being quoted and cited for several years. Apparent readership (based on Urchin statistical reports) was strong, and each issue or essay continued to gain readers over time.

Meanwhile…well, speaking invitations dried up completely. (That might change–given at least one of the books that’s coming out, I hope it will.) The “freemium” model wasn’t working: C&I wasn’t yielding speaking invitations and attempts to produce something special for a fee were essentially useless. (Four copies of the hardcopy limited edition sold. Four.) And, while the numbers still seem reasonably strong, I’m not seeing much of any secondary recognition–not much sign that C&I is part of the ongoing professional conversations. And, of course, there’s essentially no revenue (I believe donations this year total two digits before the decimal point).

I tried something mildly interesting in producing the Library 2.0 Reader for a PDF and hardcopy price that yielded a nominal $4 in revenue–and adding a slight speedbump to the original C&I issues, both of which were still being downloaded–apparently–hundreds of times each month. The speedbump, a substitute PDF, suggested buying the book, but also gave the very brief URL for the continued free copy.

That’s been extremely discouraging. Not only has the Reader barely sold at all–five copies in June 2011, two in July 2011, zero copies (also true for all C&I books) in August, September, and so far October 2011–but Urchin statistics show that, while there have been 783 downloads of the stub issue since July 1, there have been only 16 PDF downloads of the new version of the original essay and 7 or fewer of the more recent ones. HTML hasn’t done much better: 17 of the original, 13 of the followup, 11 of the more recent essay. In essence, not only won’t people pay a nominal sum for these essays, all but a handful aren’t even ready to copy-and-paste a URL. I can only assume that, for 90+% of the downloads/clicks on the PDF, there’s no real relevance there.

Oh…and my print magazine columns dried up, one at the end of 2009, the other at the end of this year. In both cases, I think the editor’s decision was right: The column had run or has run its course.

I’ve said most of this before

True enough, including the Bibs & Blather in the August 2011 C&I. There I talked about relative priority of various projects, with C&I going back to a lower priority level.

I also said “It’s still here. I’m still here” and that C&I was likely to continue, “Possibly with less regularity. Probably with less intensity.” I said I was nearly certain to reach issue 144 (one somewhat natural stopping point, a gross of issues) and better than 95% likely to reach issue 150. (I also made some changes and, I believe, improvements in the layout and in the HTML versions. For what those changes are worth…)

C&I has reached issue 144: the current issue, dated October 2011. It actually appeared on September 17, 2011; that’s on the late side for relation of actual appearance to issue date, but not by much.

What’s changed?

Maybe nothing. On the other hand, it’s now October 19, and not only isn’t a November issue imminent, I haven’t written anything toward such an issue.

Something curious happened toward the end of last week and early this week. I turned around a second round copyediting draft of The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing, the book (to be published by Information Today, Inc.) that I regard as something every public library would benefit from–and yes, “every” does include some very small libraries–and possibly the most important and relevant book I’ve ever written in the field, up to and including MARC for Library Use, although it’s a very different kind of relevance. I won’t be doing anything on that book for at least another week and a half, and remaining steps are quite small…

Meanwhile, work’s well begun on my 2012 book for ALA Editions, on public libraries’ use of social networks. I’d completed the first pass survey of libraries in25 states. As of the end of last week, I was about a third of the way through the draft of the book itself.

It would have been a perfect time to turn some attention to Cites & Insights, printing lead sheets for an essay and starting work on the actual writing during breaks in working on the new book.

Instead, I decided to expand the social network project: Building a new spreadsheet with public libraries in another 13 states (all the remaining states with readily-available spreadsheets of library names and service areas), some 3,600 of them, and starting a slightly more efficient survey of social network use in those libraries. That, combined with an already-planned “quarter later” rescan of the original 25 states (which may now become a four-months-later rescan), pretty much takes up library-related energy, one reason there have been so few posts.

Where does that leave Cites & Insights?

Caught in relevance-and-reward limbo, at least for now.

I  know Open Access: What You Need to Know Now is and should be relevant, even if it’s gotten a lot less attention than I was hoping.

I know The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing is relevant and should be rewarding.

I know Libraries on Social Networks (working title) will be relevant and, I hope, rewarding.

Doing the substantial amount of additional research for that project will add slightly to its value. “Slightly” is probably the operative term. And yet, when faced with the choice of working on that slow, slogging, slow process or working on C&I essays, I chose the research.

Is C&I defunct? No, at least not yet. Is it on indefinite hiatus? I honestly don’t know at this point. (You could put that another way: Will there be a November/December 2011 issue? Damned if I know…)

Could this change? Of course. But for now, that’s where things stand. Or sit.

Relevance matters. So do rewards, of which relevance itself is an important (but not the only) one.

Yesterday afternoon, I sent a PDF back to Amy Reeve at Information Today, Inc.–namely, The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing: Helping Patrons and Communities Use Free and Low-cost Publishing Tools to Tell Their Stories. ISBN 978-1-57387-430-4. (Since it’s listed in the latest ITI catalog, I’m comfortable using the full title.)

It’s a PDF because this book is an example of what it’s about–using low-cost software most patrons already have (Microsoft Word or, if not that, LibreOffice/OpenOffice) and low-cost service providers (primarily Lulu, but also CreateSpace) to produce micropublications: Books, such as family histories, geneaologies, oral histories, microniche items, etc., that will have a market of from one to 50 copies. While the book will be published traditionally, the PDF used to publish it will come entirely from Word 2010 on my computer (albeit with title page design supplied by ITI).

This PDF is the third version, following Amy’s superb copyediting. I’m not sure I accepted 100% of her editorial suggestions, but it was close to that. As a writer who’s published more than a dozen books traditionally (with editors, copyeditors and the whole process) and more than half a dozen via Lulu (with only my own flawed editing), and who’s also published a couple hundred columns in print magazines where editors are involved, I really and truly appreciate high-quality editing and copyediting. The second version followed John B. Bryans’ editorial suggestions, which resulted in considerable improvements. I’m certain Amy Reeve’s work has also improved the book. (Let me not forget M. Heide Dengler, who worked with me to refine the Word template I created for the book–a Word template that will be publicly available as part of the methodology described in the book.)

There are still more steps. There may be a proofreading step. There’s certainly an indexing step (done by professionals at ITI, for which I’m especially grateful, as I’m not a competent indexer). In a few weeks, the results of those steps will come to me and be combined with the existing (or further revised) document to create the final PDF.

Meanwhile, and really, I’m not just procrastinating a bit longer on starting to actually write my next book, truly I’m not…

A few idle thoughts

• For every ten textual changes in a book–no matter how small those changes are (down to and including changing an em dash to a comma and space)–there will be at least one new bad break (line-breaking hyphen that doesn’t follow agreed layout rules), orphan word or other layout problem
• There is no substitute for high-quality editing and copyediting. You can do a good job on your own, but an independent mind will bring more to the table.
• Adobe Acrobat just may be a tool of the devil. While the book discusses using Word’s own PDF output with PDF/A selected (which assures that all typefaces will be embedded, thus meeting Lulu’s upload rules), I was using Acrobat as a “printer”–with explicit inclusion of all typefaces–because I thought it would yield a smaller file, as it has in previous cases. For some reason, I’m still not sure why, I could never convince Acrobat to embed Lucida Bright and Lucida Sans (used as examples of possible typefaces)…and, when I reverted to Word’s PDF/A output, there was no significant difference in file size. Not to mention the fact that Word’s output process is a whole lot faster than Acrobat’s “printing” process.
• This stuff is fun. It’s also work, but it’s an oddly satisfying form of work. And, once you’ve done page-by-page checking and handling of orphan words and other layout issues, you become very aware of how many big-publisher books apparently haven’t had that level of attention (three-quarters of a sample of 40 recent Big Six books I checked at the library, for example). Independent and smaller book publishers (definitely including ITI and ALA Editions) really do try harder, and it shows.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the book as it nears real production. (One private copy, without index and final title page and with a very odd cover, is being produced as I write this–I wanted to make absolutely sure I was walking the talk. And, hey, Lulu’s still offering a “create a new book, get one copy free” deal, so the private copy’s only costing me the $3.99 postage charge.)

Now, on to libraries in social networks…

My weekend list of must, should and could goals includes “one good post,” by which I mean one post in this blog that actually says something. It’s also a standing item on my weekly to-do list (the weekend list is handwritten, and when I run out of slowly-yellowing 4×6 index cards, I might stop doing it; the weekly list is a Word file and kept to one printed page. In both cases, I just love crossing things out as completed–and in certain cases, putting an item on the weekly list and, after two or three weeks, bolding it, will keep reminding me to do something I’d just as soon postponed).

As I was saying…I aim to do one good post a week at a minimum. Lately I’m missing that aim. That may continue. You can partly blame FriendFeed. You can partly blame my being old and lazy.

You can mostly, at this point, blame a confluence of events:

• I thought I’d finished the first-phase research for the social networks book and was just about ready to start actually writing the draft in the middle of this week. Well, I did start writing the draft…and found after two pages that I wanted to think about it a little more.
• In timing that couldn’t be better, the managing editor at ITI sent me the PDF of my micropublishing books with loads of copyediting suggestions just at the point where I had to admit I was procrastinating, and that took priority. I’ve now gone through all the suggestions, sent back a couple of small questions and one larger question, and am just about halfway through revising the draft. (I love good editing: while ITI is clear about editorial suggestions being suggestions, not mandates, I’m likely to accept somewhere between 95% and 99% of the suggestions, maybe a little higher than 99%.)
• You don’t do this two-screen revision (the book in Word on the larger left screen, the PDF on the smaller notebook screen over to the right) all at once. Or at least I don’t–it leads to new mistakes and irritability. I’m doing one chapter at a time, with substantial breaks in between. I could be using those breaks to start the other book–but I don’t really want to do that. Fortunately, it turns out there was one more metric that I needed, one that requires a few hours (literally “a few”–no internet searching involved) scanning. So I’m interleaving that scanning (and occasional pure fun stuff) with the revisions.
• The scanning has to do with “currency” of the most recent post or tweet on a library’s account, as of the date I did the checking. For some reason, while I saved recent tweets and posts, I didn’t actually record currency (although I planned to do so on the second pass in late fall). I’ve come up with a sortable single-character code that gives me a useful hierarchy of currency without much effort.
• One reason to check currency has to do with the many library Facebook accounts (and some Twitter accounts) that don’t show up as links on the library’s home page. While I went into this project believing that no model of social network use would suit all libraries equally well, I had sort-of assumed that direct links on the home page would be one typical sign of active library use. Until, just for fun, I checked out the library website where one of the field’s better-known and more thoughtful advocates of library social networking works (it’s in one of the 25 states I didn’t survey)…and found that there were no obvious links. But, searching for and checking the Twitter and Facebook accounts, there was also no question that these were active, well-read, viable accounts. So I sent an email inquiry to the person involved–and received a response that convinced me that my assumption was wrong: That even “put links on the home page” isn’t necessarily an obvious choice for every library. That, in turn, is leading me to rethink my definition of “active” accounts, or at least to add a new category.
• In other words, lots’o'activity, and I don’t really feel like doing long, thoughtful, coherent blog posts at the end of the day. Some day…
• Oh, as for early work on the November Cites & Insights… Well, it’s possible there will be a November/December C&I, which could come out any time up to, say, December 10. We shall see. (The current issue is #144. That’s one of the magic numbers for calling it a day…I’ve done a gross of issues, just as Buffy did a gross of episodes. I don’t believe the October 2011 issue is the final C&I…)

Hmm. I guess this will do as “one odd post” until a good one comes along. Oh, and given recent comments about blind sources: The person involved is David Lee King, and I found his thoughtful response to my clumsily-worded question convincing and, well, thoughtful. Thanks, David.

Yawn. If there’s a staple of blogging, it’s the “I haven’t been posting much” post.

But heck, what good’s a meme if you can’t participate?

I’ll probably continue not posting much for at least another 10 days, because… (in my mind, I hear that intoned as part of a Almond Joy/Mars ad–odd, since I don’t eat either one)

Into phase 1.5 of research for the new book

Well, that’s along with turning around the book on micropublishing, writing one long essay for the October Cites & Insights, writing one short piece for C&I, wrapping up the first half of a 50-movie megapack (all of which means that I probably have the draft form of the October issue in place), going to see H.M.S. Pinafore, running scenarios to see when I should start collecting Social Security and how much we can spend without risking running out of $ by the time I’m 100, and being a lazy oaf as usual…

Phase 1.5? Going through 875 sets of tweets and Facebook statuses captured during Phase 1 (I copied-and-pasted, text only, the most recent five of each as I was noting other metrics), turning the raw text into something I could use (that is, one paragraph per tweet or status, shorn of most overhead) and noting the overall theme of each group and, for libraries with both, how they relate to one another. (I looked at the most recent 20 tweets or updates; in almost every case, what I see from the most recent 5 is true of the whole stream–e.g., some libraries use a social network entirely for events, some entirely for events, services and programs, some for a whole mix of stuff, at least one strictly to announce weekly sets of new books.)

That’s all additional fodder for the book, but with 875 sets–841 sets of Facebook updates, 370 sets of tweets, 336 with both–it takes a while. “Piecemeal” effort: do ten sets, play a little poker, do ten sets, check FriendFeed, do ten sets, check gmail, and so on. After or during which I’ll do more metrics and try to contact some of the libraries that stand out (for the good) in some respect, to get more feedback.

Target: Finish phase 1.5 while I’m still 65 years old. That gives me 10 days, which seems about right.

So that’s why I’m not blogging much and probably won’t be for a while. In the time it took to write this, I could have done another five sets…but I needed the break.

I’m delighted to note that there’s a review of Open Access: What You Need to Know Now on pages 452 and 453 of the September 2011 Journal of Academic Librarianship. The reviewer is David Gibbs at Lauinger Library (Georgetown University); as far as I know, I’m not acquainted with Gibbs.

It’s an excellent review–not only because it’s favorable but because it’s careful (and not wholly favorable–Gibbs says I’m “not always the clearest writer,” a comment that brought forth approving laughter from my wife, the librarian).

Here’s his conclusion, after noting that–by design–the book only deals with scholarly journal articles:

That said, this is a highly readable and recommended survey of one of the most important issues facing librarians and libraries in the 21st century.

If your library doesn’t already have a copy, it should. It’s never too late to order one–noting that Amazon offers a Kindle ebook version and ALA Editions offers a whole bundle of them, if paper isn’t your thing.

Turns out there’s at least one other print review (in addition to John Dupuis’ blog review, which I believe I noted earlier)–in the August 2011 Voice of Youth Advocates. Unfortunately, that one concludes that “This is a helpful work on an important trend, but most VOYA readers will find the cost a barrier.”

Just a quick multifunction post for no particular reason:

• I reached a milestone yesterday, completing Phase 1 of my 2012 book project–that is, checking public libraries/library agencies in half of the U.S. states for presence on Twitter or Facebook. More than 2,500 libraries checked in all, starting near the end of July. (There will be a followup, intended to be precisely three months after the initial scans.)
• I have not yet started on any of the data analysis or real work on the project, and probably won’t even add the key columns to the spreadsheet(s) until I’ve taken a day or two away from the project. Conclusions will, of course, be part of the book. On the other hand…
• The process involved looking at more library websites than I’d ever expected to, and that did generate some thoughts that have very little to do with the book. I may turn those thoughts into a casual essay (or part of an essay) for Cites & Insights. (No, I’m not planning any grand set of guidelines or critiques–others who are closer to the issues have done those or will do them. These will be casual thoughts.)
• Also completed the first half of a closer milestone: Making changes in my current book project (The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing) based on the editorial pass. Starting, oh, as soon as I finish this post, I’ll be doing the second half of that milestone: Detailed copyfitting to deal with awkward line-break hyphens and the like. (For very good reasons, I’m doing the actual layout on this book.)
• Once that’s well under way, I’ll do some C&I writing…and maybe get back to watching old movies.
• I am firmly resolved not to deal with a silly list issued by some college that gets lots of attention for the list. I looked at part of it, broke down laughing, and decided that it wasn’t worth the time or attention. Silliness is always with us; the Onion and Cronk do it better.
• Speaking of old movies, which I wasn’t, our Saturday movie last weekend was a reminder of why I don’t plan to give up on physical discs any time soon–the Blu-ray version of Forbidden Planet, magnificently restored–and with loads of extras, running to more than four hours altogether, I think (including some we won’t bother with, such as the full-length 1957 film that also “starred” Robby, the Robot). Yes, we’ve seen the classic movie (perhaps the first A-level SF movie?) before; no, we’ve never seen it like this–and even if we had high-speed broadband, you can’t get this level of picture quality via streaming.
• And to close this randomness: Perhaps worth noting that, of all the Blu-ray discs we’ve watched from Netflix–probably 80% of the discs over the last couple years, certainly more than 100 discs–only one has had any problems. (That one looked as though someone had deliberately tried to damage it, and succeeded.) That tough coating on Blu-rays apparently works: Most of them look as though they’d never been played.

Now there’s a potentially endless series…

I suspect my posts have even been less regular than usual, if such a thing is possible. (There’s a retired library person who lives in Livermore who posts every. single. weekday, if regularity is your thing…)

Last weekend, I considered doing a series of daily posts this week and next about progress on the two book projects that are currently overlapping, and where doing semi-overlapping work (a couple of hours each day on each one) turns out to be the best way to proceed.

That didn’t happen and won’t happen. The book projects, and my own overriding laziness (well, and some real-life situations), are the reasons for so few posts.

Briefly:

• One project came back from line editing on Tuesday. It’s an odd hybrid project where I’m doing the layout as a fundamental part of the book. I’m waiting for some responses on a few layout issues, but meanwhile I’ll start this morning on some needed additional text (probably 500-1000 words). I have until a week from Sunday to finish the textual and layout changes, so in practice working a couple of hours a day is a good way to proceed.
• The other project is nearing the end of Phase 1 of the research stage, after which I’ll start on the actual writing–at a very preliminary level. The research has gone far beyond what I originally anticipated (I first planned to look at libraries in two states, then in six; now it looks like 25), and it’s straightforward enough that I plan to do a three-month follow-up, which should be revealing.

Somehow, once I’ve done some work on each project (I’d been doing more on the second one while awaiting the editorial notes & queries), I’m all written out: Writing a post is rarely of much interest. Sorry about that. Then again, do you really care that I’m halfway through scanning Kentucky libraries (that’s what I would have said yesterday early afternoon–I’m done, with Oregon up next)?

[LSW FFeeps probably recognize I was doing Kentucky yesterday, as I found Madisonville's URL for their public library website so remarkable as to be worth noting--namely publiclibrary.org. And yes, there's a thelibrary.org in Missouri. Did you know there are more than 700 LSW folks on FriendFeed?]

My habitual pattern of public library use is to check out three books: One “genre” fiction (alternating between Science Fiction and occasional Fantasy on one hand, mystery on the other), one mainstream fiction (whatever that means–basically “fiction books that Livermore Public hasn’t segregated into genre shelves), and one nonfiction. LPL has a 4-week circulation period. Most often, I finish the three books in three weeks. Most often, I enjoy them all.

The last two cycles, though, I really haven’t enjoyed the nonfiction books. In one case, I finished the book (it was a struggle) and wondered why I’d wasted so much time. In the other, the writing was facile enough and the book short enough that I could breeze right through–but I was annoyed by the whole thing.

Thinking back on it, the two books have something in common.

What they have in common: They’re variants of Hunter Thompson’s gonzo journalism, but without Hunter Thompson’s sheer manic flair. That is, in both cases, the book seems to be a lot more about the writer than it is about the subject.

In one case, the supposed subject is the situation in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. In the other case, it’s the New Yorker (the supposed decline thereof, although the writer who denounces the post-Wallace Shawn magazine somehow managed to keep working there for another fifteen years).

I originally included the authors and titles here, but that’s hardly the point. I know that I never want to read another book by either of them (even though one has an excellent reputation in some circles).

No big significant message here. I was surprised to find that these two disappointments did have as much in common as they did. I don’t feel that nonfiction writers should minimize their personal appearance within a book–I like getting to know the writer as well as the subject–but there are limits.