On Today’s Bookshelf (XIV)

I spend my working hours editing books and then spend my pleasure hours reading more books rather than watching TV. I can’t recall the last time I turned on the TV (except to watch a rented video). What follows is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or acquired since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post) either in hardcover or in ebook form:

Nonfiction –

• Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Shogan
• A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman
• The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer (I already own and have read the first 2 volumes in this outstanding history: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome and The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, as noted in prior On Today’s Bookshelf posts)
• The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid edited by John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd
• Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America by Owen Matthews
• The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition by Mark Twain, edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and Benjamin Griffin (I already own and have read volume 1)
• Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott
• Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
• Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
• The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner
• Shadow on the Crown by Patricia Bracewell
• The Last Tsar by Donald Crawford
• Thomas Becket by John Guy
• Hiding Edith by Kathy Kacer
• The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis by Julie Kavanagh
• A Monarchy Transformed by Mark Kishlansky
• The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell
• Shooting Victoria by Paul Thomas Murphy
• Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson
• The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
• Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
• The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston
• Six Women of Salem by Marilynne Roach
• The Last Greatest Magician in the World by Jim Steinmeyer
• Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Fiction –

• Blood Land by R.S. Guthrie
• Shadowborn by Moira Katson
• Ascendancy by Jennifer Vale
• Witch Wraith by Terry Brooks
• Two Fronts: The War that Came Early by Harry Turtledove
• Treecat Wars by David Weber
• Shadowborn, Shadowforged, & Shadow’s End by Moira Katson (trilogy)
• The Song of Eloh Saga by Megg Jensen (7 books combined in a single omnibus)
• The Dream Thief by Shana Abe
• Something Blue by Emma Jameson
• Venice by Peter Ackroyd
• The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin
• Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins
• The Algebraist by Ian Banks
• Bone Thief by Jefferson Bass
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Bridge of Dreams and Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
• Killing Rain by Barry Eisler
• First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
• American Assassin by Vince Flynn
• Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler
• The Apostates Tale by Margaret Frazer
• Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
• Chosen, Exalted, Stained, and Stolen by Ella James (4 books)
• The Iron Legends by Julie Kagawa
• The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
• Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin
• The Chair by James Rubart
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

As you can see, I have no shortage of reading material. As I have noted before, my to-be-read pile keeps growing at a pace faster than I can read books. Perhaps if I ever retire I will have enough reading time to read faster than I acquire.

What is most interesting to me is not how many books I read but how many I start and never finish. Being an editor has its downsides. For example, I get frustrated by books that wander, or where the same character has 14 names (and counting), or the bad editing sticks out like a beacon, or the author has a lot to say but lacks even minimal storytelling techniques. (Note I have not mentioned those books that frustrate because of poor grammar and English, which is a category unto itself.)

The holiday season is soon upon us and I need to begin to put together a wish list of hardcover books I am interested in. Have you given thought to what books you will ask for this holiday season? How is your to-be-read pile growing/declining?

Aquiring Books for the TBR Pile: The Special Problem of eBooks

Avid readers are easily identified by the size of their TBR — to-be-read — pile: The bigger the list, the more likely the avid reader has crossed that fine line from avid read to avid hoarder. And ebooks are a special problem in this mix. But let’s begin at the beginning.

As my latest hardcover acquisitions were delivered by the post office, I decided it might be time to take a long, serious look at my TBR pile. The problem was that there were no spots available on my primary TBR bookshelf for these new books (only 2 this time, but I have several more due this month). My system isn’t scientific, but what it is, is this: When new books arrive, I put them on a top shelf because these are (supposedly) the books that are of most immediate interest to me and the ones that I think I will get to shortly. (Many, but not all, are added to my On Today’s Bookshelf articles, On Today’s Bookshelf, On Today’s Bookshelf (II), and On Today’s Bookshelf (III).) But to add them to that shelf means that a book or two have to be moved from the shelf. Room is limited.

So now I have moved a couple of books off the primary TBR shelf and into the vast stacks of TBR. Perhaps I’ll get to the books moved, perhaps not — at least that is what I am finding. I currently have more than 200 hardcover books in my TBR pile and on my TBR shelf. And as I note, that is just my hardcover books.

Which brings us to the special problem of ebooks. Yes, ebooks are a special problem because they take up virtually no space — just a bunch of bits and bytes, digits if you will, on a disk that can store gigabytes of digits. And so that TBR pool steadily grows. I looked this morning and I have more than 300 TBR ebooks, and that pile keeps growing.

What happens is that I read an ebook from the TBR pile and discover that I really like the particular author’s style. So rather than picking up another book from the TBR pile, I go buy other books from this liked author and read them. Not only hasn’t my ebook TBR pile declined by more than the one book, it has likely grown as I’ve added more to it while reading the like author’s books. Of course, if I discover that the author is terrible (sadly, a not uncommon finding with ebooks), then I not only stop reading the current ebook, but I tend to remove the author’s other books from the TBR pile. But they don’t disappear; they are still in some ebook zip file on my hard drive, just no longer in my TBR pile.

But unlike the hardcover TBR pile in which each hardcover book was purchased for money — definitely, one would think, an incentive to actually open the book and at least try reading it — I discovered that a good 80% (and probably closer to 85%) of the ebooks in my ebook TBR pile cost me nothing — they were freebies. This represents another problem or two.

First, it means that I am relentlessly adding to my TBR because it doesn’t cost me anything to do so. But that also means that the author hasn’t received any benefit. The author can’t receive any benefit until I actually read the ebook and discover how truly great the author is (we can only pray and hope). But, second, it also means that what was at the top of last week’s ebook TBR list because it was the most recently acquired, is now lost somewhere down the list, and unless it has a catchy title, there isn’t anything about the ebook to move it up the list.

That is a distinct difference between an ebook and a hardcover in my two TBR piles. Even a hardcover that I haven’t yet read although I bought it 8 months ago has a good chance of being the next book I read from that pile. The cover can attract me as I glance over the stack or the title can catch my eye as I rapidly skim the pile. With ebooks, that is much harder. Covers are often so amateurish that they are a turn off rather than a turn on. And it isn’t easy to skim covers or even titles. Finally, let’s face it, few books — e or p — really have great, catchy titles. Titles are the last bastion of the great marketer and few of us are great marketers.

So when does the TBR pool become so overwhelming that one says “Stop!” It’s easy with my print books because they cost me money and require space to store and I can rationally (although I have yet to do it) give those books the old Clint Eastwood make-my-day squint and say, “Enough! No more buying of books until I read 50 of these books!” But that moment never comes with ebooks, especially with free ebooks. There is no cost and no storage problem.

Consequently, ebook authors are disserved by readers like me. They get rewarded if I actually read and like their book because I will then immediately buy and read nearly everything else they have written. But that is the problem — they need to get read in the first place, and the only way to do that is to be at the top of the list, which is itself nearly impossible. An ebook TBR is like the drowning pool.

I have to admit that part of the problem is the poor quality of so many ebook offerings. I want to hedge my bets and make sure I have plenty of choices because of every 10 ebooks I acquire, I am certain that 8 or 9 will be trashcanned within the first 30 pages of reading. (In case you wonder why, take a look at some past articles that can be found under the tag Professional Editor, such as On Words & eBooks: Give Me a Brake!)

eBooks are a special TBR problem. I’m not sure how authors can solve it. It is truly a Catch-22: If you don’t offer a book for free, who will sample your work but if you do offer it for free, how can you know it will ever be read as opposed to hoarded? I suppose if you develop a reputation for quality that would help, but getting the word out that your writing is quality is tough. At least in my case, my ebook TBR pool is begging for a reliable solution.