Happy Bloomsday to All!

Once again it’s Bloomsday, the 16th of June, the day on which James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place. If you aren’t familiar with this great work of the early twentieth century, it tells the tale of a modern-day Ulysses (Leopold Bloom) as he wanders the streets of Dublin on June 16, 1904. Closely modeled on the Odyssey, Ulysses is a landmark in modernist literature.

Every year on this day, around the world, people read Ulysses alone or in groups, to themselves or out loud, in performance or simply in sitting on a couch. For this year’s Bloomsday, allow me to recommend a novel way to experience the book. The recently released unabridged audiobook of Ulysses, from Naxos, is a gem. With musical interludes and sound effects, and excellent reading by Jim Norton (and Marcella Riordan for the final chapter, the soliloquy by Molly Bloom), this reading brings the work to life in unexpected ways. At over 27 hours, you won’t be able to listen to the entire book in one day (the novel takes place over a period of “only” 18 hours), but you’ll be drawn into the story in ways you did not expect.For those interested in penetrating this work more deeply, Ulysses Annotated gives you detailed information on the pullulating allusions that fill the novel. And The New Bloomsday Book gives a plot summary that can help you follow some of the more intricate chapters of the work. Hugh Kenner’s Ulysses gives a critical view of the book, and allows you to approach it with greater understanding of the broader scope of Joyce’s vision. Finally, Richard Ellman’s biography of Joyce sets the standard for literary biograhy. You’ll learn more from reading this book than from any book about Ulysses itself.

But most readers can eschew all the extra layers of complexity that such critical approaches add to the novel. The best way to experience Ulysses is to hear it read out loud. If you can, get the audiobook; if not, read the book. It’s long, it’s not beach reading, but it’s one of the greatest novels written in English.

Are iBooks Books Complete? I Bought One Missing Nearly 100 Pages

I’ve been wanting to re-read Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and decided to buy the books to read on my iPad (I already have paperback versions), to benefit from the larger font size. I’m currently near the end of the third book, when I noticed that something was missing. At the end of part III, there’s a section that seemed to not be there. I looked it up in my paperback, and, indeed, pages 459-548 are missing from the ebook edition.

I’m writing to Apple to get a refund (which I’m sure they’ll issue right away; they are pretty good about doing so for any music problems), but I’m somewhat worried about the overall integrity of these ebooks. If I hadn’t read the book before, I might not have noticed the missing part. Sure, there’s a hiccup, but one could assume that it was just glossed over.

So can one assume that ebooks purchased from Apple – or from any other vendor, for that matter – are complete? I’ve seen comments that many of them have editing issues, and I indeed found this to be the case for a Penguin ebook I bought from Amazon.

This is disturbing; are publishers really not performing quality checks for ebooks? In this case, nearly 1/6 of the book is missing; the length of the file should have been checked.

It’s worth noting that this particular book has been the object of several “reviews” in the iBookstore mentioning the glitch (I bought the book before these reviews were posted), some of which mention having contacted Apple. That Apple is still selling the book is at a minimum disturbing.

UPDATE: Apple customer service had me re-download the book. It’s the same. They didn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t a faulty download, but rather a problem with the actual book file that they are peddling. This leads to a problem: since customer service reps probably can’t escalate this type of problem to those who can take care of it, these issues may take a long time to be resolved.

UDATE 2: Apple has replied (much more quickly this time) to my follow-up e-mail, saying:

“I’m sorry to hear that the new copy of “The Waste Lands” is also missing the same section as the first copy. I am sure you were looking forward to reading the entire book and I would be more than happy to assist you with your refund request.

“I have reversed the charge for this iBook. In three to five business days, a credit of $6.99 should be posted to the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase.

“I have also submitted this item for investigation. Apple takes the quality of the items offered on the iTunes Store seriously and will investigate the issue with this item, but I can’t say when or if the issue will be resolved. Please try again in a few weeks if you would like.”

Note the “when and if” part, which suggests that this will never be fixed…

Ulysses Gets Censored Again; This Time by Apple

Apple’s strategy of censoring apps that contains content unsuitable for children is certainly defensible, but sometimes the results are ludicrous. A comic adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses was denied approval until the developer and artist made some changes, notably reframing the image below:

Come on, Apple, even the famous court decision overturning its censorship in the US made things pretty clear:

[W]hilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.

This is really sad; Apple censoring a comic of one of the English language’s greatest novels, while still, fortunately, allowing that novel to be sold in ebook format via its iBookstore. Apple has set standards that are very difficult to enforce, and should really rethink the kind of stupidity they are leading to. Keep out porn, sure, but provide a parental control system so things such as this comic – and its subsequent episodes – can be distributed. The future of a lot of creative content is at stake here; Apple shouldn’t be the one arbitrarily deciding that a comic of a great novel is obscene just because there’s a penis in it.

In any case, the entire work – including all of the supporting information, which will be of help to any reader of Ulysses, is available on the web. And, by the way, the iPad app is free, so grab that too!

Happy Birthday Finnegans Wake

On this day in 1939, James Joyce’s final book, Finnegans Wake, was published. A dense, complex book, that more people have started than finished, Finnegans Wake is a novel of the “night,” as Joyce said, full of dream language that, well, is hard to follow. You need to be armed with patience, dictionaries, and books of annotations to read it, but it is, in spite of these hurdles, an enjoyable book.

Here’s how it begins:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonn
thunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the off wall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

I know this may not tempt you too much, but if you’re interested, why don’t you buy a copy and try it out?

Amazon’s Kindle App for iPad vs Apple’s iBooks

One of the main reasons I wanted to buy Apple’s iPad is to use the device as an ebook reader. I’m a big reader, and have thousands of books, but would like to be able to read some books on a portable device. Aside from any discussion of the merits of this, I thought I would look at the two main apps for reading ebooks, Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks. (I’m leaving aside the many other apps that allow you to read free ebooks, or those which offer limited catalogs. I’m just looking at the two that let you read the broadest selection. And I won’t discuss selection here either, because the iPad is too new to have the selection that Amazon offers.)

First, Amazon currently has the edge in device ubiquity, with a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as for the iPad. Apple’s iBooks will, however, be available for these devices in the fall, when the company releases a new version of their software. Amazon also, however, lets you read ebooks on their own device – the Kindle – or on a Mac or PC, with a program that that works on those platforms. Apple will presumably follow suit, with a Mac version of iBooks in the fall, and perhaps even a Windows version.

But the main question remains that of display. Reading an ebook, you want the broadest range of display options, so you can get the maximum reading pleasure from the books you buy.
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Is It Possible to “Rip” eBooks?

Amazon today released a Mac version of its Kindle application. It’s clearly a beta, as they say (well, they don’t say it outright, but if you check the Info screen and splash screen, it says “Beta” in small letters). I fired it up on my MacBook Air, and read some on it, and, while it needs a bunch of features, it’s a step forward.

But that made me think about something. Back in the day, when there was DRM on most digital music files sold, there was something called the “analogue hole” which allowed people to “rip” protected music. You’d simply have to play it on your computer and record it, with software designed to record sound from specific applications, or burn it to a CD then rip the CD. I wondered if there could be an analogue hole for ebooks.

Here’s how it would work. Someone would create a script that takes a screen shot of the current page, using large fonts so it is as clean as possible, then moves ahead to the next page, then takes another screen shot, and so on. After a while – say a half-second a page, so 120 pages per minute; ie, fast – the entire book would be captured in graphic files. One could then, perhaps, use an OCR program to “scan” those graphic files, converting the images to text.

Now I don’t use OCR, and haven’t in a long time, so I’m not sure whether it would be possible to “feed” a large number of files into an OCR program in this manner. But if it’s possible, it seems almost elementary that someone will use this to “rip” ebooks, effectively stripping the DRM.

It’s obvious to anyone who’s watched DRM play out that ebook DRM will be cracked, and quickly. And even if it’s not, this analogue hole would allow anyone with a bit of scripting know-how to accomplish the same thing. I don’t know what’s going to happen when people can easily download pirated ebooks. This already exists, but in limited numbers; when lots of people have real ebook readers, I’d be willing to bet that such piracy will become very common.

I hope publishers have a plan B. Because the music industry sure didn’t.

Does Penguin Care About eBooks?

I’m a big reader. As you can see here, and on my Reading Henry James blog, I read a wide variety of books. While this is not a book blog, I write about books, in addition to my writings about Macs, iPods and iTunes, because I’m a book lover.

I’m very interested in ebooks, because I think that, in some ways, they represent the future of reading. I’m not giving up paper books (yes, in the future, we’ll have to use two words to describe “traditional” books), but for some books I’m going e.

Lately, I’ve been wanting to re-read James Joyce. Long one of my favorite writers, Joyce is one of the masters of the 20th century. But I hadn’t read his works in many years. The announcement of a new edition of Finnegans Wake reminded me that I should go back and re-read all of Joyce’s work. (Yes, all; I have read Finnegans Wake once before.)

Last night, after reading a brief biography of Joyce by Edna O’Brien (is it really out of print already?), I decided to start re-reading Dubliners. I had an old copy of the book, in a mass-market paperback edition, whose pages were yellowed and cracking, and which smelled musty. So I figured, hey, why not grab an ebook and read it on my iPod touch? I checked on Amazon, and found this Penguin edition for just $2. So I bought it.

I’ve long bought Penguin Classics editions because of the quality of the texts, and the generally good paper and typography. I have some Penguin books that are decades old and that are still in fine condition. So with two serious choices – I know, I could have grabbed a free version or a 99-cent version – the Penguin or the Modern Library – I chose the Penguin.

What a mistake! Not only were there a half-dozen typos (or scan-os) in the introduction alone, but the way the “book” is laid out is terrible. Here, a picture (or two) is worth a thousand words:

The above are two subsequent pages as they display on my iPod touch.

Except in the introduction, where the spacing between paragraphs is correct, the entire text of the book is like this, with extra spacing between each paragraph. I’d expect to see this in free ebooks, but not one from Penguin. It seems as though they paid no attention at all to the text and layout of the ebook, even though the actual text of the traditional book was carefully proofed and laid out. (And, in the case of a book like this, they carefully chose their source text.)

I’ve actually never seen this on other Kindle books I’ve read. If this is the future of ebooks from some publishers – in this case Penguin – readers will be very careful about which books they buy. It is quite disturbing to read like this, and this is certainly not what the author intended. With a classic of this type, it is important to get the text right.

So, Penguin, if you’re serious about ebooks, you’d better take them seriously. Readers won’t choose your books when there are other choices (for classics), and I’ll certainly look elsewhere in the future.

Note: I did download samples for both the Penguin and Modern Library editions of this book. Since the Penguin edition’s sample showed only the introduction, where the line spacing was correct, I had no clue that it was incorrect in the remainder of the book.

Book Notes: First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process, by Robert D. Richardson

Buy from Amazon.com

Robert Richardson is a brilliant man, and an excellent writer. He is the author of three biographies that will stand for decades as the essential works on the thinkers he explores: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James. (These are three of the four American thinkers I appreciate most; I only wish he would write a biography about the fourth, Henry James.)

Richardson is especially attuned to the prose of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who might be considered America’s ur-philosopher. In this diminutive book, Richardson looks at Emerson’s writing, and uses him as an example for a style that some other writers may want to emulate. (I say “may”, because Emerson’s style is not for everyone, nor for all types of prose.) Using examples from Emerson’s essays and journals, Richardson gives suggestions about effective writing, but this is not a how-to book. It is more a brief overview (in only about 80 pages) of Emerson’s writing and thought.

This is an essential read for anyone who writes for a living, whether they appreciate Emerson or not. Understanding why Emerson’s writing works can help better appreciate many elements of writing in English. And, perhaps, it may help those who are unfamiliar with Emerson’s work discover his wonderful words and thoughts.