People of the Book
A Blog about Book Publishing from a Catholic Perspective

Why do some people become voracious readers? Motoko Rich has some thoughts.

Are people going online instead of reading books? A new study suggests that television might be the big loser: “The study found that 36% of respondents spent at least four to six hours of personal time on the Internet versus only 23% of respondents who spent that amount of time watching TV.”

Tiffany Sanders set out to read all the Loyola Classics books, but something happened: “The first book I ordered was Jon Hassler’s North of Hope, and I’m afraid it’s derailed me. I planned to work my way through the Classics list, but that’s going to have to wait until I’ve worked my way through Hassler’s other novels.”

Busted Halo loves Fr. Jim Martin’s new book A Jesuit Off-Broadway.

This is very beautiful: a high-definition image of Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” The same site also has an image of Pozzo’s fresco of the glory of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Amazon’s new Kindle eBook reader has been met with mixed reviews. A “future of the book” cover story in Newsweek sees the Kindle as the device that will bring about the much-predicted and long-delayed digital upheaval in publishing. Other reviewers are more skeptical.

Seth Godin thinks that the Kindle can make Amazon a publisher.

Meanwhile, there’s news of an even more revolutionary breakthrough in information storage.

Even a lukewarm football fan like me finds this play pretty exciting. Trinity has the ball on its own 40. They are trailing 24-22, and there are two seconds left in the game.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

–e.e. cummings

Test your vocabulary, learn some new words, and feed the hungry at www.FreeRice.com. My high school Latin came in handy while I was taking the test.

The Vatican says that Pope Benedict is working on the second part of his book Jesus of Nazareth. He will discuss the gospel accounts of Jesus’ infancy and his passion, death, and resurrection in the second volume. The first part of Jesus of Nazareth was published this year. Benedict is completing an encyclical on hope that may be published this year, and he working on another text on social issues.

Loyola Communications had just launched other6.com, a website that offers a simple program to help spiritual growth. Visitors are asked to answer two questions: “Where have you found God today?” “Where do you need to find God today?” The site will keep track of your answers. Over time, you should be able to see patterns of God’s work in your life.

Paul Campbell, the Jesuit who leads the site’s team, is so confident that Other6 will make a difference that he’s issued a 14-day challenge. Use the site every day for two weeks. “If at the end you haven’t learned more about yourself and about God, we’ll give you your old relationship with God back to you!”

Paul is confident because the idea behind Other6 has a long and distinguished history in the church. It’s based on the Daily Examen of St. Ignatius Loyola. This is a method of prayerful reflection on the events of the day that is designed to detect God’s presence. The Examen is a daily discipline which especially looks for God in the ordinary events of life. The name of the site reflects this emphasis. It refers to the “other 6″ days of the week — the days of the week besides Sunday.

At the site you can read what other people say about where they have found God, and where they need God. (Identities are hidden, of course.) My favorite today is a woman from Pennsylvania who writes, “After six years of loneliness Bob came into my life. I feel like I’m 60 again.”

Barry Eisler foresees the time, coming soon, when the clerk at your bookstore will print a copy of any book you want at a POD station. Distribution is no longer an issue. What will this do to the book business?

Publishers won’t need their sales forces. Price will become less important. Selection won’t be an issue because every book will be available at every store. Retailers will become publishers — something we already see at Borders and B&N. Eisler wrote three articles on the subject. The first one is here.

My question is: what will bookstores look like in this new world? Won’t they still shelve books for the many buyers who want to browse? Who want to hold the book in their hands?

I haven’t had much web surfing time lately (too much writing to do) so I just learned about National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the month of November. Last year 13,000 writers did it (out of 79,000 who signed up): “They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.” Details here.

The Wall Street Journal tells the story of a self-publisher who made every mistake possible: bad title, too many books, no distributor, weak marketing. But he learned. He’s recouped his investment and the book is up for an award.

“The Catholic Novel Is Alive and Well in England” is an excellent essay about Catholic writers and the future of the Cathlic novel. Author Marian Crowe praises the work of Alice Thomas Ellis, Sara Maitland, David Lodge, and Piers Paul Read. She makes some bold predictions about what we might see in Catholic novels to come. Among them: a rapprochement with secularity, a broader perspective on sexuality, and more fiction in the comic mode.

Many newspapers have been drastically reducing the space devoted to book reviews. At the same time, blogs where books are reviewed and discussed have proliferated on the internet. Are these trends related?

Book blogger Jerome Weeks thinks they are, but in a surprising way. Book blogs haven’t caused the decline in newspaper reviews. That’s happening because newspaper advertising is declining, forcing cutbacks of all kinds. But book bloggers are benefiting from these cutbacks, Weeks says. Publishers are shifting their advertising from print to the web and a significant amount of this money is going to blogs.

Weeks sees Jessica Crispin’s Bookslut blog as the leading success story. She makes a living from Bookslut. Says Weeks: “to put this in an even larger context, just so we can fully grasp its significance: It has been fairly rare in the history of American literature that anyone has made a living writing about books in any medium, in print, online, on air, whatever.”

At the height of the sexual abuse scandal several years ago, Boston College editor Ben Birnbaum asked Catholic writers to “reflect on the nature of hope and its sources and uses in our time.” Only one writer said he had no hope. The answers of the other 35 are published in Take Heart: Catholic Writers on Hope in Our Time (Crossroad). Some of the writers tackle hope in theological and philosophical terms. But almost all of the writers, being writers, associate their hope with things: “green chile, a blooded crossroad, a Monday evening meditation group, a subway ride, charm braclets, ‘Danny Boy,’ a neglected church building, and AIDS clinic, and Spanish anarchists,” writes Birnbaum. In other words, hope is everywhere.

Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2008 (Ave Maria) is the dead-tree version of the hugely popular website www.sacredspace.ie. The website, operated by Irish Jesuits, is a superb destination for daily prayer. The book contains most of what’s on the site. It frees you from the limitations of the internet. You can read it in bed, in the bathtub, on the beach, in church — anywhere.

The Benedictine Tradition by Laura Swan (Liturgical Press) presents Benedictine spirituality through the lives and writings of great saints, scholars, abbots, and martyrs. Swan writes concise essays about 13 Benedictines, along with excerpts from their writings. It’s an excellent way to learn about this great spiritual tradition.

Fr. Jim Martin’s new book A Jesuit Off-Broadway has been named one of the best 100 books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Martin is on the list for the second year in a row. Last year his My Life with the Saints made the list.

Read an excerpt of Jesuit Off-Broadway here. PW’s list of “best books” is here.

Stanley Fish comments on two new books about belief that head in different directions. One is by a former evangelical who is now an agnostic. The other is by a philosopher who has abandoned atheism for a kind of belief. The God question continues to fascinate.

Solanus Casey by Catherine Odell (OSV) is a revised and expanded biography of the beloved Capuchin who had an astounding ministry in the Midwest in the first half of the 20th century. Father Solanus conducted a ministry of healing and spiritual counsel from his post as doorkeeper at the Capuchin monastery in Detroit.

Saints of the Americas by Arturo Perez-Rodrigeuz and Miguel Arias (Loyola Press) features the stories of thirty saints of North and South America. The stories are cleverly presented as “conversations” between the authors and the saints.

Saints in Love by Carole Hallundbaek (Crossroad) looks at four saints who had relationships with a strong emotional component. Francis and Clare are here of course. The author also examines the ties between Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena and Pope Gregory XI, and Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal.

Saints of Asia by Vincent O’Malley, S.M. (OSV) supplies brief biographies of nearly 100 saints from a continent where the Catholic Church is growing rapidly.

A writing teacher asked my friend Joe Durepos, an editor and former literary agent, to write some advice for her class. This is what Joe wrote:

The first step to being successful Christian writers and editors is to love books, to love reading, to love words, and to love them so much that they are the defining characteristics of our lives—known and obvious to all who live and work with us. We can’t fake this one. And it’s our love that we pass on to others, not simply for the books and their words, but the love that binds it all. And this love makes the distinction between the world of Christian books and general books entirely irrelevant. It’s the love that defines us.