A couple of articles lately make me question what the future of the book entails and how it's disappearance as a physical thing will impact a community?  The last remaining chain bookstore seems to be on its way out, "The Wrong Goodbye of Barnes and Noble", and libraries across the nation are facing cuts in hours, staff, and budgets.

My first job was in a library, in a kind of neat stone building, gray and stately, the way downtown buildings used to be built.  It overlooked the shore of Lake Michigan, and provided a great lunch hour, in the downtown of a small city.  Nothing could fill the head of a young aspiring writer like being around books for the day, punctuated by being outside for an hour in the sun with the sound of waves to incubate ideas.

As I write this I checked out that library's online site.  I noticed that they are only open on Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm., and only open until 8 pm Monday through Thursday.  Greatly reduced hours, and as people work longer, it makes it more difficult to get there in time.  I am not a hopeless romantic, and I know fewer people go there, so this is not unexpected.  Still, as I reflect, I remember the library, when I worked there as a page, as a place of community.  Many people were regulars and had favorite tables or booths.  It was very busy.  It was a great place to browse for books, and to do research.  In a sign of the times, however, it's opening web-page now offers advice on how to use Facebook.

Browsing for books is a favorite past-time of mine, and I browsed more than libraries.  I have loved bookstores my whole life.  The physical feel of a book, the browsing of a few pages, the feel and smell of the place selling...more than books, it was a place.  A destination, and a means to build your own collection.  A hope that one day your children would browse the same classics that made your imagination soar.  Sometimes getting a gift card to a bookstore was more fun than getting a book itself, for it allowed for a discovery, time to go and search and find something unexpected.  To be around people with similar interests.

I know some will have quibbles with the reductions of chain bookstores, since Barnes and Noble, like other large chains, has been responsible for undercutting the independent bookstore.  I do agree that it was not a good thing that many independent stores didn't make it due to the chains.  Still, with many Barnes and Nobles closing, so many communities now will be without a book store.  Combine that with no library.  Yes, we get some creative solutions, such as "birdhouse libraries".  It doesn't, however, see to be a replacement.

Ultimately, I wonder what is the impact on publishing, and on books?  If there is an impact there, is it an impact on authors, too?  It will impact how we perceive "the business" and "the craft".   On the larger community, the one we live in, the impact is probably greater.  So I wonder:  What is the impact on us when the only community around books that we will have is online?  The article on Barnes and Noble makes a link between physical books  driving ebook sales.  So I am unsure that the answer of the online community is the only answer we need.

It's appropriate during the month which will see the release of The Hobbit motion picture to borrow it's full title for a blog post.  For like the little halfling with hairy feet who went on a great journey, I was on my own writing journey, completing, editing, and finally putting out a self-published book on Amazon (for now).  Cigars with Dog: Conversations and Tall Tails is now available to read.  This is a collection of short stories, in an often humorous vein, of a man and his Dachshund. The stories often involve cigars, that the two of them share at the end of the day on the back deck as they discuss life and the day's events.  There's a number of stories that involve events from laying down the rules about Halloween to lecturing squirrels to dealing with surgery. 

Please give the book a try if you don't mind a few stories involving the wit and talk of a dog!  The picture of the cover to the right (--->) takes you to where you can buy a copy. 

So, I have not been around here much because I was off, on my journey, writing.  But now I am back, and having vanquished various dragons (lack of time, unsure whether anyone else would enjoy the project, procrastination, etc.) that were in the way of putting a book out, I'll be around here more.

I have attention deficit disorder when it comes to reading and writing. What to choose?  There is so much to choose from!  So many new things to grab.  How does today's amateur writer/lazy reader, choose where to spend their time?  

There are so many new books from new friends in the online writing community.   Collections of stories, memoirs, novels, poems.  Wonderful jewels, just becoming polished.  There are new books from old established authors who have been favorites for years.  “I didn't know he was  still writing!”  Then there are new finds when one goes to the (few remaining) book stores. I can go in with a $25 gift card, absolutely and resolutely sure that this time I will come out with a  couple paperbacks or one hardcover, and not go over the amount clearly stated on the gift card, but, well, an armload of “finds” later always proves me wrong.   In my defense, when I didn't grab, pay, and walk away with them in the past, I would never remember or find that very promising book later.  It would be lost to me.  So now I grab them.  (I know, writing them in a list could work, but it's not nearly as fun.)

Then there are journals, articles, etc. that are fun to read.  There are also poems and short stories online from authors just sticking their toes in the community for the first time, people I would like to encourage.  

Finally there are the old friends, the favorite books that sometimes are pulled onto your lap for a re-reading.  In this fond ritual one calls forth not only the details of the book, the love of certain characters, the thrill of the best passage, but also the time and place of the time your first read the book.  Do we not all have a book that is associated, perhaps, with a first girlfriend or boyfriend, or a time at a cabin next to a lake, or some other time of our life? 

For example, as a gangly teenager, there is Beneath The Wheel, from Hermann Hesse, that captured that feeling that the world was not always kind.  Or reading the poetry of Robert Duncan sometimes reminds me of the freedom I had as a young adult, able to pick up and go to a city within driving distance on a moment's notice to hear an author and search for new treasures at an obscure big city used book store.  Another book for me that holds that special place is Lord of the Rings, because my wife, whom I had just married, made me read it.  We had picked up a used copy at a used bookstore in San Diego where we had just moved.  It was a dusty, somewhat but not completely organized shop, and that made the reading all the better because we felt like we lucked into finding the last copy of the book that this store had.  So re-reading that book brings back memories of adventuring as a young married couple in San Diego, not only adventuring in Middle Earth.

Then there is the time I should spend on my own, reading about writing, and actually writing.   There is simply too much that we can do, and not enough time, what with jobs and other intrusions of the world.

So how does an aspiring author, someone who treasures the online friends made, and someone who loves to slip into a couple hours reading a favorite established author once the sun has slipped away, how does one balance and choose?  I would stay and figure it out, but one of the books I have picked up a couple weeks ago is calling...