Using the web changes your reading habits.

Gregory Lamb writes for The Christian Science Monitor an article on how the web changes reading habits. The article at first sounds promising and very suggestive, but it is nothing more than a brief report on a couple of theories for artificial intelligence systems that basically try to predict what you would be interested in reading. One of these theories is the theory of ScentHighlights. From the article:

The reading experience online "should be better than on paper," Chi says. He's part of a group at PARC developing what it calls ScentHighlights, which uses artificial intelligence to go beyond highlighting your search words in a text. It also highlights whole sections of text it determines you should pay special attention to, as well as other words or phrases that it predicts you'll be interested in. "Techniques like ScentHighlights are offering the kind of reading that's above and beyond what paper can offer," Chi says.

While readers might not feel a need to use ScentHighlights with the next Harry Potter novel, the software could help students, academics, and business people quickly extract specific information from other written material.

ScentHighlights gets its name from a theory that proposes that people forage for information much in the same way that animals forage in the wild. "Certain plants emit a scent in order to attract birds and bees to come to them," Chi says. ScentHighlights uncovers the "scent" that bits of information give off and attract readers to it.

I like the idea that reading online should be a better experience than on paper. I think right now a lot of people get turned off from technologies like e-books because the experience is not as pleasant as reading the book, even with the little extras like better searching in the text. I have to admit the idea of foraging is intriguing. I know that for work related reading I often "forage" to find the essential stuff I need. I am not sure about finding a "scent," but I am sure other readers may have different insights. I guess I was disappointed in the article because I wanted to learn more about actual readers and how their habits are changing. While the theories discussed are intriguing, the headline left me wanting more. A misleading scent?

U.S. has a serious trade deficit. . .in literary translations

The June 2005 issue of Gale's Literature Community News has a piece written by Chris Jackson on the deficit in translated works. The essence of the article is this: the U.S. has a severe shortage of works from other nations translated into English. In the meantime, the world does a good amount of translating works from English into various languages. The opening statistic in the article provides a good wake-up call:

50% of all books published in translation are translated from English. Only 6% of all translated books are translated from another language into English. What does this mean? For one, it means that the works of several Nobel Prize-winning authors still aren't available at your local bookstore. For another, it means there's "a one-way mirror between America and the rest of the world. They get to see what we're doing, but we don't get to see what they're doing," according to Hyperion editor-in-chief Will Schwalbe.

Personally, I have always known that a lot of the cool and fun stuff to read is written overseas in various languages. No offense to United States writers, there are some excellent ones, but overall, I love to explore stuff from around the world, which is often better and just more imaginative. As I said, the United States has produced some fine writers like Hemingway and more recently Toni Morrison, but overall the U.S. production, at least recently, does not seem to have as much diversity and daring. I am speaking literary fiction; popular fiction is a whole other ballgame, so to speak, and I read my fair share of the popular too. But in terms of literary fiction, offer me someone like John Updike, and I just think "blah." Offer me Isabel Allende, Jose Saramago, Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe, and others from around the world, and I am thinking "oh yea." I am sure readers would love to suggest their own American favorites. As I said, there are excellent writers, but I think they are rare.

My only regret at this point is that I am not fluent in at least two or three more languages so I could read more. I am fluent in Spanish, and I read anything originally in Spanish that way. Works from Portuguese writers, like Saramago, I pick up in a Spanish translation. This is a bias on my part, but since they are both Romance languages, I think a Spanish translation will likely be closer to the original. I took two years of French as an undergraduate, and I actually managed to pick it up quite well (being a Romance language made it easier for me). Sadly, lack of practice and time means I have lost a lot of that knowledge. Who knows? Maybe some day I will get the guts to pick it up again so I can read Victor Hugo as well as contemporary French writers, not to say those of other Francophone nations. Overall, the world offers a diverse set of literary genres and forms. It seems to me we are missing an awful lot here in the States. In the meantime, I pick up any works translated into English (or Spanish) I can get my hands on.

In addition, as Arts and Humanities Librarian at my library, I select books on Foreign Languages (pretty much anything other than English; we have an English selector). So, I pick up works written in Foreign Languages (not many, since our programs are pretty small). I also get to pick translations into English from around the world. Recently, I have selected anthologies of Arab women's writing, writers from the Amazon region (many of which write in native languages), some Eastern European, etc. I have to be very selective, in part because I know the interest may be low. But I do it in the belief that I need to broaden the horizons of my patrons as well as I need to build a more diverse collection.

Here is another good quote from the article:

A study by the National Endowment of the Arts found that in 1999, only 300 of the 10,000 works of poetry and fiction published in the U.S. that year were translations from any language. But get this: According to Esther Allen, head of PEN American Center's translation committee, in 2002 more than 330 books were translated into Arabic. Turns out those supposedly hostile-to-the-West countries are doing a better job of incorporating international literature into their culture than English-speaking countries.

I hate to say this, but this country has a serious lack of understanding when it comes to the rest of the world. Back in April, I wrote a post about how Social Studies is losing out to Mathematics and Sciences. I am not saying that we should teach less Math and Science, but we should also be teaching more Social Studies, including Geography. The post has a link to the National Geographic Global Literacy Survey, which highlights how dismal such knowledge is here. This article about translated literature just makes me think of that further. I find it very interesting that at a time when the U.S. is at war in the Middle East that they over there are translating and reading more works from here than viceversa (ok, so the number is close, but it is more). Hostile as they may be it seems, that if nothing else, they adhere to that old maxim about knowing the ways of the enemy. I would like to think that there is some interest besides "understanding the enemy." And literature can be very revealing about a particular society. It can open all sorts of doors to better understanding. On a side note, I do wonder how much of this flux of works into Arabic from English is affected by the fact many regimes in the Middle East are repressive when it comes to the freedom to read, and readers get their copies of English stuff underground (or have to seek it out more aggressively. Here, we just go to Borders or online to buy it, but this is a whole other topic). Personally, I think there is never enough literature to read and discover. So, I would urge publishers and translators to keep making works accessible to readers around the world. I, for one, will be reading.

Update note (6/30/05): The Guardian has published an article listing ten overseas writers that we should be reading. The article was prompted by the awarding of the International Man Booker Prize to Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare (who? Yea, I know, they actually typed the question on the article, and I had the same reaction). As for the list of ten, I only knew of one. So, it looks like I have some reading to do.

Links to tips on better writing for blogs

I got these links from Library Voice here. B.L. Ochman provides suggestions on both how to write good blog posts as well as how to write comments on other people's blogs here. She points out that commenting on other blogs can still be an important part of the conversation. You can find more tips here and here, out of To-Done, blog on productivity and other workplace issues.

Puerto Rican Novelist Enrique Laguerre Dies

Through the REFORMA discussion list, I got an article that reports the death of Puerto Rican writer Enrique Laguerre, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. He died on June 16th, and he was 99 years old. The people of Puerto Rico had led a letter writing campaign at one point to the Nobel Committee to get Laguerre nominated. El Nuevo Dia features a special report on the author, in Spanish. All I know that this is a sad day for letters as well as for Puerto Rico and its people, including myself. Laguerre was a novelist, playwright, college professor, poet and literary critic. In 1975, he received the National Literature Prize from the Instituto de Cultura Puertorrique~na. (They have a section on the author as well). Among his works are La Llamarada (1935), La Resaca (1949), and El Laberinto (1959). I had the opportunity to present a paper on his novel El Laberinto, a novel about an immigrant's labyrinthine travel through New York and then the Dominican Republic, when I was working on my first master's degree. Anyone who is interested in immigration studies should be reading this novel. Overall, he published 15 novels that portray and trace the history of Puerto Rico from the 18th century to the present day.

REFORMA cited a short article out of diariodepuertorico.com, but unfortunately the actual article did not appear to be available when I looked it up. I would urge readers to look over El Nuevo Dia's coverage if they are able to read Spanish (heck, run parts of it through a translator if you have to). I tried locating a report in English for readers, but I can't seem to locate one at the moment. Laguerre's work was often read in schools as part of the curriculum. I wrote that paper for a class in Latin American literature mostly seeking to write about a unique author, and I found a most interesting writer with an excellent vision of Puerto Rico and the challenges the island faces. I always wanted to revise that essay for submission, a discussion of the labyrinth imagery in his novel, maybe now it would be a good time. He deserves to have his work studied in more depth, likely more than someone like me could do. Then again, Don Enrique was a humble man, and a writer of the people whose works constantly depicted people of humble backgrounds. I feel kind of awful I did not find out until today, but I do admit I have not kept up with news back from my little island as much as I would like to since coming to live in the States. As I type this note, my eyes are watering, and I am sure many other Puerto Ricans away from their little island are in sorrow as well with the loss of a great man and humanist. I am finding that words are failing me, so I am going to stop for now and look over the coverage. Descanse en paz, Don Enrique (Rest in peace, Don Enrique).

Update note (3:05p): English speakers can get a quick entry on Enrique Laguerre from an article in Wikipedia here.

Booknote: _The Woman I Kept to Myself_

This book is so good that I could not resist recommending it to one of my colleagues right away. As soon as I check it back in, I am passing it to her. Julia Alvarez, known for novels like How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, now gives us a new volume of poetry. The title is very appropriate as she is writing about her inner life. The book blurp says that "these are not poems of a woman discovering herself--Alvarez might say that's what her twenties were for-- but of a woman returning to herself." That is a pretty accurate description as her poetry takes us from moments of childhood through youth and and then adulthood.

The book is divided into three sections. Her themes are varied, and her images are colorful and evocative. She uses a simple, yet elegant language to convey a range of emotions and passions that any reader will appreciate. In a way, it is as if she was sitting addressing the reader, or better yet, as if you could hear her as she writes the lines, reading them to herself and reflecting upon them. The first poem, "Family Tree," tells of her mother writing her name down on the family tree and then how she writes her stories based on where she came from. It makes for a good opening to a great little book (it's only 156 pages). From there, she continues to write about a photographer ("El fotografo"), hairbands ("Hairbands") and signs ("Signs"); she wonders why we don't see Jesus laughing ("Why Don't We See Jesus Laughing?"), and finally notices Spring for the first time ("Spring, at Last!"). For me to choose one favorite poem is a difficult task; they are all very good. There is a bit of humor, a bit of reflection, and even some bittersweet moments. Poetry readers will find a bit of everything here. I will pick part of one poem to share, maybe because it is about the craft of writing, and how can I not like it? I see myself as a writer, but whether I get to be anywhere near as good as someone like Julia Alvarez remains to be seen. Anyhow, the poem is "Why I Write" and here is part of the first stanza:

"Unless I write things down I never know
what I think, no less feel, about the world.
I found out first in print that I prefer
white wine to red, the blues to rock,
the winter's terseness to the spring's green gab--
conclusions reached in short stories or poems. . . ."

Maybe a few lines like these are part of the reason I like this author and her work so much. These lines speak to me as a writer and as a teacher. I have learned over time that writing is a process of discovery; that is something you can use to develop your thinking, to let the ideas out to play, see where they lead. Very often I think as I write, and I use it to see what I can learn. There are things I would not know if I had not reflected about them through writing. That is a powerful bit of knowledge, in my humble view. I think many readers will find a little something that will speak to them in these poems. So, I highly recommend the book for both regular poetry readers as well as readers who might not consider poetry.