The oldest task on my To Do list

The oldest item on my Google calendar Tasks List is 367 days old.

I’m happy to say that this is the exception, not the rule. In general, I take my To Do list pretty seriously. That’s not to say I get to every item the very same day I list it, but usually I do it within forty-eight hours or so. And if I haven’t crossed it off within a couple of days, I rethink whether it even belongs there.

A good two decades into adulthood, I’ve come to realize that To Do lists should function not as lists of wishes, aspirations or goals, but as lists of tasks – whether work assignments, household chores or errands – that really and truly must get done. Therefore, if I start to run more than a day or two late on any particular To Do item, I instead question just how high a priority it is, whether I really plan to do it at all, if it’s equally essential as the items on the list that I am getting to, and whether there’s perhaps a better time to try to get to it. And then, most of the time, it gets reassigned to a future date.

But the item that I listed on October 25 of 2011 was one I just couldn’t bear to let go of, even as I also apparently couldn’t motivate myself to do it, a full year later. Namely, reading the collection of Thoreau writings that I’d bought last fall.

I really wanted to do it. I really intended to do it. But I just couldn’t seem to get to it. And while I seemed unable to get to the reading, I seemed equally unable to treat Henry David Thoreau as dispassionately as I treat the other items on my To Do list, those that I knock off the list or save for another time if they haven’t justified their importance after a couple of days. Poor Thoreau just sat there languishing in the overdue items column as the listing went from days to weeks to months to finally a year overdue.

But now I can finally cross the item off. Oh, I haven’t read the whole collection yet, but I’ve finally started it, a year and two days after first meaning to get to it. That’s because I found a convenient trick. On my birthday earlier this week, my sister sent me the same Thoreau collection as an e-book. And I synced it onto my phone. Which means even if I remain unable to find the time to sit down and give poor Thoreau my undivided attention for hours on end, I can sneak a peek practically any time I want to, just by glancing at my phone screen. While I’m frying pancakes. In line at the post office. Cooling down after my run. On hold with customer support. Waiting for the movie to begin.

Thoreau himself, I suspect, would hate this. He’d despise not only the technology I rely on in general but also the fact that his writings are now making use of that same technology, and the fact that I was so nonchalantly willing to exchange hours of fireside reading for a quick peek at a 2x3 inch screen.

Well, yes, but it’s better than nothing. For 367 days, I’ve made no progress on this one item on my To Do list. Then yesterday I downloaded the text and started reading the introduction. It probably wouldn’t be good enough for Thoreau, but he didn’t have children’s breakfasts to make, commutes to endure, or customer service on-hold queues. The original hard-copy version of the book of Thoreau readings looks pretty as a decorative object on our hall table, but the e-book is actually getting read, at long last. And my To Do list once again has nothing older than two days on it.it.

The cover-up: How do we judge a book by its cover when there's no need for a cover?

Motoko Rich wrote a very interesting essay in the New York Times last week in which she made the point that book covers, and the whole sub-industry of book cover design, risk becoming collateral damage in the ebook revolution.

Rich is a New Yorker, and she alludes frequently to the urban experience of unobtrusively checking out the cover of a book that a fellow subway rider might be reading – a book she then might decide to seek out for herself. She opens her essay with a sketch of a woman who does a micro-version of niche market profiling by noticing that the woman across from her on the subway, who is immersed in a novel, not only looks her age and has clothes and accessories similar to those she might wear but is also carrying a yoga mat. The observer is indeed a yoga enthusiast herself, and before the day is over she has purchased the same book in which the subway rider was engrossed.

The issue of e-books lacking the transparency of hard-copy books with which avid readers assess what other people are reading has been bandied about a fair amount since the advent of e-books. I read an essay last year about a woman who always judges new acquaintances, upon being invited to their homes, by what books they have on their shelves. Asking to look at the directory on someone’s Kindle isn’t exactly the same as glancing at the bookshelves as you walk to the powder room, she pointed out.

I agree that there’s a great deal to be learned from having visibility into what other people are reading. We make assessments of them, even if they are strangers; we also get passive book recommendations, like the woman on the subway. Once my college roommate and I were taking a walk on the beach just beyond the front yard of her summer house. “See that woman on the lawn chair over there?” she asked me. “I’ve been trying to get a peek at the title of her book all day. She’s been sitting there reading for hours, and I really want to know what it is.”

It’s potentially a loss for book cover designers, too. For artists and illustrators, book cover design is a profitable arena. Though many of the published authors I know have professed not to like the covers of their books, I think it would be fascinating to see how a visual artist interpreted my work with a design statement. Not being a published author, I’ve never had the opportunity, but I do have some familiarity with what it’s like to work as a writer in tandem with a design professional because I’m a journalist who writes feature stories, and I’m all too aware of how the photo that runs with my story can make or break its visibility in terms of how big and how high up on the page the editor chooses to place it based on how enticing the photo is.

There are so many ways in which it will be interesting to see how the literary world changes in response to ebooks; the question of cover design is just one of many to ask about this emerging technology. For now, while I’m still reading hard copies of books, I think I’ll develop even more appreciation for their cover designs, knowing it might eventually become a lost art. And I’ll scrutinize what other people are reading in airports and cafes more than ever. If they’re brave enough to let the world see what they’re reading, I’m more than willing to take advantage of that opportunity.

Kindle? Paper? Both generate sparks

Respected literary agent Rachelle Gardner posted on her blog yesterday about how much she likes her Kindle -- but also about how she still greatly values the unique assets of real books. I was happy to see someone admit so openly that she liked Kindles; I feel as if there’s been something shamefaced about their users ever since their debut. People still seem to feel they have to defend their use of e-readers, as if it must be a truth universally acknowledged that a reader in search of fine literature must express a preference for a brick-and-mortar, I mean paper-and-ink, product in her hands.

I don’t have a Kindle, in part because of the price of both the device and the books. I’m generally a library user, so most of my reading material is free. Even the $9.99 charge for most e-books would drive up my reading budget considerably.

Despite the absence of a Kindle, though, I’ve had the opportunity recently to have a taste of electronic reading. A friend lent me her netbook last month, and for the first time, I have a computer I can take with me rather than one that only sits on my desk. I use the netbook mostly for writing, but I also read the newspaper and other articles off of it, and I’m tempted to give an e-book a try, because I have to admit I’m kind of hooked on the electronic reading thing now.

At first I thought it was just the novelty. After I started reading the daily paper on line (and I hasten to mention that we still have a newspaper subscription, because my husband still wants a hard-copy version and because the major city daily that we read is also the one I write for, and I’d feel too guilty if I stopped supporting it), I started making my way to other publications. The New York Times, a variety of magazines, an array of blogs.

And I’m finding I really like the freedom it gives me. I can read on my exercise bike; I can read in bed; I can read at the playground. All of these were true before, when I read hard-copy materials (at least for the newspapers and magazines, if not the blogs), but it was always an issue of having what I wanted to read when I wanted to read it. I’d leave the New York Times Magazine in my purse, thinking I’d read it at the dentist’s office, and then I’d be upstairs in bed and wish I had it. I’d put a magazine in the car so that I could page through it while my husband was driving us somewhere and then want it while I was exercycling. I’d leave an article next to the exercise bike and then wish I had it while I was at the coffee shop. And so on.

Packing for trips was even worse. I don’t travel frequently, but when I do, I invariably packed four or five books to read – far more than I’d ever actually get through in the amount of time I’d be gone, but I wanted to be prepared and I could never anticipate exactly what I’d feel like reading. Then once I was away, I’d wish I’d brought for or five different books.

So even without venturing into actual e-books, I’m really enjoying the freedom of netbook reading. Although I understand the argument against e-readers by those who say “I need the look and feel of a book,” that’s not really me at all. I don’t even like keeping books in my house. I like to read books and pass them along to another reader. With books as with many kinds of objects in my life, I’m the opposite of a pack rat: I’m constantly stripping things away rather than accumulating them. While others feel comforted when surrounded by shelves full of books, I like open space around me. So the minimalist aspect of electronic reading appeals to me as well.

Nonetheless, I don’t have a Kindle, so for now I’m reading newspapers and blogs off my netbook while also working my way through a big heavy hard-bound copy of The Help. I’m not sure how reading a book like that on screen would be different, and it’s such a wonderful book that I’m just grateful to have any copy at all. But at least for now, while it’s still a novelty, I’m really getting a big kick out of the portable-library, always-at-my-fingertips aspect of my little two-pound netbook.