The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
– Oscar Wilde

This is a meditation on the price of things in general; but in particular, the price of digital things such as software, games, music and e-books.

It goes without saying we always want to pay as little as possible for whatever we buy. Ideally, we would like everything to be free. But in the real world – at least in the real, non-digital world – we acknowledge that things must have a cost. We still prefer to pay as little as we need to, but we are usually prepared to pay more than the minimum in order to obtain a desired level of quality or value. For example, rotten tomatoes may be selling at 50c for a 5-kilo bag; but we would rather pay more, if we can afford it, to get good quality tomatoes.

In the non-digital world, it costs the farmer something to plant and raise tomatoes, to pick them, and to transport them to the shops. The shops have other costs such as the cost of labor, electricity, rental, the costs of marketing, and so on. These are real costs borne by real people.

All of this means that we basically accept that we have to pay a reasonable price for our tomatoes.

In the equally real, but digital world, the same logic ought to apply to our buying behavior, but there’s an important fact which puts a significant spin on it: the costs of duplication and of distribution of digital items are essentially zero.

Note that I specifically do not say that the costs of production are zero in the digital world. That is far, far from being the case.

The developer who writes a shareware program; the artist who paints a beautiful digital wallpaper; the musician who records a song; the author who writes a book; all supply their labor at the cost of their time, and they also have other significant costs such as equipment, Internet access and electricity. These too are real costs borne by real people.

The big difference between these creators and the farmer is that supply of the digital items they produce is infinite. The cost of duplication is essentially zero, and so is the cost of distribution. A million copies of a song – once it has been created – can be made for the same cost as making one copy, and distributed for essentially no cost to a million computers.

Some people have considered these latter facts to justify paying nothing for such items. But this is clearly unrealistic and unsustainable. The copying and distribution costs may be zero, but the cost of production is not. Some creators may be in a position to donate their labor and subsidize their own costs in order to make their creations available for free; but it is hard to imagine a culture in which this is the norm, unless creators are fully supported by the State (not a healthy situation).

So, sellers must set a price on their digital items. The question is – and this is really the point of this meditation – what is a fair price to set?

E-book prices are in the news because of the recent contretemps between Macmillan and Amazon, with Macmillan winning the battle (but probably not the war) to push up the price of some Kindle books to $14.95. So let’s look at e-books.

I have seen all sorts of calculations on the Internet about what the price of e-books should be. I have even done a few calculations myself, based on reasonable assumptions about the flat costs (the flag-fall, if you like) of producing a book, together with the variable costs (the costs per book sold). Given an accurate estimation of these sets of costs, the only variables which remain in determining whether a book is profitable are the retail price of the book, and the number of copies which are sold.

Anyway, here are two sets of figures based largely on guesswork, but not too far from reality, I think. In each case I have used Goal Seek in Excel to come up with the number of copies which need to be sold to ensure a 5% return to the publisher. In the case of the e-book, I have allowed a small percentage for duplication and distribution (rather than making them zero).

Unless I’m completely out in my estimates* (perhaps in the percentage that the online retailer will take), it seems to me that an ebook should become profitable at a smaller number of copies sold, even at a much lower retail price point than the physical book. And once you have paid for the flat costs, the low per-sale variable costs of e-books mean that you rapidly start to make a lot of money once you are past the break-even point.

The number of copies sold depends enormously on the elasticity of demand. If you halve the price of a book, will you sell twice as many copies? Perhaps not quite. But it does seem reasonable to suggest that you will certainly sell more copies if you discount the price.

But in the current commercial world, publishers seem to be pricing ebooks at ridiculously high prices. For example I just bought Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, the current Man Booker Prize winner. I bought it from Amazon in hardcover. It’s a beautifully produced book, really nice to hold and to look at. A Kindle version is a sad, ephemeral thing in comparison – it’s only advantage at all over the hardcover is that it is more portable. Yet have a look at the Amazon page below, and note the comparative pricing. $15.79 for the hardcover, but $21.10 for the Kindle version.

When an e-book costs far more than the hardcover version, something is badly wrong. More to the point, who in their right mind would buy the e-book version of Wolf Hall at that price, when they can buy a ‘real’ book for less?

If $15.79 is a fair price for the hardcover, you cannot convince me that $21.10 for an electronic version is a fair price point. That price has been determined not by the economics of the situation (because a lower price for the Kindle version would mean the e-book sold well, maximizing profit and return to the author) but by the publisher’s misguided sense of the value of their work.

The digital economy has some way to go yet before it works properly.

* Feel free to correct my assumptions!

Gosh, I get through a lot of books in six weeks! Partly this is because I listen to a lot of audiobooks as I walk and drive, and partly because… well, I just like reading. So some of these comments will be rather brief.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

E-books on my iPhone

Really superior thrillers with some excellent characterization. It took me a little while to get into the first book because of the slightly off-putting Swedish references and context. But I was hooked by the time Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative finance reporter, is convicted of libel but then offered an intriguing puzzle by Henrik Vanger, an ageing industrialist: what happened to his grand-niece Harriet 40 years ago? The circumstances of her disappearance make it something like a classic “locked-room” mystery.

And we are also introduced to a young woman, Lisbeth Salander – the “Girl” of the titles – an original and memorable character, who drives the plot in some very interesting directions.

Both books were gripping, un-put-downable reading (wearing out my eyes on the small screen of the iPhone – I’m looking forward to buying an iPad).

I haven’t yet read the third in the series The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, though I am looking forward to it.*

Alas, there will be no more Lisbeth Salander books, as the author died of a heart attack not long after finishing the third book in the trilogy.

* I had to buy this in Kindle format, as the epub versions aren’t yet available. I must say that the Kindle app on the iPhone is rather poorly done. Given that Amazon bought up Stanza, I would hope that some of that technology gets put into the Kindle app.

Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh

Audiobook

This Lord Peter Whimsey book was left unfinished at Sayers’ death, but it has been splendidly completed by Jill Paton Walsh, who seems to have channelled Sayers in her understanding of the characters of Whimsey and Harriet Vane (now Lady Peter). Very enjoyable mystery, and a wonderful picture of England as it moves inevitably towards war with Germany. I imagine, however, that some of the criticism of royalty developed in the book (the new King Edward VIII and his dallyings with Mrs Simpson, his loose behavior towards security and his dealings with the Nazis) would never have appeared in a book written by Sayers at the time.

The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell

Audiobook

Rendell has an amazing ability to portray the psychological dramas of ordinary people, in novels written either under her own name or under the pen-name of Barbara Vine. And she is brilliant at inventing (or observing) remarkable characters in a seemingly ordinary urban environment.

In this book we have a fascinating and slowly developing story of two sisters influenced by the death by drowning of their step-father some fifteen years ago when they were both in their early teens. The slow revealing of this back story, the different way each of these sisters remembers this event, and the playing out of the consequences make for gripping reading.

Orpheus Rising by Colin Bateman

Audiobook

I borrowed this from the local library on a whim (the selection of audiobooks is limited, so I often pick up something on impulse). It was a bit strange, but quite enjoyable.

It tells the tale of a young Irish man who has moved to Florida, USA and writes a novel called “Space Coast” which after receiving many rejections is at last published and becomes an unexpected best-seller, making him exceedingly rich. So far so good: but his beloved wife is killed in a senseless bank robbery not long after the book is accepted for publication.

Ten years after the tragedy, after a decade wandering the world, rich but miserable, he comes back to the town where he and his wife had lived. After quite a long lead-up, about half-way through the book, strange things start happening… and at this point the book becomes intriguing, if not particularly deep.

I’ll look out for some other books by this author.

The Ladies of Grace-Adieu by Susanna Clarke

Audiobook

I am a huge fan of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which is an astonishingly good book (I’ve read it three times). Set in the 19th Century in a slightly different version of Britain, in which the study of ancient magic and faerie begins to yield positive and practical results.

This book is a compilation of stories which Clarke apparently couldn’t fit into the numerous side stories and footnotes in the original book. They vary greatly in character and seriousness, but most have an underlying humour. I particularly liked “Mr Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower” in which a country pastor discovers he has fairy relations. This is not necessarily a good thing…

Settling Accounts Quadrilogy by Harry Turtledove

E-books on my iPhone

Whew! I’ve finally finished the “Southern Victory” alternate history series by Turtledove – eleven long books detailing the consequences of the Confederate States winning “The War of Secession” in 1862. Great stuff, really, but I think I’m glad I have finished it. I feel like I have been reading this forever.

At least, I think I have finished, unless Turtledove unleashes yet another trilogy taking the history beyond the end of the Second Great War.

Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly

Paperback, my collection

The latest of Connelly’s Harry Bosch books. Bosch’s daughter, living in Hong Kong with her mother, is apparently kidnapped in retaliation for Bosch’s investigation of Chinese Triads in Los Angeles. Bosch charges off to do the Rambo thing, but not everything is as it seems…

Currently Reading

I’m currently reading:

• A Presumption of Death by Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy L Sayers (Audiobook)
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Hardback*, my collection)

* Just a note on book prices in Australia – it was cheaper to buy this beautiful hardcover version from Amazon and have it shipped to Australia (admittedly with some other books to share the cost) than it would have been to buy a thick paperback version here, whose spine would have cracked in no time.

I can’t think of any product about which more has been written, both before and after its announcement, than the forthcoming Apple iPad.

So I might as well add to the flood.

The speculation before Steve Job’s announcement of the iPad on January 27, 2010, had reached hysterical levels. Hysterical in every sense of the word -absolute madness, and absolutely funny. I was secretly hoping that Jobs would stride onto stage that day and tell the world that Apple had no intention of producing a tablet, just to see what the reaction would be. He did acknowledge the silliness of all of the speculation by throwing up a slide showing Moses on Mt Sinai and a quotation from the Wall Street Journal:

The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.

What is even more interesting, really, is the almost equally hysterical commentary about the Apple tablet after the details were released. This seems to range from near fury on the part of some commentators due to disappointed (I would say misguided) expectations and what they see as the shortcomings of the device, to sensible and thoughtful comments from people like John Gruber.

Now I am not an Apple fanboy, far from it. I’m basically a Windows user and a Windows programmer, and I have been for a very long time. But I remain fascinated by Apple and by Steve Job’s strategic approach. And I’m a huge fan and user of the iPod and the iPhone.

Personally, I think the iPad is an absolutely brilliant device, and more importantly it is an extremely clever strategic move on Apple’s part.

Much of the negative comment and outright hostility to the iPad seems to be based on the concept that this thing is meant to replace a laptop computer or a netbook and that it doesn’t have what it takes to do that. Paradoxically, I think this is both very true and at the same time very misguided.

I think that the iPad will replace (actually, displace) laptops and netbooks for some people, for some usages, in some circumstances. Circumstances alter cases.

Think about it. If you are in what I call ‘couch mode’ – you want to sit and relax and maybe read a book, or surf the web, or look through your email, or admire your photos, or play a casual game, or watch a movie or even attend a lecture – all of these things can be done much more comfortably on the couch rather than at your desk. And if you are in that mode, a laptop is a damn uncomfortable device. It weighs too much, it’s hard to handle, and it gets uncomfortably warm. A netbook would be better in some ways, yes. But an iPad would be best of all.

So for many, many people who like to go into couch mode (surely almost all of us), the iPad would be a brilliant device to have on the coffee table.

I myself wouldn’t be interested in using an iPad to sort out my taxes, or edit video, or develop software, or update my web site design. But Apple isn’t suggesting that you would.

The genius of Apple is recognising that there are millions of people (like seniors, for example) who are uncomfortable with computers in general, and who have no other use-cases than those I mention above – accessing the Internet, reading and answering email, admiring photos, being entertained. People who might not today even have a computer could easily pick up and use an iPad as a simple appliance, as Farhad Manjoo identified before the announcement.

Apple are into re-inventing the whole idea of computing.

And the real sting in the tail for companies like Microsoft is the fact that Apple will sell versions of its iWork applications – Keynote, Pages and Numbers – specially designed to work with a touch interface – for only $9.99 each. Think about this for a moment. For only $30 you will be able to buy the functional equivalents of Microsoft Office to run on your iPad.

Sure, you probably won’t want to write a novel that way.

But can’t you see the pathway? Someone who is a reluctant computer user gets hold of an iPad and really enjoys it. They decide to use it for writing some family history stories, perhaps, so they pay the trivial $9.99 cost to get Pages on the iPad. Then they decide they are confident enough with computers to get really serious. They are now familiar with Apple products. They are now familiar with Apple software. If they are in the market for a laptop, what are they going to buy? A Windows-based machine, with expensive Office applications? No way. They will buy a Mac.

I am predicting that the iPad will have a slow start, but then become a roaring success.

Oh, and it will kill the Kindle stone dead.

Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant.

– Sir Walter Ralegh

Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?

– Thomas Mann

A long time ago (maybe 20 years ago), I started to become interested in my family history, but then let it drop.

But in the last couple of months I have returned to the research and I have discovered some interesting things.

In this I was inspired and assisted by my wife, who is studying her own family tree. She signed up to the Ancestry web site (www.ancestry.com.au or www.ancestry.co.uk). This isn’t free, but it does have some very useful and valuable features, and these quickly drew me in.

In particular, I have been following the surname of Grigg back, studying my father’s line of descent. He was born in Durham, England toward the end of World War I, and named William Snaith Grigg. He hated that middle name! In fact, my father’s name was exactly the same as that of his own father, my grandfather. The ‘Snaith’ comes from his mother’s maiden name.

But the real interest in the story as I worked my way back through time is to do with the occupation of my ancestors, and their movements around the United Kingdom during the 19th Century.

I had always thought that the Griggs had been coal miners in Durham (the far north of England), stretching back for many generations. My grandfather certainly spent almost all of his working life working at the coal pit, and my father went down the pit at the age of 14 and worked there until the outbreak of World War II, when he was called up and went off to fight in North Africa and Italy as part of the British Eighth Army. My uncles also all worked as coal miners, and I had been given to understand that my grandfather’s brothers (my great-uncles) also worked as miners. So I had made the assumption that this tradition had begun long ago, certainly for several generations. However, this turns out not to be the case.

The real family tradition of the Griggs, I now discover, was in glass-making.

It took quite a while to tease all this out, but it began when I got hold of the birth certificate of my great-grandfather, who was called James Anderson Grigg. He was born in 1862. His father, Samuel Grigg, is shown as being a “Glass Blower Journeyman”. His mother was Mary Sked (or Skade) Anderson. The family address is shown as being in Hedley Street, Sunderland, Durham. Then I found the marriage certificate of James Anderson Grigg and Louisa Snaith. They were married in 1884. James’s occupation is listed as “Colour Maker” and his father’s as “Sheetglass Maker”.

Well, that was interesting enough, but at that stage I had no idea what a “Colour Maker” was, or what trade it involved.

The real key came when we joined Ancestry and I used the wonderful facilities on that site to start searching for census records. I was quickly able to find some matching records for the family. In particular the 1871 census, taken when James was 9. The family is still living at the same address as when James was born, and Samuel’s occupation is now listed as “Sheet Glass blower”. The surprise was seeing Samuel’s place of birth. It was “Smethwick, Staffordshire, England”. Now that was a puzzle, because Staffordshire is a long way south of Durham, in the English midlands. And I had thought that in those days people (certainly of their class) didn’t travel about much. Why would Samuel have moved so far north, presumably away from his family and friends?

Given this clue, though, I was able to find other census records for Samuel Grigg down in Staffordshire, and started to do some other research. Things started to become, shall we say, as clear as glass?

In 1841, Samuel Grigg was 4, and his family is living in Spon Lane, Smethwick. In the 1851 census, he is living with his brothers and cousins. Samuel is listed as “Labourer at glassworks” and his brother and cousins are all employed in the same industry. In a separate entry in the same census, his father Emmanuel Grigg is now living in Newton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire at the Crown Glass Works and is listed as “founder at glassworks”. Samuel grew up and married Mary Sked Anderson in 1859, when they were both 22 years old.

A little research shows that there were major glass works in Smethwick. In particular, a major glass factory was Chance, Hartley & Co, which produced all of the glass for the famous Crystal Palace. Note that second name, Hartley. That’s from John Hartley. John Hartley’s sons, James and John Hartley, established a major glass works in 1837 in Sunderland, Durham. It doesn’t take much imagination to suggest that young Samuel was recruited by the Hartley company to move north to work at the new factory, the Wear Glass Works. In the 1861 census, just two years after their marriage, we find Samuel and his wife living in Sunderland, not far from the Wear factory.

Skilled glass workers were by all accounts, highly valued, and their skills were in great demand. This meant that they often moved around the country, and were far more mobile than the average worker.

But the story doesn’t end there. Samuel’s bride Mary Sked Anderson was also born in Smethwick, Staffordshire. She was the daughter of James Anderson, and Janet Hartley. James Anderson’s occupation was “Glass Cutter”, and he and his wife came from Dumbarton in Scotland. So here is another instance of a glass worker travelling very far from home to work in the industry.

But wait a minute – Janet Hartley? Does that name ring a bell? Sure enough, we find that James and John Hartley, the founders of the Wear Glass Works, and responsible for many innovations in glass making, were also born in Dumbarton in Scotland, where their father John Hartley (a Yorkshireman) had gone to run the Dumbarton Glass Works. For a wild moment I thought that Janet might be the sister of these two luminaries of the glass industry, but not quite. It turns out that she is their first cousin, the daughter of Abraham Hartley. It looks like the elder John Hartley (born 1775) took his older brother Abraham (born 1773) with him to Dumbarton when he started work at the Dumbarton Glass Works, or else Abraham followed him at a later time.

So, looking back to my great-grandfather James Anderson Grigg, his own trade of “Colour Maker” now makes sense as someone with the highly-developed skill of mixing ingredients for coloured glass (or glass painting).

Hartley Wear Glassworks were also one of the earliest companies in the world to produce coloured glass which was used mainly in churches. James Hartley would occasionally make a gift of entire windows to local churches. One example was the large geometrical window in Park Road Methodist Church, Sunderland in 1887. Its value was £125.00.
(Wearsideonline.com)

James Anderson Grigg’s heritage comes from several generations of glass-makers on both sides of his family – through his father Samuel Grigg and his grandfather Emmanuel Grigg; and through his mother Mary Skade Anderson to her parents James Anderson and Janet Hartley, the latter from a family with impressive credentials in the glass-making industry in Britain.

Unfortunately, it seems that he eventually had to leave the glass trade. Business started to go sour for the Wear Glass Works in the 1890s as it fell behind in key technology and lost market share to other glass-works in Britain and in Belgium. It eventually closed its doors in 1894. Even before that, James must have lost his job, because by the 1891 census we see he is now working as a “Shipyard Laborer”.

And this explains why my grandfather William Grigg didn’t continue to follow the glass trade. According to family tradition, he started work in the shipbuilding industry in Hartlepool, Durham, but not long after his marriage moved to Trimdon and started work as a coal miner.

I find all of this absolutely fascinating, and quite unexpected. Real “Who Do You Think You Are” stuff.

References:
Chance, Hartley & Co Glassworks, Staffordshire
Hartley Wear Glassworks, Sunderland
Dumbarton Glassworks, Scotland
Newton Glassworks, Lancashire
Hartley Family

Because of the long gap (three months) since my last summary, this is going to be a set of very brief comments on what I can remember!

It’s also startling to realize just how many books I read in a three-month period!

Black Echo

Angels’ Flight

The Poet

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

Library Hardback, Ebooks and Trade Paperback

Yeah, OK, so I’m addicted to popular thrillers. But I like Connelly’s outwardly hard-bitten but often personally vulnerable hero, Harry Bosch. Black Echo is the first book in this series, and I’ve only just read it. Stupidly, the territorial copyright system prevented me from actually paying the author for an electronic version, so I resorted to borrowing a free hardback copy from the local library. Anyway, it was interesting at last to read of Bosch’s first encounter with Eleanor Wish, a relationship which continues on and off throughout the whole series. Angel’s Flight is another in this series. Both books have interesting and not wholly predictable plots, and I enjoyed them both.

The Poet doesn’t feature Bosch, but instead journalist Jack McEvoy, devastated by the apparent suicide of his twin brother, a police officer. Of course in the way of such novels, it turns out that it was no suicide but a murder instead – indeed, part of a series of such murders. As the case becomes handled by the FBI, McEvoy becomes involved with an agent, Rachel Walling, but then starts to have doubts about her… I enjoyed this a lot, and would consider it one of Connelly’s best. Not so The Scarecrow, a sequel featuring McEvoy and Walling, which I thought was a very lightweight pot-boiler, and a real disappointment.

Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

Hardcover, my own collection

This is the third in a series of – what? re-imaginings, re-visitings, re-workings – of Niven’s Known Space science fiction books written in the 1960’s and 70’s. As such, they are really quite intriguing, as the events and characters in those old stories are woven into a wholly different framework seen from an alternative angle. Niven always has plenty of imagination, and wrote stories which really appeal to those who like speculation on the grand scale. But his dialogue and characterization have never been his strong suits. It’s when he teams up with others who are much stronger in these areas that he has done his best work – with Jerry Pournelle, for example, or here with Edward M. Lerner.

The previous two books in this series are Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds.

Infernal Devices

A Darkling Plain by Phillip Reeve

Paperbacks, my own collection

These are the last two books of the Mortal Engines tetralogy. I talked about the previous book Predator’s Gold here. Really superior (if occasionally a bit violent) science fiction for early teenagers, with strong characters and really interesting (if slightly unbelievable) premise of a future world in which cities have become mobile on great traction engines. I, of course, am no longer a teenager. But it doesn’t stop me really enjoying books written for that audience.

Illegal Action by Stella Rimington

E-book on my iPhone

This is the third in a series of thrillers written by the ex-head of Britain’s MI5. She certainly has the background knowledge and isn’t a bad (if not great) writer either.

American Empire: Blood and Iron

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

American Empire: Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove

Audiobooks

Turtledove is, as they say, the master of alternative history. But gosh this is a long-winded series! So far I have listened to over 160 hours of Turtledove’s vision of a world in which the Confederate States won the American Civil War in 1862. After that event – now called “The War of Secession” – we had the “Second Mexican War” in the 1880s, and “The Great War” in 1914-1917, at the end of which the Confederate States (and their allies Britain and France) were defeated by the USA and Germany.

The “American Empire” group of Turtledove’s novels covers the aftermath of that defeat and leads us up to the 1940s. It’s fascinating how the author spins an entirely believable tale of how a disgruntled sergeant in the defeated Southern army, embittered by his experiences and filled with a conviction that the South was “stabbed in the back” by “traitors” in the government and by an uprising amongst the still-mistreated blacks, goes on to join and then lead, a new political party. Turtledove so cleverly shapes his story that the realization of the parallels with events in Germany in “our” timeline is slow in coming. By casting that story in utterly convincing terms in an American setting, he makes us see those “real” events in a much deeper way.

And so on to the next four novels and the opening of the equivalent of World War II. Lots more reading to do!

Once Upon a Time in the North by Phillip Pullman

Small hardback, my own collection

Very brief but enjoyable prequel to Pullman’s “Golden Compass” series, telling the story of how Lee Scoresby first meets up with the armored polar bear Iorek Byrnison. This is a small-format gift book.

Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan

E-book on my iPhone

Well, this was free (from Baen Books), and worth about what I paid for it. I read the original SF novel in paperback years ago, and I seemed to remember enjoying it, so I read it again for curiosity. I was surprised, though, at how poorly written it was. The plot is all driven by a series of revelations rather than by the actions of the characters (let alone by the interactions of the characters).

The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell

Trade paperback, on loan

The latest Wexford novel from Rendell. Cleverly done, and well-written, if not particularly deep. Rendell writes so many, and so many very excellent, books that I’m sure she sees these police-procedural Wexford books as a relaxation from her more challenging works.

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. (Ebook)
• The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell (Audiobook)

The main reason for this long gap is that I was pushed a bit off balance by the death of my 91-year old father, Bill Grigg, in October.

Though it had been clear for some months that his health was declining rapidly, and he had gone voluntarily into a nursing home in June, it was still a blow when the end eventually came. It was particularly hard, of course, on my mother. They had been married for 60 years.

I don’t want to publish very much about my father here – I’m not much in favor of publishing very personal material to the wide world of the Internet (so call me a dinosaur in this era of twittering every random thought).

I did put together a photo tribute to my father on DVD, which was played at the funeral service, and I also spoke about how, by his example, he contributed greatly to my love of reading, and particularly reading science fiction and fantasy (he was a great fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Speaking of which, I’ll try to catch up in a separate blog, however, briefly, on the reading I’ve done over the last few months.

————–

* Well, disappointing my daughter and my mother, anyway, and possibly two or three others. My wife, I think, doesn’t see much point in reading my blog since she hears most of this stuff from me directly.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Hardcover, my own library

Amazon link

I finally finished this book, subtitled ‘The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln’. It’s a fascinating study of Lincoln and the men he appointed to his cabinet, several of whom had been his bitter rivals for the nomination of the Republican Party. Can we see a certain repeat of history today in that Lincoln appointed his main rival – the person whom almost everyone thought would win the nomination – as Secretary of State? Certainly we know that President Obama was reading this book between his election and the inauguration.

But modern parallels aside, I found this a really gripping read, as we see Lincoln practically lift himself up by his bootstraps from extremely humble beginnings, educating himself and then following the law and eventually stepping in to politics, to become the unlikely nomination of his party. This, however, was not mere luck. Lincoln had a careful plan and built up his support at the expense of his much richer and much more well-connected rivals – William Seward, Salmon Chase and Edward Bates – and snatched the nomination. Most people at the time, and certainly those rivals, thought it a bizarre and unwise choice by the party, and Lincoln was much disparaged as a ‘backwoods lawyer’ and a ‘rail-splitter’. This book demonstrates how Lincoln overcame those perceptions and built the initially grudging and then full-hearted respect of men like Seward, his Secretary of State.

The book also tells, of course, the story of the Civil War, but dwells only briefly on the campaign itself, and more on the personalities and the politics of the war which Lincoln shrewdly managed.

As an Australian, my knowledge of American history is only limited. I learnt a lot from this book, and enjoyed it greatly.

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• American Empire: Blood and Iron by Harry Turtledove (Audiobook).
• Angel’s Flight by Michael Connelly (Ebook).
• Ruled Brittania by Harry Turtledove (Ebook).
• American Journeys by Don Watson (Hardcover, my own library).

We’ve just returned from a short but very pleasant stay in Daylesford, Victoria.

Daylesford is currently being promoted heavily on television at the moment through a commercial which links images of young people having a very good time and a soundtrack of the song “Down in the river to pray” which was featured in the movie “Brother, Where Art Thou?”. It’s a beautiful song, but I have no idea how this religious lyric (inviting everyone to go down and pray in the river) relates to the luxurious and sybaritic lifestyle depicted in the visuals…

Despite this saturation advertising, we weren’t particularly influenced by it to chose Daylesford for a weekend away – it’s close to Woodend, and Castlemaine, where we’ve been many times, and it had been on our list to visit for some time.

Anyway, I took the above photograph while we were ambling around the lake in Daylesford, a comfortable 2 km walk. On the day we had arrived, it was raining heavily (much to be desired in our current drought conditions, but not so good for tourism), but on the next day it was absolutely perfect, not a cloud in the sky, and a mild temperature ideal for walking about.

That night after dinner, we went back down to the edge of the lake and stared up at the night sky. The spread of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds were very easy to see, and an absolute wealth of stars which are just lost to us in the city. It makes you yearn for the chance to escape the city and see such glory far more often.

The Grail Quest by Bernard Cornwell

Audiobook on my iPhone

Amazon link

This is a trilogy of historical novels, set during the Hundred Years War between England and France (mid 1300s), and centered on the exploits of Thomas of Hookton, an English archer. In those days, the English longbow, en masse, had the devastating impact on opposing armies that the machine gun did during World War I. Arrows from such bows, plied by men trained from youth to have the strength to draw them, could pierce even plate armor.

Cornwell has an excellent sense of period, and has clearly done his historical research thoroughly. There are several battles in the book which – if they were fiction – would seem to strain credibility: the Battle of Crécy, in which the English army in France under the command of Edward III, hugely outnumbered, desperate, out of supplies, and exhausted, nevertheless managed to wipe out a vast proportion of the French nobility and escape; the Battle of Durham, where again a greatly outnumbered English contingent destroyed the flower of Scottish arms and captured the King of Scotland; the Battle of La Roche-Darien where Duke Charles of Brittany thought he had a cunning plan to destroy the English archers, but was in fact defeated and captured. All of these are true stories, but Cornwell brings them vividly (and bloodily) to life; and it’s perfectly credible that his protagonist would be at each of these events, which happened within the span of a few years in the 1340s.

The character development of Thomas, his loves and friends, is all excellently handled, particularly the conflicts between Thomas and his one-time friend, the Scot Robbie Douglas in the last book.

And then there’s the plot device of the search for the Holy Grail. No Arthurian (or even Monty Pythonesque) romance here, but a belief that the relic exists among the powers of the Church, and a connection through Thomas’ family which holds out the tantalising thought that the Grail might really exist and be located. It’s this hope which drives the characters.

Really entertaining reading. And very well narrated by Sean Barrett.

Almost Perfect by W.E. Pete Peterson

E-book on my iPhone

Interesting history of the word processing software which for a time was the best-selling product in the field.

The book could have been subtitled “The Rise and Fall of Word Perfect”, I guess, for the product is now long gone, swept away by the ubiquitous Microsoft Word.

This e-book is a fascinating look at the early history of computing and word processing in particular. Since I am someone who cut their teeth on a dedicated Wang word processing system, and who has seen the introduction and rise of Microsoft’s products, it was particularly interesting to me. But it would be equally interesting, I think, to students of business dynamics and interpersonal relationships in business, as the company grows and grows and relationships get stressed. Peterson eventually gets shafted by his long-time partners, and a fair bit of his resentment and self-justification comes out in the book.

This is only available as an e-book these days as the original is long out of print (if it ever was in print, not sure).

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Hardcover, my own library) – yes, I’m still reading this – it’s a long book, and I find it hard to find time to sit down with a physical volume these days.
• Ruled Brittania by Harry Turtledove (Ebook)

After six months of loving my iPod Touch but carrying a separate mobile phone, I gave in and signed up for a fully-fledged iPhone when the 3GS model came out.

My justification was that I would only have to carry one device with me on my morning walks, or when I was driving. That’s my excuse, but what I was really drooling over were some of the exciting new capabilities that the iPhone has which are still missing from the iPod Touch.

Here we have an elegant, powerful, multi-functional pocket computer with some astonishing capabilities. It’s truly a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of electronic devices.

Rehashing my earlier list of functions of the iPod Touch, now expanded by the addition of iPhone 3GS features:

I can (and do!) use it to:

* Store my contacts, calendar, notes, photos
* Get my email from several accounts
* Calculate
* Act as an an alarm clock and stop watch
* Keep track of my working time on various projects
* Listen to music – I have some 160 albums on it
* Listen to audiobooks as I walk or drive
* Play games
* Watch videos
* Read e-books
* Take photographs
* Find my way with maps, compass and GPS
* Store all of my passwords
* Check the weather
* Check the stock market
* Record sound
* Browse the Internet
* Look up train, tram and bus timetables (with real-time advice on arrival of trams)
* Find the nearest ATM
* Look up postcodes
* Identify planets, stars and constellations in the night sky
* “Fax” documents
* Remotely control my computers
* Improve my musical ear

Oh yes, nearly forgot:
* Make and receive phone calls
* Write and receive text messages

Others, with a different selection of ‘apps’ will have a different list. But I submit that such a list of capabilities is truly astonishing. It’s the kind of ‘magical machine’ that I could barely have dreamed of when I was young. Heck, I spent a long while saving up for a simple four-function calculator when I was in my first year at college!

If you are wondering how I do some of the things in the list above, here’s a short list of my favorite iPhone apps at the moment:

MotionX GPS

This is currently my very favorite app. It really leverages the power of the GPS, compass and accelerometer. I set off for my morning walk, start my audiobook playing, fire up this app and start walking. When I get back home, I stop and save the ‘track’. Now I know exactly how long I’ve walked for, how far, what my average speed was, what my maximum speed was, and the highest and lowest altitudes I’ve visited. My exact path is shown on the map, and I can even email it to myself or friends, complete with a Google Earth KMZ file. Brilliant and worth every cent (AU$3.99).

JotNot

This is a clever application for those out on the road – essentially it turns your iPhone into a mobile scanner/fax. Take a photo of a document with your camera – even at an angle – and then an overlay appears with movable corners. Position the corners to match the corners of your document, and voilà ! JotNot processes the image, reshapes it to make it into a perfect rectangle, adjusts the sharpness and contrast, and you have something which looks like a pretty good scan. JotNot then lets you email the result as an image or as a PDF. Terrific for receipts, newspaper clippings, white-board workings, business cards…. I love it. (AU$5.99)

Pocket Universe

This really leverages all the features of the iPhone 3GS. It knows what time it is because of the clock; it knows where in the world you are because of the GPS chip; it knows which way you are facing because of the compass; it knows how much you are tilting it because of the accelerometer. Thus, you can hold it up to the night sky and it will show you essentially the same view – but with the constellation lines shown, and labels next to the brightest objects. Instant recognition of ‘what’s that star or planet’? It tracks the phase of the moon and all of the planets, and has a summary of ‘Tonight’s Sky’, with rising and setting times. Very clever stuff. (AU $3.99).

MetLink and Tram Tracker

These are specific to the Australian city where I live (Melbourne), but offer a really handy way to discover when the next public transport vehicle is leaving for your destination. Metlink has all the latest timetables (updating live) for train, tram and bus. You can set up your favorite stations/stops. Tram Tracker is even neater: it shows the actual time – not just the scheduled time – before the next tram arrives at your stop, working off the very same live electronic information available to the company running the trams. Both of these are free!