Tra la-la, la-la

Posting may become a bit more sporadic in the near future, as full-time classes have just started up and frankly I'm terribly unused to being a student.  Listening to lectures is more tiring than I remember!

I will say, it's a hopeful sign that the first reading I'm assigned--the Wired article which defined the concept of the "Long Tail"--kicks off with a case study about the Joe Simpson book, Touching the Void.  It's a book about mountainclimbing (specifically, the near-fatal variety) I read several years ago on a recommendation from a fellow mountaineer.  "This is great!" I thought to myself.  "I  love mountainclimbing!  What a good sign!"

Then I remembered a key scene from the book, which was even better in the movie: Joe Simpson is dangling by a rope into a bottomless crevasse, possibly moments from plummeting to his death, when he tragically discovers that Boney M's horrible song "Brown Girl in the Ring" has gotten stuck in his head.

"This is terrible!" I thought to myself.  "I hate Boney M!  And now it's stuck in my head!"

Still, the case study was pretty interesting, and it's a good illustration of how internet buzz about one completely separate book can suddenly give a boost to half-forgotten titles on your backlist.  On the other hand, my guess is that the buzz about Touching the Void didn't have such a promotional effect on Boney M.  If you'd like to see for yourself why I think that way . . . Well, you've been warned.

Every Which Way

You'd think after living in India I wouldn't blink twice at British traffic.  They do drive on the opposite side of the road as us Yankees, but at certain crosswalks there are helpful "Look Right" and "Look Left" reminders, and anyways Brits insist it doesn't take long to get used to.

On the other hand, drivers in Oxford have this lovely habit of pulling up curbside on whichever side of the road they happen to want to park, whether or not they're facing the correct direction.  Mail trucks don't flinch at crossing an oncoming lane of traffic to deposit the postman at your doorstep.  Construction vehicles rumble into both lanes on their way to their worksite.  In fact, the larger the truck, the more likely you are to see it parked completely backwards.

All these cars driving American-style aren't doing much for my acclimatization.  As a result, that extra bit of hesitation just before I step in the street -- is the traffic to my right or my left? -- sometimes causes other, more confident members of the crowd to walk into me.  It might be a good idea to just look every direction several times before moving anywhere.  Or, better yet, just to shut my eyes and run.

More Oxford in Images

To save myself the trouble of going on a similar trip when guests start to arrive, I signed up yesterday afternoon for an Oxford City Sightseeing tour.  You know the type: the obnoxious big red buses with people leering from the upper level, cameras bristling.  It wasn't immensely helpful, and it didn't take very long - as I said before, Oxford is incredibly small - but I did get the opportunity for a few nice snaps.

Apparently, studying in Oxford is not a big deal, because everyone and their mother seems to have done so.  Our tour guide (pictured above) couldn't pass a single college without listing four or five famous attendees.  When his list began to include people like Bill Clinton and Kris Kristofferson, the American country singer, I felt like he was mistakenly reading from a copy of Who's Who in Every Cultural Sphere, Ever. I guess when you're the third-oldest university in Europe, you've got time to form a collection.

Speaking of collection, we drove past the famous Bodleian library (bookworm heaven, for which I will soon have a library card).  I knew it was large, but I didn't realize why: it's a copyright library.  That means every book published in the UK needs to send a copy to the Bodleian to ensure copyright protection.  So when they say "miles and miles of shelving", they mean it quite literally.

They do a lot of studying in Oxford, but never fear.  Parked in front of Trinity College, I noticed an advert which seemed to suggest they know how to have fun, too:

We remained fully clothed for my particular tour, but who knows?  It was cold that day.

A Scholar's Life

The only downside to completing the first week at a UK university is realizing that, just like they call the bottom level of a building the "ground floor" and say the "first floor" is up one flight of stairs, we have just finished "Week 0" and "Week 1" is barely on the horizon.  Sigh.

And what a week it's been, numbered or otherwise.  Between technology workshops, inductions, meetings with my professors, enrollments, banking appointments, and numerous trips to the grocery store, I've barely had time to sit and process my surroundings.  General consensus is that we haven't been given much new information, but having so much fed to us at once does create no small amount of stress.  Thank goodness our first out-of-class assignment has been probably the most pleasant part of the whole publishing experience: walking through a bookstore and looking at books.

Oxford University Press's dedicated store, right off of High Street.  Proof that textbooks can be pretty, too.

There is only one drawback: dirty, vile temptation.

If you can pay in coins, it feels like it's free!

By the time we'd finished browsing, I was glad not to be carrying any cash.  It's altogether too tiring to keep repeating to yourself, "Student budget, student budget, student budget, student budget . . ."

As Advertised

These past few days have been busy with the beginning of your correspondent's Master's in International Publishing coursework.  It's refreshing to be on the other side of the academic food chain again, although I'm sad to report that all of that time selling textbooks doesn't make me any more likely to buy new books from the campus bookstore.  Sorry!

It's been wonderful to meet my classmates and appreciate the diversity of my particular cohort.  Within only 75 students, we have representatives from 24 countries, including Chile, Lithuania, India, Iran, and more.  It's been amazing.  Even our getting-to-know-each-other, casual conversations sometimes break into learning something new about something we didn't know was unknown.  The specific kind of cold in Poland, "white nights" in Sweden, primary schools in the Netherlands . . . All these little undercurrents inform and shape a culture, but don't become apparent unless you stumble over them in conversation.  It's why you can't learn about Russia just by reading Dostoevsky.  A trip to his dingy basement apartment in St. Petersburg reveals more about the parts of his life he's not saying out loud.

Firmly at the center of the "unknown unknowns" category is the pleasure of being surrounded by such a great group.  I have something to learn from everyone.  Best of all, everyone wants to talk about publishing!  Sentence structure has never been so fun . . .

Or, maybe it has.

Merry Old England

My first impressions of Oxford, UK, are as follows:  These. Buildings. Are. Old.

I've had the luxury of time these past few days, and have used every second to wander through town exploring new backroads and alleys.  In fact, the whole city appears to be backroads and alleys, lined with cobblestones and flanked by high stone walls.

On one of my walks I stumbled upon the Christ Church complex, on the south side of town.  Christ Church is one of the oldest colleges of the University of Oxford, and the buildings have been standing since the 14th century.  Lucky students actually take classes here, have dorms here, and spend their formative years in the shadow of these great buildings.

Of course, this is all information I gleaned off of Wikipedia after I got home - at the time, I was just soaking in the scenery and wondering where I was.

I mostly viewed the college from afar, preferring to walk through the nearby Christ Church meadow.  Quickly, my attention was diverted by something a little more interesting, given my adventures the other day.  Once again, in the middle of the city, the grass was littered with cows.

Judging from the size of their horns, however, it doesn't look like this meadow is open for jogging.

This Always Happens To Me

Due to a momentary three-month lapse of reason, I've been training for the Dublin Marathon which falls on October 25 of this year.  It's not my first marathon, but it's the first I've attempted while in the middle of an intercontinental move.  As it turns out, I'm scheduled to run my 19- and 20- mile runs just as I've arrived in Oxford, with no knowledge of the city and its environs.

I set off this morning fully intending to find the Thames riverbank and just follow the water for eight or ten miles before turning back, completing a neat little loop.  I soon discovered that, although the map of Oxford looks quite large, Oxford itself is very small.  Compared to your typical sprawling American metropolis, you don't have to travel far to get from point to point.

What I'm trying to say is, I ran right past the river and not only did I fail to find my jogging path, but I ran myself straight out of town.

I doubled back and tried again to find the route.  It had all seemed so clear when I researched it on Google Earth.  I found something that approximated my desired cycling path, but which once again proved itself wrong.  Now I was running through a grand meadow, on something which signs reassured me was a "public footpath", but which clearly led me straight through a cow pasture.

After twelve miles, though, "clearly" is a relative term.  I was tired and only halfway paying attention to my surroundings.  I made the discovery by force: One moment I'm running, the next I have come face to face with a giant English milking cow.

This can't be right, I thought to myself, looking around.  Cows were surrounding me.  I assumed I had taken a wrong turn.  But, to my surprise, I saw there were English folks wandering all over the cow pasture just as I was.  There was even another runner, the first I've seen since arriving in England.  No one else seemed worried about the grazing livestock, and the animals seemed fairly unconcerned about them.

Meanwhile, the cow was chewing its cud and looking back at me blandly from the middle of my road.  I had not been expecting this.  I've been wrestling my instincts to over-domesticate loose cows since India, and again I felt the urge to find this cow's owner and let him know his animals were going wild.

That's it, I decided.  I've run far enough.  And next time, I'm going to need a map.

Around the World

Two more discoveries made immediately after exiting the pub yesterday:

1)  A nice little corner store, to remind me of corner store man.
2)  This corner store man, as should every corner store man, sells laddoo.  Including my favorite: besan laddoo.

This is how I simultaneously lose Pounds while gaining pounds: spending all my money on Cadbury and laddoo. It almost makes up for the fact that I can't get a decent jar of peanut butter to save my life.  Looks like I'll be heading straight for dessert . . .

Oxford

Yesterday I watched the sun rise over Canada hours before my plane left the US.  Today I watched the sun rise over Ireland hours before I landed in the UK.

Dear God I am so tired.

Navigating Oxford has been easier than anticipated.  The first person I ran into on campus was the very man I had been incessantly emailing with to arrange my housing.  Before I even realized it was him, he had correctly guessed my name and flat number and the keys were dangling from my hand.  It certainly helped ease the frustration of the following one-mile walk from campus to the flat, all the while carrying 100 pounds of gear.

Look at that backpack!  The bulges have bulges!

There's a silver lining even here, of course.  As my favorite travel companions will tell you (with some dismay), the more tired I am, the more efficient I become. I was home, unpacked, and had the furniture rearranged even before lunch.  Thanks, jet lag!

At the moment the only thing I haven't nailed down is the internet and a phone. I'm sure I'll have time to get those sorted in the morning, but for now I've solved the problem temporarily by discovering a happy hour and free Wifi at the neighboring pub.  Cheers!

Mind the Gap

All the anticipation invariably boils down to one fidgety eight-hour airplane ride.  I'm leaving America today and will arrive in London at what will feel like 3 a.m., then it's an hour's bus ride to my new life.  In other words: things are about to get interesting.

In true English style, your correspondent will keep a stiff upper lip and give you the grand finale of British Men Doing Silly Things.  I'm of the firm opinion that Genesis perform the best traveling music.  Conveniently, they've also written a song about books, which seems appropriate to the occasion.

Take it away, boys.  I'll see you from Blighty.

British Men Doing Silly Things: Part 3

Packing for India was a lot easier than packing for England.  Fewer sweaters to cram in.  Also, I didn't need quite so many coats.

There is also a lot more to be arranged in terms of paperwork, and that says a lot.  I'm just crossing my fingers that the little hanging details like, oh, the location of my passport, will be hammered out before I board my plane.  Everything is budget, plan, and petition.  Much like these very official British men doing silly things.

This American Life

If you had asked me on September 11, 2001 what I would be doing on the nine year anniversary of the tragedy, I wouldn't have known how to answer.  In these few months back in the USA between gigs abroad, I've thought long and hard about what it is to be American.  I sing along to country music and spent an evening in July dodging fireworks.  It's somehow appropriate that, on September 11, 2010, I was back at Notre Dame enjoying the most American of pastimes: college football.

If that sounds strange, consider what a college football game means.  At least once a year I travel across the country to meet up with my closest friends on the campus where we first met.  We reminisce about old times and eat and drink until we've probably done something stupid enough to reminisce about next year.  We cheer for the young men who represent this tradition on the field.  Win or lose, we end every game by putting our arms around each other and singing our Alma Mater.

This year, because of the anniversary, our marching band played "America the Beautiful" at halftime.  The background chatter died abruptly, and tens of thousands of people removed their hats and sang along.  I was awestruck.  The moment was a better tribute to our losses than anything words can express.

I thought about that later this evening, after detouring from my drive back to Detroit to visit a Delhi friend.  She had surprisingly moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, while I was re-acclimatizing in Boston.  We ate dal and chocolate, drank tea, and swapped stories of high altitude climbing between bouts of laughter.  I thought: Here I am celebrating one country, reminiscing about another, and about to move to a third in three days.  Would I have foreseen any of this nine years ago?

They say being an ex-pat is difficult because assimilating into a new culture can rip away your roots.  I don't know if that's true.  Everywhere I go I bump into memories of places I've called home, be it Indiana, Massachusetts, Detroit, Denver, or Delhi.  At the same time, no matter where I am, I was born American, and for better or for worse I represent my country to the rest of the world. That's the point behind going abroad in the first place: being able to sit down with a new friend and say, Let me tell you where I came from . . .

The drive through Indiana

British Men Doing Silly Things: Part 2

Everything seems to have been building up to this string of four or five days.  Last day of work yesterday, moving out of Boston today, spending the weekend with old old old friends, and finally--legally--flying to England on Wednesday.  (My visa has been issued, and hopefully within a few days my passport will be in hand.)

I don't know about you, but I need more British men doing silly things.  This song is particularly appropriate today.

*...With a nod towards my former manager, who used this as her farewell a few weeks ago.  It was exactly right, so I'm repeating after her.  Who doesn't, after all, get by with a little help from their friends?

End of an Edit

One more milestone reached today: I turned in my red pen.  I've gone from editing at large to studying at large.  (Studying editing, though.  Phew.  Or else I'd have to rename the blog.)

A hat tip to everyone, at home and abroad, who made my short career as a development editor more than I could have ever expected.  My new job is to make you proud by taking everything I've learned and applying it to the new adventures that lie in store.

Most of all, thanks for reading!

British Men Doing Silly Things: Part 1

Your correspondent has been preoccupied of late with the millions of landmines inherent to leaving behind a job, friends, family, and American football.  I have to admit as a result the blog has taken a bit of a nap.  I apologize.  It's much more fun to read about international escapades than about the emotional torment of giving away your desk toys to the editor across the row.  (*Sniff sniff* I'll really miss that bobble-headed hockey player!)

So, for entertainment's sake, I'll attempt to lighten things up by turning my attention to what I have to look forward to.  I bring you: British men doing silly things.

The first in the series is Jeremy Clarkson, of the TV show Top Gear.  Here he is trying to drive the smallest production car ever built.  Enjoy this while I glumly shelve my desk copies in the office library.

The Girl with the Draggin' Review

You may wonder how my experiment with my first ebook is progressing.  Well, progressed.  Truth be told, I've been finished with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for several days now.  I guess that's not much of a change from the printed copy experience: I was able to read a well-written, fast-paced thriller within four days.  I didn't feel like I lost any of the action, or that the format distracted from the novel.  On the other hand, Steig Larsson uses fancy computer programs and techy devices like I use salt and pepper, so that probably calmed the voice in the back of my head saying: "I am reading a book on a screen."

Foibles were that, at first, I found it easier to lose my place.  I would put my book away into my purse, only to have the "Next Page" button trigger twenty times and sometimes spoil the action when I pulled the novel back up.  I learned to actually turn the device off when I wasn't reading, and this became less of a problem.  Flipping back and forth wasn't as easy as I'd have liked, and even tho the hard copy would have stood further rereadings, with the ebook I'm going to have to just put the novel down rather than waste the time.  The bookmark feature didn't really help much with either of these issues.

On the other hand, I read the whole book, I read it quickly, and I enjoyed it. Fewer remarks on the difference are all the better for the Kindle. 

Of course, I'm not aiming terribly high by reading the best-selling ebook to date, whose plot devices lend itself to trendy gadgets.  I had more time to kill afterwards and browsed through my sister's library for a weekend read.  After trying a Chuck Palahniuk novel, a Chelsea Handler humor piece, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, I gave up and borrowed a George Orwell novel from my boyfriend.  In paperback.  This one, I read in two days, and it took up less space in my purse.  I thanked my sister and set her Kindle aside, where it promptly froze up, having run out of batteries.

Rock You Like A Hurricane

This is my last weekend in Boston, after five years of calling it home.  I chose to stay on past Labor Day so I could soak up every last bit of of sea, shore, and sunshine.

There is just one thing I hadn't counted on . . . my first hurricane.

I grew up in the midwest.  The land is flat and the wind often picks up enough to create tornadoes, which drop out of the sky without warning and create a narrow lane of destruction before evaporating as quickly as they came.  On the East Coast, I was happy to live in hill territory which doesn't see too much of the "twister".

When you live near the ocean, though, you risk hurricane season instead.  I can live with hurricanes.  They're less random, you can see them coming, and if you prepare well enough the worst damage they cause is to knock out your electricity for a while.  It's a great excuse to invite your friends over and eat all of the ice cream in your fridge. 

They don't hit Boston often, which is why it's all the more ironic that Earl has come barreling in right on the final stretch.

It almost feels like a little salute. I guess, officially, now I've seen it all.

The More Things Change . . . The More They Stay the Same

I was out having a drink with a friend last night, when the conversation turned to my latest experiment with the Kindle.  Her reaction was one I had heard many times before: "I just like the feel of a book in my hands."  To my surprise, my own visceral response was to disagree.  My argument was, you can get used to an e-reader the way you can get used to a laptop or a computer. 

We were raised having new technology tossed at us from the first time we rolled out of our cribs.  I grew up on video game consoles whose controllers and buttons evolved with every new generation.  Is it really hard to believe that I could get used to holding yet another electronic device?  It got me thinking.

Meanwhile, I woke this morning to see this article in the Boston Globe.  It's an interview with Andrew Pettegree, a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews, who's just published a book on the birth of print.  (Not surprisingly, it's not yet for sale on the Kindle.)  He describes the early book market as similarly confusing for readers and publishers alike, as both struggled to decide what to do with Gutenberg's new technology.  The public has no use or interest in mass-market texts, since they were used to copied-on-demand manuscript editions.

Think about it: as lovely as the Gutenberg Bible looks, can it compare to the Book of Kells?  It's a transition we don't think about much, but I'll bet it made few Renaissance readers uncomfortable.

Of course, not every book is a Gutenberg Bible.  My favorite part of the article describes what was actually printed on most of the new presses:

These are the sort of books they want to produce, tiny books. Very often they’re not even trying to sell them retail. They’re a commissioned book for a particular customer, who might be the town council or a local church, and they get paid for the whole edition. And those are the people who tended to stay in business in the first age of print.

What do you know!  Custom publishing!  And all this time, I thought we were being innovative . . .