Forsooth! ’tis another piece of informed journalism from The Smellagraph.

While the article by Basheera Khan is obviously flame-bait for those passionate about books and while the great and the good of the book industry debate the merits – if you will – of points made in Basheera’s article, it’s probably worth explaining a couple of points to the layman.

First, when you ‘buy’ an ebook, you buy a license to read not a book.  This little niggly detail was only discovered when – without informing those customers who had bought a digital copy – Amazon removed copies Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ remotely from the customer’s Kindles without first informing them.

Next, came a guy who reported his Kindle stolen.  While he recognised that he would have to buy a new Kindle, he asked Amazon to remove the copies of the digital books which he had bought (and for which, presumably, both he and Amazon had records of those transactions) and guess what?  Amazon told him that he would have to buy those digital files again.  All of them.  At the original price.  Mr Thief, meanwhile, gets  fully-stocked Kindle.

Related to the above, can you really imagine a burglar packing all your books and taking them away in the dead of night… or simply chucking your eReader into a bag and making off with your library?

Second, reviewing the books that have sold in the bookshop since we opened in September, very few of those books would look good on an electronic book reader… They are big and colourful and a delight to hold and to open, an experience in themselves that cannot be recreated on a black-and-white screen.

Third, while heralding the advance of the digital age and the changes that a digital, online economy will bring, Basheera skips over the issue of empty shop fronts in our town centres… Neglecting the question of what happens to all those jobs and the impact of that unemployment on the economy, are we all supposed to spend our leisure time at home?  I may regard myself as a more cultured than most being someone who enjoys galleries and museums and theatres and so on but for hundreds of years, shops have been the backbone of our communities.  When roads are full of potholes, building sites – or derelicts – are blighting the urban landscape, when gangs of youths are causing trouble and on and on… it is often the small merchant who kicks up the stink that finally gets a council to act and not private householders.  Small shops are the social glue of many communities.

Fourth: you buy something, you want a physical something to show for it.  Electronic stuff breaks, gets corrupted, lost and misfiled.  You have a physical something and you’re engaging with the wider world around you.  Often, when you love a book, you pass it along to a friend or member of your family…

…which brings us to heirlooms and the legacy of digital technology which is one of constant change and upgrade.  Are the children and the children of our children simply to be in receipt of digital formats that can no longer be read by then current standards of technology?  Technophiles talk of how wasteful paper books are.  Really?  You put a book in the ground and it rots.  The same cannot be said for batteries and components made of nickel, chromium and mercury.

Books have for more than five hundred years been a simple technology that aids our learning.  Basheera should try and read one before she next writes an article.  Good riddance to bookshops, she writes.  Really?  Have you seen what successive Tory and Labour governments have done to our libraries in the U.K.?

The shudder in my son’s left hand
he cures with one touch from his right,
two fingertips laid feather-light
to still his pen.  He understands

the whole man must be his own brother
for no man is himself alone;
though some of us have never known
the one hand’s kindness to the other.

Don Paterson

from his Forward Prize-winning poetry collection, ‘Rain‘

…on what other readers made of Per Petterson’s ‘Out Stealing Horses’.

Is The Edinburgh Bookshop unique in running not one but three different book groups?  Within the space of 90 minutes – the length of the initial meeting, each group has established its own unique identity.  Tonight, the first group met up after reading its first novel, Per Petterson’s Impac Award-winning novel.

I reviewed this book some time ago – in August 2007 in fact – and so it has proven to be a good exercise to re-visit the novel and discover new things about the characters, the style of writing and the narrative.  After reading the novel for the third time, it is as though I have discovered a completely new novel that just happens to also be called ‘Out Stealing Horses’.

Italo Calvino once wrote (in ‘Why read the Classics?’) that the mark of a truly great book is not just one that we would recommend to others but one which we re-read.  In this sense, Per Petterson has written at least 2 classics (I’ve also re-read his incredibly stunning novel, ‘In the Wake’).

In discussion with Book Group Number One, I heard so many different versions of ‘Out Stealing Horses’ that I feel compelled to read it again.  so many factors made this book stand out for the readers: the language (which has survived the rigours of translation); the landscape; the light; the impact of memory on how we live today; the father-son relationship… of which it’s always interesting to hear a female reader’s perspective when it is felt some new insight into male psychology has been discovered.

We’ve chosen something a lot lighter for next time: David Sedaris’ latest ‘When You Are Engulfed in Flames’.

A year of reading from home without succumbing to the temptation to buy yet more titles to add to our collections would still leave many of us with a huge surplus of books to enjoy.  I was fascinated by the idea of this book when given an advance reading copy.  Susan Hill leads us through a grand adventure of books, authors, libraries, reading and writing, revelling in a world whose mysteries have never faded but open up to us each time we linger over a beloved narrative, fondly recall our years of learning or a treasured encounter with a sorely-missed mentor.

Having enjoyed a life rich in the vibrant heritage of literature in Britain, Susan Hill’s epic year embraces such differing experiences as the pop-up books of Robert Sabuda to an accidental encounter with an ageing E.M. Forster.  Each step of her journey through the tapestry of a life written with such verve and passion will be the envy of writers just beginning their careers.  As an autobiography to savour on the sofa or as a brief affair with one of England’s greatest living authors, this rich pageant is simply irresistable.

Link to publisher, Profile.

Lothian question, Barnett Formula and blah blah blah…

Again, a representative of the media based in London reports that Scottish MPs vote on matters pertaining to England.  No, no and again, no.  This is lazy, inaccurate and entirely in-line with what we expect of a reporter representing the under-siege Labour party.  The only ‘Scottish’ MPs who vote on matters relating only to England are those who belong to English parties: the Labour MPs, the LibDem MPs and the single ‘Scottish’ Tory MP.  The seven MPs at Westminster representing the SNP do not vote on matters relating only to England but do take part in matters relating to the so-called United Kingdom as they have been entitled to do since the Act of Union in 1707.  This quite obviously means that they will be voting on matters relating to both England and Scotland, a situation that ensures that English MPs also get to vote on matters relating to Scotland (at least in matters relating to taxation, the military and foreign affairs).

The inaccurate reporting of the ‘truth’ as reported by Labour supporters like Iain McWhirter is an indication of why the Labour government is failing in advance of a Tory recovery that is itself a nonsense lacking any substantial (and numerically accurate) policy.  David Cameron and his apostles do not have to tell the truth, simply ask whether Labour is being entirely honest and lo!  The Labour government lose another percent point in poll ratings.  We know Labour lie: we have to look no further than the gap between the promised end of child poverty and our own streets; the gap between a quality education and so-called ‘faith schools’.

Against such a dark background of repeated lies and un-truths, Alex Salmond’s boast that the SNP will gain 30 seats is not incredible and this is unfortunate.  This is a man who boasted in The Times that he will only employ among his staff people who think – and crucially, believe – like him.  When the majority of people in Scotland are either Catholic or atheist, will we be properly represented by our Scottish parliament next year or ruled by diktat of The Church of Scotland?

Yes, this is not a book-related article but as books are always written, published and sold within a wider civilised society, it seems the act of a responsible citizen to correct any untruths that are unfortunately being reported as fact.  How can the party of UK government put forward a credible argument for its continued existence when its supporters continue to peddle the sort of fiction that is doing most harm to its chances?  What Scotland, England and the UK as whole needs is a rational, fact-based argument based on the sound principle of what is going to be of most benefit to the people that live in the British Isles.  No man, after all, is an island alone…