Monday, February 9, 2009

Bars 'n Books

Looking towards my weekend on Friday, I had no idea that the events to come would result in another fun blog post. Well, most of the weekend-events were not book-related at all. But one of my favorite blogs does a “Key learnings” section after her weekends to wrap up the things she learned. As I’m still new, I can use all the material I can get, so without further ado…here are some of the (random) key learnings:
  • Never go to a bar in an office building that requires you to take an elevator. Although we ended up having fun anyways, this place was one of the sketchier places I have been since moving here.
  • Never trust alumni clubs, and always check your tickets. Realizing 30 minutes before a sporting event is about to start that your tickets are actually for April is never a good thing. Going back to the bar to stalk the girl that gave them to you, finding her, and exchanging them for the correct tickets is genius.
  • Hockey games are only 3 periods long, chugging the beer you had rationed for the 4th isn’t fun.
  • Meeting the young mayor of your college town in a random bar will make any night better.
  • Hearing his political raps is like the icing on the cake.
  • I heart Ben Bailey (cash cab guy!)
  • I still heart the Yankees (despite A-roid)
  • If you are trying to hit on a girl at a bar, it’s probably not best to do so by crushing her dreams*.

*I feel that this final point needs a bit of explanation. On Saturday night I met up with a bunch of friends at a nearby bar. We were having a good time when a guy came up and bought us drinks and started talking. At one point in the night we got to talking about NYC and how I wanted to move there one day to pursue a career in book publishing. I’m not sure if he was just trying to make sure the conversation continued or if he really believed this, but he turned to me and said, “You know, I read an article last week saying that book publishing is dead.”

He tells me this after I’ve told him how I had considered moving there for graduate school and definitely wanting to go into the industry. Thank you dream-killer! He went on about new media, kindle, etc. I held on to my firm belief that yes, new media would definitely play a dominant role in the future landscape of book publishing and all publishing in general, but the printed word will adapt.

I admittedly do not know that much about this new e-reading technology, but do you really want to pull that out of your bag at the beach and dig into your guilty beach reading pleasure? Am I the only one who prefers buying books (despite the costs) so I can one day build a huge library and look at all the lovely books I’ve read. The smell of old or brand new books can’t compare to the clean, cold e-readers and e-books. I’m not saying these technologies don’t have their benefits, but I do not see, and truly do not hope, that the book publishing company is on the path towards it death.

What about you? Where do you see the industry going?

1 comment:

  1. As an avid reader I am definitely interested in the Kindle, especially with the new 2.0 version, as e-books are cheaper and obvi easier to carry. But nothing can ever replace the satisfaction of organizing your books just so on the shelf, stepping back to admire them, ensuring the right genres/sizes/authors go together, and of course the happy-tingly feel I get when I look at the spot reserved for all my favorites right next to each other.

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