dead people's books

religion says the spirit never dies it only separates from body. this is strange situation but if the spirit is alive after death and if there was way to communicate and dead people wrote books that got published would you read them? my friends think dead people's books business is just good marketing to sell books to people who believe in paranormal but if science can prove it can be done what would then your reaction be? would you read it or be scared to death?

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Book lending for air travellers

I was thinking of creating a book lending business in airports for travelers on long flights. Instead of buying the book in the airport bookshop the passenger can borrow it only for the course of the flight by having the credit card charged full retail price of the book. Upon arriving in the destination airport the passenger returns the book and gets full refund in their credit card. The book can then only be re-lent to passengers traveling back to the country airport the book originally came from.

If a passenger really likes the book they will have the option to buy it by simply keeping it. In this case a new order to re-stock the book will be automatically made via the system and a small profit realized from having sold it retail price. People can also donate books in this business and if their used-book is sold they get to keep a portion of the profit.

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which letter is most popular?

could google count all the instances each individual letter appears on the web and then rank them by most use? i had this strange thought that if an article is written with words that make more use of the most popular letter people will probably read it faster. if such assumption holds true then a new software algorithm can be made to suggest edits on long texts for faster reading.

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I'd like to talk about a book I haven't read!

The title of the book is "How to talk about books you haven't read". First let me tell you this is no joke. The book is real and sells for $14. Check it out on Amazon if you don't believe me. The gist of the book is that a truly cultivated person should not read books but be able to talk about them by understanding how they are related to other books and where they fit into our culture.

That's an interesting argument. As soon as I read the first page I got the author's point right away. I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Never bought it or opened it again. I can easily talk about it for hours. I am the kind of person who doesn't read much anyway so if I didn't read this one I am actually very qualified to talk about it.

The only problem with that book is that it's full of text from start to finish when its argument is that you only need to read the title and table of contents of any book in order to really understand it. According to the author, reading a book in all its detail from the first to the last page does disservice to your understanding of it. Perhaps it would have been better if this book's pages were left blank with a "no-need-to-read" note in them. I think so. The author would have made his point so much better this way and it would have been the easiest $14 ever written.

Do you see how much I have written already about the book? And I can keep going. I am so happy I got the gist of it right away without reading it And saved myself $14! :)

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Shorter Thoughts

I believe that people who succeed to write their thoughts in 2-3 lines should get higher rankings here. Shorter thoughts are easier to read usually.

What do you think?

Not a bad idea. I like reading very quick and short sentences. That way I can just scroll down and read more without having to click in a thought. Anyway I never click.. too busy for that. Generally I agree but some concepts cannot be included in 1-2 lines

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where did you read that?

don't you hate the sort of people who are not smart but think they are, the sort of guys who blab about 'their' ideas, try to impress all the time or push their opinions on to others? they are so full of hot air, aren't they? it's always the case. i thought of a clever way to bring them down to earth and deflate their egos. at some point they will get to ask 'it's a great idea don't you think?' to which I reply, "yeees, it's interesting, where did you read that?"...'oh no no no this is my idea...' :P

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I'm an author and I made this library deal

Yesterday I got the idea to borrow a book of mine from a university library. I had written it 5 years ago. I felt lucky and honored that 2 people in total had borrowed and read it. After all, two is a bigger number than zero, right? Before checking with the library, I had the fear that no one would have read it though I secretly hoped that someone would be out there to disprove me. One of the 2 borrowers, probably the second one to borrow the book, was kind enough to use a pencil and make notes on the side, underline certain passages or put other parts in brackets.

He or she was merciless with the marks so I ended up following easily all traces left on almost every page in my book. But I wasn't getting upset. Ok, initially I was but as I kept following the marks from page to page, I suddenly found it to be a very revealing exercise, if not amusing!

And it just opened up my appetite. I visited as many public libraries there are where I live, looking to borrow more copies of my book so that I could trace more of my readers' marks, compare them and possibly detect patterns in their reactions to my writing.

The experience fascinated me. These days you can get instant reviews on your work online but they bore me. When people write reviews they get into 'review mode', which makes it more probable that you will get an idea of what people think about your book but more difficult to get a real sense of how people felt while reading it.

Besides people tend to exaggerate on reviews, others play the whole work down and often for reasons you can't be sure of. But for someone like me who doesn't believe honest reviews exist, seeing how my readers were marking their reactions as they read my book was quite fun.

So I went to propose this deal to the library people. For every copy of my book that gets returned highlighted, underlined or marked in any way, they will notify me by email and put it on hold for me until I happily replace it with a clean copy for the library. Of course, I get to keep the marked copy.

I figured that if my rate of book markings is 1 book every 5 years, it's definitely worth the cost for I get to keep the traces of my readers' reactions. The library people were naturally happy with the deal.

But so was I!

Now I'm debating with myself whether I should contact more libraries around the world that have my book in their stacks and ask for the same deal...so tempted!

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Can therapy diminish an author's urge to write?

What prompted me to this question was thinking about authors whose books are fiction and auto-psychoanalytical. The themes are always personal obsessions they have which urge them to write about them. The work is never auto-biographical. They write esoteric fiction that reads as very real. They write compulsively, locked in their private space for hours. I wonder if these authors went through therapy and talked about their obsessions whether they might lose the urge to write about them. I'm thinking that if therapy won't diminish an author's urge to write, how it might affect his choice of themes and literary style going forward.

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exhilarating - exciting - entertaining - emusing...

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 27 March 2008 by member nadia

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...enteresting, bulls hit! We read heaps of words that accompany recommendations on the covers of books or on ads about books. What usually works for me is any line in the following 3-words spirit: "Read It! Twice!!"

What's the punchline or kind of recommendation that does it for you? Can you give an example?