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Okay, so I’ve only listened to one audio book in my entire life. It was Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: Final Empire (From the Mistborn Series). Dude… it was long. For real. 25 hours. That’s pretty long, I think.

The upside of audio books: you can do other things while you read. You can wash dishes, cook dinner, listen to conference calls… wait, not really for that last one. I really did enjoy that part of it.

The downsides… well, there are several:

- You’re less interruptible. Okay, maybe you’re not all the time, but I was listening through head phones about 90% of the time. I was definitely less interruptible.

- It’s slow. Not everyone will find this, (approaching humble brag) but I’m a pretty fast reader. Listening to someone else read seems to increase the amount of time a book takes, by maybe as much as 75-100%.

- The reader can be great or awful. I’ve tried to listen to several other audio books in the past couple of years, and they were all awful.  The guy who read Mistborn was pretty good, although the voice he adopted for the female protagonist kind of annoyed me.

- It’s easier to space out. I think I remembered to rewind every time this happened, but if I didn’t, would I really know?

Anyway, that’s my current take on audiobooks. Not as bad as I thought. I’m working on Tina Fey’s BossyPants as I write this blog post. It’s read by Tina, which is fun. But, it’s also that process of figuring out that a writer / creative type person whose work you like may not find you “fun to eat dinner with” in real life.

I was reading Luke a Christmas story from the library last night. It’s from a major kids brand, which means that they can basically slap any content in with some stock artwork from the major brand’s TV show and kids will want to read it.

And boy can you tell. The dialogue tagging reads like something I did in 5th grade, when I was worried that saying “said” too frequently would get me in trouble. They “called,” “exclaimed,” “cheered,” and “cooed.” Anything but “said.”

So, I edited as I went. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Luke has heard this story.

We got to a certain part, and “‘Yay!’ cooed the babies” became “‘Yay’ said the babies.”

Luke sat up and looked at me. “No, it’s ‘cooed the babies’”

So, I had to explain my editorial mind and the way dialogue writing ought to work to a three year old.

Not! Instead, I just said, “Daddy made it better.”

That worked.

I know that the library is supposed to be outmoded. After all, we have google. Who needs the library any more?

I had the great pleasure of going out with my wife last night, and after dinner, we went to the library (I know, we’re such exciting people. Concert? Movie? Play? Nope… library). Now, we’re library people any way (my 3 year old attends story hour religiously), but we had an especially fun time being loose (and childless) in the fiction section. I got to look at all kinds of sci-fi fantasy stuff. I think I got 3 different books that were all robot oriented. It’s a sign. I welcome our robot overlords. Just kidding

The thing is, could you get those books online? Well, that’s a complicated question. If you want to and don’t mind stealing, you can probably get them. If not, you’d be paying. And that’s one of the great things about the library. It’s a level playing field. No matter whether you’re rich or poor, you can walk in there and get any book they have.

The internet has the benefit of always updating. The library doesn’t have that. You’ll find books that are outdated.

Now, in our era, that’s a bad thing. I think we’re a little too “new” biased. There’s much to be learned from old ways of thinking — even when they were wrong. You can learn something from a philosopher who thought the earth was flat. You can learn something from a scifi writer who couldn’t conceive of space flight. We spend our whole lives learning from people who are flawed. When it comes to information, though, in the year 2011, if it’s at all wrong, it’s valueless.  Maybe we’re throwing out the baby with the bath water?

It used to be that you read old books to learn about the way the world used to be, the way the world used to think. Now, we learn only from what is currently viewed as correct. Historical context is about 15 minutes. And we’re weaker thinkers for it. At least, I think so. Now, leave me alone. I’ve gotta go read the front page of CNN, reddit, and slashdot to make sure I’m up-to-date.

I hinted at this in my last post, where I first brought up the whole curated stupidity thing. Did you know you can get access to full, high-quality university courses online? No joke. Now, you don’t get any credit for it, but you can learn a whole lot. This list at Open Culture catalogs over 250 courses that you can take, for free, online. They run the gamut, but I have to say, I’m pretty excited about the literature, economics, and sociology courses. Talk about countering stupid.

I posted that Lewis quote on Monday because it’s been rattling around my brain for a little while now. It’s been combining itself with a concern about the nature of the information we (I) take in on a regular basis.

Seth Godin’s post, Deliberately Uninformed, launched itself into the narrative I was already engaging in my head. He’s got a lot of good things to say, but the most important part for me was this:

Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it’s possible to become informed if you choose…

Or you can watch TV.

The thing is, watching TV has its benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about things that matter. It gives you shallow opinions or false ‘facts’ that you can easily parrot to others that watch what you watch. It rarely unsettles our carefully self-induced calm and isolation from the world.

I found it interesting that Seth would pick on TV; in my mind, increasingly, the culprit is not television but the internet. Not the internet on the whole, but the popular internet. Let me define that for you:

The pop internet is made up of the most commonly trafficked destination or aggregation (not search) sites. So, by Pop-Net, I mean sites like MSN.com,  Yahoo.com, or CNN.com for the non-geeks or Reddit, Digg, or Stumbleupon for the semi-geeks/geeks.

The content you’ll find dominating these sites is primarily things that will make you, well, stupider. Read carefully. I’m not saying that all the content on all of those sites will make you stupider. I’m just saying that a lot of it will. “Don’t be afraid of your home’s ghosts” on MSN. “Kate Hudson’s Style Missteps” on Yahoo. “Katey Perry, Russell Brand Wed” on CNN, “Neighbourhood Kids Set me Up for the Greatest Comeback ever” on Reddit, “Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things” on Digg… And these all in the top stories of the day.

I fear that, in spite of unprecedented access to knowledge, we’ve created a culture that aspires toward the experience of curated stupidity. We’ll let the most popular sources tell us what to look at, and we’ll accept that as the information we ought to be taking in. It is no better than the assessment of the downside of watching television above.

Another angle: did you know that many top universities post free courses on Youtube? Want to learn about Chemistry? MIT can help. Want to learn about the theory of Literature? Yale will hook you up. With all this great, in depth, educational info, surely the top videos on Youtube must be riddled with good information, right? Wrong. There’s nothing smart at all in the top videos for the last week.

It appears that, when faced with the choice between consuming things that will make us smarter and things that will make us chuckle (while making us dumber), we’ll pick dumber most of the time.

All that to say, I’m seeking to stop making myself dumber on the internet. I’m going to be seeking out good, helpful things. If I’m going to consume information this way, it’d be nice for the preponderance of it to be things that make me smarter. And, for a while, you’ll likely find the results here. Sites that might make you smarter. So much better than a link to, say, peopleofwalmart.com.

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.”

- C.S. Lewis

More to come on this.

I’m reading My Life with Charlie Brown, which is a compilation of select articles and letters that Charles Schultz wrote. It’s pretty fascinating to get an inside look at the life and practices of a man who had a phenomenally successful comic franchise. So far, my favorite quote is:

People also ask me if there’s any message or theme to Peanuts. I suppose it might be that Charlie Brown, in spite of always losing, never gives up. But really, I never think about that. I just think about how I’m going to get two or three more good ideas. I draw from day to day.

Fascinating that in 1995, after many years of writing those characters, he was still just hoping to turn in good comics. I think there’s something in that for every creative endeavour — don’t worry about the big picture of your art or your craft so much. Just turn in good work as you’re working.

It had been a while since I’d been in a bookstore. I saw my chance, and I took it — a great big Borders store. I went in just to browse. I don’t know if perhaps the nature of the business just requires them to cast a wide net, or what, but it felt like miles of shelves of junk with just a few gems hidden here and there. Two sections dear to my heart particularly made me cringe; the Christian section was bad (lacking depth), the YA section seemed worse. Immensely worse. I found myself thinking “who’s reading this stuff?”

I worked my way through the rest of the store, and as i got to the other end, I said to myself “This is it… there is no longer any need for bookstores. There’s nothing about this experience that I can’t beat online. It’s useless.” I aimed for the door.

My path took me through the children’s section. As I walked through, I heard a little boy, probably 5 or 6 years old, say “Where the Wild Things Are? Can I read that one, mom?” I teared up. It was just a little bit because I don’t cry.

That’s a special book. And maybe that kid was drawn to it because he saw the movie, but maybe — just maybe — he stumbled into it. And that’s not something you can do the same way online. You can’t just be immersed in great books and have the opportunity to stumble into Where the Wild Things Are.

I said a silent apology to Borders. I also decided I wanted to own a bookstore, which my wife mentions might not make sense in our market. I’d want to run it entirely on recommendations… staff recommendations and public recommendations. If it’s a great book and you’ll tell people about it, we’ll stock it. Otherwise, we just won’t bother. Less “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” and more “Here, there be great books.”

I was reminded this evening of the power of books. Even if I don’t ever own a bookstore (and I probably won’t, realistically), I’m committing to going to our local store and spending the occasional dollars. I want my kids to have the chance to pick up a good book by mistake.

Sometimes it’s awfully tough to know exactly what your creative output is supposed to look like. That’s where I am right now. Having just had a brilliant weekend at the Hutchmoot, I’m more encouraged and challenged than ever by my love for story (and The Story). I want to put that to good use. I’m just not certain what that’s supposed to look like. So of course, being the very private person I am, here I am processing that in front of an audience. How fun!

Life, of course, has its stages. I’m still learning how to be a good dad; I’m still learning how to be a good businessman / employee. I’m still learning how to juggle all the requirements on my time. I’m still learning how to be disciplined. Those are hard processes.They are time consuming. They are sometimes frustrating.

But, one thing I’m learning is that it doesn’t get easier. It probably gets harder. It definitely takes on different looks as life progresses, but if I don’t learn how to master my time and my output now, I won’t have any easier time later.

I’m thinking of combining a few pieces of advice I’ve heard and read lately. Chip MacGregor offered great advice on taking writing seriously the other day. I think I’m going to combine those thoughts with “Start small” and maybe go back to trying my hand at short stories.

I’ll let you know how it works out!

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

- Jonathan Swift, brilliant writer and satirist of the 17/18th century. Want proof? Read this.

General state of the blog update:

Welcome back, good to see you, all that stuff. Here’s the thing about this blog: It’s only useful as long as it’s serving a purpose. And it’s a little bit of a drain on resources. And, as I approach the place where my time is more and more at a premium, trying to keep this up as a 6 day a week venture is just beyond my capabilities. But, the discipline of routine writing is good for me. So, here’s what you can expect: Monday will continue to be the day where I pawn off something good someone else said as though I put work into a post. Wednesday and Friday, you’ll continue to find original content related to reading, writing, music, creativity and the Believer’s life. The rest of the days of the week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, for those of you not diagramming this out on a piece of paper in front of you), you’ll find nothing new. Hopefully this will allow the content I do post to be higher-quality, as well as allow for some additional sanity / time with my family / etc.

Thanks for reading, truly.

Andrew