The website AAUGH has unearthed how Amazon adds those annoying image tags (“40% Off!”) to their cover images. It’s all in the tags. (via )MeFi)

In a heated post, Scott takes audiobooks to task, pointing out that the audio book experience ain’t tantamount to reading. “Listen Jim,” writes Scott, “and all other audiobookphiles out there: If I can barely wrap my little mind around Vollmann while I’m holding the book right before my face and re-reading each sentence 5 times each, how in the hell am I going to understand it if some nitwit is reading it to me while I’m brewing a cappuchino on my at-home Krups unit?”

While I would agree with Scott that there’s a fundamental difference between reading a book and listening to a book, I don’t necessarily believe that audio books should be completely discounted. Personally, I’ve found that reading a book aloud (or hearing another person read a book aloud) allows one to discover or familiarize herself with a book’s particular cant and rhythms. To some degree, it’s a bit comparable to only experiencing a play on the page. Sometimes, the intonations, the delivery and the visual nature of the staging leads the mind to frame the narrative in a new context and unearth a subtext that may not have been as readily apparent from a strict read.

The problem then with audio books, aside from the fact that rewinding can’t beat the exactitude of rereading a specific passage on page, is not necessarily the content, but in the way that the work is often delivered by the author. Too many audio book producers make the mistake of enlisting the wrong voice to read the work. And let’s face it: some authors, even though their text scintillates, are pretty damn horrible readers. (Without naming names, I’ll just say that if you go to enough readings, you experience this unfortuante phenemonon repeatedly. I would even suggest that this is an obstacle that may prevent poetry from being completely accepted. For more on this subject, I refer you to Mark Twain’s famous essay, “How to Tell a Story.”)

Further, for many people (particularly Southern Californians), the audio book serves as a surrogate to listening to an obnoxious FM radio DJ blather on during rush hour. While I bemoan the idea that this may be a person’s sole exposure to a book (as Scott says, the text is the thing and I would add that, if you are a supremely active reader, nothing beats copying passages, looking up words and references, or taking notes to understand an author’s intent further).

The problem here is that the audio book experience isn’t the same as a reading experience. But this does not mean that listening to the text of the book while driving and then returning home to study it further is without value. Further, comfort reads and potboilers may, artistically speaking, offer nothing more in the way of entertaining fluff and, on the whole, may be better experienced in one listening. From this perspective then, the audio book serves as a better use of one’s time, even if the sanctity of reading may be compromised in the process.

At the LBC site, editor Reagan Arthur weighs in on Case Histories. Arthur confesses her partiality, but does remark that Case Histories is the first of Atkinson’s novels to go into six American hardcover printings. Atkinson also playfully points out that Case Histories‘ sales are “not so stratospherics” and that, thus far, it has not hit any bestsellers list.

Seconds after throwing the Birnbaum Signal into the sky, our literary superhero respodned by interviewing Courtney Angela Brkic and Kevin Guilfoile. Commissioner Gordon’s services are no longer required.

Today at The Elegant Variation, during the course of Kevin Smokler’s appearance via the Virtual Book Tour, there was a heated though civilized thread about whether the infamous Reading at Risk report issued by the BEA was useful or even genuinely reflective of diminishing literary awareness. Arguments concerning the methodology and the resultant media reaction (which Smokler contends is equivalent to hyperbole involving those darn kids who listen to rock and roll back in the day, a sentiment I certainly agree with) were unloaded. But the central question of whether or not the everyday world is aware of authors remains not only unanswered, but largely unexplored on an empirical basis.

In a unconnected post on the same topic, Sara at Storytelling has a very interesting idea in response to some of the raging debates that have been going on at the LBC. She has a list of ten authors: five of whom are recognizable, five of whom are not. She wants people to go outside with this list and see how many people can recognize the names. She’s enlisted her daughter to posit the list to fellow students in her high school.

I think this is an excellent idea. For many of the same points that Sara made, whether there exists a “crisis” or not (depending upon your definition of the term), it would be a fascinating (if unscientific) experiment.

The list of authors is:

1. Chris Clarke
2. James Robinson
3. Margaret Atwood
4. Erik White
5. Sue Kidd
6. Michael Chabon
7. David Gardener
8. Philip Roth
9. Kate Atkinson
10. Joanne Mitchell

Tomorrow, I plan to ask fifteen random strangers not only if they have heard of these authors, but whether they can name a book that was written by them. And just because I can (and because I’m knee deep in his books), I’m adding an eleventh name: William T. Vollman.

I will post the results here. But for those who are interested in getting results, I would highly urge you to do the same in your respective regional areas. (I’m based in San Francisco.)

My thinking is that the results may surprise us. But the proof resides in carrying out the experiment.

[UPDATE: Ron Hogan suggests that Bookmark Now fails to tie in the “Reading at Risk”/literary awareness alarmism into its scheme of essays.]