One of those things I think of as "not really arguments" are the essays/articles/ponderings people write about paper vs ebook - you know, the ones that seem to have the idea that ebooks are truly making all paper books disappear, or are threatening the entire future of paper books. This isn't going to happen ever, by the way. Why am I so sure? Because there will never be a time when all the paper books previously published will all be available in digital format. Unless of course there's suddenly a new process that will be as easy for digitizing as the speed of the Transporter compares to today's air travel. (Actually the Replicator is a better comparison isn't it? I'm too lazy to rewrite that. Let's pretend it was my first thought.) It could happen - and I would enjoy to see that in my lifetime. But I'm not going to count on it. Now, there may be fewer new paper books published in the future - but there will always be people who want paper copies of some of them. As a species, humans like to obtain certain objects just to touch and hold.

There are always going to be books that it won't be profitable to turn into digital books. For those books the only options/hopes for digitization are that a hobbyist/fan, an academic, or an academic institution (or something Google-ish) will work on formatting them, purely out of desire to have others read them, or continue scholarship on the author/subject. Which means there will still be those of us that will bump into mentions of obscure books which we will want to read and paper will be our only option. This isn't entirely sad - but it does mean that paper's going to be around a while. And since paper books do tend to last, we'll still be buying them. (Gadgetry however - well, do you still have your first cassette player? Record player? CD player? Mp3 player? All of those?)

Short version: We're still in the early days of ebook tech. It's still in progress and the old tech has not been completely replaced. (Tech advances more quickly now, but adoption of tech never has been that rapid. Also see: vinyl records. It's really hard to call when something's definitely died out.)

Also remember that loads of people (the kind who love making predictions) decades ago were certain we'd all be using flying cars by now. (Words to google: flying car predictions.)

Now to the (vaguely) more interesting bit - why I had to buy these paper books!

Short answer, the obvious: They were only available in paper.

A Woman of No Character: An Autobiography of Mrs. Manley

by Fidelis Morgan

hardback: Faber and Faber, January 1, 1987

There are sooooo many biographies or academic writings on certain women in our history that are only available via used books online. (Am not going into a lengthy Not All Libraries bit here, for fear of being dull.) You're not going to easily find these in physical used book stores - not without some continuous looking, emails or phone calls. Unless you've got the motivation of a research paper there's a lot of history you're going to miss out on. Me, I hate missing out on these sorts of stories, and I have an insatiable curiosity problem. And I'm rarely happy with just a biographical line or two in random history books. (Note: Edited out a long burble on "I seem to have this problem with more women's histories than men, because I can't really quantify that. I could do an entire post just on "random guys in history I ran down books about because they didn't get much attention in histories." I'm a sucker for this kinda obscure history. But I do find that many of these "not well known" women in history have very few books devoted just to them. I suspect this has to do with how many women's history dissertations get published.) (And so much for editing that out, huh.)

I bumped into first heard about Delarivier Manley in reading Lucy Moore's Thieves' Opera, and posted about her in this Reading in Progress post. There you'll see I googled her, and wanted to know more. I added a book to my TBR list/wish list and it might have ended there. Except I had to buy some other things at Amazon, and I got into my "oh what the hell, I'm buying other stuff so I might as well..." moods. I have an Amazon wish list just for books that I can only buy in paper, and this was at the top - plus I was still thinking about her. Impulse buy!

Luckily this book was published in the 80s, so not a huge problem getting a copy. No idea what the writing's like yet - but I'll let you know.

Also if you want a unique name for a fictional character, do let me suggest Delarivier. I'm somewhat fond of it.

Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Thomas Hoving

hardback: Touchstone, February 15, 1994

This one's been on my Amazon list for so long that I've completely forgotten where I discovered its existence - I know it was another book's bibliography. Which means I can't tell you any interesting story that caught my eye this time - that's usually how books get on my Need To Read This list. If you read his wikipedia page - Thomas Hoving - I think you'll quickly see why I felt he might have an interesting take on working in the museum.

Note: I will squee over anyone who's worked at The Cloisters - as Hoving did. I still have not been there (I have been to the Met). Someday I must. I've always been in love with the idea and descriptions and photos of the place. I think I can blame some of this on an art history class in Gothic cathedral architecture. Great stuff. With a really difficult final exam where you were shown interior photos and had to name the cathedral and its time period. (Studying for a visual part of an exam is not easy!)

Is there a fandom for those of us who love Museums? Because I know there are many of us. I see others like me whenever I'm in a museum. We're the ones that carefully read the text next to the objects, who pick up and read the paper brochures, who stand aside to let a group pass through so we can take our time looking. I always smile hugely when I see people do this, and then quickly pretend I'm not looking. Everyone needs their museum-alone-time.

Here's a sentence that I can't help but think has a lot of (undocumented) stories behind it.

p 187 (Kindle Locations 2948-2951):

"A great deal of evidence was required to convict someone of murder; infanticide, a common crime among poor young women, could be disproved by the defendant producing in court a little shirt she had sewn, which would show that she had been preparing for the birth of her baby - even if, unbeknownst to the jurors, she had made it the day before she appeared in court."

Of course it was also extremely easy to be convicted of many other crimes, all of which led to a death sentence or transportation (to America or Australia usually).

And because it's somewhat sad to post just that bit, how bout...

p. 132-133 (Kindle Locations 2059-2066, 2069-2076):

Such stories lent highwaymen an allure that captivated the reading public - particularly the female side. Claude Duvall was one of the best-known highwaymen of the late seventeenth century - a heart-throb, as famous for his lovemaking (he was French ) as for his wit, generosity and wild lifestyle. One of the most often told stories about him recounts how he held up a couple and asked the gentleman for permission to dance with his beautiful young wife, which the man could hardly refuse. Duvall helped her out of the coach and danced a minuet with her on the roadside. ‘Scarce a dancing master in London, but would have been proud to have shown such agility in a pair of pumps, as Duvall showed in a great pair of French riding boots.’ His epitaph read,

 

Here lies Duvall, Reader, if male thou art,

Look to thy purse, if female, to thy heart.

...In 1709 Mrs Crackenthorpe of the Female Tatler mocked the fantasies of middle-class women dreaming mistily of being held up by a masked highwayman who kisses their sweaty palms as he takes their husbands’ money, and gallops off into the distance, his cloak streaming out behind him.

 

'Mrs Mary Fanciful, having heard a world of stories about highwaymen, has a curiosity to see one. She sets out for the bath, on Monday next, with ten guineas (not hid in the privat’st part of her coach) therefore, if any of these gentlemen please to clap an uncharged pistol to her breast, only that she may know how it is to be robbed, they shall receive the ten guineas with a sincere promise never to be prosecuted for the same. Her sister, Mrs Sarah Fanciful, wants mightily to see a ghost.'

In the ebook the Female Tatler is instead Taller in this quote. (eyeroll)

I had fun discovering a few websites discussing this periodical:

Issuing Her Own: The Female Tatler

University of Michigan 2002, student project. Specifically good for the authorship page - so many periodicals/pamphlets/etc. were written under pseudonyms that this is one of those continual academic problems. And of course a ladies name didn't guarantee a women writer. The links on that page aren't all working - so I'll refer you to Delarivier Manley. Who I now must find a biography on.

Short Excerpt from The Female Tatler

Norton Anthology of English Lit. site

Tatler (1709 Journal)

wikipedia entry for the original that the other Tatlers spun off from