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Memo from the Sheriff's Office I put out an e-newsletter from time to time. It's supposed to be a monthly, but sometimes I miss. Then I'll put it out more frequently when a special event is coming up. I'll give you my most recent e-newsletter, and, if you like it and would like to keep up with my books and what I'm doing, shoot me an email. I'll put you on the list. Two things first. The name, Memo from the Sheriff's Office. The main character in my first book, Early's Fall, was a Kansas sheriff, so way back when, when I was looking for a name for my e-newsletter, I settled on Memo from the Sheriff's Office. I had outlined five books for the James Early Mysteries series, so it seemed appropriate. No, I'm not a sheriff, nor have I ever been one. But I worked with a lot of sheriffs when I was a newspaper reporter, and I have a high regard for the men and women willing to serve in that office. Now the picture above. In the very old days, before email, newsletters were delivered to you and me by U.S. Mail. The gun in the photo above is not a gun. It's a mailbox.
Memo: April 24
Fellow crime writer comes north Tomorrow – yes, Saturday – Chicago crime writer Michael Black journeys north to my state, to Mystery To Me Bookstore in Madison, where he will talk with crime and mystery fans about the CSI Effect . . . how real is what we see on television?
Memo: December 24
Merry Christmas |
Wanted: People who like books
If writers are to prosper, if literature is to prosper, we need lots of readers, not just those who love books.
Chicago Tribune cultureal critic Julia Keller wrote about that a few years back. Here's what she had to say:
This is going to irritate about 97 percent of the writers I know, and it may even cost me a few precious friendships, but here goes:
You don’t have to love books. It’s OK just to like them.
It’s OK to be a casual reader, a sometime scholar, an occasional consumer of print.
It’s acceptable to read a book every once in a while, for the simple reason that you happen upon one that intrigues you – without quitting your job, selling your furniture and going back to graduate school in comparative literature.
In the midst of last weekend’s wonderful Printers Row Book Fair, I listened to author after author, moderator after moderator, panelist after panelist (including me), automatically refer to the assembled multitude as “book lovers.”
Now, book lovers are wonderful.
Book lovers are essential.
I love book lovers. But it occurred to me that the audience surely included a good number of people – perhaps even a majority – who, if pressed, would classify themselves as “book likers.” As people who enjoy reading, as people who respect authors and seek knowledge, but for whom reading is not a consuming, world-obliterating, walls-come-tumblin’-down passion.
If literature is to survive beyond the next few years, assailed as it is by the triple whammy of brutal economics, shrinking attention spans and unrelenting competition from less demanding pastimes, it will survive as much because of book likers as book lovers.
Book lovers remain a fairly stable unit from century to century, a crucial but relatively small segment of the population for whom words are life itself. Book lovers, that is, aren’t a growth area.
But book likers – those whose livelihoods don’t depend on the publishing industry, those who might be teachers, roofers, chefs, accountants, tow-truck drivers, financial analysts or waitresses – constitute a huge potential market.
The number of book likers can readily expand, depending on how solid a case we make for the merits of a particular book – and how well the book, once opened, does its job.
The miracle of the Harry Potter series, after all, is how many new readers it has lured into literature’s tent. Author J.K. Rowling performs her greatest magic on people who heretofore weren’t regular readers. Her works reach out to book likers, not just book lovers.
Book likers are literature’s only real hope; they are its last, best chance.