‘Book lust’: Author Timothy Egan responds to Steve Jobs—and meanwhile stay tuned for a review of the Young and Gomez ‘Dead’ books

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By David Rothman

The return fire—against Steve Jobs, for saying that “people don’t read anymore”—just keep coming. In Book Lust in the New York Times, Timothy Egan, an NBA winner who has written five books, shoots back with his own set of statistics. I see both sides of the debate. But as at least one Times reader has noted, isn’t it a little silly for a book-loving father like Egan to point to his own child to back up the optimists’ side?

I agree with Egan, shown here, that, yes, people are still reading. But the book industry isn’t growing as rapidly as it could, at least here in the States, as shown by layoffs at major houses. And E? It should be doing better than the current 24 percent annual growth reported by the IDPF, based on numbers from around a dozen major publishers.

Books vs. book objects

The issue isn’t just the time devoted to reading but also the kinds of books read. The ratio between book-books and junky celebrity books is, I suspect, worse than ever. In the case of many VIP books, I’m talking about objects that look and feel like books, complete with cardboard and paper, but somehow come across as mere promotional vehicles. Sherman Young alludes to book objects in The Book Is Dead, which I hope to review shortly along with Jeff Gomez‘s Print is Dead. Yes, I get it—the paradox of books used to argue the death of books. But as I’ll explain, there’s more to it than that.

The positives: As noted in the Freakonomics blog, publishers are growing more attuned to the potential of the Net. You already know about the Oprah freebie, the book—or book object?—by Suze Orman. Freakonomics points to other freebies such as  The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by law professor Dan Solove and Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, both available on paper from Yale University Press.

And speaking of a nonobject book: Earlier I briefly mentioned e-books for the homeless (yes, problematic as things stand now). As a former poverty beat reporter, I’d suggest that for a classic look at the related problems of poverty and homelessness, you read an E or P edition of Down and Out in Paris and London, by Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. Oh, how many of his truths still apply today—especially his observations on the meanness of public policies!

Technorati Tags: Timothy Egan,New York Times,Suze Orman,Sherman Young,Jeff Gomez,Down and Out in Paris and London,George Orwell,Eric Blair

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