ursula le guin on books, reading and the publishing inustry

lots of good stuff here:

Staying awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading By Ursula K. Le Guin

Once you’ve pressed the on button, the TV goes on, and on, and on, and all you have to do is sit and stare. But reading is active, an act of attention, of absorbed alertness—not all that different from hunting, in fact, or from gathering.

Books are social vectors, but publishers have been slow to see it. They barely even noticed book clubs until Oprah goosed them. But then the stupidity of the contemporary, corporation-owned publishing company is fathomless: they think they can sell books as commodities.

In those departments, beloved by the CEOs, a “good book” means a high gross and a “good writer” is one whose next book can be guaranteed to sell better than the last one. That there are no such writers is of no matter to the corporationeers, who don’t comprehend fiction even if they run their lives by it.

you know filipino comics have been misunderstood, underestimated and basically bollocksed up by corporations in charge of 'em, too. *cough* atlas caparas *cough*


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