National Libraries Day 2012

Fans of basic cultural amenities will today be celebrating National Libraries Day. A tide of support to remind those in power that it is a very good idea to keep as many of these places open as possible.

Of especial note this year is the publication of The Library Book a collection of writings from authors such as Alan Bennett, Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith and others, exploring the importance of libraries through memoir, polemic and short story alike. Proceeds got to the Reading Agency‘s library readings programme.

For my own part, I’d like to chip in with two particular memories which, in their own small ways, hint at the greater good of keeping books available to all of society.

First, a memory from the early 1990s: Myself and my brother are visiting South Yardley Library, where we join a crowd of supervised children in a corner, all putting blindfolds on. We are given blindfolds too. As we plunge into a disconcerting world of darkness, we follow instructions to walk carefully forwards and duck under an unseen entrance.

To this day I remember the hesitant steps we took, as the storyteller guided this unexpected Fellowship down deep ravines, through thick forests and across dead marshes. At first, our imagination was stimulated with words alone, but soon our faces were being brushed by the tendril fingers of Ents or the trailing webs of vast spiders, as we stepped over bridges and crawled down mining tunnels.

Or perhaps we were simply clambering around strategically placed tables and chairs, scattered with cushions, dangling ropes and half-filled washing up bowls? Either way, what the clever organisers of that modest weekend amusement achieved with words and some basic props has stayed with me all these years later. It was as vivid an introduction to Middle Earth as anything Peter Jackson would conjure up a decade later.

My second memory comes from years afterwards, when academic libraries had become a familiar sanctuary for my studies. Searching for some book or other that the campus library did not have, I visited the public library on Canterbury High Street.

Inside, I was struck to see a familiar homeless man, who I was used to seeing begging on pavements outside, quietly engrossed in a book at one of the reading tables. With his scruffy unkempt appearance he was a striking sight in this context. I couldn’t help thinking how excellent it was that everyone, no matter how down on their luck, should have somewhere in the warm and the dry to while away some time picking from a selection of books.

Put simply: libraries can help the disadvantaged, and inspire the young. Reason enough to keep them open in my books.

Interactive futuristic books

The make-believe future seen in The Last Bookshop is a world where paper books are all but forgotten. Where physical shops have become a thing of the past, and “money” is an old-fashioned term for the defunct notes and coins replaced by online credits. It is also a world where all forms of communication, media and entertainment have evolved together into an interactive holographic technology overseen by the mighty GamaZone corporation.

Some cynical commentators predict a dystopian future along these lines might not be so far-fetched. Others remain more optimistic.

Either way, it cannot be disputed that decades from now, technology will indeed have progressed in as-yet-unimaginable directions. The cultural history of the written word will undoubtedly have undergone yet more plot twists and cliffhangers, whether those are played out on paper, screen, or both.

But our film isn’t really about the future so much as it is about the present. It is about exploring this odd era we find ourselves in, where old established ways of life are called into question and changed so utterly by technology that is relatively recent and fledgling. We mould our lives around Facebook, around our mobile phones, just as since the 1950s we have moulded ours lives around TV viewing (nowadays increasingly online).

Many people will tell you that the only way publishers can make money is by printing tons of celebrity books that are essentially parasitic upon the entertainment industries in general. So it’s interesting then to see how portable entertainment technology responds to the issue of books. How it furthers their story, if you will.

One of the latest flashy pieces of kit is of course the iPad (although ironically I understand it doesn’t support Flash… ahem, little IT joke there). I was recently made aware of an interactive iPad app featuring a character called Morris Lessmore, which is more than a little bookish in nature. Here’s an advert for it…

Now, I’m not in a position to review the iPad app. Most obviously because I don’t have an iPad. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I live a life of relative poverty peppered with the occasional purchasing of actual books. I’m not a complete luddite: I make films, I blog… I’m capable of making lame jokes about Adobe software. But I don’t for example have a snazzy phone. I don’t use social networks. I had a go on a Nintendo 3DS this Christmas and my brain nearly boiled at how futuristic it was.

Nevertheless, as an interactive reading experience you would have to be a real misery guts to deny that The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore looks pretty startling. And that’s not simply because I’m a fan of silent films and Morris clearly owes a debt to Buster Keaton. I can well imagine a child (including children who have the inconvenience of being adults) getting drawn in by all the usual swiping, scrolling and prodding of the iPad’s touchscreen as they manipulate the animated environment. I’m also impressed to read in an interview, the lead artist saying that “every functionality had to be something that kept the reader in the story, or moved the story forward (rather than) bells and whistles that don’t serve the story, and in fact often pull you out.”

The Morris Lessmore website makes it clear that their project is in fact not simply an iPad app, but a film and a physical book too. Indeed, the iPad app appears to have been a later consideration.

All of which is food for thought when we consider how the story of books and bookselling might progress from here. And how advancing technology might replace, hybridise with or perhaps even harmonise with book-based storytelling…

Animated books

I was recently made aware of this delightful short film entitled ‘Organizing the Bookcase’ which seemed perfectly appropriate for this ‘ere blog…

Credits sneak peek

Have a butcher’s at these screen grabs from The Last Bookshop’s finalised credits sequence, fresh out of The Bakery kitchen.

As you can see, the design has changed slightly from the concept art that we posted back in August, in that credits will now be displayed on the insides of various antique books, rather than along the spines.

This exciting development means that the film is now 99% complete. Which means we are now very close indeed to an announcement of the film’s completion. Watch this space…

Bakery advent calendar

Tomorrow is the first day of December, and I thought followers of The Last Bookshop blog might be interested to know about some of our related Yuletide japes.

The Bakery (our creative collective responsible for producing The Last Bookshop) will be blogging a daily advent calendar.

We shall take it in turns to post up videos, photographs, audio trinkets and any other bits and bobs that we like, for your enjoyment. The advent blog will inevitably veer from the opaquely bizarre to the self-explanatory, but hopefully there shall be plenty of Christmas cheer and amusement along the way.

Grab yourself a mince pie and head along to webakestuff.co.uk/blog

A visit to Totnes

The end of October may have seen Dan and Owen tweaking The Last Bookshop’s  soundtrack (oh yes, there are now some lovely new twinkly piano bits) but I myself was gallivanting in Devon for the wedding of an old friend.

On our film’s limited budget, it hadn’t been practical for the location scout to take in any bookshops too far afield; so I was keen to use this opportunity to browse some of the bookshops that were logistically denied us. My dad half-remembered a certain bohemian vibe to the nearby town of Totnes, and so the family and I trotted off to find amusement in the drizzly afternoon.

If you’re in the area, give Totnes a visit. It has bags of character, an attractive church, and a thriving centre of independent shops. It felt reassuringly alive. Largely absent were the clusters of vacant lots and closed down shops which seem to dog so many English towns.

And yet, a worry began to niggle at me as we ducked in and out of the various arts and crafts shops. I noticed one of the shops contained a full-length bookcase. As did the next shop. And shortly afterwards, so did another shop. I had the worrying thought that – like the treasured possessions of a deceased elderly relative divided up among the surviving grandchildren – the local bookshop may have been closed, dissected and distributed. Soon the randomly-located Beano annuals and Enid Blytons and ‘How it works’ Ladybird books of Computers started looking like evidence of a terrible retail fatality.

My pessimistic imagination was starting to run away with itself, fuelled by years of reading doom-mongering in the Guardian, and hand-wringing in the Bookseller, and indeed having witnessed enough closed-up shop fronts myself between interviews with shopkeepers telling of their diminishing returns and increased rents.

But, as the old saying doesn’t go: there was light at the end of the high street. I was soon relieved to be browsing the stock of the Totnes Bookshop (which I later learned was justifiably shortlisted for The Bookseller’s Best Independent of the Year back in February) before a purchase was made over the road at Harlequin Books. This latter shop in particular is crammed with an excellent selection of old secondhand books.

A short stroll towards the castle soon revealed a further bookshop, modestly nestled among crooked houses. A sign declared its pleasingly eccentric opening hours, and – typically – the weekday we had chosen to visit was not favoured. Perversely, this made me rather happy. Surely there is nothing more indicative of a shopkeeper’s retail confidence than in deciding to be regularly closed on a day that would evidently bring good custom. I peered through the window and saw intriguing volumes.

All told, the trip to Totnes was a satisfying step back in time. The place felt untouched by the fears abundant elsewhere in the country. That said, the fact that Totnes has its own unique currency surely can’t be motivated by anything other than a desire to keep local money artificially trapped within the town for fear of it draining away elswhere.

 

Though not a bookshop, an honourable mention must surely go to one of the best shops in Totnes, the Drift Record Shop. Just as I like to champion the bookshop independents, who provide a service, function and experience necessarily different to Waterstones; it is also satisfying to happen upon a quirky record shop whose eclectic stock and earnest enthusiasm is a million miles away from the unpleasantness of HMV. Accordingly, we relieved The Drift Record shop of no less than three CDs that afternoon.

The sense of timelessness continued as we moved on to Newton Abbot and Ye Old Cider Bar, reputedly one of only two cider houses remaining in the UK, where I had a mug of cider and a glass of the nicest mead I’ve ever tasted. Highly recommended.

As The Last Bookshop blog forges on with its mission to explore the current plight of bookshops as context for our forthcoming short film, Totnes seems to forecast a sunny outlook after the storm.

Fry’s Planet Word

I’ve been greatly enjoying Stephen Fry’s current BBC TV series ‘Fry’s Planet Word’ which in recent weeks has explored the origins of language, the role of swearing and the history of writing, among other subjects.

Fry is so deeply associated with modern technology, with Apple and Twitter, that it was especially interesting to hear his reflections on good old fashioned paper and ink. Indeed his reputation is such that when we were planning The Last Bookshop, we joked that the Boy’s Gamazone hologram might be entirely voiced by Stephen Fry, perhaps as a posthumous tribute to Fry’s endorsement of the holographic technologies developed in his own old age.

The fourth episode of the series, titled ‘Spreading the Word,’ highlighted the importance of modern technology in preserving old texts, and in taking the written word into new environments. But it also took time to compose a personal ode to the wonder of physical books, with Fry describing how he felt when he first encountered a published copy of his debut novel.

It was in interviewing Prof. Robert Darnton, the Director of Harvard University Library that the programme addressed the fate of physical books, and how we currently live in a time of media transition. Prof. Darnton was the voice of wise optimism, asserting that history tells us “one media does not displace another,” before going on to draw parallels with the co-existence of print with radio, and later radio with television, and later still TV with the Internet.

Fry himself sounded a little less certain about the future of libraries. And in his passion for such book temples, brought my own thoughts resolutely back to The Last Bookshop film, and our desire to champion buildings filled with tomes.

The rise of technology need not necessarily mean we must end up in the book-bereft fantasy world in which our film is set. And yet, a glance at our society shows us libraries under threat and bookshops increasingly unable to stay open.

I’ll leave the last thoughts to Mr Fry himself:

“Almost everything I am, I owe to libraries.

“It’s like a will-o’-the-wisp; one book lights another book, which lights another one, which lights another one. I suppose libraries still, for me, have this extraordinary charge: when I get in one I feel this buzz, it’s almost sexual.

“There’s something about the fact that behind all these bound copies there are all voices, there are people murmuring to you, seducing you, dragging you into their world. These are wonderful, magical places. And I suppose if I have a campaign that I’m really behind, it’s that of saving our libraries. Because everyone surely has the right to access the voices of the past.”