Pricing a Book

This book by Praveen Swami - India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947-2004 (Asian Security Studies) - boasting one of the most boring titles I've come across, costs $160. On the top of my head I can think of a few parameters that determine the price range of a non-fiction book. The perceived value of the content is obviously on top. Research scientists and anthropologists spend decades gaining knowledge which they summarize succinctly in an understandable manner. (A topic like Guns, Germs and Steel pops to me). We pay for their years of experience and analytical skills. Another determinant is the genre - an exploration of counter-terrorism, though important, doesn't sell as much a biography of Oprah Winfrey (pandering to the masses). And then the popularity of the author - Obama's earnings from his books last year was $8M.

But no common-sense approach would okay a publisher setting the price at $160 for a 272 page book. (I know there are businesses that pay a lot for slim reports. But this doesn't fall into that category. I bring in the number of pages because that's an indication of the extensiveness & depth of the treatment. A 57-year history can only be put in a nutshell in less than 300 pages; to dive deep and dissect would consume considerable volumes). Unless there are any state/jihadi secrets, which there obviously can't be, it doesn't make sense to price it out of reach of a common man interested in understanding the history. It's hard to put a price tag on any book and the value a good book delivers can never be measured in dollars. And this book might very well open eyes to many; it might very well contain many seminal ideas. But such an expensive price tag in most cases will work against the propagation of the author's knowledge; it may turn out as the prime means to ensure a reduced readership.

Here's a sentence from 'Fashionable Nonsense' on epistemic relativism:

But the numerous discussions we have had during which the theory-ladenness of observation, the underdetermination of theory by evidence or the alleged incommensurability of paradigms have been put forward in order to support relativist positions leave us rather skeptical.

This quote appears in the 50th page - a point where the authors can safely assume that the reader is well in tune with the context and subject matter of the book. I was, in fact. Even then I had to read the sentence twice to understand what the authors are trying to convey. I've read books by professors written for mainstream audience and I've found most of them strikingly clear in getting the message across. Richard Feynman once said that however a difficult a concept may be, if you understand it thoroughly you should be able to explain it to a 17-year old satisfactorily. The authors of this book (Sokal & Bricmont) are professors and from what I've read of the book I can say that they know their stuff. But frequent sentences like this where the reader is expected to perform vocabulary gymnastics can be tiresome.

I understand that authors sometimes are so deeply immersed in writing journal articles for elite societies and keep talking among themselves when evolving ideas for a book which might result in chapters that are jargon loaded like this. But it should have been the responsibility of the publisher to make the authors' ideas more accessible (without diminishing or simplifying) - if at all their target audience are general public. I'm going to try to continue reading, but if I find myself rereading frequently I'll have to shelve it for there are many more in my wish list.

Reading? Yes. Book? No.

I'm spending as much time as possible on educating and informing myself. Through blogs, columns, articles, podcasts and documentaries. But the sort of satisfaction derived from turning the last page of a book is missing. Books, supposedly, provide depth & breadth on a subject. The author's years of experience and expertise on the subject is juiced, bottled and ready for the reader to be consumed. That satisfaction is usually not derived from any number of 500-word pieces featured in Time.

When it comes to making a choice, I've been choosing articles and podcasts over a book because at the end of the said time, I'd know quite a bit about a lot more topics than a lot more about just one topic. And the advantage with these new media outlets is that most of the time they're dealing with trendy topics - be it the Toyota recall or Tiger Woods or the dysfunctional nature of U.S political culture - in addition to being in the know, they also contribute for a good lunch time chatter.

This instant gratification has come at a cost. Reading books was one of the main instigators of my thirst for knowledge. That cannot be comprehensively quenched by what is comparably a twitter feed to a New Yorker article. A great book does great service to the mind. I have a huge list of books in my wish list and I just realized the pointlessness of it. To think that that would always be my wish list instead of serving in my knowledge arsenal is so depressing.

So today I'm making a public promise of sorts to read at least a book a month, and provide a decent... I don't want to call it a review... but what I take home from the book. As with movies, I will not sit through something if I think it will not be worth my time. To begin with I'll try Fooled By Randomness by Taleb. I've tried his much acclaimed Black Swan and I found his tone a bit domineering and preachy. Irritated, I closed the book. Since then I've heard the title referenced at many places by people I respect. As I decided to reopen, I was told to reach for his first book and the Swan would just start flowing easily from FBR.

Part of making this book-reading an announcement is to apply that extra pressure on myself so that I cut down on some of my useless browsing. Any of my three loyal readers can feel free to ask for updates after a month. So, here's to re-establishing my dying habit.

Filler Post, Apologies

I promised (to myself) that I will update this site at least once per week. A little more than a week has passed and I've managed to break my promise by not even managing to have the first post on date. That's very much like me, but the good thing is that I started working on a piece and have left it midway - due to lack of time and content/research involved. But I hope to have it by next Monday. I think it's always better to have a complete piece than a half-baked one.

Just to fill my byte quota: I'm currently reading a couple of books 1) Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by the American scholar Jared Diamond. Brilliantly written - entertaining, informative and fascinating all at the same time. 2) How to Read Better and Faster by Norman Lewis, results are already showing up and my tortoise paced reading has been kicked in the butt. The next one sitting in line is The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. I read about 50 pages and I'm under the impression that this could be an Indian One Hundred Years of Solitude. Rushdie has already expressed his admiration for titans like Marquez and Grass and his exposition of surrealism is just fabulous.

I've seen two wonderful movies and haven't written reviews yet, because I want to do justice to them by writing full length reviews. They're Spike Jonze's Adaptation and Inarritu's Amorres Perros. Adaptation is just brilliant screenwriting which are further emphasized by some top notch acting by Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper. Inarritu's debut work is impressive but not terrific. He resorts to some traditional/cliched directorial techniques here, but his spark is undeniable.

I dragged my wife with me to the viewings of those two movies. She has seen movies at the rate of 1/year before we were married feels like her life is on a movie-spree and wonders how I can still be sane and have a normal social life. She wasn't quite impressed by Adaptation (may be it's a woman thing to not appreciate cine-creativity *^!#) but she has taken a liking for Inarittu. Having seen Babel, she has expressed her interest in viewing 21 Grams, his middle piece.

I'm also wondering if I should post a lot of Twitter like blogs on ScreenAct.... blogs that just run for a few lines and whenever time, inclination and writing energy meet, I can go for a big one. We'll see how this space evolves. If you're going to keep a tab on this blog, please hold on to your patience. This may take a while, but when I settle into a pattern, I should keep the current.