From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXXI

Introduction

This is the thirty-first installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, Volume XXVII is here, Volume XXVIII is here, Volume XXIX is here, and Volume XXX is here.

If you’re new to the Bits & Bobs series, it’s really not that complicated: they’re snippets of past correspondence that I think could amuse any audience. Back in the olden days—before blogs, doomscrolling, podcasts, streaming, Youtube, and TikTok—certain oddballs, such as myself, actually took the time to correspond with friends and family. As you yourself may recall, people used to write letters, on paper, and send them through the mail. And originally emails were more like letters and were widely exchanged among humans, before email became mostly useless (e.g., solicitations from a retailer you bought something from five years ago). And get this: people used to actually read emails, or at least that’s what I told myself when I worked pretty hard at writing them. Now my old correspondence has a second chance at an audience, as I string old snippets together into these Bits & Bobs posts. The different volumes are varied in time and place and can be read randomly, rapidly, repeatedly, reluctantly, resentfully, resignedly, reverently, ruefully, and/or religiously.

Today’s Bits & Bobs are in chronological order, and I specify where I was living when I wrote them. You can try to guess whom I wrote them to (but honestly, good luck with that). And as you will gather from the dates, these were typed, printed, and mailed.

March 8, 1990 – Santa Barbara

[My brother] Geoff came down and visited last weekend to watch the races our UCSB cycling team hosted. A couple of years ago, some racers complained that our criterium course was boring. Well, we showed them! This year we set up a course on campus with eleven corners, including a hairpin. Traditionally, not my kind of course. (Aren’t you glad I have health insurance? I’m not—the premiums just went up to $60 per month!) It seems like maybe all the weight training I did over the winter came in handy: the race come down to a field sprint and I took fourth. Somehow the team had conjured up a speed radar with a giant display that was positioned at the finish line, and we broke 40 mph in the final sprint! I’ll confess I was extra motivated trying to impress this girl who came to watch me, but it turns out she got bored and left before the finish, unbeknownst to me. Oh well, at least I got a good race out of it, and Geoff was stoked for me. I have no idea how else to try to impress that girl … I’m kind of out of bullets now.

October 1, 1990 - Oakland

The main reason I’m writing you is that I have a puzzle which I think you may be able to help figure out. Suppose that for dinner I make six servings of mashed pota­toes (hypothetically speaking of course; I would never eat such a boring meal in actual life, at least not without also making a huge burrito . . . okay, we’re getting less hypothetical here) and in making these six servings I use two cups of water, a cup of milk, and two cups of potato flakes (which, through a miracle of science, turn out better than real potatoes, just like Cool Ranch Doritos taste better than anything that actually exists in nature). The question is, how can my six servings only be 1/2‑cup each, like the box says? I mean, I should have five cups of potatoes, which would be ten 1/2‑cup servings. Where do the extra two cups go? Steam? Heat? It would have to make five cups. Hell, it looked like five cups, and it’s sitting in my stomach like five cups (and a burrito).

Anyway, I thought you might know the answer. But don’t feel like you have to rush a response back to me or anything; I mean, you mentioned how self-conscious writing makes you feel, since you’re worried about your spelling and punctua­tion. So (whoops, this box of potatoes just leaked flakes all over my lap) if I get too accurate with my grammar, etc. in this letter, will you get stressed out and decide writing is too much hassle? I don’t want that to happen, so I is gonna start scrweing up my spelings and grammers so if and you will deside that mabey its all cool and I’m perty stuppid and not so dangrous to rite to at alll. Maybe that won’t be convincing since this is still a typed letter instead of casually scrawled like yours, but obviously there’s plenty of really dull typed stuff out there that wouldn’t intimidate anybody and I should try that mode. In fact, maybe I should adopt a scientific writing style:

Certainly it is noteworthy that the dust, lint, and flakes of dehyd­rated potatoes in this Oakland resident’s apartment tend to gather around the exterior surface of his high‑fidelity stereophonic audio speakers. This is doubtless due to the static charge effected by the main B‑type DryWatt FlipFlop magnets in the speakers, combined with the relatively dry air of the Oakland region. The tendency of the speakers to simultaneously repel said dust and lint as a result of the air displacement, effected by the vibrating speaker cones, is also notable. The point at which the magnitude of the sound (adjusted by the resident by means of the volume control knob found on his receiver) repels the dust and lint to an area beyond which the static electricity will attract it is left as an exercise for the undoubtedly intelligent science enthusiast reading this article.

Is that boring enough for you? It’s still risky—my dad and one or two of my brothers would probably be fascinated by that whole paragraph. Actually, my dad would probably be really disappointed in me due to some inaccuracy.

I have to say, your letter was pretty confusing. What are Little Debbies? And what’s Greasy Tony’s? I can’t believe there’s an all-u-can eat joint I don’t know about. And are Spener and Spencer the same guy, and am I supposed to know who this guy/these guys is/are? Maybe I met him/them at Nationals and forgot, since I tend to do that. When I was in Boulder this summer on my way to Wyoming for a bike race, I was at a restaurant and a whole group of people called me over, and I didn’t recognize a single one of them. They were talking to me and everything, using my name even, and all I could do is play along and think, “Who the hell are these people? I’ve never seen then before in my life!” What do you do when that happens?

December 1, 1990 – Oakland

One of my English professors, for my Chicano Literature class, decided to be a dick and make our big paper—80% of our grade—due on the Monday after Thanksgiving. I had planned to spend the long weekend writing it, but somehow managed to let my brother Geoff talk me into driving to Boulder for Thanksgiving instead. The worst part is, it took him a good while to convince me, so by the time I embarked on the trip (starting with a Greyhound bus to his place in San Luis Obispo) I not only hadn’t made good headway on the paper, but hadn’t even figured out my topic and thus hadn’t checked out the books I’d need. I figured I would have to wait until I got to Boulder and borrow my brother Bryan’s University of Colorado library card; check out the books there; and write the paper on the Friday before driving back home. So, Friday afternoon, I go to the CU library with my friend P— (a student there) and wander through the rows and pull out every book I can find. Then I read the table of contents of each book to figure out a good topic to write my paper on. Suddenly, there it is, a shimmering topic shining down on me from above: the social growth of the Chicana (Chicano female). I found like ten good books.

So I study those a while, until this library staffer comes and says the library’s closing early, what with the holiday and all. So I go to check out my books and the dude at the circulation desk tells me, “Sorry, it’s after 5:00. I can’t check anything out to you. Regulations.” I tell him how bad I need the books (though I can’t mention I’m leaving to go back to Berkeley the next day since I’m supposedly this card-carrying CU student). He won’t budge so I go back into the depths of the library, which is dark now, and tell my friend P— to go down and wait under this window. Without a word, he understands my situation: my back to the wall, I have no choice but to drop the books down to him.

Unfortunately, in putting my brilliant plan into play I feel less like Sean Connery and more like Peter Sellers. The windows are literally welded shut, with grates over them. I go down to the second floor, stumbling around in the dark, and all the windows have padlocks on them. Colorado Maximum Security Corrective University. So I devise another plan: I’ll make a run for it. So I find an exit, with a red door handle and a huge sign, “EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY! ALARM WILL SOUND!” and a smaller but equally ominous sign beneath it, “Those misusing this exit will be prosecuted.” I have no idea where the exit will dump me, and what direction I’ll have to run in. Plus, I’ve got a duffel bag with 10 hardback books and a bunch of other crap in it, and I’m not much of a runner. But on the plus side, I’ve seen the guy who’s patrolling the library and he’s a big fat guy with only one arm. Seriously. So I take a deep breath and push through the door.

I’ve always wondered what those alarms sound like—and I’m still wondering because nothing happened. For a second I was really stoked because I thought I was home free. Then I realized I was still indoors, in some storage room or something. I stumble around in there but it’s seriously pitch black and I can’t find an exit. So I go back into the stacks and look for another exit, really stressed out by now, and then I make a wrong turn and the one-armed man sees me. He’s even less sympathetic than the circulation desk guy, and makes me put all my books on this little cart and leave. And that’s why before I left for California on Saturday, I had to go back to the library and check all those books out, and bring them with me to research and write my paper on Sunday, after the trip.

Of course we managed to get on the road late. Right around Utah, I figured I’d done my share of the driving, and turned the wheel over to my brother’s roommate, J—. (Geoff doesn’t have his driver’s license.) I got maybe half an hour of sleep before J—woke me up and said, “Dude, you gotta keep me awake. I keep hallucinating trees on the road.” I guess I can understand that, since he hasn’t slept in a while, and it’s dark out, but he goes on to say, “They’re sage trees, and they’re talking to me. Talking trees, I’m serious. You know what they keep saying?” I guess I nod or mumble “uh-huh” or something, because he says, “You do know? What did they tell me, then?” I play along: “They said that sleep is a myth, and that you don’t really need sleep, just lots and lots of coffee.” So we keep talking, and after a while I’m only half awake. Suddenly J— shakes me real good and says, “What did you just tell me?” I confess that I can’t remember. He says I was talking about a green hotel where I was writing Christmas cards, and this huge doorman with a big zipper who kept harassing me. I remember the part about the green hotel, because in Las Vegas we’d passed this creepy looking Holiday Inn, painted white but bathed in green floodlights (neither of us could figure out why). Finally J—’s driving shift was over, by which point Geoff was awake and able to help keep me awake for the final leg.

I finally got home at like 11:00 p.m. on Sunday and started my English paper at about 11:30 p.m., giving me about twelve hours. I was definitely hurting, this being basically my second all-nighter in a row. On a hunch, I phoned my friend H—, who’s in my class. She picked right up. “Working on your paper?” I asked. “Of course!” she laughed, “I just got started!”

During the night as I pounded out the paper I hallucinated about people in the hallway outside my apartment; talked to them a bit before realizing they weren’t real; and discovered that coffee, UpTime, and NoDoz are altogether inadequate for postponing sleep. The only thing that could help now was adrenaline. I got that by accidentally falling asleep, and waking up twenty minutes later thinking it was morning already. Once the panic subsided I found I could function again. At about 8:00 on Monday morning I remembered I had a paper in the works for my 9:00 Rhetoric class; finished it; went to class; and ended up falling asleep during my small group discussion. Evidently I was talking in my sleep, because I awoke to this girl laughing her ass off. Then I headed home and finished the big paper. It was due at noon, and I finished it at 12:35 and brought it to class. Nobody was there: class had been cancelled. I managed to track down the professor and he took the paper. Whew.

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Welcome to Albany, California

Introduction

I live in Albany, California. If you’re not from around here, you probably haven’t heard of it. When I talk to people in other states who ask where I live, I usually just say “Berkeley area.” Well, perhaps it’s about time you learned about your blogger’s town.

This post is inspired by a great travel book I picked up recently: Roz Chast’s Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York. Of course there’s been more than enough written about that famous city, but Chast is a very funny writer and cartoonist. Not so much has been written about Albany and I’ll do my best to give you a chuckle or two.

(I’ve laid out this post according to Chast’s chapters, but that’s about where the similarities will end. I cannot do cartoons, but I did get some nice sketches from a budding local landscape architect on condition of anonymity.)

Let’s start here

Over a century ago, Albany was an unincorporated area where Berkeley people came to dump their garbage. One day in 1908 an angry band of shotgun-toting local women turned them away. This triumph inspired the residents to incorporate as the City of Ocean View, which (thanks to people’s good taste) was changed to Albany (after the city’s first mayor, who came from Albany, NY). The story of the armed women is acted out every year by students at our local elementary school. I suppose it wouldn’t be so charming if it had been men wielding the guns. Nobody knows where the men were on that day, as this was before video gaming and televised sports.

When I was in college I was aware of Albany, but only vaguely. I thought maybe Albany was the name of a district of Berkeley, like Westbrae or Elmwood. After living in San Francisco for about five years, my wife and I decided to head back to the East Bay where we could more realistically afford a house. “How about Albany?” my wife asked. “I hear they have good schools.” I shrugged and was like, “Yeah, sure, okay.” After a mere nine months of open houses every weekend and having more than forty offers rejected, we finally got a place and became Albanians. I’m not sure that’s what we’re called, actually … makes it sound like we’re from Albania. So … Albanites? Albanyites? Albanyans? Albanyone?

Basic layout

You don’t need to know that much about getting around Albany because it’s not very big—less than two square miles. You could cover it on foot in a day, but why would you, when it’s a great place to bike? Here’s a bike path map.

That green north-south route is the Ohlone Greenway, a bike path well off the street with a separate walking path. That east-west thoroughfare shown in white, Solano Ave, is where the cute shops are. There’s a busier, wider thoroughfare called San Pablo Ave that runs north-south and is more industrial, where you’ll find some solid restaurants, garages, and the Hotsy-Totsy Club (more on this later). Another bike path goes all the way out to the ocean.

Walking around

Albany, like its surrounding community, is a great for walking because it was built up before the Second World War, so it wasn’t designed around cars. This means it has wide sidewalks separated from the street by a median, so you can really enjoy a stroll without feeling like you’re always about to get run over. A lot of these sidewalks still have the imprint from the construction company that built them, showing the date:

Good sidewalks may not strike you as such a big deal, but not all communities have them. In this regard Albany is the polar opposite of Irvine, California, which caters to cars so completely it’s essentially illegal to walk there. (I think the city planners down in Irvine have given up and are just waiting for the kind of natural disaster that would require the whole city to be evacuated, so they can blast off, nuke the entire site from orbit, and just start over.) In Albany, by contrast, city planners are forever thinking of new ways to be cool, like installing bike lanes, allowing restaurants to build patios out into the street, and putting button-activated flashing lights up at our zebra crossings to help distracted motorists understand that “Hey, I’m walkin’ heah!” Nobody seems to mind that our houses have tiny garages built for Model-T Fords.

The subway

Okay, we don’t have a subway exactly, not like NYC. But we do have the Bay Area Rapid Transit line running through town. The stations and tracks are underground in Berkeley, because those guys wisely insisted on that, but in Albany it’s elevated. When you take the Ohlone Greenway you’re pretty much right under the tracks, so occasionally a train goes by overhead and your fillings rattle. 

The North Berkeley station is just a twelve-minute walk from the southern border of Albany. BART can take you to useful destinations like San Francisco and San Jose, and to the Oakland and San Francisco airports (and I mean all the way—no stupid shuttle bus required).

Stuff to do

Look, I’m not going to try to go toe-to-toe with Roz Chast’s list of goings-on in NYC. Obviously that’s your place if you just dig museums and live theater and such. That said, there’s a lot of culture in this region, such as the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, the Museum of Paleontology on the UC Berkeley campus, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley hills. Needless to say San Francisco has all kinds of world class museums and stuff. (Don’t expect to see King Tut, though, even if they claim to have built an exhibit around him.)

Among most residents, the most popular pastime in Albany is ghost whips. This is where you head out to a large, empty parking lot, get your car going in a straight line, and then jump out and walk next to it. Okay, I confess, we don’t actually do this—our parking lots aren’t that big. I have it on good authority that for ghost whips, you need to head to Turlock, about 100 miles east.

Albany does have a couple of unique attractions, such as Golden Gate Fields, the only racetrack (horses, not dogs) in the Bay Area, and the Albany Sauna, one of the oldest Finnish-style saunas in the country (dating from 1934). According to Wikipedia, its “original furnace and rooms have been maintained to produce one of the most authentic sauna experiences outside of Finland.” I guess I should mention I’ve never actually been; saunas are not really my thing. But here’s a tip: if you want to sound impressive, pronounce it “SOW-na” (first syllable rhymes with “now”).

I’m a cheap bastard so I have a lot to recommend here that’s free. First off, our regional parks are phenomenal. Just head toward the hills and your options are endless (Wildcat Canyon, Tilden, Sibley, Huckleberry, Chabot, Briones), or head toward the water to the Albany Bulb, Berkeley Marina, or Point Isabel. 

Hiking, road cycling, mountain biking, they’re all great in these parts. We even have the fully paved Nimitz Trail running along the ridge of the Berkeley hills with spectacular views of the bay, so even a dweeb on a Segway could have a good time. Here is some eye candy.

Walking around in town is fun too, because we have great weather. Winter is not depressing here, like in places where the cold is biting and/or everything is brown and grey. Winter is our green season and all kinds of trees are blossoming right now. And plants grow so well in this area, most homeowners become part-time gardeners.

If you favor walking with a  purpose, this is a great community for a pub crawl. Start at the Westbrae Biergarten (in Berkeley, just five minutes on foot from Albany), where you can enjoy some choice local draft beer and greasy snacks.

Then proceed down the road ten minutes to Gilman Brewing (delicious Belgian style brews), then stroll another four minutes to Fieldwork Brewing Company, which in my opinion makes the best IPAs on the planet. After all this you’ll need some exercise, so fortunately it’s over a mile to an old standby, the Hotsy Totsy Club (slogan: “Keeping Albany tipsy since 1939”). The best thing about the Hotsy Totsy is that it has an awesome taco truck next door.

On the way home, swing by Schmidt’s Pub, an Albany fixture since 1978 that kind of feels like a house (because it is) and always has great beers on draft, plus some nice original art.

Nerdy stuff

If you decide to live here, let me dangle this nice bonus in front of you: Albany residents get to use both the Alameda County library system and the City of Berkeley library system. That’s fifteen locations! Not that you’d visit all of them, of course, but it means a ton of inventory, and you can have books or movies sent to your local branch for free. The main Berkeley library is a beautiful old building with five floors of goodness. And the gorgeous North Branch, which is the closest to Albany, is a designated historical landmark, having been built by the famous architect James Plachek and funded by the Federal Works Progress Administration.

Now, if you’re sneering at that last paragraph thinking I’m some kind of total nerd, well of course I am! But this area might rub off on you in a good (i.e., intellectual) way. After all, lots of UC Berkeley faculty live in Albany (particularly if they want to raise children in a good school district), and Albany is also home to the University Village, which houses Cal grad students and their families. According to US Census data , Albany has a highly educated population: about 87% of our adult residents have at least some college education; 5% have an Associate degree; 32% have up to a Bachelor’s degree; and 40% also have a Graduate degree.

What does this mean? Well, if you want expert guidance in literature or film, look at what videos were recently returned to the library and not yet re-shelved, or what’s on the hold shelf. You can also get advice from bookstore employees, such as at Pegasus Books (which is technically in Berkeley but a stone’s throw away), who are as stoked on great books as you are. And if you’re looking for free books, we have scores of those little libraries along the sidewalks—I mean, they’re everywhere, and the books in them are top-notch (not just the crap you see in airport newsstands).

What’s more, your book club can occasionally invite, as a guest, the writer of the book you’re reading. We also get pretty good lectures; I’ve attended readings by Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and David Sedaris. And when chatting over your back fence with your neighbor, you can switch seamlessly among English, French, and Latin. (Okay, now I’m exaggerating.)

Flora and fauna

I know I already talked about the flora but let me add that it’s a true Mediterranean climate, which is one of the rarest climates on earth. According to the Atlas of the Biodiversity of California, the only other places on Earth with this climate are the Mediterranean Sea region (duh!), Australia, South Africa, and Chile. In this climate, everything grows amazingly well. Spit out a sunflower seed and you’ll have a giant yellow flower in what seems like mere seconds. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but really, all kinds of groovy stuff grows in abundance here. The only thing we don’t have a lot of is lawns, because we refuse. They’re so vulgar.

In terms of fauna, the Albany area is great for bird watching because it’s along the Pacific Flyway, so we get all kinds of cool birds: ospreys, great blue herons, terns, and all manner of shorebirds. Up in the hills I see hawks and falcons and even the occasional owl. Check out this great horned owl that perched one day in our neighbor’s tree.

In town here we get lots of songbirds and a surprising number of wild turkeys, which fearlessly stand down cars, sometimes at major intersections.

We don’t get the alligators in our sewers like in NYC, but I have seen plenty of coyotes up in the hills, and a couple of bobcats. I haven’t seen a mountain lion but we do have them, and I’ve seen the remains of their kills. Twice during bike rides, at dusk, I’ve been hit by a bat. (Their echolocation actually isn’t all that good and they dart around crazily, like moths.) We also get cute little newts, and in fact one of my favorite cycling roads, South Park Drive, is closed to cars five months out of the year for the annual newt crossing.

And, of course, we get deer wandering the streets with oddly little fear of anything. The expression “deer in the headlights” doesn’t apply because they never seem to even look up.

Food

Suffice to say there is all kinds of good food either in Albany or a short walk or bike ride away. The dim sum in Albany is very good; the dim sum in Oakland’s Chinatown is great; the dim sum in San Francisco (a BART ride away) is surely on par with anything in NYC. We have an embarrassment of Sushi places, great taquerias (even Calvin Trillin, writing in The New Yorker, admits San Francisco bests NYC in this regard), and top-notch pizza. (I’ve had both Giordano’s and the original Uno, arguably the most famous pizza places in Chicago, and find them identical to Zachary’s and Little Star, respectively, which are competing places on either end of Solano Ave.) Of course restaurants come and go so I can’t go down a huge list other than to say dining out here is legit. And in terms of famous restaurants that aren’t going anywhere, Albany is walking distance from Chez Panisse, where California Cuisine was invented.

We also have a number of top-notch bakeries. Not far away is Grace Baking, a well-loved place, and in Berkeley there’s Cheese Board, which has lots of tasty baked doodads but is particularly known for pizza. They’ll sell you the dough so your pies can come out great at home, too. Albany’s newest place, Pâtisserie Rotha, has such great pastries, people will stand in line for hours for them (or so I’m told). A friend brought us some of Rotha’s stuff and it was darn good. (Had I waited hours for it, I’m sure I’d have liked it even more.) 

There’s also Semifreddi’s, which I always thought was the best in the business for baguettes and such until I tried Acme Bread Company and realized it was vastly superior. Technically Acme is in Berkeley but it’s a short walk from my house.

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado which is at too high an altitude for baking, so I am just blown away at the great baked goods here. When I’ve traveled on business I’ve tried in vain to get good bread, pastries, etc. Of course I’ve had great stuff in France (though no better than here, honestly). I will concede that for bagels, there is absolutely no substitute for NYC. And, having racked my brain, I realize also that the Vogel’s sandwich bread my family had in Glasgow is better than what we get in the grocery store here. But still: Albany is a great place for foodies.

Apartments & housing

Housing is really expensive here. I could go on about this, but it would be boring.

Final stop

You may be wondering why I chose this topic. Well, I figured if you live in a place where winter is harsh, you might like a little escapist travelogue. On the other hand, if you live near Albany—i.e., anywhere in Alameda County—property tax is due in about a month. This is a good time to count the many blessings we have here!

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E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown

Introduction

As I approach my third week of shelter-in-place, and confront the (albeit still nascent) need to stave off boredom, one of the activities I miss the most is going to the library. So during a couple of days off from work I dove in to learn what electronic resources my library has to offer. This post documents that effort, and frankly that struggle. Don’t worry, it’s not as dull as it sounds. (Trigger warning: this post contains lots of profanity.)

Virtual book club

My book club moved its meeting to Zoom, following in the footsteps of my world-famous, game-changing Virtual Pub Night. This worked out very well. At the end, we chose the book for next time, which presented a problem for me.

My standard book club protocol is to go to my library’s website the very moment the next book is announced, to put it on hold (possibly ahead of my fellow members in case few copies are available). I’m a cheap bastard, and though I love buying books, I only buy cannot-lose titles I know that a) I’ll read more than once, b) I’ll want to loan out, and c) I’ll keep forever. Plus, I prefer to buy from library sales where books are only a buck or two. No disrespect to my book club, but our selections seldom meet these high standards. Now, with the library option no longer available, I had to buy Picking Cotton and had to figure out where.

The obvious solution would be Amazon, who has it for just $7.51. But can we really do that to our local booksellers, when they’re already suffering, while Amazon’s business is booming more than ever? My book club agreed we couldn’t. And yet, our local bookseller wants $17.99 for the book, plus $3 shipping, so with tax it’s almost triple the price. I’d still do it, except that it’s not at all clear how quickly this local outfit could fill the order right now. Actually, that’s the total BS rationale I contrived to feel better about myself. The truth is, I’m just a cheap bastard.

The Kobo

Fortunately, I have in my tech arsenal a little e-reader called the Kobo. What, you haven’t heard of it? Well, neither had my book club. In fact, I myself had no idea what this thing was when I inherited it from my late father a couple years back. I also have no idea why he bought it. I powered the thing up some months ago out of curiosity, and found that it only had one book one it, which was actually just a teaser excerpt of Heart of Darkness which was totally not my dad’s style.

Via a quick trip to kobo.com I learned they could sell me Picking Cotton for $12 all-in. Would it be worth setting up an account, signing up for endless spam no matter how many times I opt out, forking out the money, and learning the ins and outs of this weird Kobo thing?

I stared at the dumb little reader. Obviously it’s not best-in-breed because nobody has heard of it, and if my dad didn’t get any mileage out of it, why should I think I would? But that’s a loaded question. My dad, though an even cheaper bastard than I, often bought stuff he never ended up using, like a $2700 tricycle (featured here, but you’re too late, somebody already bought it).

Toward the very end of his life, when my dad was already riddled with cancer, he planned a cross-country solo road trip, dragging a little teardrop trailer behind his tiny car over remote highways. I talked him into getting a mobile phone in case he encountered trouble. He bought an Android phone and a prepaid plan and the guy at the phone store got him up and running, but my dad never used the phone. He literally never placed a single call, nor, apparently, did he even turn it on. It just sat there in its box. I suspect he was intimidated by the technology, particularly because he knew it was designed for anyone, even a dumb teenager or technophobe blue-hair, to easily grasp. Paradoxically, this increased the intimidation factor because my dad—an actual rocket scientist who programmed computers back in the ‘70s when they were the size of refrigerators—feared the intense embarrassment of being stymied by this basic consumer product.

Pondering this as I gazed upon the little Kobo, I realized I really had no choice but to engage with it. In fact, as tired as I was after book club, I knew I had to figure this thing out immediately. You see, another idiosyncrasy of my father’s was that he loved to put stuff off. A common rant from my poor mother, before they divorced, was “‘Someday’ … it’s always ‘someday’!” Sure, he’d fix the garage door … someday. He’d get that VW Beetle running … someday. So frequent was our mom’s rant, my brothers and I used to compete for who could do the most accurate rendition of her “‘Someday’ … it’s always ‘someday’!” So given my knee-jerk reaction to the very notion of procrastination, I stayed up late and had that Kobo up and running before I turned in.

Kobo vs. proper book – Volume I

So how did the Kobo work out? Well, nine years ago I blogged about the Kindle, giving ten reasons why I wanted to hate it. The Kindle was synonymous with e-readers back then, there having been no real competition. I conceded then that ideally I would have read an entire e-book before advancing an opinion on them. Now I have.

I had to install the Kobo app on my PC, create an account, and give over my credit card info. The device itself was fairly self-explanatory but I had to expunge my dad’s account info from it, which was just a little weird, like exorcising a ghost. It wasn’t clear how to do this so I pried the back off and stuck a paper-clip through a tiny hole to do a factory reset. When reconfiguring the Kobo I noticed the WiFi was extremely flaky: it’d find wireless networks I’ve never seen before on any of my other devices, but would fail to find the access point on my desk, less than five feet away. (It did pretty well when I leaned it right against the access point but really, should any device be that finicky?) Eventually I got Picking Cotton loaded on the Kobo and over the next few days worked my way through reading it. Now I’m able to give you the pros and cons of this e-reader.

Overall, in the “pro” category I’ll say this:

• The screen was pretty easy on my eyes;
• I like how an e-reader doesn’t interrupt and distract me the way a smartphone does via all the content being pushed to it by apps, friends, and colleagues;
• Unlike a smartphone, I don’t have to unlock it (which isn’t that hard, but still)
• Battery life was excellent;
• The Kobo sits flat on a table (unlike a book) so I could easily read while eating lunch;
• It’s lighter weight than a book, so if I were to read it while lying on the sofa I’d probably appreciate that (vs., say, a hardback of Anna Karenina)
• My wife didn’t bristle to see me peering into the Kobo, at least when she realized it wasn’t my phone;
• It gave me some interesting stats at the end (e.g., it took me 4.4 hours to read Picking Cotton)

In the “con” category I’ll just say at least 7 out my 10 original misgivings about e-books still apply. Looking at #5, “I can’t buy used titles at a great discount,” I figured it’s been a long time … maybe the market has changed. Since this may not be the first time I need an alternative to my local library, I figured I should see if the Kobo folks might have some great deals.

I searched a couple random titles to see how the prices were. Started Early, Took My Dog (2011) is ten bucks. That’s no bargain. Maybe an older book would be cheaper? Nope … The God of Small Things (2008) is $14. What about much older? I found Lolita (from 1955) for $13, which is a rip, but As I Lay Dying from 1930 is available for only a buck. If I searched on price, what else might I turn up?

Wow! They’ve got a lot! Check out these free titles:

Wow … “She’s stumbled into a lair of desperate dragons—and she’s just the thing they need.” No wonder my dad bought this Kobo! (Wink.) Now, if you’re not into the romance genre, there are also lots of free nonfiction titles for cheap… here are a few.

Remarkable, isn’t it, that Saundra’s sweet revenge actually happened, and that there really was a bike path killer? Fascinating. Now, if I’m willing to pay just a bit more, here’s a priceless book:

But seriously, this was getting me nowhere. The bigger question is, what could I get from the library for free to read on my Kobo?

Digital content from the library

I’ve long known that the Berkeley Public Library has lots of alternatives to bound paper books, CDs, and DVDs. Almost too many options, really … the full list is a bit intimidating:

• Kanopy (streaming movies & music)
• Hoopla (digital books, audiobooks, music, and movies)
• Naxos (music)
• Alexander Street (music)
• In-branch albertnet via guest WiFi (wow, cool!)
• Overdrive (e-books, audiobooks)
• RBdigital (digital magazines)
• Flipster (kids’ magazines)

The trick with these platforms is they don’t always get included when you search for a title on the library’s main website. (I learned that the hard way … it turns out Hoopla has as audiobook of Picking Cotton and I could have saved a lot of trouble had I discovered that earlier.) The other issue is that you have to set yourself up on each platform individually, which isn’t that hard but obviously presents some friction.

I tried out Hoopla for an audiobook and it’s really easy, once you’ve downloaded the smartphone app. It’s great for road trips if your phone can sync with your car stereo. I’ve also been using Kanopy for a while, and in fact I just set my wife’s PC up on it the other day, in less than five minutes. Kanopy’s digital streaming works great (no jitter or buffering) and it’s easy to connect your laptop to a modern TV.

All this being the case, I was emboldened to seek better return on the time I’d already invested in my Kobo. I asked my older daughter to research this for me, since she was on spring break and stuck mooning around the house anyway. She tapped away for a minute or two and said, “You have to do it through Overdrive.” And thus was my next tech journey launched.

Kobo vs. proper book – Volume II

So here’s where things get complicated. The library can’t just buy the online rights to a book and make it available to all its readers at once … that would be injurious to publishers, like Napster was to the music industry. The library must buy individual licenses for each title it wants, so only a finite number of library cardholders can check out the e-book at once. This is trickier than buying a finite number of physical books, because each library customer must be able to view the same title on more than one device. So when I check out the e-book, I’m downloading a license file with the content, and that file has to travel with the content. How does this work when there are at least 18 companies making e-readers?

The answer is, you have to download software called Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) and install it on your computer, and create a login for that. This software is how you manage the digital licenses. Then you have to authorize your computer, and also your e-reader, with your Adobe account. Now your ADE app will enable content on your e-reader for your login, but no other. You also have to set up Overdrive with your library, to check out the material. You download the content and license, and then use the ADE interface to copy these files over to your e-reader. So you’re getting a crash course in three platforms: Kobo, Adobe, and Overdrive.

So how hard is this, really? In principle it’s not that bad; getting the devices authorized wasn’t too hard. I was able to get an e-book working with my laptop pretty quickly, and then I loaded an e-book on the Kobo, ejected it from the PC, fired it up, and clicked the icon for the new e-book. And then?

This is super annoying on so many levels. It’s bad enough that loading the library book on the Kobo just plain didn’t work, after all that time and effort. Second, no error message should ever say “Oops!” That’s like hearing your dentist say “Oops!” when he’s drilling in your mouth. Meanwhile, the info this error message gives on how “this document is protected by Adobe Digital Rights Management (DRM)” is nothing you don’t already know, and the idea that you didn’t sign with the authorized ID is pure BS. The software wouldn’t let you copy the content over to the e-reader if it wasn’t authorized and you weren’t signed in. Clearly, I followed the process … it just didn’t work. And then, to get the dialog box to go away, I had to click “OK” when obviously this is not OK.

I found a help article about how to de-authorize your devices, delete all copies of the content and licenses, start over, re-authorize, and try again. This accomplished nothing. I also got nowhere cussing up a blue streak … it didn’t even help me feel better. At one point I got an error message about the license having actually expired, so I tried loading some very recently published books, but this too was a bum steer.

The Kobo error message should have said, “Oh, SHIT! I’m really sorry, my software is all jacked up so I can’t access this content, but you’ve done nothing wrong. Really—it’s not you, it’s me. See how easily you can read that book on your laptop? I know. That’s because the laptop works like it’s supposed to. I just can’t get it done. I suck. This is why nobody has heard of Kobo. I’m a loser, so why don’t you kill me.” And the “OK” button say either “FUCK ME” or “Make this dialog go away, and go get on with your life, I’m a lost cause.”

Oh well, I thought, at least I can still buy titles for the Kobo if I need to, like if this COVID-19 shelter-in-place goes on indefinitely. I mindlessly clicked on the Picking Cotton icon, just to remind myself the Kobo wasn’t without value, and was shocked to get another error:

Whoa. Let me get this straight, Kobo: because I tried to load a library book on you, and you couldn’t parse the digital license properly, now the totally separate title I paid for also can’t be accessed anymore? How is this okay in any universe?

Figuring I could at least start over, I deleted the e-book content and license files from Overdrive, de-authorized the Kobo, re-synced it with the Kobo PC app, and tried again. Still no dice … I just kept getting that stupid error message. So then, based on the advice from a knowledge base article from Overdrive, I de-authorized the Adobe account from my laptop, created a new Overdrive account for the Adobe app, re-authorized the laptop and the Kobo using the Overdrive credentials, and tried again with another library e-book. Still no dice. The Kobo still wouldn’t display the library content, and still wouldn’t even display the content I’d paid for.

Whoever wrote this second error message should be taken out and shot. Beyond the annoying recurrence of “Oops!” there’s the weak statement, “There might be a problem with the file.” Might be a problem? Like, this might not be working? Gee, you think? It should say, “I have clearly failed you.”

And then we get “Try updating your library.” Try?! Haven’t they heard Yoda’s words of wisdom? “Do or do not. There is no try.” I mean, I’m facing an obvious software problem and the Kobo coders are telling me what I might try? How about, “Try sticking your thumb up your ass and whistling Dixie”?

And don’t they realize the word “library” is meaningless here, since they could mean my library folder on the Kobo, or a device software library, or the Berkley Public Library I checked out the (apparently devastating) content from? Perhaps the worst part is referring me to “Customer Care” at Kobo, because Kobo actually does not have a technical support department … just a bunch of useless static content giving you a bunch more dumb suggestions.

(Full disclosure: after much searching, I did finally find a link for “Contact Customer Care” on the Kobo website but here’s where it led.)

Of course I tried rebooting my Kobo, many times. Finally, as a last resort and knowing this would mean starting from scratch and reconfiguring the device entirely, I went for the factory reset, prying the back off again and using a paper-clip through the hole in the back. In the process, because the back is so hard to pry off, I actually drew blood. (From me, not the Kobo, unfortunately.) This time, however, the device would not reset. The factory reset process is apparently as stymied as the rest of the device. All I kept getting was the stupid little smiley face as it rebooted again to its fucked-up state.

“Wipe that smirk off your face, you worthless little shit!” I boomed idiotically at it. You know, with this coronavirus pandemic I think we’re all a little on edge, and I find I actually have less patience than ever for anything that I’m supposed to have control over but suddenly do not. In this light I’m very proud of myself for managing, upon seeing that stupid little Kobo smirking at me over and over, to not just pound the stupid thing to rubble with my fist. It’s reduced itself to a paperweight, and a useless one at that because for its own safety, it really needs to be kept out of my sight. Perhaps my dad was wise not to tangle with it (though in that case he was foolish indeed to shell out $80 for it in the first place).

Silver lining

Okay, so the Kobo is a bust. Item #9 on my list of reasons to avoid e-books was certainly prescient: “I fight with PCs and other electronic devices all day, and books are my respite. I don’t care how foolproof the [device] claims to be: it has an OS that can have bugs, and it has WiFi of which it can be out of range, and it has a battery that can die … all potential headaches.” But I shouldn’t have lost sight of a larger misgiving, #5: “If I end up loving it, embracing its format, and becoming addicted to its convenience and cool features, my literary world will shrink from ‘anything any library or bookstore anywhere has’ down to ‘anything that’s available on the [platform].’” If I can’t buy the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Anna Karenina from kobo.com (and I can’t), but they’re offering me romance novels about “the brooding, sexy captain of the NHL’s Chicago Blaze” or a sexy young woman being “pinned to the floor by a billionaire playboy,” should I really be spending any time on this platform anyway?

On the plus side, I can still read the one Kobo title I paid for, albeit on my smartphone via the Kobo app. I’ve also discovered that Overdrive e-books can be read on my smartphone, via yet another app called Libby, which has a pretty nice user interface.

So, even if this shelter-in-place has me stranded for weeks or months, I know I’ve got options. I just have to relax … take a deep breath … step away from the Kobo … count to ten …

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID Wristbands

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