The Book Lover's Guide to the Internet

Electronic News, Jan 13, 1997 by Grace I. Zisk

Evan Morris. The Book Lover's Guide to the Internet. Fawcett Columbine. New York, 1996. pp. 289. $12.95.

The Book Lover's Guide to the Internet: Is this an oxymoronic title, or what? Actually, no. For as author Evan Morris points out, "What makes the Net unique, what it does especially well, is the presentation of written material." Therefore, it follows that "the people with the most to gain from the Internet today are readers."

Stating the obvious at the outset (that "the Internet is almost entirely text--millions and millions of words"), Morris has wisely narrowed his focus to sites of interest to readers and writers, including books, magazines, and newspapers, libraries and reference sources, bookstores and publishers, and discussion groups. So, what can a book-lover find on the Internet? Some newsgroups Morris annotates offer reading recommendations and discussions (at rec.arts.books), information on English language usage (alt.usage.english), ghost stories with a personal touch (alt.folklore.ghost-stories), humor (alt.humor.best-of-usenet), and "one of the first groups established in the new humanities hierarchy": humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare.

Students take note: there are over 14 pages of websites devoted to individual authors, starting with Doug Adams and Martin Amis, and ending with Wolfe and Woolf (Thomas and Virginia, respectively). Hypertext presentations such as that for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/pridprej.html) provide cross-links to the characters and their relationships, background information for the story and the author's life, explanatory essays and "even illustrations of key moments in the story."

Speaking of hypertext (text with embedded links that allow the reader to jump to other references), the author calls it "literally the foundation of the World Wide Web." It's the Net equivalent of footnotes, illustrations, and other text extensions limited to X number of pages in a book, and somehow more "in your face" and exciting on the monitor. Expecting something different, I checked out the novel UNLISTED by William H. Calvin (http://www.well.com/user/wcalvin/bkf2toc.html). Aside from a map or two in the end pages, the only hypertext at the site referred you to his first book and promoted his other writing.

In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, Charles McGrath commented that people who have "embarked even halfheartedly upon the Net say they have no time anymore to read, watch TV, visit with their friends-- no time to do all the things they used to like to do." He then goes on to describe some of the better writing published on the Net! In The Book Lover's Guide, you can find the addresses of some of your favorite magazines and newspapers, as well as lists where you can find even more. All of this certainly confirms the fact that people are reading. It's not printed on paper, but it IS reading.

Although the Web-page addresses of some publishers and agents are listed, from a writer's point of view the Net is the quintessential equal opportunity publisher--no agents or editors involved. (See Morris's chapter on "How to be Your Own Publisher: Putting Yourself On-Line.") There's also advice and guidance here on setting up your own Web page. The downside of all this is the same as the upside: anyone can do it. If you'd like to compare your work with some really bad writing, see http://nyx10.cs.du.edu:8001~rebell/writprj.htwml. Meanwhile, for those occasions when you have no time to surf the Net, these books can guide you quickly to your destination.

Grace I. Zisk is a writer and editor living in Charlottesville, Va.

Editor's note:To save you time here's Electronic News' address on the Web: http://www.sumnet. com/enews. Enjoy!