Burning Books

I found an email in my inbox today from someone calling him- or herself "Burning Books". They claimed to know me and offered a link to a podcast - LINK

I have a deep and abiding fascination with Nigerian Princesses desperately in need of a North American to help them claim a fortune stolen from their murdered father by a tyrant of some kind. This is the new century's first completely new literary form. If I wasn't interested in the many and various ways people will attempt to scam bank information from me via email I probably wouldn't have followed the link. Plus, anyone who claims to know me ought to know "Burning Books" is a good way to get my attention but not in a positive way. Instead of a banking scam, I got an 18 minute review and discussion of a book I've never read - written and delivered by "Burning Books", a nom de diffusé. (Google Translate so it may or may not make sense).

I'm passing it along. Why? I spend between 10 and 20 minutes writing these. Read aloud each would take less than 2 minutes. Time required to write something increases exponentially with time required to read it. This person (who, it turns out I know but since Burning Books is the name sent to me and the name on the podcast, it's the one I'll stick with) wrote 18 minutes worth of essay, criticism, highly specific pondering for no better reason I can think of than the love of books. I must assume BB is a faster writer than I am. Certainly BB is better. Still, I would have needed 40 hours to write 18 minutes. How can I not recommend, in the strongest possible terms, both the activity and the results it produced? I really hope this isn't a one-off. I subscribed (although I'm not sure how that works) and if and when more are uploaded, I'll pass the news along.

I've written before about bad writing. And I've written about really good writing. Most of the former were amateurs who should never touch a keyboard for anything other than tweets. Most of the latter were professionals at the top of their game. This is a rare case of someone who is technically an amateur (but think Olympics and not mini-put) with fantastic prose. The podcast seems like a wonderfully Quixotic enterprise for such a gifted writer and highly trained thinker. In essay form the contents of the podcast could have been published (an absolute necessity in the world of academia) instead it was uploaded anonymously and notification was sent out to friends via email. I kept wishing there was a button I could click on to recommend or +1 or "Like". I don't know what the podcast equivalents of those things are. So I'm writing this.