There is now a Japanese edition of The Secret History of Democracy. I am most curious to know, but will probably never know, how my prose in “The Hunters Who Owned Themselves” reads in Japanese translation, or how the mixture of English, French, Michif and Cree terminology was handled. Unfortunately, I do not yet possess the publication data… only that a Japanese edition has existed for several months. Perhaps some Japanese reader who is fluent in English will report to me on this matter.
The book is also available for Kindle, at a better price than the paperback. My Nexus 7 tablet having proven itself indispensable (I now have difficulty remembering my life without it), I find myself reading more and more books on it, as e‑books or pdfs. My digital library is now considerably larger than my physical one. However, most of the e‑books I’ve found have been dreadfully created by mindless scanning, with no attempt to correct format, typeface shifts, and misinterpretations. In one book I have, the scanner decided that “the” represented “die”, and so replaced every occurrence, so that the text reads rather morbidly. Yet people seem willing to pay almost the same as book prices for this sloppy stuff!
I always notice how many people are reading things in subway cars, streetcars and buses. My impression is that e‑readers have noticeably increased the number. Many people, it seems, who would not carry books around with them feel comfortable with a tablet or reading from their phones.
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