Personal

Booktag

2 Comments

Rick Horowitz at Unspun “tagged” me with a questionnaire about books. He thought it would get me blogging again.

The reasons I’m not blogging much aren’t ones that a questionnaire will address. I’m simply too busy right now. I’ve committed to a large number of bindings by early August, for Interaction, the World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Glasgow this year. I bind in spare bits of time, in evenings and weekends, and this time was formerly blogging time. I will answer the questionnaire, but it won’t get me blogging much again.

My relationship with books is a little more complex than Rick’s. For me, a book is not just a box of words (which is a special enough thing in its own right). I am a bookbinder as well as a reader. Books are things I make, physical structures I love for their own sakes, as well as containers for stories and knowledge. Some of these questions will therefore get two answers, one from me as a reader and one as a binder.

Incipit

1. Total number of books I have owned

Like Rick, I’m going to take this as “total number of books I own.”

Over the years, Martin and I have acquired and disposed of thousands of books. At one particular point in this cycle, we concluded that we could not shelve all of our books at once, and moved to a “catalogue and store” approach, with most of our books boxed up in our loft. I have some doubts as to the accuracy of our catalogue with regard to physical location, but the quantity listed is about right.

According to our catalogue, we have 2255 books between us. I would estimate that there are about 45 books on our shelves that are not catalogued, either because they are recent purchases or because they are bookbinding books (I’ve never got round to cataloguing that collection).

The next question is whether I divide the aggregate total by two, since the books are community property. But we believe that books are shared wealth – we even have a separate budget in our accounting system for book purchases, which do not come out of our personal funds. So I would contend that I own in the region of 2300 books.

2. Last book I bought

The last book that I bought to read was the Penland Book of Handmade Books. It bills itself as a technical book, but most of the things that it describes the makings of are “artists books”, which frequently do not really match my definition of a book at all.

The last book that I bought at all was a Folio Society edition of The Hobbit. I have been rebinding a HarperCollins edition of the book (for the Worldcon art show, at which the evilrooster bindery will be an exhibitor), and I bought this one to compare the bindability. I suspect that I will not love it as well as I do the HarperCollins one, but as a binder, I learn by doing.

3. Last book I’ve read

Atypically, it’s a self-help book. (Usually, I’m too contrary for self-help books). My line manager at work recommended that I read Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzer as a book that had had a strong impact on him.

My reaction to the book was mixed. I already do much of what the book recommends, in particular the effort to understand where the other parties in a heated dispute are coming from. It goes on to discuss the ways to find and highlight shared goals between the parties, in order to find common ground. I see these techniques as part of my goal to be a peacemaker, though I don’t use the cheesy business-speak acronyms that the book does to describe them.

So on the one hand, the book gives away my trade secrets. If everyone follows it, then one of my key skills becomes a commonplace. On the other hand, I’d love to see a lot of those techniques applied to the American political scene, where the victory of one party over another seems to have superseded the goal of improving the common good.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me

1. The Bible

I value this book both because I am a Christian, and because I am a member of the Western intellectual tradition. I don’t blog about my faith (not directly, anyway), and if you don’t realise the Bible’s influence on Western culture, I can’t start explaining it here.

Most of the time, I prefer the New Jerusalem Bible, which is one of the Catholic translations. Part of my preference is because it renders the text in a clear and comprehensible way, and contains all of the “apocrypha” that I want in the book. But my other reason for liking it is that JRR Tolkien was one of the original contributors, and that’s just cool.

For the Psalms, Wisdom and the Song of Songs (and, on some days, the Gospel according to John), I find that I turn to the King James Version. Some of the Bible is best read as poetry, not prose, and KJV has never been equalled as a work of art. In short, Shakespeare trumps Tolkien.

And sometimes, when I need to really understand a passage, I go back to the Greek. I have an Oxford University Press edition of the Greek New Testament that is of use at times.

As a binder, I have a standing policy of not rebinding Bibles. They’re rarely well-bound, because the majority of them will never be read much, and it would be too expensive to bind a 1500-page book on tissue-thin paper in a durable fashion. Add to that the emotional impact of messing up someone’s dearly beloved family heirloom, and you can see why I’m just not keen.

(Having said that, I did do a repair on a colleague’s reading Bible, but on the explicit understanding that it might be ugly as long as it preserved the life of the book. He just didn’t want to recopy years of marginal notes if he could avoid it.)

2. The Left Hand of Darkness

My parents read me some interesting books when I was a kid. Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel was one of them. It’s from the 1960’s and 1970’s trend toward intellectual and philisophical science fiction, and is (in my opinion) the best of the breed. As a meditation on gender, alienation, friendship, and politics, it’s always got something to say to me, after over twenty years of rereading. Having a strong plot and good characterisation is a bonus. Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, one of the two main characters, was probably the first literary figure I ever really loved.

Many people don’t like the book, particularly ones more rooted in the action and war trends more popular in science fiction now. Takes all kinds, I guess.

I’ve never bound the book, but if I did, I think I would design a binding showing a night time snow-bound landscape (it takes place on a world gripped by an ice age). The shapes of the land would echo the double curve of a yin-yang symbol, which is an important image in one scene of the book.

The book is also the source of one of my favourite recipies for dealing with problems: When action grows unprofitable, gather information. When information grows uprofitable, sleep.

3. The Secret History

Donna Tartt’s first novel describes a Californian Classics student who travels to an East Coast university, where he becomes caught up in the activities of a close-knit clique. Since those activities include a recreation of a Greek bacchanal, which culminates in a murder, his social life gets a bit complicated.

Tartt knows her Classics, and her Classicists. Many of the fine touches of the book ring very true, from the students’ spurious pedanticism to their use of fountain pens. The characters have clearly been changed by their knowledge of Classical languages, as I was deeply changed by the study of Latin and Greek. And the author herself shows signs of those same changes, in that the book’s plot works equally well in the ancient Greek cosmology as it does in the modern one.

I haven’t bound this book either, nor thought deeply about how I would do so.

4. The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin

This was a gift from my friend James, the first Christmas that I knew him. We were both twenty at the time, and the poet’s angst and faintly defeatest style suited us. He is the master of taking away almost all that he gives the reader, with lines like this from An Arundel Tomb

…the stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love

Another example of what I mean is from Talking in Bed:

At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

Although I’ve grown up since then, some of what Larkin says still works for me. His poem The Importance of Elsewhere is one of my two favourite mediations on being an expatriate. And I often reread No Road, usually as a counterweight to Robert Frost’s Mending Wall.

5. The Craft of Bookbinding

This book, by Manly Banister, was the bookbinding book that got me into the craft. It was one of two that Martin gave me one Christmas, and it was the one that convinced me that an amateur with woodworking skills could bind books and make bindery equipment. It also showed the difficult parts of binding, unlike many beginning books, which never get past the “learn this in half a day” level of techniques.

It was only later that I discovered that Manly Banister was a pulp science fiction author and fanzine editor.

5. Tag five people and have them do this on their blog

I’m not comfortable doing this, because it feels like placing an obligation on others. I’ll tag one person: Mark, we’ve already discussed this. Can you put a link in the comments section when you’ve done it?

If any of my other readers (whoever you are) feel like doing it too, again, put a link in the comments.

Finit

Edinburgh, a love letter

The Gum Fence, Episode 2

3 Comments

In my last blog entry on the Gum Fence, I didn’t mention my employer’s fence-painting program. Even while I was photographing lumps of chewing gum on top of every spike at the back end of the property, painters were priming (grey) and painting (black) the fences round the front doors.

I wasn’t clear on the ownership of the land, so I didn’t know whether the painting program was going to reach all the way to the gum fence. I wondered, when I did think about the possibility of the workmen getting to that section, what they would make of it. What would they think of the thankless task of picking all those bits of gum off of the spikes?

Well, the priming effort reached the gum section a few weeks ago. The weather was windy, cold and snowy until just recently, so I didn’t particularly rush to investigate their progress. It’s only now, with the sun out and the temperatures up, that I’ve gone to check. Quite frankly, I hope our property people do so too, because it’s not impressive.

Fact one: the rails are primed but not painted, and have been for over a fortnight. This is a drastic change from the speed at which they did the railings at the front of the building, where there was a 3-day turnaround from ugly to painted.

Fact two: they haven’t removed the gum. They’ve just painted the primer on over it.

Taken 2 March 2005

Really – who paints over a lump of chewing gum? Who primes 300 lumps of chewing gum? Surely if you want the paint to stick (which is why you prime) you should remove any extraneous substances?

Taken 2 March 2005

On the plus side, if they ever finish painting, the black enamel will preserve the gum for the edification of future generations.

Edinburgh, a love letter

The Gum Fence

5 Comments

Someone has stuck a piece of chewing gum on top of each spike on a fence near my office.

The fence runs along Fettes Row, separating the road from the slope down to my employer’s car park (or, more properly, the piece of waste ground on which my employer permits its employees to park their cars; it’s a tax distinction). The pavement here is narrow and uneven, made up of old cobblestones, imperfectly pointed. Shrubs grow through the railings, and cars park close beside, making it an awkward side of the road to walk on.

The chewing gum starts beside a long-disused gate. Taken 12 January 2005

Whoever is doing it missed a spike, buried deep in the ivy. Taken 12 January 2005

They put dabs of gum on the stubs of broken-off spikes, too. Taken 12 January 2005

Even when the uprights were broken off quite low down. Taken 12 January 2005

The gum continues over 17 fence divisions. Each fence division has 20 spikes, so even allowing for the 5% or so spikes that are missing altogether, someone has put over 320 tiny dabs of chewing gum on pointy bits of iron. Assuming that each dab represents a third of a stick of gum, someone has chewed over a hundred of them before methodically sticking a piece on each spike.

It makes me wonder. How long did this take? Did they walk by, one day at a time, sticking dabs of gum on spikes? When did they stop, and why?
(Have they stopped, or will I find two or three extra spikes covered the next time I walk that way?) Do they now have such well-exercised jaw muscles that they can bite through a walnut?

And, most importantly, Why?

Family

Almost One

Fiona turns one in 2 1/2 weeks. As always, being a parent, I feel two mutually exclusive things. On the one hand, it seems just yesterday that I was sitting at this same table, doing a jigsaw puzzle, when the first contractions started. On the other, I can’t imagine life without her.

That second thought – the inability to even contemplate a life that didn’t include her – is a particularly poigniant one these days, as we watch the families torn apart by the tsunami try to find their loved ones and, too often, discover that those loved ones are dead. What parent doesn’t picture themselves on the beach with their children, with the wave coming, wondering how to save their precious lives? Who can’t empathise with the survivors afterward, wondering where the family members they lost in the maelstrom will turn up? And for the locals, with no safe home to go to to deal with their grief, things are even harder.

So, since Fiona is too young to notice whether she gets a present at all, Martin and I would like to ask her friends and family to give her small gifts this birthday. She’d enjoy a rattle made from a box and some split peas and taped shut as much as she would some Super Magic Whizz-O Gadget with bright sparkly lights. So give her a small toy and a big hug, and give the money to the tsunami victims this year. She’ll never notice the difference, because the hug is what really matters.

And she has lots more birthdays to come, where we can all splash out on gifts for her. Would that the families of the tsunami victims had the same.

Thank you.

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Window Tax

I work in Edinburgh’s New Town (it’s relatively new, dating only from the late 1700’s. In comparison to the Old Town, which has buildings from the 1400’s, it’s new.). And the beautiful old Georgian buildings have an interesting feature: many of their windows are blocked.

This is because of progressive taxation. The Window Tax, which was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1696, was levied on homeowners in proportion to the number of windows in their houses. A common tax avoidance scheme was to block off a window so that one didn’t have to pay. Some homeowners even painted the blocked-off sections black, with white lines to represent the mullions.

Building with plain blocked-off windows, at the intersection of Dundas Street and Eyre Place. Taken 10 January 2005.

This building’s main windows are blocked off with plain stone, but someone went to the trouble to paint the one over the front door black. Why do one and not the other? I walk by it every day – it’s cattercorner from my office – and I’ve always wondered. Taken 10 January 2005.

Which windows are real and which are fake? The ones with the curtains are genuine windows, of course, but so are many of the others. In fact, only the bottom left window is blocked off and painted. But a casual glance on a sunny day sees no difference. Taken 10 January 2005.

In 1851, the Window Tax was abolished in favor of a flatter taxation system, which allowed the government to extract a greater proportion of its income from the growing middle class. But many of the owners of houses with blocked-up windows must not have wanted to go to the inconvenience and expense of unblocking them. And now, of course, most of the buildings are subject to conservation laws that determine how much they can be changed.

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Phone Pix

3 Comments

Every workday, I try to walk part of the way home. When the wind is gale-force or the sleet is dripping down my neck, I don’t do so well at it. But the rest of the time, the walk is a good wind-down after work, a chance to adjust to my home life, and an opportunity to immerse myself in a city I love.

Walking through the city has made me want to photograph it. And I have been, with my camera phone. But the pictures have been sitting there, stuck on the phone, until I got it together to get the cable and software together to be able to download them.

So here are a couple from December walks home. If I can get it together, I’ll start a regular column on what I see as I walk, with photos. The picture quality isn’t anything to shout about, but phone shots are better than none at all, which is what I would take if I had to bring a digital camera with me all the time. (I can barely keep track of my keys, some days.)

All of the trees in Edinhurgh’s main park, Princes Street Gardens, are lit up during the holiday season. But instead of going around the trees, the lights go along the trunk and branches. Taken 8 December 2004.

Smily found in chalk on the side of a burnt-out Bank of Scotland building opposite the Museum of Scotland. Connected to the arson attack that destroyed the branch? Probably not. Good use of symbols? Yes. Meaning? Unknown. Taken 8 December 2004.

Politics

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

9 Comments

Martin and I have been married for 11 years and some months, most of our adult lives. Like any couple, we have moments of severe dissonance, when we look at one another and see strangers, or even enemies. Sometimes it’s a decision one of us makes, sometimes it’s disciplining the kids, sometimes it’s the way money is spent or time allocated. It can affect our relationship with the outside world, or be a purely internal disagreement.

It’s always painful.

The one of us observing, and reacting to, the word or deed in question may feel excluded, overridden, or disenfranchised. The consequences of a wrong choice may seem overwhelming and disastrous. The agent, meanwhile, will feel betrayed and defensive at having a good faith decision questioned.

Resolving these disagreements, finding common ground, and dealing with the risk of error are some of the most difficult tasks in any partnership. It’s hard to listen to the objections of the overridden spouse; it’s even harder to live with what seems to be a wrong choice by your partner. And maintaining the discipline to avoid recriminations or smugness (depending on how the controversial decision comes out) is yet another perennial task. Martin and I rarely achieve perfection in all these areas; we usually reach adequacy.

A small proportion of married people rarely face the challenge, either because they don’t disagree or because they rigidly delegate responsibility. But for the vast majority of married couples, this is the source of such trouble, such strife and such grief, that they lose, for a time, the joy of their union and shared purpose Some can’t overcome the alienation and start to see their partner as an opponent. That, of course, is the road to divorce court.

We who stay married endure these trials because we are richer with one another than alone, even when we are at odds. We work at marriage because we made a commitment, and because we share so much that cannot ever truly be separated. And when the quarrel ends, we savour the sweets of our union all the more because they are earned, not given, and because they are the greater for it.

Does all that make sense?

Right. Now read Republicans and Democrats in there instead of a married couple. The problems that plague my country in the aftermath of the election are the same as any couple in trouble: miscommunication, mistrust, and the sneaking suspicion that the other party isn’t striving for the greater good. But even more than a marriage, a nation is all but indissoluble. We are one land and must learn to live together. The same principles of compromise, communication and determination that make a marriage work are needed to make the nation work.

Now go to it, guys.

Politics

Why?

2 Comments

Being an American abroad can be difficult sometimes. There’s so much to defend, to explain, to demystify. Now is certainly one of those times; I spent a lot of yesterday failing in my earnest desire to discuss anything but the election.

My British colleagues asked, “Why?”

“Because,” I replied, “They don’t see the news you see.”

The stories that don’t make Fox, or Clear Channel, or the Murdoch press: the death of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the erosion of the case for war, the French as a rational nation with a reasoned viewpoint. Bush the bumbler, Cheney the crook, Rumsfeld the hatchet man. Alert statuses changing from puce to chartreuse to teal whenever there’s an awkward story to bury. Historical analyses of how Saddam Hussein came to power and was kept there; the deaths of Palestinians as well as Israelis; a positive view of Democrats.

“But, but, but, why? I don’t understand.”

“Because you don’t see the news they see.”

I don’t see this news either, but I can make some guesses: Bush the charming, folksy man verses Kerry the cold, stiff intellectual. A judge who feels his allegiance to Christ supersedes his obligation to separate church and state. Gays lining up to marry in coastal states, intercut with deliberately shocking images of Gay Pride parades. World War 2 documentaries, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Reagan days. The 700 Club and Christian radio.

People who voted for Bush were not by definition idiots, or insane, or evil, as many people on the Net have stated in their anger and disappointment. They voted as sombrely, with as much thought, commitment and dedication, as the rest of the electorate. But their priorities, their aspirations, and their worldview are different from that of my Scottish colleagues, so different that there’s almost no explaining it.

The lives they lead – or at least strive for – are classic Norman Rockwell. Small towns of good neighbors, where doors are not locked (or haven’t been within living memory), where children go safely to school and families to church, where people work hard and value honesty and faith above money and power. Marriages last, teenagers don’t get pregnant, no one has affairs or abortions, or suffers from domestic violence. There are no drugs, maybe not even alcohol. Summer vacations are spent at “the lake” (there always seems to be a lake); Christmas and Easter are religious holidays rather than just time off. When jobs are scarce and times are hard, everyone pulls together, and every funeral is followed by a succession of covered dishes. There are a lot of flags, and not just at the Fourth of July parade. Folks have no need to go to foreign places, because America is the best country in the world.

People may not live this way in real life, but a large proportion of Americans wish they did. I do, sometimes. And the Midwest, the farm states, are the custodians of this dream. They see themselves as the moral compass of the nation, the heart of the land. The coastal states are corrupted by their contact with foreign cultures, too much money, and too many intellectuals.

Kerry never spoke their language, though as a combat veteran he had an “in” that his East Coast lawyer image couldn’t ruin. But Bush and his colleagues talk the talk, however little they walk the walk. And the anti-foreigner, anti-intellectual message has been underlined for years by Republican-owned media that panders to its viewership’s biases. (Just as the New York media does, by the way, and the Californian, and the various flavors of British – a news channel that its viewers doesn’t like doesn’t survive.) A Midwestern voter could get up, switch off Fox News, listen to Clear Channel on the way to the polling station, and vote the way his pastor suggested (using copious Bible references), with a clear conscience. It all made sense; all the inputs hung together.

I don’t know how to change the Midwest, or whether it would be a good idea to try. I don’t think anyone has the right to but the Midwesterners themselves. Perhaps the Internet, with its wider spectrum of news available, will broaden views (though it’s equally possible that it will simply consolidate them around a few conservative websites). Perhaps, as with Clinton’s “The Economy, Stupid” message, some unifying problem will cause the heartland to vote for someone who is more palatable to the rest of the nation and the world.

I do know, however, that berating Bush supporters, calling them stupid, or ignoring their reasons for voting as they did will not get their votes in the future. Once the hurt has died down, I hope the rest of us can distinguish between the voters and their candidate. (Just as I distinguish between our soldiers, whom I respect, and the people who sent them to war, whom I criticize.) As an American expat, I may oppose any attempt to pare down our Constitutional rights, may cringe at what Bush says and does on the world stage, and may very well worry for the future he builds. But I’ll still be defending Bush voters to my British friends and colleagues.

E Pluribus Unum

Who can categorise everything?

Web Businesses: A Study in Contrasts

1 Comment

I have had two very differing experiences with Web businesses lately. One has left me seething with fury for almost five months. The other filled me with dread and Martin with foreboding, but came out beautifully.

The Good

As I’ve gained skill as a binder, I’ve decided to sell some of my work as well as giving it away (advt). Despite its negative connotations in some circles, I’m pretty much inseperable from the evilrooster identity as a bookbinder. So the obvious thing to do was to obtain the evilrooster.com domain name. I used to own it, several years ago, but never did much with it.

Now, I am – apart from a role player named Joe somewhere in the States who turns up on two or three sites – the only evilrooster on the Web. So I was not facing much competition for the name. But old domain names, no longer owned, don’t always vanish into the incohate pool of available URLs. If they are still linked somewhere on the web, then they are often bought, en bloc, by search engines and link farms, and redirected to the main search engine page. (It boosts a site’s Google rating to have multiple links into it.)

Evilrooster.com was such a site. It was owned by a search engine named Netster, on the strength of a link from my mother’s old site. That was discouraging. But the Netster site said that the company’s policy is “to transfer a domain name to any person or company that, in our reasonable opinion, has a legitimate claim to that domain name…We do not sell domain names”.

These are very important statements for Netster‘s sake, because the use of domains not immediately related to one’s business is a feature of cybersquatting. (The most famous example being whitehouse.com, which is a porn site – try whitehouse.gov for the seat of American government.) And the current body of decisions on cybersquatting makes it clear that buying a URL one is not entitled to with the intention of selling it to the proper owner at an inflated price is not on either.

(A related web offence, passing off is irrelevant to this discussion – they don’t bind books – but often gets mentioned in the same context as cybersquatting.)

But a policy is not the same as an action, and the new owners could very easily have put a maze of red tape in their policy on website transfers without breaking the rules. For instance, since I don’t have evilrooster trademarked, they could have denied that I am legally entitled to it. Or they could cut a deal with a registrar that includes a high price for domain name transfers, then recharge me their “costs” for handing over evilrooster.com. Neither would be illegal, and I would have fallen back on an alternative URL rather than get into a scrap about it.

Instead, they engaged in a very civil and helpful correspondence with me. In the absence of a trademark, they asked if I was using the identiy on my work. My rooster finishing tool came in handy then – it’s plainly visible on most of the bindings on my gallery page. So they agreed that I was entitled to the site. If I would get an account with their registrar, thy would initiate a transfer. I signed up with the registrar in question, and reviewed their pricing. Their transfer fee was not extortionate. Then I got an email from Netster, which I will quote verbatim.

Hello,

We have moved the requested domain(s) to your account. Please take care to manage it from there. While during this process we have incurred transfer, registration, and administrative costs, it is not our desire to seek reimbursement from you. Instead, we would appreciate any positive references you might make about our search engine, www.netster.com. We are sure that would be more valuable to us than any fee.

Thanks,
Administrator

That email made my day. When I get evilrooster.com redeveloped (watch this space for an announcement when it’s up, but don’t hold your breath. I do have a job and two small children, plus a lot of binding to finish before Christmas), I’ll be adding a link to Netster. Considering that they’re primarily a US-based site, I’m not likely to get a lot of use out of it, but maybe the link will be of use to them. I hope so; I want to encourage good Internet neighbours.

The Bad

I wish everyone was as good as these guys. I wish that an internet-based book vendor, whom I had paid, was as friendly, communicative and effective as Netster.

There’s a book on headband construction that I wanted. I have a photocopy of it, from when it was out of print and unobtainable. Oak Knoll Press (to whom I will not link lest I boost their page rank), the publishers, printed a new edition, and I wanted to buy it, to support the bookbinding publishing market and the authors who did the work.

So I went to the Oak Knoll site. First problem: it doesn’t work in Firefox (the mouse-over activated pull-down menus have some strange ideas about where the mouse pointer is), so I needed to use Internet Explorer. It’s a minor nuisance.

I ordered the book on June 17 and paid for it by credit card. Oak Knoll emailed me and told me it would be about 1 week for processing the order, then 5 weeks’ surface shipping. So I expected it in late July.

By early August, I was wondering where my book was. I emailed Oak Knoll, and got no reply. I emailed again, and finally got an answer that showed that my email was caught in their spam filter. Without wanting to tell a business how to run itself, I might suggest that a spam filter that traps your customers’ emails is probably not a good thing.

Apparently, Oak Knoll’s postal supplier lost a bunch of June shipments somewhere in Florida. Did they email their European customers to find out whether the shipped books had arrived? Of course not. Did they contact me and tell me when I’d be shipped a replacement? Don’t be silly.

So I waited a bit, then tried again. Again, no one answered my emails. I finally called them and got some attention at the cost of a transatlantic phone call. They said they’d send out another copy on September 17 by expedited delivery, and could I contact them when it arrived? No estimate of delivery time was given, so I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, well into October, I got peeved and sent them another email. I can’t say I was surprised that they didn’t reply. Only when I sent another email, threatening to post an account of the transaction on the book-arts listserv, did a woman named Jeanette write back. She complained that I was “SHOUTING” at her, and that she was tired of it. She also said that the book should have been inserted into the UK postal service 8 – 10 days after shipping; clearly it had gone astray. Again. Not that they were interested in checking when they could wait for me to complain.

By this time, I was heartily regretting ever having tried to buy the book, or support their business in any way. I finally emailed them to say forget it, I’d source it elsewhere (a UK bookbinding supplier whom I trust to deliver what I’ve paid for, Shepherd’s). Then, after no reply, I emailed them the same thing again, and got an answer. Apparently, without telling me or updating my online order sheet (which I checked after logging onto IE, sigh), they’d already sent a third copy out.

They have since refunded my money, which they held for the 4 1/2 months that they fumbled delivery and failed at customer service. Murphy’s law says that the third copy of the book will arrive, at which point I will either contact them and pay again, or refuse delivery and notify them that it is on its way back to them. One thing is certain, though:

I will never buy anything from, or recommend that anyone buy from, Oak Knoll Books.

As publishers of bookbinding books, they will get some of my money from resellers, but I won’t deal with them directly again. To be clear: I accept that they can’t help it if their delivery company lets them down. But it’s when a problem occurs that a company gets the chance to show its competitive advantage. Oak Knoll’s policy of never answering customer emails the first time and without threats, much less actually communicating with them when they know things have gone wrong, does not shine.

a blog by Abi Sutherland