Once again, it is rumoured that newspapers will soon be asking readers to pay for access to online versions of their publications and it will start with the powerful New York Times. Their previous effort resulted in a much lower readership and not much money so they gave up. With the advent of the Kindle, the Ipad and other digital devices specifically designed to make available electronically current print medium, I believe the news industry is hoping for a renewal and a badly needed shot of energy to bring readers back from wherever it is they have disappeared.

Yesterday, when I clicked on my bookmark for the National Post, instead of getting the day’s front page as usual, the page I received outlined subscription choices for both the print version and the digital version and some of online tools to enhance my reading of the paper. I don’t know if it was telling me of things to come or just reminding me of what is already in place I may be unaware of. The subscription for a year was $110 and if I wanted to view just one edition, I could pay $1.

We do live in a world that runs on money and paying for a newspaper pre-Internet was never really an issue. How things have changed with the availability and abundance of news sources online now! For me and for those who like to hunt down multiple sources over the day to try to find some balance in what is being reported, this could mean our daily forays will come to an end and it will be either make a choice of which source or sources you are willing to pay for or rely on other means of getting the all important worldly view. From most, paying for all the sources viewed would be unreasonable if not impossible. I can’t help but think this cannot be a good thing in this era of monopolies and corporate domination. Not many corporations can claim truth and integrity in what they do, let alone what information they chose to give us. I may have to quit news cold turkey and actually get a better grip on that life outside the confines of the Internet.

I think it was a report I heard last Sunday on American Public Radio (but I can’t be sure, as it was about that time I was sucking up clumps of cat hair — in fact, reams of cat hair — from under the keyboard of my computer with my prehistoric but faithful Filter Queen vacuum) that I caught bits about a book festival in Jaipur, the pink city in India, and heard Alexander McCall Smith talking about his part in the festival. But the best and most tantalizing portion of the report was the interviewer talking to some Indian high school girls who were hunting down authors for autographs. Imagine, high school girls hunting down writers for autographs! Doesn’t that make your head spin just a little?

The interviewer proceeded to ask some of the students who they like to read. The responses were like a list of Booker winners and the very best of writing today. The authors who were part of the 2010 Jaipur Literature Festival were not restricted to Indian and Asian authors; the list was long and included the likes of Tina Brown, Booker winner Anne Enright, one of my favourite writers, Louis De Bernieres, and Tony Wheeler, the intrepid traveller who wrote the first of the Lonely Planet series.

I mentioned hearing about the festival from a friend who has spent a lot of time in India; she sent me this link to the festival (jaipurliteraturefestival.org), which will let you listen to authors and watch all the highlights of each day’s events with wonderful Indian music thrown in as a real bonus. You can go day by day or you can pick and choose which of the events you would like to be part of. Be careful: It is just a little too easy to become obsessive about the website. Even the list of attending speakers will open some doors for you as the accomplishments are varied and vast and guaranteed to make you want to read their work and listen to more of the festival. This is the Internet at its very best.

Just a final word on a couple of new books in the library I know some of you might want to reserve. We have a new James Burdett mystery in and I have taken full advantage of my role as librarian and grabbed it while it was still hot from being processed. I want to make sure it is as good as its predecessors, Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo and Bangkok Haunts. This one is called The Godfather of Katmandu. The other book I am halfway through is called Ghosts and Lightening by Trevor Byrne, a young Irish writer. This is his first book and I predict he will make the Jaipur festival in the next few years. If you have read Trainspotting by Scotland’s Irvine Welsh or even James Kelman’s How Late it was, How Late, you will be struck by the same deftness and skill the Irish author can take you into lives completely different than yours, and a world you are quite happy not be part of. Like Irvine and Kelman, Byrne writes the language the characters speak and it takes a page or two to find the rhythm, but once you do, you fly through the pages.

Ann Day is the chief librarian at the Creston and District Public Library.

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