Biersdorfer, who writes a tech column for the New York Times, also has written books on the iPod and the iPod Shuffle. She knows her way around Apple and clearly likes its products. Her 300-page book is chockfull of tips on how to incorporate applications into the iPad, the joys of reading on the iPad (if you buy one now, you can enjoy various newspapers for free, newspapers that are likely to charge for their content very shortly).

I was particularly interested in the section on iBooks, Apple’s iPad-exclusive book downloading software. I’ve seen an iBook and, while I now own a first-generation Kindle, I suspect I’ll offload that in favor of an iPad soon; I just have to decide whether to buy a Wi-Fi iPad (a mere $499) or the 3G model, which requires a plan and costs $629 up front. While Biersdorfer rightfully celebrates the look of a book on an iPad, she wrongfully denigrates traditional books: “Of course, reading an iBook isn’t the same as cracking open the spine of a leather-bound volume and relaxing in an English club chair with a snifter of brandy by the fire,” she writes on page 130. “But really—who reads books that way anymore (except for the impossibly wealthy and characters on Masterpiece Mystery)? Aside from visiting a bookstore or library, reading books in the 21st century can involve anything from squinting through Boswell’s Life of Johnson on a mobile phone to gobbling down the latest Danielle Steel romantic epic on the oversized Kindle DX e-reader.”

Biersdorfer convinces us in her exhaustive guide to the iPad how cool it is, but she should have parked the snark in her driveway. Those of us who still read books one has to hold—those quaint, weighty, tactile print memorabilia—like them at least as much as the hottest new Apple product.

What’s great about her first world credit as Lylah Rose Wolff is she hit it age 15. I didn’t go global until the ‘80s, when I was in my late 30s and writing for Goldmine, a record collectors’ magazine. My wife, the amazing multimedia artist Karen Sandstrom, hit the world in 1995 with a preview of the art that would go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. That ran in Art and Antiques.

Lylah’s way ahead of the curve. A whiz at Photoshop, she’s wired for contemporary media. She has a Nikon, she’s beginning to turn her bedroom into a studio, and she’s creative and ready to learn. All she has to do is keep on keeping on with her camera, get over any squeamishness that stands in the way of getting a powerful picture (much is distasteful to my very girly girl) and press her case. It’s a powerful one.

I’ll be in Brussels, Barcelona, Toulon, Marseille, Chantilly and Munich. More train than plane is in the plans; it’ll be interesting to see how Europe handles its travel in the shadow of the volcano.

It’s been a while since I wrote. One of the highlights of the past few weeks was Karen and I going to dinner with Bob Hoover, books editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; his wife, Kathleen; our friends Ron Antonucci and Sarah Willis; and the star of the event, Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate of the United States.

Dinner with the Poet Laureate of the United States was something to chew on.

Karen and I went to the film festival for the first time in it must be 10 years last week, and didn’t hit a clunker. Here’s what we saw: “The Ape” (Swedish); “House of Branching Love” (Finnish); “A Matter of Size” (Israeli); “Fire in the Heartland” (U.S.); “Desert of Forbidden Art” (U.S.); “Marwencol” (U.S.) Each time we went downtown was more fun. The festival was packed, the standby lines long. Here’s a brief rundown of the flicks:

—“The Ape”: Intellectually fascinating study of paranoia and trauma that never resolved, remaining ambiguous and disturbing. The point of view was riveting.

—“House”: Bawdy, funny sex comedy about tribulations and rewards of marriage. Entertaining as hell and ultimately uplifting. The actor who played Wolfi could be a major star.

—“Fire”: About the May 4, 1970 National Guard shootings at Kent State. Well-documented and profoundly sad, it evoked the politics of the ‘60s with minimum preachiness and suggested there still are stories to uncover about that seminal incident.

—“Matter”: Emotionally my favorite flick, it’s a comedy about four giant misfits in a small Israeli village who channel their creativity into becoming sumo wrestlers. It’s a whole new way of seeing fat, too. A blast.

—“Desert”: A documentary about suppressed Soviet-era Modernist art in a museum in Uzbekistan. Great art, amazing story.

—“Marwencol”: From rural, upstate New York comes this documentary about a guy beaten nearly senseless whose “recovery” consists of creating a World War II-inspired community in his backyard, populated by dolls. The most provocative movie I saw, it makes you rethink your notions of art and “wellness.”

Saturday night, I saw John Zorn’s Masada Sextet at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Saxophonist Zorn, who channels what he calls Radical Jewish Culture, and his five co-conspirators played only a little over an hour, but how and what they played! Great, often romantic music with a Sephardic, Spanish coloration; even one highly abstract piece was a kick, because Zorn and Co. so enjoy each other and their shared discipline.

The film festival and Zorn show were breaths of fresh air in a community that often feels ingrown. Seeing crowds downtown was invigorating. Hearing Zorn’s music was similarly mind-expanding. Cleveland felt like an open city this past week. Maybe it’s spring rearing its desired head.

Today I got Martin Benjamin’s “Atomic Age” in the mail. I worked with Marty in Albany in the ‘70s and ‘80s at rock and roll shows, and he’s the best photographer I’ve ever worked with (dig into his website and you’ll find a picture of me—with more hair and way bigger glasses). His book—infrared photos of his wife; shots from irradiated sites; glimpses of remote cultures; startling closeups of what look like perfect strangers—is an event. Like words, but in different ways, images can move and shape and change the world. Marty’s certainly do.

T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon (Knopf)
Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone (Melville House)
Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (Knopf)
Peter Kuper, Diario de Oaxaca (PM Press)
David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)
Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom, Box 21 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Ken Auletta, Googled (Penguin)
Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs (Knopf)
Robert Goolrick, A Reliable Wife (Algonquin)
Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll (Oxford University Press)
Andre Agassi, Open (Knopf)
Steve Knopper, Appetite for Self-Destruction (Free Press)

Didn’t sell a single copy, but I saw a lot of friends and enjoyed partaking in an event designed to push local writing, an ever more endangered species. The event also gave me an opportunity to check out Loganberry Books, a fabulous place I’m sure to revisit. Not only is the place cavernous, it offers a lot of used books (including rare first editions), the giant fiction room I show here, even a bindery.

It’s great to see a local concern thriving amidst dire economic news like the shriveling of the Telarc record label and the downsizing of Borders. I don’t know how Loganberry is doing, but its mix of ambience, inventory and locale is inspiring. It reminds me of the ‘60s in Cambridge, Mass., when I used to scour bookstores around Harvard University. Harvard Bookstore remains the best I’ve ever seen, but I also recall Pangloss and even Schoenhof’s, bookstores long gone.

Being in Loganberry got the intellectual juices going in a way chain stores don’t. I’m not sure why, but I’m happy about it.

For now, the website remains, offering readers a look at the kinds of articles the magazine specialized in: stories about various media, my City Therapy column, editor Sarah Sphar’s welcome to summer, a voluminous, mouth-watering gourmet guide by associate editor Ivan Sheehan. It’s good reading.

I hope a publisher, former or new, resurrects Live and is willing to be patient and gamble on monetizing a medium that seems quaint but still is necessary: the leisurely, thoughtful read. The best example of that is The New Yorker, a weekly marvel that never ceases to astonish.

But every locale of any size needs such a publication. To me, Live always represented an opportunity to trumpet and safeguard and interpret what is best about Cleveland’s culture. I hope I don’t miss it too long.