I didn’t quite know what to expect when I opened Joan Francuz’s (class of 2016) book, Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon (1920 House Press, 2018). It seemed like it might be a good choice to review for International Literacy Day, which is today, with this year’s theme being “promoting literacy in the digital era.” When I ordered it, I wondered if it might be a history of writers or maybe a history of writing tools. 

I was right and wrong on both counts. As the blurb on the back of the book says, “Trace the history of our digital age through the words of the people who described things—the scribes and technical writers of their time,” an appropriate description for what turns out to be “a work memoir of someone who survived the gig economy by working as a scribe.” 

Neither the title nor the blurb really do the book justice. It’s actually a short history of the world, at least since the first writing on stone tablets, through the lens of a person who spent most of her career as a technical writer—a career I considered 30 years ago when I was casting about for a writing gig that would be steadier and pay better than freelance journalism. (Because I’m technologically challenged, I turned to editing as a better option for me—still not great pay, but better.)

During the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Nonfiction Writing, one thing we learned is that what you exclude from a book is just as important as what you include. This is important for me because I love research, and I try to include every bit of information I find. It doesn’t make for a great narrative arc. 

If I found it challenging to limit the amount of information I included in my book about concussion, a field in which research has exploded over the last two to three decades, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Francuz to pick the pertinent bits out of 6,000 years of history to shape an arc in 155 pages. It’s mind boggling.

Not only has she succeeded, but she’s done so with dry wit:

In the hierarchy that runs up from data to information to knowledge and wisdom, data is something simple like “8”; information is the number of people invited to dinner; knowledge is making the dessert the day before the party; and wisdom is not discussing a spouse’s online shopping habits just before the guests arrive. 

While the ancients seemed to spend their time on the higher order questions of wisdom and knowledge, and sought answers to questions like what made for a good life, the scientists of the Enlightenment discovered knowledge and information about our physical world. In our modern age, we seem to have moved further down to the data and information end of the hierarchy. 

Think of a selfie that arrives on your device. Why is your friend standing in front of that building? Is this a reminder that you had plans for dinner—and you’re late? Is it a holiday photo? Are you meant to comment on their new hair or clothing? Was the photo sent to you by mistake? Is that really your friend in the photo? 

This is a modern example of data without information. 

This is an unexpected little gem of a book, full of fascinating facts gleaned from the books in a seven-page bibliography—enough to spawn a whole new version of Trivial Pursuit—with a 16-page chapter of Notes on Sources that reads like a mini-book of its own. Francuz’s story told with intelligence and humour by a woman of roughly my own age—born in the fifties, molded in the seventies, and seasoned by 40 years of working in the “gig economy” long before that term was coined.  

Even more importantly, the back-of-the-book blurb closes on a note I can truly relate to: “if you have a garden and a library, you have everything that you need.

Read my reviews of other books from the prolific class of 2016:

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—a Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton.

Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, by Moira Dann.

A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time, by Mary Jane Grant. Review coming soon.

Sit Still and Prosper: How a Former Money Manager Discovered the Path to Investing with Greater Clarity, Calmness, and Confidence by Stephanie Griffiths. Review coming soon.

Winter in the City of Light: A Search for Self in Retirement, by Sue Harper.

Nowhere to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid.

F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, by Lauren McKeon.

The Fruitful City: Building Communities Around Nature’s Bounty, by Helena Moncrieff.

A Distorted Revolution: How Eric’s Trip Changed Music, Moncton and Me, by Jason Murray. Review coming soon.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth about Breast Cancer Screening, by Renee Pellerin.

Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, by Andrew Reeves.

The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons, by Suzanne Stewart.