Jessa Crispen advises a reader on living alone. Meanwhile, I am slightly dismayed over the fact that my cherished, ideal living situation is once again something that people do not embrace, but instead “deal with.” I clearly don’t know how to be a human being.
Tag Archives: books
Undeservedly Obscure
PC Hodgell is the author of one of my favorite fantasy series. From her LiveJournal: “I’ve just learned of my first panel at a sf&f convention, Mediawestcon and, wouldn’t you know it, the topic is ‘The Kencyrath: Why Doesn’t Anyone Know about This Series?’”
It kinda broke my heart to read that. As a fan, I certainly wish more people knew about her work, but I’m at a loss as to how one broadens the audience for an existing book franchise.
I only stumbled into it myself, when a high school friend of mine gave me a copy of the second book in the series, but after that I was hooked. I’ve re-read the first two books recently, and they still hold up.
Maybe I’ll actually review them, one day, but if you feel like taking a chance on a book based on some Internet stranger’s say-so, why not give them a try? The first two books are collected in a one-volume mass market paperback, published by Baen. It deserves a look.
“The Stranger” On A Train
Over at the Hairpin, they’ve got a link to a site that collects pictures of people reading on the NY subway. Man, New Yorkers really like their big-ass books!
Now, I may live in Northern California, but I, too, take a train to work, at least part of the way. Here, it seems like everybody just plays with their phones. I read books on mine; it’s just easier that way. It was different, back in the day. I actually got through Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle over the course of several million train rides. More importantly though, I used to stand on the books so that my nose would not be at the armpit-level of my more averagely heigh-ed fellow passengers.
That’s not to say there aren’t a few paper-book holdouts. Why, just the other day I encountered my first Fifty Shades of Grey reader on the train. I thought her rather brave–not because it was a mere two days after that infamous Saturday Night Live sketch, but because the thing looked quite unwieldy.
Difficult to read with one hand, anyway.
Also, Why Do They Keep Calling Him A “Rocker?”
Apparently, Phil Collins (yes, that Phil Collins) remembers the ever-loving hell out of the Alamo. I’ve no problem with him being an expert in some academic discipline, or some seemingly non-characteristic area of specialization, but even with the explanation provided in the New Yorker article, this one still kind of baffles me.
China Is Big
Hey, it looks like they name-checked China Miéville over at Penny Arcade. That means he’s famous now!
Yet More Literary Shame
We’ve seen a few instances of people coming clean with their feelings of shame regarding the books that they’ve read, so I suppose it makes for a nice change of pace to consider the shame that some feel over the books that they haven’t managed to crack.
It should be noted, however, that embarrassment over failing to read a book is actually a pretty rare thing; the more common response to a lack of literary experience seems to be a perverse sense of pride, arising from widespread scorn for books in general, you nerds.
Throners
“… Game of Thrones is about the heroism of fighting fate and the social order.” Well, I suppose that’s part of it. On the other hand, from what I’ve read of the books, it also might be about an author’s burning desire to put his characters through the world’s most complicated meat grinder.
The TV show is different achievement altogether. It represents, at long last, the recognition of soft core pornography as a valued cultural product. I mean finally. I’ve been hearing all about how permissive and perverse our society is for thirty years now–a complaint that actual society hadn’t really lived up to, until now. So, so heroic.
Hey, maybe that out of context quote is right after all!
RIP Maurice Sendak
The Millions : Maurice Sendak Dies. Yet more sad news.
UPDATE: The A.V. Club has an in-depth remembrance posted. (How do they write these things so fast?)
They Say The Heart Of Monoculture’s Still Beating
Do you remember any part of the past fifteen years? If so, you might recall somebody mentioning that we now live in a highly fractured entertainment environment. The prevailing notion was that our popular culture, once a vast monolith of consolidated culture comprised of three television networks and single-screen movie theaters, had begun to slowly shatter into a million billion niches, each capable of holding only a dozen or so highly specialized fanatics at a time. We were all supposed to become so engrossed in our own peculiar, esoteric interests, that we would eventually lose the ability to talk to one another, since we no longer shared any common entertainment. Thanks a lot, Internet!
Or… maybe not?
What if I described for you a man who was incapable of naming more than one title in the Hunger Games series? A man who isn’t entirely sure what a hufflepuff is. Who hasn’t been to a movie theater since, oh, I don’t know, whenever it was that Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released. A guy who can’t afford the really good cable package that everyone else seems to have, and therefore is beginning to suspect that A Game Of Thrones is some sort of soft-core “Skinemax” series that a bunch of hipsters have ironically decided to take seriously, but he can’t actually prove it. (And also believes–but also cannot prove–that George RR Martin manages to type up his novels despite the full-on erection that must constantly be getting in his way.) A man who thinks Girls is one third of a really old Motley Crue album.
Why, I do believe you’d say this hypothetical man (ahem, yes) is out of touch. Which raises the question: out of touch from what?
A-ha, MONOCULTURE! It was you all along!
Er… that’s not quite right is it?
Because it isn’t just mass culture–it’s also the fractured, fractal culture that was there all along. There’s been fanzines and samizdat and specialist mailing lists, and midnight movies, and underground booksellers, and subculture since the dawn of mass culture. It’s just been hidin’ sorta. The Internet made it easier to find, is all–but mass culture is still alive and kicking! Look how weird it feels when you talk to someone who doesn’t know much about it.
Niche interests didn’t–and probably won’t–kill our shared enjoyment of big, mass-market entertainment. Because you can have both! You can do obscure things and popular things at once! You do not need to live two lives to do those things! I mean, do you have any idea how much money the Hunger Games made? Do you really believe that, out of all the people who went to see that movie, there isn’t at least one person in that group who doesn’t collect handmade erotic thimbles, just to pick a hobby at random? Of course there is! Of course!
I’m no sociologist. And I know that human culture is varied and changes over time. But it seems like there will always be a few big things, and a whole lot of little things, to be interested in. Or, at the very least, we’re probably going to be stuck with that arrangement for rather a long while yet. I mean… probably. I don’t know. I’m pretty obscure myself, after all.
More Shame-Based Literary Notes
What Are Your Dirty Little Reading Secrets? I’m starting to think that there is more shame and embarrassment surrounding literary reading than is entirely healthy.
I’m not really the sort of person who enjoys publishing personal revelations about myself, but we live in a confessional age, so why not bow to peer pressure this once? I will therefore grudgingly admit that I did not read a single book between the ages of 11 and 15 without first skimming through it to look for any potential naughty parts it might contain. What can I say? There was no Internet back then.
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