tychoish, now without a net

Haven’t done a reading update in a while. But I’ve been reading. This weeks, reading update is very technologically involved. Keeping track of how much I’m reading is part of my New Years resolution (and reading more by-proxy) so this post falls into that vein.

I read John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War in ebook last week. I’m not typically a Scalzi fanboy, and I think I became fully aware of him for the first time in the last year, as a result of listening to something PNH said somewhere. Sorry for the vague details. I really enjoyed the book, in any case, and I’ll probably read the next few soon. I’ve always been sort of ambivalent about Scalzi’s online persona, not quite sure why; the fiction is pretty damn good.

I’ve also opened, but not really gotten into Tobias Buckell’s Crystal Rain, soon.

More interestingly, I think, I’ve been working through a backlog of Strange Horizon’s stories that I bookmarked a while ago on my iPod Touch (part of my recent computer upgrade) which is great for reading whilst eating or whatever. I really look forward to the next release of the software update in a few weeks, offline readers, better syncing and what not seems like a pretty good deal.

Anyway, I’m reading a series of short stories about fantastic cities by Benjamin Rosenbaum, whose work I’m quite fond of. These stories, are quite short–I’d be inclined to call them flash fiction–and they remind me of a more serious Alien’s You Will Meet. They’re both second person, they’re both short, they’re both cataloging an imaginary and an open-ended collection of objects. I’m on the fourth, I think, and I have to say that I really like the way that it melds the sort of alternate history/divided united states genre with a series of stories that at least appears to catalogue something that doesn’t exist–and thus explores a sense of wonder in the utterly banal. I had a roommate (Hi H.! I hope I described that well enough!) who was interested in something that, felt from where I was sitting pretty similar. And cool.

What are you reading?

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tagged: reading

Every time–it seems–that someone suggests or comments on the future of the digital text (ebooks), someone always says one of the two following things:

1. People don’t like to read words off of screens, the quality/experience is bad and in truth people would prefer to read words off of paper.

2. The codex is–by design and use–an important carrier of information that can’t be replaced by digital technology.

Despite the apparent similarity, I think one of these things (and only one) is true: the second. Lets explore.

For starters, if you really think about it, we all read hundreds of thousands of words off of screens every year (and in some cases, every month or every week). We don’t mind reading off of screens, and particularly with anti-aliasing and flat screens, in many cases it’s easier to read off of screens because readers have more control over the display of text, and yet people don’t really read books off of screens.

The standing argument as to why monographs and novels have never found success, is that there are two many distracting things you can be doing on the computer. Why read a book when you can check your email for the 20th time this hour? This is, I think, why the codex is probably here to stay. And because giving books a physicality is commercially worthwhile, and because we respond to the form.

Having said that, I read a book off of my laptop screen this past weekend, and I have to say that I rather enjoyed the experience. So here are some thoughts on the experience:

The book came to me in PDF format, from a publisher. So the “pages” looked like conventional book pages. There were page numbers and so I was able to locate the text in space on a page, very much like I would a “regular book.” This spatial experience is often forgotten in digital texts, and I think that layer of information helps our minds make sense of longer texts. Also, because I knew the page numbers of the individual pages, and the total number of pages in the document, I was able to calculate my progress, again, helpful in assimilating the data in the text file.

I could read the words comfortably on the screen while viewing the entire page on the screen. Being able to see a snapshot of a page helps me in locating the text in space, which makes reading easier. More importantly, it allowed me to only scroll when I needed to change the page. This is really important to a successful reading experience, in my view.

The final piece of the puzzle is probably approaching an ebook like you would any other text on a computer screen, rather than approaching an ebook like you would a pbook. I read paper books, for the most part, in bed at night. I read things on the computer sitting at my desk. I read the ebook, mostly sitting at my desk. I also tend to read pbooks in longer stretches, reading several thousand words at a time, where as I probably never read more than 1,000 words at a time on a screen without taking a break. You might have a very different method for reading, and that’s fine, but by cycling a novel in with my regular livejournal-blog-email-twitter reading cycle I was able to read a novel in a weekend; whereas it almost always takes me several weeks (if I’m lucky) to finish a novel.

The end result? I’ve started reading another ebook, because it seems worthwhile.

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tagged: hypertext • reading • technology

So I think I’ve finally gotten into reading The Left Hand of Darkness, so I think this attempt at reading it will be successful. I’ve posted my feminist sf post about difference, spurred on by starting to read this book (again).

The post ponders the ways that feminist SF approaches and resolves issues surrounding “difference,” does feminist (or) SF say, “look here are people that are different,” and then look at all the ways that difference leads to disparity (as cyberpunk and other dystopias tend to,) or the way that differences (between, say men and women) pale in comparison to the differences between aliens and human, (Which strikes me as a little assimilationist). I’m not sure what the “answer” is, but if we had answers, we wouldn’t have a blog…

In other media consumption news, while I posted my thoughts on BSG and torchwood, I’m also more slowly working my way through Jeremiah, a show written by JMS, the same guy who write Babylon 5. While I like the concept, and I think it’s a fun show, I’m ten episodes in, and the pacing of the story feels “off.” The episodic story lines aren’t that gripping, and the story arch moves too slowly. As I think about it, Babylon 5 was probably the same way, but there are seemingly more space opera stories than there are, post-apocalyptic dystopian stories.

In the end this means that I’ve had a hard time mustering the proper entertainment materials to get me through the dark tunnel part of this knitting. Surely there are NCIS episodes or some such that I haven’t seen. I’ll post more about the sweater later. TV recommendations are most welcome.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: media • reading • science fiction

This post is mostly about things I’ve read/am reading, but I have a few administrative issues to get out of the way first.

I’m still up in the air about the new name or tagline for tychoish. I learned that I was misremembering the “early days of a better nation quote,” which make it difficult to serve as a new blog title. “Work as if you were living–” is kinda dumb, even if you modify it to “think” or “write.” And I think “innovated, bordering on the avate garde,” is perhaps a smidge to close to pornography for my tastes. Regarding the use of the pen name/pseudonym, I realized in a comment exchange on LiveJournal¹ that the reason I was a bit angsty about this is that knitting is something that I already do “as [given name],” and because of this and because there is–as far as I know–not a huge precedent of knitters using pen names I got bit tetchy about it. Now that I’ve realized these things I feel fine about the situation.

But anyway, that said…

Back to reading:

In a fit of insomnia, I finished reading Samuel Delany’s “Empire Star,” the novella that’s related to Babel-17, that I read last year (Bable-17 is the closest thing there is to the “Science Fiction of Lingustics” and is quite amazing²). I’ve seen this novella anthologized a number of times in “new space opera” and “SF classics” collections, and it’s absolutely amazing.

The plot is very complex and circularly, and perfectly simple all at the same time. The use of the narrator is risky as hell from my perspective, but it works perfectly. It’s also, not surprisingly, an incredibly self-aware text. It predicts when the story is going to become interesting and turn, it’s self-referential, and the responses to “Empire Star” in Babel-17 are perfect.

Good stuff.

I’m not sure what my next novel to read is going to be. I have Delany’s Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand on the shelf, and I’d like to read that at some point, but I think giving my brain a while to rest might be good. I’m also considering reading Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, because I write telepath stories, am interested/entertained by procedurals, and because I haven’t, but I don’t know how that’s going to go over.

I also got the Left-Hand of Darkness, which I’ve always wanted to read (and even started a few times,) but something always manages to come up, so maybe I should dive in to this.

I feel somewhat guilty by the fact that I’m not really getting into the Tiptree (The Stary Rift,) but I think it’s no use to guilt myself into what is ostensibly pleasure reading.

I’m also beginning to listen to James Patrick Kelly’s reading of _Look into The Sun,_³ on his podcast “Free Reads“⁴, which proves to be interesting and fun. It’s nice to knit while listening to podcasts, and I’ve been behind on my knitting of late.

Anyway, that’s all I have on that. I’ll be in touch.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: journal • reading