Three Ways You Can Better Enjoy Into the Nanten – Starting with Feedly
Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson
Into the Nanten can be kind of hard to consume if you’re on the go, and depending on how you like to read or what parts of it you’re enjoying most, the website itself may not be the easiest or best way to follow along. The site is designed primarily to be immersive – lots of green texturing, the fonts, all of it is meant to suck you in and keep you involved in Marceles’ journey. No distractions, no advertising, nothing but pure story.
As we saw from the first week’s statistics, people really are sticking around (and this trend has continued uninterrupted). So at least it’s succeeding at keeping people engaged.
But organizing a story like Into the Nanten into something that’s easy to read can be difficult. This is both because of its strictly chronological nature and because it’s always growing. How do you keep track of where you last read? How do you remember all of the characters’ names? Where are all the pretty pictures?!
What follows are a few suggestions for how you can follow along outside of the website based on your preferences. Suggestions for the mobile reader, visual consumer, and deeper immersion for both. If you have any other ideas I’d love to see them in the comments below!
I Want to Read on the Go!
If you’re always on the move, an RSS reader for your phone may be your best bet. Google Reader is long gone, bless her beautiful zombified soul, so we must all get on without her. Though none have truly taken her place, there are some very cool options, of which I’ll be highlighting Feedly.
Feedly
Once you’ve subscribed, Feedly presents each post of Into the Nanten starting with the latest first – but what’s really nice is that you can invert this and start reading with the oldest first. Notably the photos all display well on Feedly. While you don’t get the same look and feel as the website, you can more easily differentiate between what you have and have not read. Feedly keeps track of it all, and as you progress will knock each read post off your list.
This is especially helpful when you don’t have time to read posts every day. You can let them accumulate in Feedly and pick up right where you left off. You can bookmark your favorites, tweet straight from the app, even post to facebook or save it in evernote – it’s beautiful and simple. It’s so simple, in fact, that when my mom asked for an alternative to the site, Feedly is what I set her up with. Not that my mom is simple or anything… ’cause… boy, is this hole getting deeper?
If you’d like to see some more options check out this list of alternatives. There are plenty out there, and I think it would be interesting to hear which ones you prefer and why.
Subscribe by Email
You see that little “Subscribe to Marceles’ posts by email” box in the sidebar at the top of intothenanten.com? It’s that easy. Just put your email in there and confirm your subscription. Every time a post goes live you’ll receive it in your inbox from the same people that manage wordpress.com. Now that’s service.
Note that this is not my newsletter, so if you want to receive that you need to sign up for that here on jayswanson.me.
I Want to Spend Time Staring at the Illustrations!
Well that’s totally understandable. Nimit has done a fantastic job rendering Marceles’ illustrations and I enjoy staring at them myself. There are a few places you can do this with ease, depending on where you prefer to do your e-stalking.
If you’re an Instagramaholic, like my sister, and you can’t think of any better form of visual stimulation than that which is bound in a neatly-cropped square, look no further. @mindofjayswanson is where I post each quote and take a look at each illustration as they go live.
There will be some sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes snaps along the way as well, and it’s a great place to get clues as to when my next book is coming out.
There is an Into the Nanten board on Pinterest that I’ve also been sure to keep up to date. If you need a break from organizing your treehouse inspirations and scarf wishlists, take a moment to gander through the images there. No square-cropping necessary.
They even have a widget I can add so you can poke around from here.
Follow Jay’s board Into the Nanten on Pinterest.
Tumblr
No intro necessary here. The only drawback to tumblr currently is that it’s only a parrot of @mindofjayswanson on Instagram – I’ve gotta combine efforts somewhere – but if you love it enough I could be coerced into doing more with it.
If Instagram isn’t your cup of tea, and you love the tumblr, here’s your solution:
I have no fishing boat proceeds to declare for this, tumblr, it’s just pure old fashioned square posts for now.
I Want to Feel Even More Immersed
Last but not least. There’s one really fun way to feel even more immersed in the story: Twitter. Marceles has his own Twitter account @MTetrarch, as do Bolton @SladBolton and Starlark @StarlarkC. And yes, they tweet.
Of the three, Marceles tweets the most. His tweets are predominantly random thoughts over the course of the day that either tie into his entry or give us a little extra insight into his mindset or the world around him. You’ll see his latest tweets in the sidebar of the ITN site. As for Starlark and Bolton, they pretty much just insult each other.
This is where things get a bit tricky for me – because I don’t want to break the magic of the story – so Marceles won’t be responding to any of you. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, he simply can’t. You’re getting a window into his mind, it’s not a two-way street. That said, exceptionally good tweets aimed his way might get fav’d at one point or another.
In Summary (TLDR)
If you want to get even more into the story of Into the Nanten:
Download Feedly for your iDevice or Android, follow along with the visuals on Instagram or tumblr, pin your fan art to Pinterest, and listen into the monologue and dialogues through Twitter.
What Did I Miss?
Any suggestions? What are other ways you plug into the story? Do you have any suggestions of ways to make the experience more fun for everyone? I’d love to hear them in comments below!
I’m currently organizing two more pages, a character/names/places cheat sheet, and a summary to date in case you need some refreshers. Hopefully those will be up soon, but they won’t pop up in Feedly or anywhere so be sure to check the site.
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