Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Michele asked for a spoiler thread for the mid-part of the story, and I agree, so let's do one for where Dradin's flashback to his family situation starts.

Since I have an ebook for this, I don't know the page number, but it's about a page or two after the bits in bold that he reads from the book he had bought; after these bits: "BEING CHAPTER ONE: THE MYSTICAL PASSIONS The most mystical of all passions are those practiced by the water people of the Lower Moth, for though they remain celibate and spend most of their lives in the water, they attain a oneness with their mates that bedevils those lesser of us who equate love with intercourse. Surely, their women would never become the objects of their desire, for then these women would lose an intrinsic eroticism.

Aww, and Dradin is so excruciatingly naive, but in such a sweet way, that one cannot help feeling for him:

"Thus began the fantasy: that in some other room, some other house—perhaps even in the valley below—the woman from the window lay in her own bed by some dim light and turned these same pages, read these same words."
That would be so incredibly romantic in just a slightly different context...

... and having read the story before, I now find his imagining of her bedroom so painfully poignant.

In any case, note how he fills in everything about her in his mind. Everything he "knows" about her, is an imagined thing. Don't we all tend to do that when we get a "crush" on somebody we don't know very well?
We fill in the missing bits how we would like them to be.

Hmm, I wonder if we shouldn't start a new thread; this one is getting awfully long?

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I swear, I'm getting rid of it. I feel like a gorilla. A wimpy gorilla, but a gorilla nevertheless."

Don't be silly! Be yourself. Your wife hasn't complained in how many years? ...so maybe she likes it. ;)

Hello dear bookworms! If you truly are a bookworm and student of human culture, I am sure that you would have, by now, spotted at least a few extra/intertextual references in Vandermeer's intriguing world!

Here are a few I noticed just glancing over the opening pages of Dradin:

-Borges Bookstore (Heheheheh)

-Dradin mentions that his father sobbed over the sad "exploits of two poor debutantes named Juliette and Justine as they progressed from poverty to prostitution, to the jungles and back again, weepy with joy as they rediscovered wealth and went on to have wonderful adventures up and down the length and breadth of the River Moth, until finally pristine Justine expired from the pressure of tragic pleasures wreaked upon her."
Well, what is funny about that, is that Juliette and Justine are two Marquis de Sade heroines, and yes their adventures involve prostitution (Julliette is dealt with in another book), but in the novel Justine, the poor woman is tortured as she stubbornly holds out against pleasure, and, well, let me not spoil the ending of Justine for you if you've not read it.

Then I couldn't helping thinking that Vandermeer has someone in our world in mind with Hoegbotton & Sons. “Hoegbotton & Sons? No, sir. Not a son of Hoegbotton. We do not deal with Hoegbotton & Sons (except inasmuch as we are contracted to carry their guidebooks), as their practices are . . . how shall I put it? . . . questionable. With neither Hoegbotton nor his sons do we deal."

First off, I thought of Amazon, but there could be something I'm missing there.

Then, we have: “It is called The Refraction of Light in a Prison and in it can be found the collected wisdom of... Whee! Spot the Newton reference? Opticks Or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light by Isaac Newton, where he deals with The Refraction of Light in a Prism. Maybe I'm too much of a nerd that I enjoy wordplay like that, but at least somebody is enjoying Vandermeer..... :P

Okay, we have said a bunch of things above, but that was a while ago, so I've been glancing over the start of this story again, and I am yet again struck by Vandermeer's delightfully dry yet rather mischievous sense of humor. Here we have Dradin, a missionary of some sort, coming out of the jungle into what for him must be relative civilization, he sees a girl in a window and instantly falls in love with her. And he falls very hard. He is determined to get to know her - one is not sure exactly what makes him feel this way; and this forces one to reflect on how much one tends to assume about a person without actually conversing with that person.

Firstly, this woman seems:
1) expensive (nicely dressed, haughty, educated.)Check.
2)aloof and unattainable (never looks up, has a haughty air, is sitting far ABOVE (note, above) only visible through a window. Check.
3) attractive. Yeah, one can usually see that from a distance even.

Hmm, so, the aloof and unattainable is something to strive for, like a Madonna on a pedestal, and yes, on a pedestal = above(literally)..... check.

Delicate and breakable, therefore, someone who needs protection. Check.

Does the above seem like a pretty patriarchal view of what a desirable woman constitutes? Most certainly, and how fitting, then, that he is a missionary!

In any case, I had to chuckle at the phrase: “Not a woman I know,” he said, “but a woman I should like to know.”

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I'd fire my doctor if he wrote something like that about me, too!"

I don't know. At least it implies that his doctor knew him pretty well. Most of the doctors I've had not ..."

I hate when that happens. You get so many doctors just after the money or prestige these days, or to whom its just a job...

Nah, he is your quintessential English garden (and sheet!) variety of ghost writer, it would appear. Instead of squids, you're going to find creepy hair all over the place. Yes, hair as in fur.

LOL, Derek, which reminds me: I will never forget that you have hair on your back! As I was still getting acquainted with you a few years ago, I made some Halloween comment about werewolves having hair on their backs, and you commented that you sport that feature yourself! ROFL. :D (Theoretically, we all do - it's just less obvious on some of us.... )

Nice, Derek, nice! Looks like we may make it in time for Halloween!

Re True Detective - I would recommend that you do yourself a favor and watch the ending, especially now that you've been focusing on King in Yellow. The ending of the show will remind a bit of Lovecraft too, if you're familiar with the latter's work.

Yes, I was thinking we have to choose at least one or two Poes and Lovecrafts too, to perhaps post or discuss.

Mmm, let's make threads for Poe and for Lovecraft as well. Their oeuvres are famous enough to justify it.

Oi, my dears, and DiL is such a cool such a very very dark story! There's such a lot to say about society in there...

@Ruth, does it really matter exactly on which date who starts which one? We'll never synch our readings exactly, so post whenever you're ready - the threads are there. You can follow the links from here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... :)

Oh, sorry, did you mean the ghost stories vs City of Saints? I had thought with "KiY" you were referring to another COSAM story - Oh boy, so am I alone with COSAM now - no matter, I will just quickly finish DiL, and since no-one else is there yet, I'll jump over to KiY - so do you want King in Yellow next?
Seems like we have many people eager for that, so, I suppose if you like KiY, I'll quickly start a discussion for that then.:)
Opening thread for King in Yellow here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Will populate it soon, sorry about that.

Thanks, Derek! I hope it is the version I have. Will check tomorrow. :)

Thread for ending spoilers for Dradin in Love.

First thread for Dradin in Love is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...


For those ahead of schedule, I have made a thread for the next story. Will post on it tomorrow.
The Transformation of Martin Lake : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Also, those who read Dradin in Love in one sitting and would wish to discuss the end and the, er... dramatic developments later on in the story, we can do so here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thread for discussion of:The Transformation of Martin Lake. Please cover spoilers with spoilers tags at this point.

Try: The Transformation of Martin Lake ; and
The Strange Case of X

Guys, we must please reserve this thread for the schedule...

If you can't get hold of Foxit anymore either, I'll send you a copy of that as well. :) (Tomorrow when I get a chance).
I do have the Adobe Digital Editions reader of course as well, since you cannot avoid having to have it if you buy via Google, but I really dislike all the DRM around that and I dislike Adobe products in general because they tend to be so intrusive. But when I have time again, I will try out some of the readers you have mentioned!

Oh, and I also use Foxit for PDFs, as well as Word 2013 (for PDF). The latter is a very good text to PDF converter btw., and what is nice about it is that search results show up all at once, so you can choose from a list.
The editing capablities are also rather nice-ish.

Foxit doesn't convert, but if you are reading lots of books at a time for some project, you can have them all open at the same time and refer back and forth - it does tabs like a browser.

Yolande wrote: "Traveller wrote: "I do work and leisure on a PC sometimes up to 16 hours a day. I find the lighter background not just better and less strain on my eyes, but more convenient for me to read after da..."

LOL, Yolande, I've been adding to that post - don't know if you got the final list in my little gush there. XD

I use Mobipocket. Sadly, I think you cannot find it anymore, but since it was a free product to start with, I can maybe send it to you. Unfortunately, when my PC broke about 2 weeks ago, I lost all the settings, such as bookmarks and notes, because I had to re-install Windows and all my software, otherwise I would have taken a screenshot to show you how I optimise it. I have some free time tomorrow and will do something like that then.

You might already know Calibre, which is useful in many ways, especially if you like to convert PDF, epub mobi, rtf. etc back and forth.

I used to also like the MS reader that made use of .lit formats, but that is also not supported anymore. ...but yeah, I find mobipocket to be a fantastic product - notes and highlights appear in a column to the right which you can hide or show at will - so, let's say you are reading a book with 'bird' symbology in mind, you can simply highlight every mention of birds, and then whenever you want to go back to one of the bird quotes, you click on the link to it in that right-hand column, and viola - you are on the page with the word highlighted! One can also add notes to those if you like.

I've tried Sumatra, but it doesn't have any of those useful editing/proofreading features that Mobipocket has.

Which ones have you tried?

I used to do epub in Firefox browser - but no special features to it. The Kindle desktop reader was okay, but it would always say "kindle edition" if you copied and pasted from it, and it became irritating with Amazon exerting such tight control over it in various ways.

Linda wrote: "I have to do a lot of things for work on screen, so my eyes are done and protesting. I don´t hate the Kindle as much as I thought I would when it was gifted to me, but I still prefer paper books, i..."

Linda, it sounds as if you suffer from dry eyes, which can be a result of aircon and/or staring at a screen without blinking enough.

You can alleviate sore eyes by teaching yourself to blink more. Look away from your screen every now and then. And also, close your eyes with your hands cupped lightly over them and sort of blink and squeeze them shut a little while moving your eyes around a bit.

Lastly, I personally use a commercial eye moisturizer which works wonders! You usually find them at pharmacies in the same dept as where they keep eyedrops and products for contact lenses. (Don't get the type that makes your eyes look white - those are actually bad for your eyes. All you need is an eye lubricant.

I do work and leisure on a PC sometimes up to 16 hours a day. I find the lighter background not just better and less strain on my eyes, but more convenient for me to read after dark. I have a Kindle and a kobo, but I read most of my books on my PC.

The screen is nice and stable, I can make the text of whatever I'm reading into nice small comfortable columns in the reader that I use, I can make notes, highlights and bookmarks in the reader that I use, and I can copy and paste quotes.

In addition, I can file my books according to author and subject and effortlessly find them again - no risk of a book going missing. In addition, my kindle and kobo are much easier to carry with me in my handbag if i want to go out, much easier and lighter to hold when i stand in a queue, and i need only one hand because i don't need to try and force the books to stay open.

When i want to read in bed, i don't need to leave the light on, or even the lamp on, since my kobo is backlighted; so i can literally finish reading, close the cover and go to sleep. Also, if i want to read from my device at a table or desk, it has a convenient prop, so i can read with my hands free. Also, i don't have to keep turning pages. I can just click or tap instead to have the next page instantly. Also, my e-readers keep my place for me, so I don't need physical bookmarks, or worse, dog-ears. Also, with treebook bookmarks, you have to search where you were - with e-readers, you can just highlight your last word.

Oh, and i can eat and drink while i read electronically without fear of ruining the book. Not to mention - a screen doesn't have a spine! :P

And last but definitely not least - reading electronically prevents neck and shoulder pain and strain !

I love having "fancy" treebooks if they're exceptionally bound, typeset or illustrated, but I have come to detest big thick heavy treebooks. (And Derek, yes, the spine!)
Yes, I like having books on my "actual" shelves, but it's the ebooks that actually get read. They're just so much more convenient in so many immeasurable ways, not to mention much easier to search, sort and keep track of.