The Bookhouse Boys discussion
File Under: Misc.
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On the other hand, though I think it may have a little to do with making the book appear longer than it is, I think it may also have to do with the general book presentation. Willa Cather (among others) was a strong proponent for the importance of presentation in experiencing her novels, and Fey and/or the publisher may feel similarly. I have a ton of old paperbacks that I've bought used over the years (we're right by the University of Virginia, so you can get great lit cheap from student and professor sell-backs), and I always notice the difference in reading experience between older/cheaper presentations and newer/pricier ones.
For instance, did you ever get any of those Dover $1 books in college? They were these really thin paperbacks reprinting public domain texts on the cheap, and they used small, tight print and crammed in about a thousand words per page (I've got one, as an example, that squeezes Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde into a slim 54 pages... it's not a long novella, but most modern editions would be at least twice that size). I was so excited when I first discovered these editions because, hey, classics for $1! And I was broke and in college! But jeeeeezus were they a slog... that format transformed even the most lively texts into a total chore, just by dint of the fact that you were spending a seeming eternity on each page.
There's something to be said for ample line spacing and larger print providing at the very least the illusion that you're covering a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Even if you're reading the same 1 chapter per day of a certain book, a breezy flick through 10-15 pages as opposed to a tight 3-5 can make all the difference in the world, believe it or not.
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Midaq Alley was like that for me. It helped immeasurably that, despite my lack of enjoyment of great swathes of the text, I always seemed to cover a lot of ground in each reading. If it had been crammed, tiny print, it would have enhanced the sense of tedium I (sometimes) experienced.
There's definitely a limit, though. If the font is too plain, and the point size too large, it feels...remedial or something, and not as meaty as it should be. If I'm reading a sweeping, epic fantasy, I don't want to spend five seconds on each page.
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Do you have any 'guilty pleasures' in your book closet? I know some folks who say you should not be ashamed of anything you enjoy. I'm more of a 'you are what you eat' kind of guy, but I do have some weak points. I guess my little smokies in the world of literature would have to be old pulp adventures. I love reading the original The Shadow stories (like The Living Shadow) and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu (The Fu Manchu Omnibus 1).
What are your 'beach books'?
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And they were pretty entertaining to me at the time.
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Lord, where does one even start? Well, our bookshelves probably have too many crappy fantasy novels that all belong to me. And I will admit to reading (and liking) certain chick lit when I need a brain break.
Matt wrote: "So, I'm on the bus to work this morning and this dude sits next to me and cracks his book. I always sneak peeks at what people are reading,..."I do that too. So it isn't creepy, then?
Damn, I haven't thought of Cruel Shoes in almost 30 years. "Beloved," huh? I remember liking it, in a bewildered kinda way.
Matt wrote: "Do you have any 'guilty pleasures' in your book closet?"
Nothing wrong with pulp, Matt. I'd love to dive into some old Shadow, Doc Savage, or Fu Manchu stories.
Thinking about my guilty pleasure books, I realized that the books I could name didn't really fit the description. But they would be my answers to this question:
What favorite childhood books have you not revisited in adulthood, for fear they would not live up to your memory of them?
When my son brought home The Westing Game from the school library, I reluctantly offered to read it with him. "Reluctantly," because I loved it as a kid, and I was afraid it would not measure up.
But it wasn't bad at all. A bit wordy in places, with sledgehammer-subtlety "hints" my ten-year-old rolled his eyes at, but overall still an enjoyable read.
But I'm still terrified to reread old favorites like Andrew Greeley's God Game, or Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series. For decades they've lingered on my shelves collecting dust. I'm too attached to their memory to discard them, but too nervous about their quality to an (allegedly) adult reader to ever read them again.
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Oooh, I love topics like this... either books you're afraid to revisit, or books you realize after re-reading that you should have left in the past where you still had fond memories of them...
I think I'd worry a bit about revisiting most of Douglas Adams' stuff... LOVED it in high school, but it's a small oeuvre and I don't re-read very often, so I haven't touched one in a decade and a half. Mostly, I'd worry about starting to roll my eyes at all the parts I used to find hilarious... absurdist humor was very much my thing when I was a teenager, but now I'm a lot more attracted to brutal honesty and uncomfortable humor. Not that one is more or less sophisticated than the other, it's just where I am at the moment....
I guess I don't really count my YA favorites (I was BIG into Christopher Pike novels in middle school), because you're supposed to outgrow those...
I read a metric crap-ton of Gore Vidal when I was in college, but not so much since until the past week... not necessarily revisiting a work so much as an author. I still think he's a fantastic wordsmith, but I've picked at a few of his threads as time has gone on... there's a general stiffness and sameness to a lot of his characters (excepting the occasional absurdity thrown in for color), which sometimes leaves his plots hovering between being a fantastic bore and a pastiche of shallow conversations between shallow people. Also -- and this is true of every writer, really, and my own reaction to reading so many of his novels -- he's got about 3 basic major themes that inform his plots, so that the past few of his I've read have given me an extreme feeling of déjà vu.
Update: At my insistence, my son and I started reading A Wrinkle in Time last night. He fell asleep after six pages...
... but he was very tired. We'll carry on with it tomorrow.
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He fell asleep after six pages..."
That series was on my bookshelf my whole childhood. I didn't get around to reading the first one until I was an adult and think I missed my window.
So, if I were using Facebook and Twitter, would I have known that one of my favorite bands, Archers of Loaf, got back together?! WTH?
I might have to reconsider this whole Luddite thing.
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.c...
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In my family we read the The Great Brain books and all loved them. I would feel very sad if I were to go back to them and find them un-magical, in any way.
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What words or phrases would you like to drag into the word crypt to be released...when?
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
I've got a heap of stuff I'd like to stake in the heart, as I'm sure many of you do. Let's hear them.
To start, "diva" has had a good 15+/- year run of being used constantly. I really feel it had been wrung of all its piss and vinegar by about 2000, yet its constant usage persists. I was looking up some grammar stuff for a work doc today and an embedded ad on the site featured an analysis of regular ol' sea salt vs. kosher salt by none other than "THE NUTRITION DIVA." She was very reasonable, modest, soft-spoken, and, well, not very diva-like at all.
http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytip...
Okay, now YOU do one!
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The internet: Bringing people together through mutual annoyance since 1995. ;)
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Worse? That overuse and consequent lack of impact leads people to create new calendars in their zest to get across just how frequent something is, i.e. "I work 25/7." Corollary: The Anthony Robbins types who insist we give "110%".
Matt reminds me of a bad joke I just heard.
How many divas does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Only one. She holds the lightbulb still while the world revolves around her.
Jason wrote: "How many divas does it take to screw in a lightbulb?Only one. She holds the lightbulb still while the world revolves around her. "
When I heard that joke, it was about UNC basketball players. Hey, if the tiara fits....
And speaking of hyperbole, can we mutually agree as a society to retire the word literally???
It's now misused far more than it's correctly used ("My brain literally exploded."
"Wow, yet your speech centers appear unaffected.").
Plus it's unnecessary even when used correctly: One never has to say "That car literally flipped 20 feet in the air" or "Griffin literally buried a 540-degree one-handed jam." In fact, adding the adverb makes it sound more hyperbolic, doesn't it?
Drop it, sheeple. Or I swear, my brains will start leaking out of my ears.
Literally.
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In fact, Dave went so far as to write a blog post about it. It's post #3. http://greeninkedits.wordpress.com/
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I don't care for the word "quality" having some implied goodness to it. "...for all your quality meat products"? Rancidness is a quality, so is being disease-ridden. A minor irk, but one my wife gets to hear about all the time. ;)
Finally, I hate that some coked-out ad weasel realized that each word in his slogan described the product on its own, so we have the period-after-each-word thing that's "cool" right now.
(view spoiler)
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Given the topic of discussion...Americanisms that annoy the British. Some of them I've never even heard anyone say; some are just normal American phrases; and some bug the SHIT out of me too.
Jason wrote: "You're not alone, Jim. :)In fact, Dave went so far as to write a blog post about it. It's post #3. http://greeninkedits.wordpress.com/"
Clearly, the man is a genius. Thanks for the blog link.
EDIT: Ten geek points awarded to Dave for using "Flash Fact" in the "Informal Writing Rules" piece.
@Matt: Agreed on "meh".... though it still somehow works its way into my vocab once in a great while.
Also, "coked-out ad weasel"??? Show us on the doll where the adman touched you, Matthew...
@Jen: That list actually made me feel a bit defensive of Americanized English. Really, "take-out" rather than "takeaway" is what concerns you?
Get a sodding life, wot?
Yeah, that's what I mean about the fact that some of it is just standard American English. I had the biggest reaction to the objection to "bi-weekly" as opposed to "fortnightly." The former is shorter; the latter belongs in a Shakespearean play. We win.But some of the things they call out drive me nuts, too - made-up words like "physicality", "ridiculosity" and "winningest" and corporate buzzwords like "deliverable." And of course, the positively incorrect, like "I could care less" when the speaker means to say "I couldn't care less."
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Agreed on "deliverable" and all of its ilk, like "monetize." And agreed on the misuse of "could care less."
Frankly, one of my biggest pet peeves about errors like the latter or the misuse of literally is the taboo against correcting anyone who butchers them. There's a time and a place, sure, but if we're to be so cavalier about our use of language, surely we can develop a thicker skin about it?
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Yeah, I'm not calling it a "shopping trolley" no matter how much they want to make fun of me.
I love English slang (and hear a lot of it on podcasts) but they've got their share of silly sounding phrases. We should throw together a companion list.
I'll give them "I could care less," "It is what it is," and "deplane." When a Brit can show me where the hell the extra I in aluminIum came from, I may concede a few more.
Jason wrote: "I love English slang (and hear a lot of it on podcasts) but they've got their share of silly sounding phrases. We should throw together a companion list. "I refuse to stoop to their level. Except for that one time above. Okay, two times. But no more. ;P
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I would do pert near anything to get a file of the Chris Gaines episode of Behind the Music. I laughed so hard when I saw that thing, I just about tore some innards.
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I would do pert near anything to get a file of the Chris Gaines episode of Behind the Music. I laughed so hard when I saw that thing, I just about tore some innards."
The whole time Peter Parker was going "dark" in Spider-Man 3, that's what I was thinking about.
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Sara came up to visit me one time when I lived in a small town about half an hour outside of the one I now live in, and we went to the local fair. Something to do. Anyway, this was in 2001, 2002, something like that... this fair was filled with rednecks, a serious bad tattoo parade. And at one point, a Nelly song came over the loudspeakers (remember Nelly?), and, I shit you not, EVERY single person in that fair dropped what they were doing and started grinding. Little kids, old grandmas, one and all. Not a black person in the crowd. And I'm 100% sure that, if I'd had a chance to look in their cars, I'd have found Toby Keith and Tim McGraw CDs in every stereo.
This sounds like I'm being really snarky and judgmental, but I'm not... it's actually a point of continual fascination for me.
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Reckon it could be funny, if you did it right.... ah, well. Filing under misc. :)
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Weird. I was going to post something in here about that myself. Renee read that her book group and groused the whole time about how terrible it was. I have to experience their lousy choices vicariously. She read lots of passages of Holy Fools at me (and when I started to flee she followed me around the house reading it...like some kind of bizarre exorcism). Echh.
That's a book the other book club has not chosen, though it has made the "next book" poll a couple of times. It's been a book club darling nationally for 2 or 3 years; all of the book club websites I keep up with have been pushing it as spectacular for years. I'm sure I'll read it someday, just so I can discuss it when it inevitably comes up in conversation, but I'm not in a big hurry. I'm sure it's fine; it just doesn't sound particularly...deep.
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I usually need to see a bit of a film before I hate it, but I hated this movie 23 frames into the preview. That might be a new world record.
On a positive note: Do you have any words that make you happy, even apart from their meaning?
I might have some kind of mild synethesia or something, but there are many words that just resound in me like an open chord from perfectly tuned guitar. I like they way they look, sound, the relationship of each letter to the others in the word, etc.
For example: KREEL
This word makes my heart smile and I don't know why. I have always loved it. Maybe I was a fisherman in a past life. In this case, I do like what the word means. I mean, how old-timey, grandpa-ish is this?
http://www.hudsonrivertradingco.com/c...
Do you have any words that you just love? : )
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I didn't even know you guys smoked dope. Huh. ;)
I mentioned a few days ago on various social networking sites that I adore the word MELLIFLUOUS. It is such a lovely, flowy word! You might even say that the sound of MELLIFLUOUS is mellifluous. :)I'm a words person, so there are lots of words I like to varying degrees. A simple word that I think is just awesome is PANTS. I like to take it on to just about everything. I often call one or the other of the dogs "Crazy McCrazypants." I call my niece "Sillypants." There was even a time in the younger, sillier days of our courtship that Dave and I used pants as an adjective - "That's so pants!"
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It's The Third Policeman-related music.
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I think of this passage often whenever I see new glamor murders being tried in the court of public opinion. Armchair investigators love to ask questions like, "But why would a mother murder her own child?" and "Why would he shoot his own wife if she wasn't having an affair?" It's not only immaterial, it's offensive. There's never an acceptable motive for murder. The only thing worse than killing somebody is killing a lot of somebodies. No amount of indignity, jealousy, vengeance, or greed can alter that fact. If people could only drill that into their heads, maybe this planet'll be worth living on some day.
File under: cultural ennui.
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It's a long shot, but does anyone know of a way around something like that? As far as I can tell, it's not an issue of possibly giving diabetes to the recipient so much as a general rule that T1 diabetics aren't healthy enough to undergo the procedure (T2 diabetics are apparently allowed to test/donate, it's an issue of being insulin-dependent). I'm in perfect health, I know I can undergo the procedure if I'm a match.
Also, for those who are able to join the registry, spread the word... even if it's not my cousin, you may be able to save a life some day. http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/index.html...
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Same here, Dave.
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I grit my teeth when I hear someone say "mischievious" (devious mischief?). Sad thing is, my teeth are down to nubbins because no one says "mischievous" in the U.S.
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The resort where we're staying has several pools. Renee and I have developed a game during our vacation: upon entering any of the pool areas, the first person to spot a copy of The Help and call it gets to have the other person make his/her pre-dinner cocktail for them upon returning to the condo for the day. It's a fun game because someone's bound to win (today was the first day we didn't have a winner...no copy spied).
On a somewhat-related note: My mom (a voracious reader and Kindle user) was at the pool with us yesterday and said she didn't like that you can't tell what people are reading when they use Kindles. I said, "Yeah, it makes it really hard for me to judge them!" ;)
Finally, the free-book shelves here are loaded with the typical fare: multiple copies of The Firm, oodles of Harlequin romance, and whoever the hell that guy is who writes all the espionage thriller things that dads read, but there's always one interesting score. This time, I found The Ebony Tower. Woohoo!
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Now I gotta fish around Goodreads all day looking for this ad! :P
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Now I gotta fish around Goodreads all day looking for this ad! :P"
You owe me!
http://www.loa.org/mark-twain?gclid=C...
While looking for that ad, I did get to see several clips promoting Possess that start out with "This ain't your mommy's exorcist." Unintentional laugh, you have already made my morning. Thanks. Why do so many of the books' ads look like Massengill commercials?
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Thanks for the link... looks like that's not the complete Twain, but it is a nice set of hardcovers of his most enduring work. The complete collection only runs you $195, though. o_0
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Oh. I didn't even read the details of the ad. I guess I'm just the rube they're looking for. :(
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Sci-Fi
Fantasy
How hard it is to be fat or a nerdy teenager
Biker flicks
Political dramas
"Raunchy" comedy
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NUFF SAID!
The Bookhouse Boys
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So, I'm on the bus to work this morning and this dude sits next to me and cracks his book. I always sneak peeks at what people are reading, out of curiosity. I saw in my peripheral vision that it was a hardcover and a pretty hefty one. When I glanced at it, I noticed that the font was at least 24pt (like 6-8 words/line, 20 lines/page MAX). What's up with that? I thought to myself. Then I looked at the title and it was Bossypants by Tina Fey.
So, my question is: why do they make a 100-page book 300 pages by pumping the text up? Is it because they want it to appear to be bigger? If so, why? My beloved Cruel Shoes was a slim HC. Is it simply to make the book itself bigger so they can charge more?
I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.