--- In [email protected], turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "whynotnow7" <whynotnow7@> wrote: > > > > For those last few minutes of the day I sometimes enjoy > > leafing through catalogs we get in the mail, the ones > > filled with electronics and gadgets I won't buy. > > I used to get an electronics catalog years ago -- can't > remember the name, sorry -- that I really enjoyed because > they would sneak writeups of fake merchandise in with the > writeups of real merchandise. For example, in one issue > there was an offer for DEDs. Darkness Emitting Diodes. > In another there was a blurb about the newest in chip > technology, WOMs. Write Only Memory. The game, from > their side, was to see how many people tried to order > the joke items.
Sounds great. > > > I haven't figured out why people seem to be obsessed > > with reading books. I can't recall the last time I read > > one cover to cover - it has easily been years. > > I found that my reading slowed down as my eyes got older, > and thus weaker. It actually took me some time to realize > that I hadn't been reading as much because I *couldn't* > read as easily as I had been able to in the past. It snuck > up on me. Once I realized what the problem was, a good > reading light and some glasses did the trick. Same thing with me. I am now at that awkward stage where I see 20/20 for distance but need glasses every time I need to read something. > > > Perhaps they are a fun distraction for overactive minds > > - I don't know. > > People have different reasons for reading. Some do it to > relax, or as you say to distract them from their lives. I > do it because I love good writing. Sadly, that is often > my bane when it comes to modern writing, because I have > high standards based on reading earlier writers. I think > I stopped reading for a year after having plowed through > my first Dan Brown novel. It took a re-read of Dorothy > Dunnett to get me back on track. :-) Yep I don't have the interest in analyzing writing that you do, so it shortens my list considerably. > Although books are not mentioned explicitly in this fair > use snippet from Wikipedia, I agree with Marshall McLuhan's > premise of "hot" and "cool" media, and I suspect (but don't > remember) that he would class books as "cool." I for one > wonder what he which he would have thought the World Wide > Web was. > > In the first part of Understanding Media, McLuhan also > stated that different media invite different degrees > of participation on the part of a person who chooses > to consume a medium. Some media, like the movies, were > "hot"—that is, they enhance one single sense, in this > case vision, in such a manner that a person does not > need to exert much effort in filling in the details > of a movie image. McLuhan contrasted this with "cool" > TV, which he claimed requires more effort on the part > of the viewer to determine meaning, and comics, which > due to their minimal presentation of visual detail > require a high degree of effort to fill in details > that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. A > movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot", intensi- > fying one single sense "high definition", demanding > a viewer's attention, and a comic book to be "cool" > and "low definition", requiring much more conscious > participation by the reader to extract value. > > More comments below: > > > --- In [email protected], "seventhray1" <steve.sundur@> wrote: > > > > > > Thanks for the recommendations. I wish I could find > > > something I enjoy reading for a few minutes before I > > > drop off to sleep. > > I can unreservedly pass along wayback's recommendation > for Dan Eagleman's "SUM: Forty Tales from the Afterlife." > It's just what the title implies, and brilliant. And the > stories are short, so it's perfect bedtime reading. You > can drop off to sleep after any story without feeling > that you still need to read more. > > > > I am so narrow minded that I can't bring myself to read > > > fiction and usually stick with something "spiritua"l in > > > nature. > > In comparison, I read primarily fiction and avoid anything > "spiritua"l like it had a big herpes sore on its lip. :-) > > > > But most of the modern new agey type books seem dull > > > and full of platitudes. > > More than "seem," I'm afraid. > > > > Lately I've been reading some of the lesser known early > > > theosophists. Even that has been somewhat dull. > > Herpes city for me. I'm re-reading a book now because I > need to analyze the author's writing style. He used a > mechanism in this book that I need to use in something > I am writing. The book is by Orhan Pahmuk, and is called > "My Name Is Red." It's a murder mystery. But by a Nobel > Prize-winning author. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red > I find the same issue with "spiritual" books. The last ones I read were those by the guy who calls himself Jed McKenna. He had a refreshing if you see the master on the road kill him approach that made his writing pretty lively. Regarding fiction, I used to enjoy it and read every book by some well known authors, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Hermann Hesse for example. Then I reached a point where I saw that for me, certain assumptions needed to be made about reality in order to appreciate fiction. Since I could no longer make such assumptions, I stopped reading fiction.
