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Archive for the ‘Reading’ Category

1984

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I’m really not sure how I went to the age of 27 before reading George Orwell’s 1984. In high school, we did read Brave New World by Huxley; though Orwell was until now out of my education.

What I find most surprising about reading this book is how little I gave a shit about Big Brother. Most of the time I’ve heard the book referenced, it has to do largely with Big Brother watching over every aspect of our lives. Since we don’t see the cameras or telescreens around us; and since we aren’t corralled and tortured for thought-crime, it seems that people look on the novel mostly as pure fantasy, some awful prediction about a future which thankfully never has been realized.

I’m sure there are countless lists of analysis of this particular text on the Internet as well as just about anywhere else. Even so, I feel it important to re-inforce that Orwell, while drawing lines to a society which is certainly the epitome of totalitarian control, he much more importantly depicts the structure of politics and power which has played out and continues to thrive in our current society. We do have the right to think freely; though the efforts of double-think and news-speak as it has constrained our culture and discourse is all very real.

I urge anyone who has not yet turned these pages to please do so; and that for those who may have missed the meanings the first time, to try again with closer eye to the theory and to the text.

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News practice: February 2010

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Not too long ago, I wrote a post about my news practice. In the past week or so I’ve been modifying those patterns a bit; and, beyond that, there have been some changes in industry.

Me and the NYT

I’ve been a bit more busy with work in the past few months, and my newspaper readership has gone down. Not too long ago, the New York Times announced that they’re going to a pay model for their online content starting next year, 2011. They’ll be slowly phasing out their free content by the end of the year. Perhaps some of this is due to people practicing the type of behavior I had suggested in my previous post. Most likely, it’s that they are running thin on their margins and they want to try and inject money into their system any way that they can.

I have since also cut out my use of the calibre software to aggregate news content, as I did before. The Sony Reader Store currently offers the New York Times for $14/month, or $0.75/issue. I’ve tried this out, and the formatting and general experience is quite great. I get enough online and through the wire that I don’t feel an urge to grab onto the full subscription, though daily issues when I want to catch up are a great option.

Podcasts

I did, for a time, subscribe to a number of technology podcasts from a variety of sources. Especially when commuting, it’s a great source of information. I’ve now moved on to audiobooks provided by OverDrive at my local library, and have since cut out all but three staples: “On Science” and “Technology” from NPR, and then the Phones Show Chat. These are enough to break up whatever book I’m listening to at the moment.

Internet news

I’ve been toning down the number of feeds from Google Reader, and I’ve been putting more into Twitter. You can see my current structure on this at my Twitter lists page. Google Reader then picks up the Ars Technica feed, Digg’s Technology section, and other random sites of friends, etc.

More books, less Internet

Fundamentally, I’ve made it more and more of a point to spend less time reading crap on the Internet, and more time reading books. The definition of the word “reading” has in some ways taken different steps in the tract of where technology and blogs and the Internet has taken it. In reading a book, where certain themes follow for hundreds of pages rather than two or five, there’s fundamentally a different way that our mind is processing information. I’m saying this, of course, on the Internet and not a book; and I feel that I’m writing it for a reason; so I don’t mean to imply that one is necessarily more valuable than another. With that said, though, what I’ve been tending towards with the above processes has lent me more time to get through books, gaining back some sense of worth in the time that slips through my hands over the course of a given day. Audiobooks, too, have been adding up my hours; while cooking or eating or doing other tasks that require some degree of movement, I’m getting something into my ears which has been both enjoyable and educational.

Well, that’s where I’m at today, anyway; who knows what’s in store next.

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$20 Per Gallon

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Just finished $20 Per Gallon by Christopher Steiner. This is a book that I wish were a bit more popular; though it may have missed the mark into the American consciousness since the price of gasoline since dipped again between it’s construction and its release.

Steiner is not the best writer out there; yet I can certainly relate to his approach and appreciate his perspective. He’s an engineer, and he’s fascinated with what good will come of the world once we start to drip away our American addiction to oil. $20 Per Gallon is set into chapters with sequential consequences from increments of the price of gasoline: $4 introduction, followed by a $6 chapter, etc.

Obviously, then, the book is largely speculation. We don’t have a world where gas costs $20 a gallon in America, and so it’s a silly attempt to figure out what exactly is going to happen at that point in time. If you’re looking for hard data or absolute proof, then these pages may not satisfy you; but I’d then argue that the same goal was silly at the start. With that said, Steiner has thought out a whole lot of consequences stemming from massive increases in the cost of fuel: food production, transportation, globalization, and a variety of other topics are dissected and plotted out in the eventual patterns which we most likely will see.

What I like most about the book is the amount of positivity that the author sees for our future. It is rather easy to see doom in the face of increased consumer cost of just about anything; though in terms of energy, the base component of how we live our lives, a higher ticket price does not mean we will waste away.

On the contrary, Steiner argues largely that we will adapt quite well, and that we will just have to structure ourselves differently than we have in the past forty or fifty years. Cheap oil has allowed us to be lazy; it’s allowed our food to go to shit; it’s tied us inescapably to cars, in countless numbers, and it’s also allowed us to move our economy away from the borders of the country, taking away our jobs and investments in the same movement.

It may help that I see certain parts of science-fiction in this book. A big part of what moves us forward as a society is some kind of conflation of what is now fiction and what can be reality in our future. Steiner seems to understand this, and my only hope is that there are enough people out there who see such signs as opportunities rather than omens of doom.

Posted in Reading, World/Local | No Comments »

Neil Gaiman: “The Graveyard Book”

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

After giving The Hitchhiker’s Guide good marks, my friend Pat told me to check out Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I’ve never read anything by either author before. I picked it up from the library, and have really enjoyed the first couple chapters. Lately, I’ve been going through electronic format books a lot faster than those in print; largely because it’s easier for me to read. Ergo, from the library I got a hold of a digital copy of The Graveyard Book by one of the authors, Neil Gaiman. Aside from the title, I wasn’t sure what to expect; though it seemed popular and I figured I’d give it a shot.

Now that I’m finished with the book, I see that it’s listed under “juvenile fiction” sections; I hadn’t a clue about that, previously, and even after finishing it I was a bit confused by the listing. In many ways, it makes sense: there’s nothing in the pages that are all that offensive, and the main character is a boy who is at all times less than 16 years old. With that said, I found it to be a great read, very well written with a solid story that was strictly entertaining.

Without giving too much away, the chapters are rather self contained, almost to the effect that they are a series of short stories that are loosely coupled. In many ways, though, the variety adds to the depth of the story, and also makes for a quick read. I’ve heard that there are strong followings to Gaiman’s novels, and I can certainly see why.

I live close to a very large cemetery, which I’d heard was beautiful from a variety of sources. Since I’ve never been that much of a goth, nor have I had that much interest in graveyards in general, I didn’t give it much thought. Reading this book, though, made me a bit curious, and this past weekend I spent an hour or two walking through the cemetery paths. It really was pretty incredible, and got my mind going a bit about burial and legacy; which for me was an unexpected twist. Respect to that, and to the book.