Reading Ariadne by Jennifer Saint.
Tags: reading
441
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024
Wednesday, September 25th, 2024
Introducing TODS – a typographic and OpenType default stylesheet | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
This is a very handy piece of work by Rich:
The idea is to set sensible typographic defaults for use on prose (a column of text), making particular use of the font features provided by OpenType. The main principle is that it can be used as starting point for all projects, so doesn’t include design-specific aspects such as font choice, type scale or layout (including how you might like to set the line-length).
Thursday, September 19th, 2024
Reading 84K by Claire North.
Sunday, September 8th, 2024
Reading Dogs Of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Sunday, August 25th, 2024
Reading The Shadow Of Perseus by Claire Heywood.
Thursday, August 15th, 2024
Reading Europe In Winter by Dave Hutchinson.
Thursday, August 1st, 2024
Reading House Of Odysseus by Claire North.
Saturday, July 13th, 2024
75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time - What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written?
This is a damned fine list.
Sunday, July 7th, 2024
Reading Ithaca by Claire North.
Thursday, June 13th, 2024
Reading Best Of British Science Fiction 2023 edited by Donna Scott.
Wednesday, June 5th, 2024
The 21 best science fiction books of all time – according to New Scientist writers | New Scientist
I’ve read 16 of these and some of the others are on my to-read list. It’s a pretty good selection, although the winking inclusion of God Emperor Of Dune by the SEO guy verges on trolling.
Monday, June 3rd, 2024
Reading Europe At Midnight by Dave Hutchinson.
Friday, May 31st, 2024
Reading patterns
I can’t resist bookshelves.
If I’m shown into someone’s home and left alone while the host goes and does something, you can bet I’m going to peruse their bookshelves.
I don’t know why. Maybe I’m looking for points of commonality. “Oh, you read this book too?” Or maybe it’s the opposite, and I’m looking for something new and—pardon the pun—novel. “Oh, that book sounds interesting!”
I like it when people have a kind of bookshelf on their website.
- Mandy’s reading list is always worth browsing.
- Remy has a comprehensive record of his reading history.
- Maggie has her library and her anti-library.
- Molly White has one shelf for fiction and another shelf for non-fiction.
Here’s my ad-hoc bookshelf, which is manually mirrored on Bookshop.org.
I like having an overview of what I’ve been reading. One of the reasons I started keeping track was so that I could try to have a nice balance of fiction and non-fiction.
I always get a little sad when I see someone’s online reading list and it only consists of non-fiction books that are deemed somehow useful, rather than simply pleasurable. Cameron wrote about when he used to do this:
I felt like reading needed to have some clear purpose. The topic of any book I read needed to directly contribute to being an “adult”. So I started to read non-fiction – stuff that reflected what was happening in my career. Books on management, books on finance, books on economics, books on the creative process. And for many years this diet of dry, literary roughage felt wholesome … but joyless. Each passage I highlited in yellow marker was a point for the scoreboard, not a memory to be treasured.
Now he’s redressing the imbalance and rediscovering the unique joy of entering other worlds by reading fiction.
For a while, I forced myself to have perfect balance. I didn’t allow myself to read two non-fiction books in a row or two fiction books in a row. I made myself alternate between the two.
I’ve let that lapse now. I’m reading more fiction than non-fiction, and I’m okay with that.
But I still like looking back on what I’ve been reading and seeing patterns emerge. Like there’s a clear boom in the last year of reading retellings of the Homeric epics (all kicked off by reading the brilliant Circe by Madeline Miller).
I also keep an eye out for a different kind of imbalance. I want to make sure that I’m not just reading books by people like me—middle-aged heterosexual white dudes.
You may think that a balanced reading diet would emerge naturally, but I’m not so sure. Here’s an online bookshelf. Here’s another online bookshelf. Plenty of good stuff in both. But do either of those men realise that they’ve gone more than a year without reading a book written by a woman?
It’s almost certainly not a conscious decision. It’s just that in the society we live in, the default mode tends towards what’s been historically privileged (see also films, music, and painting).
It’s like driving in a car that subtly pulls to one side. Unless you compensate for it, you’ll end up in the ditch without even realising.
I feel bad for calling attention to those two reading lists. It feels very judgy of me. And reading is something that doesn’t deserve judgement. Any reading is good reading.
Mind you, maybe being judgemental is exactly why I’m drawn to people’s bookshelves in the first place. It might be that I’m subsconsciously looking for compatibility signals. If I see a bookshelf filled with books I like, I’m bound to feel predisposed to like that person. And if I see a bookshelf dominated by Jordan Peterson and Ayn Rand, I’m probably going to pass judgement on the reader, even if I know I shouldn’t.
Thursday, May 30th, 2024
How it feels to get an AI email from a friend
My reaction to this surprised me: I was repelled
I imagine this is what it feels like when you’re on a phone call with someone and towards the end of the call you hear a distinct flushing sound.
Monday, May 13th, 2024
Reading Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes.
Saturday, May 4th, 2024
Curious Reading Club
I think this is a terrific idea from Bobbie—be one of 25 people to get a brand new hardcover non-fiction book in the mail for just $25 and then join in the discussion afterwards.
Alas, it’s not available in the UK but US friends, check it out.
Tuesday, April 30th, 2024
Reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.
Tuesday, April 9th, 2024
Reading Julia by Sandra Newman.
Friday, April 5th, 2024
Reading Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan.