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On Books
The meatloaf turned out pretty well. We should make it sometime when lots of people are over here. Alternately, we should make all of you come over and help us finish it.
I just finished reading "Journey to an 800 Number", by E.L.Konigsburg, because I couldn't sleep. It was really good. I wish I could write like her. It's funny because she went to Carnegie Tech and all, like fifty years ago, and was a chemist, not a writer... but... eventually wrote all of these simply wonderful children's books. I only read From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and About the B'Nai Bagels when I was younger, but I still remembered how much I enjoyed them (and I reread Bagels about once every two years) when I proceeded to discover that she went to CMU and then found a big stack of her books at the New England Mobile Book Fair. Now I am reading them, much to my own great enjoyment.
The great thing about children's books, as I think I've mentioned, is that you seriously can read them in like an hour or two tops, without stops, and enjoy them. Not that I don't enjoy reading deeper books, but if you talked to me much while I was struggling through Cyteen by C.J.Cherryh, for example, it was really screwing with my head. I found it really difficult to read the first book of it (it took me a month, actually, reading like 25 pages a night), although the second two books went much quicker. But it was so much work to wrap my head around everything that in the end I'm not sure the enjoyment I got out of it was anywhere near as big as the struggle I took to get through it.
Oddly, I really enjoy reading stuff by Jane Austen, though. When I was in highschool I remember most people couldn't even wade through the Cliff Notes of all of her stuff just because of the number of characters. But that's not so bad for me. It's like keeping track of people in real life. You just have to remember who all the people you meet are.
I dunno. It is late now. Whee.
Hmm, so if I go on a quest to obtain and read all of E.L.Konigsburg's books without first reading the bunch of Tom Holt books I bought on a similar quest, what does that mean? Am I getting some of Eli's book buying habits?
I just finished reading "Journey to an 800 Number", by E.L.Konigsburg, because I couldn't sleep. It was really good. I wish I could write like her. It's funny because she went to Carnegie Tech and all, like fifty years ago, and was a chemist, not a writer... but... eventually wrote all of these simply wonderful children's books. I only read From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and About the B'Nai Bagels when I was younger, but I still remembered how much I enjoyed them (and I reread Bagels about once every two years) when I proceeded to discover that she went to CMU and then found a big stack of her books at the New England Mobile Book Fair. Now I am reading them, much to my own great enjoyment.
The great thing about children's books, as I think I've mentioned, is that you seriously can read them in like an hour or two tops, without stops, and enjoy them. Not that I don't enjoy reading deeper books, but if you talked to me much while I was struggling through Cyteen by C.J.Cherryh, for example, it was really screwing with my head. I found it really difficult to read the first book of it (it took me a month, actually, reading like 25 pages a night), although the second two books went much quicker. But it was so much work to wrap my head around everything that in the end I'm not sure the enjoyment I got out of it was anywhere near as big as the struggle I took to get through it.
Oddly, I really enjoy reading stuff by Jane Austen, though. When I was in highschool I remember most people couldn't even wade through the Cliff Notes of all of her stuff just because of the number of characters. But that's not so bad for me. It's like keeping track of people in real life. You just have to remember who all the people you meet are.
I dunno. It is late now. Whee.
Hmm, so if I go on a quest to obtain and read all of E.L.Konigsburg's books without first reading the bunch of Tom Holt books I bought on a similar quest, what does that mean? Am I getting some of Eli's book buying habits?
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but hmm, perhaps these need to be added to my list of books.
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It's a really awesome book. I highly recommend it to buy for relatives who are getting bar or bat mitzvahed.
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Oh, and i get that way with authors too -- although, not so much anymore, since i tend to buy books in fives, not ones, and i don't go to the library so much.
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I tokenize when I read. It's easy to generate tokens for Jane Austin characters.
Dostoevsky, on the other hand, has Rachmumblevski arguing with Rachwibblevski over the relative merits of Poltikov versus Pilmikov. I can't read his stuff without cliff notes, even though I actually enjoy it. I've thought about bowlderizing it by changing the names to Alice, Bob, Charlie, etc.