Sitting on a hill and counting raindrops
Jun. 18th, 2011 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoRain. Finally, rain! The sky dumped a load of it on us overnight, and it won't stop coming. Even though it means I can't go out, I'm so happy. We needed it badly, and hopefully the fires in this area will be more manageable now.
Haven't done much. Been knitting, reading, indexing, trying to avoid my mother. The usual. Being trying to get back into the habit of using tumblr, but I don't know how long that'll last, hah. That site seems so visually-oriented, whereas most of my internal spam is just text-based, so generally I just throw that all over twitter and forget about it.
Have been trying to read fic lately. Y'know, cut down on the number of things in the "unread" tag on my Delicious. (Currently: 116 bookmarks. Oh lawd.) But it seems that every time I read something, I find at least two more things to bookmark for later, so the number doesn't really go down at all. I wish I had the patience to read things, too - long things, I mean. It feels so difficult to make myself just sit still and read something. I don't understand. So, things stay bookmarked and unread for ages, and it's just ridiculous. ... I wonder, is it weird to comment on something a year after it's been written?
Started reading 1984 recently. Never read it before. Usually when I say that, people are like, "What? You didn't read it in high school?" Well no, I didn't.
There are only so many novels a curriculum can cover in a year, you know? And a lot of the time, the novels we did cover were Canadian, rather than the stuff included in the "literary canon". (I can't really think of many Canadian works that would be considered part of the canon of literature, to be honest. Anne of Green Gables possibly - but children's literature is something I consider to have a separate canon-list - and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale I suppose, but I didn't read that one until university).
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, there is an enormous long list of books that people my age are supposed to have read at some point, because generally they're covered in school or (perhaps) university/college, but I haven't read. Lord of the Flies for example - I haven't read it. Or The Grapes of Wrath, too. A large number of Shakespeare plays as well, and many of the 19th-century "classics" - Jane Eyre for example. And it gets very frustrating to have people, when they hear I haven't read something, say, "What? You mean you've never read A Tale of Two Cities? How's that even possible?"
Now, I suppose it isn't terribly important that I read these things. The world is full of good books, and there's no end to the amount of things one could read. But the problem is, books like these - some more than others - are kind of entrenched in the cultural things I encounter, in a way. Taking 1984 as an example - there are so many references to it, and one need not even stick to literature to encounter those references. There are television series that refer to it, it sneaks its way into speech sometimes (even if someone hasn't read it, they're surely familiar with the phrase "Big Brother is watching you"). Even a roleplay plot I was recently involved in referenced to it, or at least the concept of all-seeing and all-controlling Big Brother.
To put it simply, when I know there is a reference but I haven't read the source material, I feel a little bit left out - until the time when I (first) figure out what the source material is, and then (second) get around to reading it. And then I can understand, but until the point of understanding, it's frustrating. And it's also frustrating that it seems there is no end to the amount of things I need to read in order to understand both literary and pop culture references. And the same thing happens with film, as well - which is just as frustrating, that. ("What do you mean you haven't ever watched Poltergeist?")
Sometimes I wonder if the "list of things I need to read or watch in order to understand other things" will ever end. It probably won't, hah.
Haven't done much. Been knitting, reading, indexing, trying to avoid my mother. The usual. Being trying to get back into the habit of using tumblr, but I don't know how long that'll last, hah. That site seems so visually-oriented, whereas most of my internal spam is just text-based, so generally I just throw that all over twitter and forget about it.
Have been trying to read fic lately. Y'know, cut down on the number of things in the "unread" tag on my Delicious. (Currently: 116 bookmarks. Oh lawd.) But it seems that every time I read something, I find at least two more things to bookmark for later, so the number doesn't really go down at all. I wish I had the patience to read things, too - long things, I mean. It feels so difficult to make myself just sit still and read something. I don't understand. So, things stay bookmarked and unread for ages, and it's just ridiculous. ... I wonder, is it weird to comment on something a year after it's been written?
Started reading 1984 recently. Never read it before. Usually when I say that, people are like, "What? You didn't read it in high school?" Well no, I didn't.
There are only so many novels a curriculum can cover in a year, you know? And a lot of the time, the novels we did cover were Canadian, rather than the stuff included in the "literary canon". (I can't really think of many Canadian works that would be considered part of the canon of literature, to be honest. Anne of Green Gables possibly - but children's literature is something I consider to have a separate canon-list - and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale I suppose, but I didn't read that one until university).
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, there is an enormous long list of books that people my age are supposed to have read at some point, because generally they're covered in school or (perhaps) university/college, but I haven't read. Lord of the Flies for example - I haven't read it. Or The Grapes of Wrath, too. A large number of Shakespeare plays as well, and many of the 19th-century "classics" - Jane Eyre for example. And it gets very frustrating to have people, when they hear I haven't read something, say, "What? You mean you've never read A Tale of Two Cities? How's that even possible?"
Now, I suppose it isn't terribly important that I read these things. The world is full of good books, and there's no end to the amount of things one could read. But the problem is, books like these - some more than others - are kind of entrenched in the cultural things I encounter, in a way. Taking 1984 as an example - there are so many references to it, and one need not even stick to literature to encounter those references. There are television series that refer to it, it sneaks its way into speech sometimes (even if someone hasn't read it, they're surely familiar with the phrase "Big Brother is watching you"). Even a roleplay plot I was recently involved in referenced to it, or at least the concept of all-seeing and all-controlling Big Brother.
To put it simply, when I know there is a reference but I haven't read the source material, I feel a little bit left out - until the time when I (first) figure out what the source material is, and then (second) get around to reading it. And then I can understand, but until the point of understanding, it's frustrating. And it's also frustrating that it seems there is no end to the amount of things I need to read in order to understand both literary and pop culture references. And the same thing happens with film, as well - which is just as frustrating, that. ("What do you mean you haven't ever watched Poltergeist?")
Sometimes I wonder if the "list of things I need to read or watch in order to understand other things" will ever end. It probably won't, hah.
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-06-18 08:53 pm (UTC)And I've had that "Wait, you've never read this!?" experience so many times before.
Germany's got a lot of classics and important pieces itself, and I don't even know the majority of that, so it's kind of ... impossible for me to know all English classics. There are just so many important books and movies and everything.
Also, I've only read an abridged version of 1984 but it's really good. Have fun <3
no subject
Date: 2011-06-19 03:34 pm (UTC)Even if I feel weird giving them late. Especially very late. :Va [/will try to get up the nerve to do so]
THE WORLD IS TOO BIG
AND THERE'S TOO MUCH LITERATURE IN IT
AND IT ALL REFERS TO EACH OTHER IN SOME WAY
and I'll never be able to read all of it.
This is my woe.
8|
(Also, I'm really enjoying it so far <3 But we will see!)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-19 08:44 am (UTC)Hey, I wildly encourage late reviews here! Mostly as a biased attention-whoring party, but still. If anything, for author it would be a nice surprise and a blast from the past that might compel them to re-read their older stuff. Which is always fun.
As for short attention span when it comes to fanfiction - I feel you so, so much.
...You have a twitter too. This site is one big mystery to me.
Eh, letting cultural references fly over my head = story of my life. Sadly, it's true both for the Western pop-culture and the Japanese culture in general. A Japanese-studying friend of mine is kind enough to add comments explaining all those allusions when she translates something, and it's only because of that that I even know how much I'm missing. -_- As for the Western stuff, I one of those people who can hardly tell the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars, nuff said. Why so vast, culture.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-19 03:28 pm (UTC)Anyway. Ahhh, since people are saying to just review, I suppose I will (though it seems the author doesn't use their journal any more, hmm). Especially since it really was quite enjoyable, ah. :Va
I'm glad I'm not the only one with a short attention span when it comes to fic, though. It's like... I have stuff going back all the way to 2009 that I've been meaning to read, but haven't. And some of it is stuff that some people (at least people within my social circle) consider "must-reads", pfft. Oh, me.
Ah, yes - I do have a twitter. Mostly I use it like a combination of braindump and chat client, so it's kind of spammy. Somewhere along the line I stopped using IM to talk to people and began using twitter instead. I'm not sure how one is supposed to use it, but whatever. :Va
Anyway. Again: I am glad it's not just me. orz It's just, ehh... it tends to make me feel so culturally stupid. Thankfully when it happens with Japanese stuff I don't particularly care, because I'm not all that invested in it. But oh lawd western things... and not only modern things, but the entire span of it! Don't even get me started on the number of times I have read something modern only to discover much later that it made reference to some medieval tale or ancient Roman work which I haven't gotten around to reading yet. 8|
The entire body of written and visual art is just. Too. BIG.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-21 05:43 am (UTC)ohoho what do you think of 1984 so far? i read that for kicks back in grade 11 back when... back when i read books ;_;
things like that are part of the reason why I always tend to go for ~classics~ when choosing books to read. They're referenced everywhere. I could say also it's because people will have expected you to read it but that really, really depends on the kind of folks you're talking to.
also I figure that if the book is so goddamn famous it probably means it's a good read haha
no subject
Date: 2011-06-21 07:43 pm (UTC)So far, 1984's pretty good. I'm only about 1/3rd of the way in, but I'm enjoying it - though I expect that it'll take a turn for the depressing soon enough.
Man, one thing I really enjoy about no longer being in school is that I have both the time and the brainpower to read. It's so wonderful.
And YES. If a book is so influential, in many cases, it's because there's something good about it. Though sometimes it just plain isn't to my taste. And sometimes other people think there... isn't so much anything good about it. I hear people slamming Dickens all the time, for example. (Makes me sad, 'cause I like Dickens, at least to a degree. I mean, at times his stuff is a bit... overwrought, but I find it entertaining.)