Sunday!
So one of the boys in the tribe told me that I needed to read I Funny: A Middle School Story
So… I guess I have to.
What are you reading and/or watching?
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
I’m batting around a post about how people feel about reading. I suspect that it is something people feel they should love but many might not. I know some very intelligent, very hard working people who say they dislike reading or “it is not their favorite activity” if being more political/concerned about appearances.
I just picked up The Illuminaries from the library yesterday.Report
When I was a teenager, I could read read read and read some more. Plowing through books, fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction, even books with interesting titles (Libra… hey, I’m a Libra! (as it turns out, the book was not what I thought it was)).
I find that the most fun part of reading was experiencing brand new ideas… but the wrestling with ideas with others is so much more intoxicating.Report
I can still read and read and read and I’m 33 and my job involves spending 8-10 hours a day reading and writing.
I think it helps that during my formative years of 14-23, I spent largely TV free. My parents did not let me watch TV during weekday nights and then in college I had rehearsals and homework and an adviser that recommended at least 45 minutes of pleasure reading a day. From 22-23, I was in Japan and most TV was in a language that I did not understand.
So I am just not in the habit of turning on the TV. I also seemingly have trouble with the concept of passive/mindless entertainment.Report
Says the dude who majored in Theater?
I actually went without a TV or watching it minimally for about five years. I remember having a stay-in date with a new flame and realizing shortly before she was set to arrive that I didn’t even have my television hooked up. Not having cable made a pretty big difference. Then watching TV shows from the Internet came along and my inadvertent hiatus came to an end.Report
@will-truman
Theatre isn’t mindless!!!!
Passive would have been a better word choice. People often seem to say TV is mindless/passive entertainment as in you can turn it on and zone out. It does not task mentally.
Reading is fun for me even if most people seem to think that the books I read are not “fun reads.”Report
I don’t think theater is mindless or passive, necessarily. It can be either, or both. Like TV.
I read your comment as putting TV in the mindless/passive camp (Sentence two of the last paragraph being a partial explanation of sentence one) though the word “also” suggests that perhaps I read that wrongly and you meant them as two different things (albeit with some overlap).Report
NewDealer,
most of the theater I’ve been to is substantially more mindless than most of the Television I watch. I think it’s the difference between Drama and Comedy, personally.
(that, and I’ve watched a lot of musicals, and they can be pretty damn braindead entertainment).Report
I’m happy to say that today I’ll be reading Ordinary Times. 🙂 It’s been touch and go for a while.Report
“Men at Arms.” (Pratchett/Discworld.) I finished Double Down last week (no politics) and wanted a break before going back in time to Game Change (no politics).
I’m also reading some public domain comic books for The Project.Report
Men at Arms is the point where the City WTch books really take off.Report
Ooooh, there’s more City Watch books? Awesome! I really liked Guards! Guards! and am enjoying this one.Report
There are six more City Watch books after Men-at-Arms. Sam Vimes is Pratchett’s favorite character.Report
Wikipedia is your friend.
I just finished re-reading The Fifth Elephant, myself. It was a welcome example of first-rate Pratchett after Carpe Jugulum, which both Stillwater and I found extremely disappointing.Report
Wikipedia contains spoilers. Heck, just following up on James’s comment to see how many City Watch books there are told me what Angua is (which, to be fair, I totally should have figured out).Report
getting ready to start tonight “Undiluted Hocus Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner” I used to read his columns as a kid and he is probably one of the main reasons I don’t hate mathReport
Martin Gardner was awesome. I don’t think anyone who ever lived could make mathematics as entertaining as he could. (Isaac Asimov could do it with the other sciences, but he didn’t really know a lot of math.)Report
I read a book about death and music, Cigar Box Banjo, and I’m in the middle of a comic book series about a wombat who gets roped into being a hero by a statue of Ganesh… there are lots of other things but those are the notables.Report
“a wombat who gets roped into being a hero by a statue of Ganesh”
A story as old as time…Report
There was a long time between when that book was written and when a publisher finally accepted it. That’s right, it was a trunk story.Report
The joy at finally having sold the story was tempered by the fact that the per-word rate paid the author was well below-market.
Peanuts, really.Report
Digger! I read that when it was being published as a webcomic. It was one of my favorites.Report
I finished up Season 4 of The Wire over the weekend. That season ended with gut punch after gut punch, even more than previous seasons, I think. Only 10 episodes left in the series. I look forward to finishing the series, because I expect it to be really good, but I do not look forward to not having any more to watch.
As far as reading, I started on the first Wild Cards anthology, edited by George RR Martin. It is a sci-fi/superhero series. Post WW2, an alien virus is released that mutates people. Some people benefit, some become freaks, and some are killed. I have not gotten far enough into it to have a strong opinion, but so far, so good.Report
“You gonna look out for me, Sergeant Carver? You gonna look out for me?”
I really, really didn’t like S4 the first time I watched it. Now I think it’s amazing. But it is absolutely, brutally devastating.Report
I just realized that, except for the Ohio State-Michigan and Alabama-Auburn games, I didn’t watch any TV at all last week, even on Netflix. So a.) I got a lot of reading done (philosophy stuff to catch up to where I’m supposed to be by December, and some more Grass), and b.) do I know how to pick which games to watch or what? The last three college football games that I’ve watched in full are: Auburn-Georgia, OSU-Michigan, and Alabama-Auburn. People should just call me on Saturdays and ask which games I’m watching, so they know what to watch.Report