Reading Matter

After putting if off through several "Don't lose your subscription!!!" "Renew now!!!" notices I decided to renew my subscription to Wired.

I don't have a whole lot of time dedicated to print magazines these days, but I usually learn something entertaining. Also, sometimes I can impress others with the valuable knowledge I've gained, such as when I recalled over the recent holiday vacation that fabric softener is made (in part) of horse tallow. Mmm...tallow.

Merely one of the reasons I don't use fabric softener. The other one is that sometimes I like to dress in sandpaper, and obviously I don't want to spoil the rough edge.

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A Terrifying Vision of Things to Come

I was at the movies the other night, reading a regular old paper book, and the person sitting next to me asked "Have you considered a reader?"

He said this in the tone one might use to inquire "are you aware there's a treatment for that troublesome condition you have?"

Say, if I'd been wearing obvious wrist braces, and someone asked "have you considered carpal tunnel surgery?"

It's come to this already, has it?

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Looking From House to House

I love this post on Feminist SF that breaks up four approaches to communication and activism according to which Hogwarts House a person would be sorted into.

Reading provides many angles from which to view life. Let us salute Harry Potter.

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Benefits of Magazine-Reading

I was reading my American Libraries on the train on the way home from work this evening, and the woman next to me, noticing, asked where I was a librarian. It turns out she's a librarian at the university one stop down the line.

Then the man sitting across from us turned out to be a librarian at the university a bit over. It was the academic librarian car! Or, as another woman said, "the smart peoples' car." (I much appreciate that characterization of librarians, ma'am.)

This seemed like the right point for a rousing musical number, so we'll keep that in mind for the dramatization.

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Bribing Children

LISNews links to this post by a homeschooling parent in Seattle who spurns summer reading programs.

She argues that offering children prizes for reading a lot of books undermines what should be the real reason they read books--you know, 'cause books are awesome.

I have recently been thinking about rewarding behavior that ideally is its own reward, and I was a homeschooled child who once participated in a summer reading program, so I could naught but comment.

To the internet! Is what I said, before showing up here.

When I was 11, I thought the summer reading program at the library was the best thing ever. I read books all the time anyway, and now I could get a coupon to Dairy Queen for it? Sweet!

So in retrospect the program did not actually motivate me. I don't think I read any more than I would have without it, which was already about twice as much as was required for that free ice cream cone or whatever.

I guess I do get the whole "bribery is icky" aspect of trying to convince some child who normally wouldn't be reading all the time to read for ice cream, though. I mean, doesn't that kind of cheapen the whole thing? If you're only reading because you want ice cream, are you really getting everything you could out of it?

At the same time, this assumes that reading and learning are only ever to be properly valued as abstract jewels free from that taint of filthy lucre. And certainly they are valuable in that sense. If you like to read and learn stuff, I think you're more likely to have a sort of lively, thoughtful mind that will make you good at getting stuff out of life.

But reading and learning stuff can also be put to the service of making money and earning a living, and we can't really argue that that's a waste of time. Maybe it doesn't really matter if kids read for the love of reading or for the love of ice cream. Or money. They're going to wind up doing a lot of boring stuff for money later on, right? Get 'em in the habit!

Besides, maybe they start reading some boring book for ice cream, and then discover that it's actually fascinating and cool!

Bribery: is it really so wrong?

Yeah, I'm working on a parenting book right now that will lay out my theories on child rearing in more detail.

Easy Reader, That's My Name

Caveat Lector introduced me to an interesting web-gizmo called Readability. It's kind of cool.

You install this little button on your browser bookmarks bar. Then when you come upon a hard-to-read page, just click, and Readability renders everything in straightforward, black-on-white, nicely-sized, Times-New-Roman-ish-fonted glory. (I'm not great with fonts; it looks a lot like Times New Roman, but I'm not positive it actually is.)

It's kind of like what a feed reader does for blogs (besides the syndication thing): you lose all the individual design of the various pages, but depending on how dramatic and exciting that design is, it can be a lot easier to read. 

I'm reasonably tolerant of odd fonts, interesting colors, distracting graphics, etc., at least in small doses, but I have certainly come across my share of pages that irritated my eyeballs and were just plain difficult to read.

I do kind of miss seeing the interesting pictures and designs people put on their blogs. It expresses something about the writer that you don't get with the plain text. Sometimes I'll click through for some reason, and think "wow, I never pictured this blog this way!" 

Kind of the way I'm sometimes surprised to see a photo of someone I've heard on the radio. It's as if I don't get the whole experience of the blog without the chosen theme, background and color scheme.

On the other hand, sometimes when I click through, I think "wow, I couldn't read this straight-up on regular basis!" Light text on dark background, for instance, is tough for me to read over any significant period of time.

Is my blog bad? I tried to keep it simple--boring, even--but come to think of it the blue on blue may not be ideal.

Anyway, if you have a hard time reading busy pages, you might give Readability a try. You might lose some of the character, but if you're reading for information, it may not really matter. 

It's a trade-off I generally make with blogs too. The information comes through...personalized presentation is nice but secondary.

Lonely Magazines

I can't be entirely making up that American Libraries and Library Journal always seem to arrive on the same day--it seems so familiar. Here they both are, again! 

They are thus placed in competition with each other for my limited attention, meaning that almost invariably I don't read either one of them for weeks. 

It's a sorry state of affairs, I can tell you.

Here they both are, again, on top of a pile of their equally neglected fellows, some old bank statements, my Player's Handbook, letters of solicitation from worthy causes I have not quite decided to ignore, and who knows what all else.

I want to read them, in theory. At least skim them. I just can't actually seem to tear myself away from blogs and knitting to do it. 

Good News About Fiction

I am extremely pleased to hear, via Stephen's Lighthouse (where the post title presciently states "you'll like this post"), that research suggests reading fiction is good for social skills. 

Call me an anti-social misfit because I was huddled in a corner with a book all the time, will you? (Being homeschooled didn't help, since everyone sort of assumes kids who aren't in school have no social skills, because clearly children will never encounter other human beings outside of a school setting and will therefore have no opportunity to interact with them.) 

Yeah, well, you're wrong, because I was learning about how people relate to each other and why they do things and so forth. To quote researcher Keith Oatley at the University of Toronto: 

"Fiction is really about how to get around in the social world, which is not as easy as one might think. ... People who read fiction give themselves quite a bit of practice in understanding that. And also, I think reading fiction sort of prompts one to think about these questions - you know, what are these people up to?"

I think this is pretty cool, and am interested to see what the researchers find next. As the article wonders, 

For example, most of their research has focused on fiction in general. But would they find similar effects if they looked at biographies? And do sci-fi tales about chasing aliens through the galaxy have the same benefits as Alice Munro's short stories about love and loss? And what parts of the brain are stimulated when literary simulation is in full effect?

I, for one, look forward to finding out more. 

So I'm pleased to hear that fiction (as well as nonfiction, which I also love and enjoy) is getting some respect, although I have to say, I was going to keep reading it anyway just because I like it, even if all the clever people scorned me for my low, intellectually crude tastes. 

I'm anti-social like that.