Reading

18/24

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I just wrapped up a sobering re-read of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. A cautionary tale of what happens when books are outlawed and burned upon discovery by firemen. This novel carried more weight for me today, then when I first read it back in junior high.

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door…Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

This completed book takes me to 18 out of my goal of 24 novels read in 2024. Only 6 more to go for the next four months. Hell, I’m sure I can beat 24 and go to 30 by then. But then my desire is more than a goal because there is too much out there I want to consume. None of these include all of reading I have done from the RSS feeds, Substack or magazines offered in the Apple News app!

On the last day of 2023, I mapped out which books I wanted to read this year and it fun to see how it is flexible. The titles changed based on whimsy, discovery, availability and finally, how one book’s theme can affect the next pick. Example- I’ve read mostly fiction this year but have a desire to switch to non-fiction for the next one.

My issue with non-fiction books are that the recent offerings are lacking. I don’t care to read someone’s opinion on a war, politics, historical biographies with “new” information to sway my bias. Self-help books are en vogue for a few months but cannot stand tall over time due to another new craze on the topic.

Under the Library page of this website is a list of the previous readings for the past few years. At the top it will say “Currently Reading.” This is blank for now, purposely.

18 down, 6 to go this year

Unlimited- For Three Months

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Amazon was kind enough to offer a three month trial of Kindle Unlimited. So I installed a few books to the Kindle for reading, because, I.Don’t.Have.Enough.To.Read.As.It.Is.

There are a few titles on the waiting list from my libraries but those will take weeks to deliver and borrow. Thankfully Kindle had them so immediately all of this paid off. Time to speed read the previous two books I borrowed. Zoom Zoom.

Also, how great is it that if there is a word I am not sure about, I can long press the screen and a dictionary will pop up with a definition. Love that feature. With a paper book has a word that needs defining, I’ll have to break out the paper dictionary, you know, like our ancestors did.

Another feature that doesn’t get enough credit is the Highlights and Notes options. When I highlight a word or passage, Kindle sends the meta data to my personal database for later reference. Don’t ask me how because I don’t want to explain all of the heavy scripting and API codes I needed to script to make all of that magic happen.

Above: Highlighted text on Kindle. Below: The same highlighted text sent to my personal database

Three P’s

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For digital documents you want to keep for a long time, I suggest the Three P’s:

  • Plain text
  • PDFs
  • Printouts

While in college in the mid 1990’s, and prior to purchasing my first computer, I utilized a word processor. Think manual typewriter but with a 3.5″ floppy disk for storage. I wish I had known enough to preserve all of my writings. The floppy disks were formatted for the word processor but not the computer. It wiped everything off the disk to make room for the Windows formatting. The lesson here is to preserve your work and prepare by future-proofing formats. It was a hard learned lesson. All of my personal writing, studies and papers gone.

I was reminded of all of this when I read about how Hemingway’s early notes and the beginning of a novel disappeared. His wife had gathered his works and left Paris by train to Switzerland to meet him and a publisher and somehow, the suitcase went missing from the train platform and they were devastated.

My loss was due to ignorance and in no way as significant as Hemingway’s loss. But the pain was there.

My revamped workflow process is:

  • Write and edit drafts in Ulysses (saved to cloud, backed up onto my file server)
  • Publish from Ulysses to my website (saved to cloud)
  • Copy/Paste to my own database in plain text format (cloud, file server)
  • Migrate all of my work into the database in plain text, organize.
  • Print to .pdf by year (saved to cloud and file server)
  • Print to paper by year (saved to a dedicated yearly file folder or binder)

Interesting enough, while walking through the library’s “read and return” section, the word “Hemingway” ended up in my peripheral vision.

Rabbits and Frequency Illusion!

I usually don’t give them a glance but the paper spine was attractive. The fiction novel title is “The Hemingway Thief” and how the aforementioned luggage was lost. I haven’t read it yet, but it seems to be a good yarn with a few secrets and twists. Looking forward to reading it as soon as possible.

Blackout

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I’ve been experimenting with digital crossword puzzles and newsprint lately. With crosswords, I’ll solve the puzzle (entertaining in its own right) and then bonus(!) I will take a screenshot of it when complete. Then, in Apple Photos, use my Apple Pencil to markup the image to find words that stand out. After those are mapped out I will then cross out the rest to come up with some poetry. Although, that is limited to the words on the puzzle so they are more statement than poetry.

After reading an interesting article with Apple News, I will take a screenshot and do the same for the article- try to connect words and to form a new phrase or sentence.

The whole premise is ridiculous but it is mentally challenging and time consuming. I’ll see how long the fun lasts but for now, I am enjoying it.

After
Before

Theseus’ Paradox

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While researching an unrelated article, I came across that phrase, “Theseus’ Paradox” and went down a rabbit hole of nerd-scrolling after that. The Wikipedia page here details the story and the philosophy about it so I won’t get into details for now.

However, it does refer to the “Ship of Theseus”, from the Ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Then something sparked in me where I recalled I have a book in my library titled “S.” by J.J. Abrams, the famous movie director. Long time readers will remember a post back in March where I was tempted to read it but was overwhelmed at the time and wanted to read it properly. Well, after this new round of frequency illusion it is time for me to dive even deeper to see how far down the rabbit hole goes. Unrelated except by name only, there is a documentary film out of India with the same title, “Ship of Theseus” that has to do with photography. I need to find and watch this soon as well.

12 Down, 12 To Go

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Halfway through the 2024 reading list and I feel as if I am on a spree. The first quarter of the year was slow reading with work travel, relocating and heavy, difficult books to sort out. The libraries felt generous and dumped four books on me all at once to hurry and consume, but it just won’t be possible to do this and give them justice.

99% of the books on my list are fiction and yet, halfway through it, I am looking for some non-fiction. No biographies, self-help, politics or history. Something thought-provoking. The search is on.

Read & Write

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The Los Angeles Library system recently purchased a local book publisher and plans on publishing even more from local authors. Brilliant!

Local libraries could and should support people to self-publish books, e-books, websites, etc. Instead of just computers for the homeless to play games on, set up printers, scanners, zine machines, etc. Beef up the local writers and potential authors by hosting writing parties. Maybe even add a community feed to host all of those websites and their owners with a shared feed of everything published in blog format and RSS?

Read-O-Matic

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I want to design and place a machine to fill up with books that people can purchase on the go as opposed to them buying a soda or a snack. I know we will all be a lot healthier.

They remind me of the Little Free Library stands all across the country, of which I used to be a curator of one back home.

They also remind me of the Art-O-Mat art vending I’ve seen in Las Vegas.

Scroll Your Own Way*

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*with apologies to Fleetwood Mac

Scrolling is a tool of our current digital existence, no matter how much we dislike our dependence on it. This is because most people are scrolling on an app platform where they have little control on the content they see. 

Social media algorithms mean you don’t see the posts of everyone you follow. You see only what is currently popular from some of them. Plus you see other stuff you don’t follow that their algorithm “think you might like”. Popular means engagement, so the original post is swarming with comments from strangers. You also see ads everywhere that often takes over the original material you are trying to consume. The interface itself is urging you to scroll! Like! Subscribe! Buy!

No thank you.

Digital life shouldn’t be this way. The best way to consume media is not with social media anyway. It exists on websites – blogs, news, magazines, opinions. Millions of new, and better quality articles created every week.

But you don’t want to visit dozens of websites to find out what’s new. What you need is a way to have the website content you choose come to you, when you want it.

This solution exists already in the form of a little known technology called RSS. It exists in the background of almost all websites. It’s a way for RSS apps to subscribe to that websites content and receive new articles when they are available.

In the RSS context, “SUBSCRIBE” doesn’t mean you pay, nor do you give your email. In fact the website owner won’t even know you’ve subscribed at all!

It’s like podcasts — but for reading.

This is not a paid sponsorship, but an RSS reader such as the no cost app called NetNewsWire. It shows you articles from your favorite blogs and news sites and keeps track of what you’ve read.

This means you can stop going from page to page in your browser looking for new articles to read. Do it the easy way instead: let a feed reader bring the news to you instead.

If you’ve been getting your news via Facebook and Twitter — with their ads, algorithms, user tracking, outrage, and misinformation — you can switch to your news feed reader to get news directly and more reliably from the sites you trust.

Take back control of your scroll. Scroll your own way.

Start with two or three sources. Maybe a news site and a couple of blogs you like such as, oh, I don’t know, chrisdenbow.website. His RSS feed is simply: https://chrisdenbow.website/feed

Give it a go, and after a few days, you’ll feel something magical happen. You have an app with a feed you can scroll through that you completely control. You decide what is in there. There is no algorithm. Just the latest posts from every site interleaved in reverse date order.

You don’t even need to leave the app to read. I subscribe only to full text feeds, so the entire article is readable within the app. No cookie pop ups or confusing menus to navigate.

There’s no comments or likes. If you no longer wish to see posts from a particular author, you remove their feed from your app and you never see them again.

Everyone should have the ability to scroll your own way.

While typing this up, I obviously sung this in my head the whole time.

The Future

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I’ve mentioned previously that something about writing online has to change soon. I’ve looked into the options to host my decades of digital journals with various low/no cost alternatives and they suck. 

Speaking of The Future, I just finished this book of the same name as well as a quick re-read of Alice In Wonderland. That makes ten titles down out of my 2024 reading goal of twenty four.