For a brief and magical sliver of time, I read a lot of fiction.
I didn’t read a whole lot of books growing up that I can remember – I recall enjoying The Diary of Anne Frank and something about Eleanor Roosevelt; but sadly, I watched far too much television and otherwise just preferred to play. Reading always felt like homework. I didn’t fully understand the experience of falling in love with a book, a wondrous story, until I was oh, about 24 years old.
I should probably blame my parents: they encouraged me to read, but they never turned off the television in favor of reading literature themselves, so why would I turn out any different?
Or what about my teachers, and the ridiculous curriculum I was forced to suffer through all the years of my primary and secondary education? They sure didn’t help me to understand how to love a book. Even in middle or high school – as a teenage girl, did they really think I was going to relate to Shakespeare, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald? Really?
Say what you will about Harry Potter, it got people reading en masse. Did you know that one in four Americans read ZERO books? Explains a lot, doesn’t it? Children (and their parents and pretty much everybody not living under a born-again-Christian rock) learned that sometimes, a good book about wizards and witches is far better than a sitcom or a video game. Hooray.
Now that I think about it, maybe I’ll blame all the authors and publishers of crap books. But I don’t really even want to do that because at least they’re trying.
Okay fine, I blame myself. I am not well-read due to sheer laziness. I’ve grown intellectually lazy, ignorant even. Sure I read lots and lots of blogs and non-fiction, but I know that fiction is important: it is the only way we can climb inside the imagination of another human being, combine it with our own experiences, biases and beliefs, and create something that is simultaneously uniquely individual and shared with everybody else who reads it. We form a deeper understanding of ourselves, others, and humanity through fiction. Sounds hokey perhaps, but I’m totally not shitting you that I believe all of that to be true.
I didn’t (and still don’t) give books a chance if I don’t connect with them in the first few pages. While I know I should read more, I am far too snobby to enjoy reading most pop fiction, I don’t find pleasure in simple writing and simple characters and simple thoughts. I am trying, though! A friend recently asked if I only listen to the symphony every time I turn on the radio, or PBS every time I turn on the television. Yah no. So why do I put books put up on such a pedestal? Why do I feel if I spend my time reading an Ann Rice or John Grisham novel that this is time wasted, that I should be reading one of the hundreds of more important books I’ll never get around to. Tolstoy, Bronte, Joyce.
If I read pop fiction, I need to know without a shadow of a doubt that it won’t be a waste of my time, and that my friends is no small feat. I have given all genres a chance at one time or another - romance, westerns, mysteries, horror, you name it ... the problem is, most of it, to me, is like watching a Lifetime original movie on a Saturday afternoon when there is nothing else on television besides bass fishing and so you try to convince yourself to just keep watching, it’ll get better. Only a book takes up far more than 90 minutes of your precious time, and I get really mad at books when they waste my time!!
The Bridget Jones books come to mind as examples of incredibly smart, witty and intelligent pop fiction. I’d love to find more page-turning, fun, easy-to-read books. But I’m so annoying(ly picky).
So in 1994 I was living in the suburbs of Chicago with a job in the city, I commuted a total of 3 hours each day and I never did understand how to negotiate a traditional newspaper in a small space, so I read fiction. This is the sliver of time when I really read. The existential, the historical, the philosophical, the funny, the well-crafted, the important.
I fell in love with reading so much that I fantasized about becoming a writer myself. I devoured so many books at such a rapid pace that on my meager salary, it became a financial burden. I found myself seeking out lending libraries and begging co-workers to let me borrow their favorite reads.
The books that I never read in school but changed my relationship with books during this time include, just to name a few:
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Yeah I know, a bit of a trend there, all dead white guys (R.I.P.), and that’s a main complaint I have about literature studies, but whatev.
I’m making it my point to read again, to seek out books that will change my life. I want to read more books written by women: Rand, Woolf, Austin, so forth. I want to read every day, not just before bed, but instead of television and LOLcats. Who knows, maybe I’ll even resurrect my dream of writing something some day.
If you met a person that never loved a book, which book would you recommend to them? What books define you? What books have moved you? What books have you been truly thankful to have experienced, that you will never, ever forget?
One of my new favorite blogs is BernThis. Hilarious, clever, intelligent, love it. She’s trying to grow her subscriber base and offering an incentive to those who cojole their friends to sign up. It’s a win-win for me, because I would never do something like this if I didn’t genuinely think it was worth your time to check out, so do that, and if you like what you read, and I think you will, subscribe, and tell her Chepooka sent you!!
Note: If you don’t use Twitter, you may want to skip this one.
Today I’d like to talk about how some people suck all the fun out of the internet.
I vacillated before finally deciding to write this because I don’t normally like to call people out unless they’re a republican or something; everybody is entitled to their opinion, but then I realized the person I’ll be writing about won’t ever read this anyway. And if he did, maybe it would be a good thing.
Yesterday, as I was fung shuiing my Google Reader, I came upon the feed for the blog of Tim Ferris, the author of Four Hour Work Week (a very interesting book indeed, and I can understand its cult following). If you’ve never heard of him, he is the king of efficiency and lives his life in a way that most people dream about: taking “mini retirements” and working, you guessed it, only a few hours a week.
I found his article, ”12+ Gems of the Pacific Northwest Coast (Plus: 200 Tweets - My Thoughts on Practical Twitter Use),” to be one of the more pristine examples of how the “how to make money” guru-types suck all of the joy out of the social web.
You see, all summer long I’ve stumbled upon articles with titles such as (I’m just making these up), “Ten ways to maximize Twitter” and “Twitter tips for beginners,” and thought to myself, “What has this series of tubes, nay, this society become that we now need instruction on the best practices of Twittering? It’s just Twittering!!”
To start, the author doesn’t follow anybody; here’s why:
Imagine that you send an email to 10 people inviting them to a party, but you BCC 100 more casual friends who are uninvited. How will those 100 feel? Offended and somewhat resentful, just as I would.
Twitter is like this: all followers and followees are transparent. I can’t follow a single person without risking irritating hundreds. This problem is the same for someone who has 40 followers as it is for someone with 40,000. I avoid the drama and politics by following no one. I do this because I don’t care to be a hypocrite (low-information diet, etc.) and do care about my followers, not because I’m uninterested in them. I track some of my followers regularly but don’t “follow” in the formal sense.
(First, “track some of my followers regularly” just sounds creepy.)
So the lesson here kids is that it’s practical to use thousands of Twitter followers to your advantage by asking them to take time out of their busy days to tell you where to stay, what to do, and where to eat ... so long as you establish a policy to not reciprocate. That’s most efficient, plus, you’ll be saving hundreds, maybe thousands (!), of people from excruciating, torturous heartache when they discover you haven’t followed them back. Also, that’s how you get to only work four hours in a week.
He goes on to define three “Twittiquette” rules of using Twitter, but the first one is my favorite:
1. Add value if you consume attention.
I use Twitter as a “micro-blogging” platform, exactly how it’s most often described. Just as I wouldn’t put up a blog post that reads “just ate a burrito. Mmmm… good,” as it consumes readers valuable attention without adding value, I wouldn’t put up such a post on Twitter. On the other hand, “Just had an incredible mahi-mahi burrito at [best unknown taco stand] in San Diego. Must-eat: http://www.website.com In NYC, try: http://www.website2.com” adds value with actionable details. Mundane perhaps, but still a cool “to-do” that ethnic food lovers can tuck in the back of their heads.
Some self-indulgent tweets are fine, but make sure 90%+ help or entertain your readers somehow. Information empty calories are parasitic.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the point, and I think it’s awesome to have a strategy. Whether blogging or micro-blogging, even if it is only peripherally related to your business, you need to not be an idiot about it. I, for example, don’t Tweet or blog about my clients unless I have something nice to say. More and more, I’m consulting with clients on how to use online social networking tools in a professional capacity, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I would argue that social interaction on the web is no different than in real life—all things equal, you’re more likely to do business with people you like—and who wants to do business with somebody who is always “on” and trying to sell you something, be it a product, service, or themselves?!
Sometimes you want to do business with the guy who tells you a story about the burrito he had for lunch, without a full on review of the restaurant he ate it in.
So I tweeted all of this yesterday and got some feedback, it went a little something like this:
me: Reading yet another “Practical Twitter Use” article. Er, so, you DON’T want to know when I eat a delicious burrito?!!
I’ll conclude with the replies that followed, I think it should sum up my point quite nicely:
@taughnee - mmmm yes we must know when you eat a delicious burrito! 11:35 AM July 30, 2008 from web in reply to taughnee
@taughnee I want to know about your burrito habits! 12:56 PM July 30, 2008 from web in reply to taughnee
@taughnee I think hearing about your delicious burrito makes me more likely to buy stuff from you.
@taughnee Burritos are fine, but general “men suck” tweets may be hazardous to some of our egos. 
(lesson learned—don’t do this.)
@taughnee - what are you eating? I’m having a burrito
What’s your take? To burrito or not to burrito? If nothing else, I just turned the word burrito into a verb. *bow*
UPDATE: There’s hope for the internet yet.
@taughnee I am a firm believer that one should almost always burrito when given the opportunity.
@taughnee All the burrito talk is impacting my social life… Bear Tooth tonight! It is imperative!
@taughnee I say BURRITO!!!
