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"Hey, what's that book about? Can I read it?"
2012-01-19 11:48:19
edited 2012-01-19 11:48:19 in Meatspace
We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, For the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year
BITCH I WILL CUT YOU
/overreaction
it's just really annoying when you're trying to read and people are all up in your grill and trying to be social and shit
Comments
Don't know that feel.
Sorta know that feel. This doesn't happen to me, but one time at band camp some girl next to me in chorus was trying to read what I was reading. None too subtly. She didn't seem harmful, though, so I tried to ignore it. I can see how this would be really annoying, though.
I've rarely had people ask the latter, but I'm plenty used to being asked by older adults (meaning I'm referring to when I was a teen/child in this case) what I'm reading and what it's about.
This could be annoying because I often read various sorts of speculative fiction that could not be summed up that easily, especially to someone not nerd-like. Now normally, left to my own devices, I'd either say "It's kind of complicated, so I'm not really going to bother to explain" or let my Asperger's-ish take over and give a summary that most people would consider too detailed. But I was never alone. Always my mother was there, forcing me to actually summarize concisely and never go into too much detail.
And for me, that was annoying. Thankfully, now that I'm basically an adult, I've been catching up on classic-ish stuff that I might not have gone for in earlier years. Like when I was reading various stuff by John Irving, his stuff can be really hard to summarize well, but most older adults have definitely heard of him, and if they kind of haven't, you can basically just say "He's pretty famous." and they'll accept it. Or another example, I'm reading Catch-22 right now, and everyone knows of it, so they'll just nod and say something about it and move on.
I (almost) never read in public. This is part of the reason why. (The other part is I'm just too easily distracted.)
Related: when you're reading stuff and people deciding to take pity on you for being clearly shy and antisocial.
Bloody bastards the lot of them, imagine wanting to strike up a conversation with another human being!
I'm not sure if I've ever actively felt that I was using my reading to ward off people. I mean, I was just shocked when back in the days of the old IJBM, I realized that a great deal of people listen to music while walking around to signal to people that they don't want to talk.
I only wish reading was an effective strategy for keeping away the specific people I don't like when eating dinner in the dining hall. Luckily most of them are off studying abroad right now...
^^ But why don't they try it with one who isn't reading?
Because the book is an easy conversation starter?
"I'm reading Catch-22 right now"
Hey, I just started that book today.
And I don't have a problem with people wanting to start a conversation with me if I'm reading (I have enough trouble reading with outside noise anyway). But sadly, that's a hypothetical; I'm generally left to my own devices.
>This doesn't happen to me, but one time at band camp some girl next to me in chorus was trying to read what I was reading.
>one time at band camp
lol
It's happening more often now that I have a kindle, but the worst was a few months back where this one girl decided it would be the best idea ever to yank the book out of my hands and started flipping through the pages (cracking the spine by the way) and just start reading random passages aloud.
^^ Stuff like that makes me glad that I can rely on being left to my own devices when I'm not actively seeking discussion. There are downsides, but it's nice not (generally) having people come up to me to see what I'm doing.
^ And stuff like that makes me glad I'm an only child (well, that, and less people whose higher education my parents would have to pay for).
Malk - Either you hang around with some really rude people, or you're being harassed in public by random strangers. Either way, you have my sympathy.
Forzare - So I take it your sister's reading "War and Peace", "Finnegan's Wake" and the complete works of G.W.F. Hegel, then?
She's pretty closed minded when it comes to fiction. Pretty much everything a little bit fantasy or sci-fi is "stupid."
We usually get along pretty well, but when she's in a bad mood it's best to just stay clear. :V
>Finnegan's Wake
>James Joyce
>raeg
^ >fifteen-year-old reading
>criticism of fantasy and sci-fi
>more raeg
She was walking by a few weeks ago while my dad and my other sister and I were watching a season five episode, and she went, in the most incredulous voice ever, "They're time travelling now?!" like this was the most completely ridiculous and shocking thing she'd ever heard. It was kind of hilarious.
To be fair, I walked out on the third season of Lost because it was getting stupid too. Well maybe. Dunno what season it was actually.
Bleh. While time travel is certainly something that's easy to screw up, I don't think that anyone who criticizes time travel in itself as a plot device has any right to criticize fiction whatsoever.
As for watching Lost, that's one of the first things I would watch if I weren't generally disinclined towards live action TV as a whole.
^^ That was like 6 years ago or something though. I think I'd probably like it more if I were to watch it now. I probably won't watch it, but... maybe? I dunno.
even if it is objectively the best show ever.Also, I think that you've still never said anything about the quality of fiction that I've agreed with. :P
^^ If you can even call that criticism.
I couldn't buy into Lost conceptually when I tried to get into it because deep down, I knew they were just making everything up as they went along.
If so, then wow. Just... Wow
"If you can even call that criticism."
If, indeed, you can even call that criticism.
It starts getting way better about the "raising lots of questions but answering few" thing around the middle of season 3, when the end date was set in stone.
^^ She used to, but not anymore. I think.
Faking/retconning foreshadowing isn't all that hard to do. I've done it myself.
Because I never really got that impression, especially during my second watch-through.