Obscure Literary Reference Wednesday!

    I admit it.  I had to wiki Basil Hallward.  And it turns out I've read the book.  I really like comic strips that assume the reader is an intelligent, and in this case, well-read human being.

Catcher In The Rye

    I try to read at least one highbrow book each year.  I'm running out of time in 2015.  I vaguely remember Catcher In The Rye bring a popular selection for book reports back in high school, mostly because it has a bunch of cuss words to titillate teenage readers.

    As an adult, swear words are no longer an inducement to read a given book.  So the question is - is Catcher In The Rye a worthwhile read?  I'm going to the library next Saturday, and I'm sure there will be multiple copies of it available.

Reading Glasses

    Another fantastic Mythtickle strip.

Reading the Classics

    Seriously, folks.  I would have a way better attitude about reading the classics if they'd make these sort of changes to the storyline.

RIF ("Reading Is Fun") Thursday

    FWIW, Of Mice and Men is a powerful (yet short) book.

Save the Cat

    True dat, Alice.

Tribute to Oscar Wilde

 

Brought to you by the genius that is Dork Tower.

Wild about Wilde

    I'm just about finished with my first Oscar Wilde book - The Picture of Dorian Gray.  I'm not big on Classic Lit, but this is very good.  Much better than Nathaniel Hawthorne or Emily Dickinson.  Best of all, if you own a Kindle, it's free at Amazon.

Kindle

     I've taken another step into 21st Century technology.  I am in the process of reading a book on the Kindle that I got for Christmas.

    I downloaded the book during the holidays, but didn't read a word of it in January, due mostly to the fact that I was working my way through 600 pages of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

    The book I downloaded is New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon.  Are you impressed?  Actually, I chose it because it was free (public domain), and extremely short (48 pages long in a real-world book).  I'm OCD; I am compelled to finish almost any book I start.  So I figured if I didn't take to the Kindle, at least my ordeal would be over rather quickly.

     But not to worry; I'm adapting to the Kindle faster than I expected.  The screen is easy to read, and I've figured out how to underline (digitally) excerpts.  I'm not sure how to quickly get to a given note or page yet.  If I'm on, say page 50 (actually, the units are in "percentages", not page numbers), and want to go back to, say, page 10, all I can do is hit the page-back button 40 times.  I have a feeling there's a quicker way to do this, but since the Kindle is not a touch-screen, the shortcut isn't intuitive.  Yeah I know, I can always RTFM, but where's the challenge in that?

    I still prefer to be holding an actual book in my hands.  And despite the fact that Kindle downloads are now (for the most part) cheaper than the real-world book, I'd rather pay a bit more, then put the book on my TBR shelf, read it whenever I bloody well want, and get a couple pennies for it when I take it to the used-book store.

    But no trees are killed when making an e-book, and when the download is *free*, I can be talked into going the digital route.  And there are hundreds of free e-books.  They are all "classics" whose copyrights have expired (New Atlantis was first published in 1627).  But that means if I want to read a Sherlock Holmes book, or something by Mark Twain, or even something by - gulp - Fyodor Dostoevsky, I can probably download it for free.

    So I'm sure I'll be using my Kindle more in the future.  I am told it can hold about 3600 e-books, so space will not be a problem.  And Lord knows, when I go to the used-book store, the Classic Lit section is not a place I spend any appreciable time in.