Sitting on a hill and counting raindrops
Rain. Finally, rain! The sky dumped a load of it on us overnight, and it won't stop coming. Even though it means I can't go out, I'm so happy. We needed it badly, and hopefully the fires in this area will be more manageable now.
Haven't done much. Been knitting, reading, indexing, trying to avoid my mother. The usual. Being trying to get back into the habit of using tumblr, but I don't know how long that'll last, hah. That site seems so visually-oriented, whereas most of my internal spam is just text-based, so generally I just throw that all over twitter and forget about it.
Have been trying to read fic lately. Y'know, cut down on the number of things in the "unread" tag on my Delicious. (Currently: 116 bookmarks. Oh lawd.) But it seems that every time I read something, I find at least two more things to bookmark for later, so the number doesn't really go down at all. I wish I had the patience to read things, too - long things, I mean. It feels so difficult to make myself just sit still and read something. I don't understand. So, things stay bookmarked and unread for ages, and it's just ridiculous. ... I wonder, is it weird to comment on something a year after it's been written?
Started reading 1984 recently. Never read it before. Usually when I say that, people are like, "What? You didn't read it in high school?" Well no, I didn't.
There are only so many novels a curriculum can cover in a year, you know? And a lot of the time, the novels we did cover were Canadian, rather than the stuff included in the "literary canon". (I can't really think of many Canadian works that would be considered part of the canon of literature, to be honest. Anne of Green Gables possibly - but children's literature is something I consider to have a separate canon-list - and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale I suppose, but I didn't read that one until university).
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, there is an enormous long list of books that people my age are supposed to have read at some point, because generally they're covered in school or (perhaps) university/college, but I haven't read. Lord of the Flies for example - I haven't read it. Or The Grapes of Wrath, too. A large number of Shakespeare plays as well, and many of the 19th-century "classics" - Jane Eyre for example. And it gets very frustrating to have people, when they hear I haven't read something, say, "What? You mean you've never read A Tale of Two Cities? How's that even possible?"
Now, I suppose it isn't terribly important that I read these things. The world is full of good books, and there's no end to the amount of things one could read. But the problem is, books like these - some more than others - are kind of entrenched in the cultural things I encounter, in a way. Taking 1984 as an example - there are so many references to it, and one need not even stick to literature to encounter those references. There are television series that refer to it, it sneaks its way into speech sometimes (even if someone hasn't read it, they're surely familiar with the phrase "Big Brother is watching you"). Even a roleplay plot I was recently involved in referenced to it, or at least the concept of all-seeing and all-controlling Big Brother.
To put it simply, when I know there is a reference but I haven't read the source material, I feel a little bit left out - until the time when I (first) figure out what the source material is, and then (second) get around to reading it. And then I can understand, but until the point of understanding, it's frustrating. And it's also frustrating that it seems there is no end to the amount of things I need to read in order to understand both literary and pop culture references. And the same thing happens with film, as well - which is just as frustrating, that. ("What do you mean you haven't ever watched Poltergeist?")
Sometimes I wonder if the "list of things I need to read or watch in order to understand other things" will ever end. It probably won't, hah.
Haven't done much. Been knitting, reading, indexing, trying to avoid my mother. The usual. Being trying to get back into the habit of using tumblr, but I don't know how long that'll last, hah. That site seems so visually-oriented, whereas most of my internal spam is just text-based, so generally I just throw that all over twitter and forget about it.
Have been trying to read fic lately. Y'know, cut down on the number of things in the "unread" tag on my Delicious. (Currently: 116 bookmarks. Oh lawd.) But it seems that every time I read something, I find at least two more things to bookmark for later, so the number doesn't really go down at all. I wish I had the patience to read things, too - long things, I mean. It feels so difficult to make myself just sit still and read something. I don't understand. So, things stay bookmarked and unread for ages, and it's just ridiculous. ... I wonder, is it weird to comment on something a year after it's been written?
Started reading 1984 recently. Never read it before. Usually when I say that, people are like, "What? You didn't read it in high school?" Well no, I didn't.
There are only so many novels a curriculum can cover in a year, you know? And a lot of the time, the novels we did cover were Canadian, rather than the stuff included in the "literary canon". (I can't really think of many Canadian works that would be considered part of the canon of literature, to be honest. Anne of Green Gables possibly - but children's literature is something I consider to have a separate canon-list - and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale I suppose, but I didn't read that one until university).
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, there is an enormous long list of books that people my age are supposed to have read at some point, because generally they're covered in school or (perhaps) university/college, but I haven't read. Lord of the Flies for example - I haven't read it. Or The Grapes of Wrath, too. A large number of Shakespeare plays as well, and many of the 19th-century "classics" - Jane Eyre for example. And it gets very frustrating to have people, when they hear I haven't read something, say, "What? You mean you've never read A Tale of Two Cities? How's that even possible?"
Now, I suppose it isn't terribly important that I read these things. The world is full of good books, and there's no end to the amount of things one could read. But the problem is, books like these - some more than others - are kind of entrenched in the cultural things I encounter, in a way. Taking 1984 as an example - there are so many references to it, and one need not even stick to literature to encounter those references. There are television series that refer to it, it sneaks its way into speech sometimes (even if someone hasn't read it, they're surely familiar with the phrase "Big Brother is watching you"). Even a roleplay plot I was recently involved in referenced to it, or at least the concept of all-seeing and all-controlling Big Brother.
To put it simply, when I know there is a reference but I haven't read the source material, I feel a little bit left out - until the time when I (first) figure out what the source material is, and then (second) get around to reading it. And then I can understand, but until the point of understanding, it's frustrating. And it's also frustrating that it seems there is no end to the amount of things I need to read in order to understand both literary and pop culture references. And the same thing happens with film, as well - which is just as frustrating, that. ("What do you mean you haven't ever watched Poltergeist?")
Sometimes I wonder if the "list of things I need to read or watch in order to understand other things" will ever end. It probably won't, hah.