Reading roundup and year-end book meme
Clearing the decks, the last reading roundup of 2019 and the years' book meme:
40. Ben Aaronovitch, The October Man -- This was cute and fun but also drove home the point that, much as I love this world and the magic, I'm mostly here for the characters around Peter. Because I had this book sitting on my Kindle for weeks before I opened it, and ( Read more... )
40. Ben Aaronovitch, The October Man -- This was cute and fun but also drove home the point that, much as I love this world and the magic, I'm mostly here for the characters around Peter. Because I had this book sitting on my Kindle for weeks before I opened it, and ( Read more... )
Comments 24
And another unexpected bonus: the first time I saw this post, I didn't know any of the other books you described, but this time, I'm quite coincidentally in the middle of one. My husband picked up Because Internet and I'm already more interested in it than he is. There are so many things she talks about that give me that nostalgic buzz or warmth of belonging, right down to her author bio, where I learned she used to write for The Toast. I'm not too far into the book so far but I really like it.
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*nod* that makes sense -- I definitely felt myself focusing on specific types of passages over others. The ones I like best, the ones I quoted here, were the sort of Blake-flavored ones, which were not necessarily the most numerous.
I'm glad to hear you're enjoying Before Internet! It made me feel quite nostalgic too, especially the earlier sections. I remember all the "> >> >>>" emails, back in the day (and actually do still have the occasional flister who uses that convention instead of HTML), and the ASCII art, and all kinds of things she's writing about.
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ASCII needs to make a comeback too.
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Hee! I'm sure I would feel the same if I still got actual letters from people :)
I still occasionally see ASCII art in people's icons, but it's been FOREVER since I've seen it actually used in the wild, like, not in an image file. I remember how impressed I was the first time I saw, like, the ROFLcopter ASCII art.
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Or maybe rather "everyday writing" like "everyday speech", because "informal writing" actually already existed - old letters are the finest example.
"sameeee" (although I personally wouldn't do that -- I always go with "saaaaame")
Same (heh) here. I always write extras where they actually would be when out loud. It always irks me when in a book or anywhere I see it written wrong. "We areeee the champiooooons....!!!", wtf, have you ever really heard it, author? Or even imagined how it would sound like?
Btw, you can really often see where someone's autocorrect sneakily sneaked in, and they never noticed. But that's mostly just funny. What REALLY angers me, is people that give advices in language learning threads and make freaking typos in them!!! Replying to learners's questions!!! Aaaaarghhhh!!! Shot them. Shot on spot, bury deep and don't mark the grave. Unless with a tombstone full of typos ( ... )
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There's actually a section on comparing internet writing with old letters, with the conclusion that letters actually did tend to be somewhat formal, and certianly longer-form than internet writing -- and that the closest pre-internet equivalent for internet writing are postcards -- and that postcards tend to share some of the hallmarks of internet writing, like weird punctuation for emphasis, little sketches like emoji, and so on.
Same (heh) here. I always write extras where they actually would be when out loud.
I wonder if it comes of learning to read/write in a (more) phonetic language first?
What REALLY angers me, is people that give advices in language learning threads and make freaking typos in them!!!I tend to be pretty forgiving of typos, although ones that crop up in language advice are unfortunate. The ones I do fell schadenfreude about is typos in a comment complaining ( ... )
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They haven't seen some of my posts in discussions, not only on LJ, but okay... XD
while I don't think there's any one "correct" use of emoji, I do feel like you'd be able to tell if someone was using emoji "wrong" :P
Yup, I agree. The views on language rules tend to petrify with time, though (even if the language itself keeps changing), so that's partially why they said "in a hundred years", I think - by this time there might be written rules for emojis, who knows... Spelling rules are not really so old either. And writing the rules down (and making everyone keep to them) slows changes in the language too, to the point it seems like it's set in stone to those less familiar with old texts. (And then there are also those who learned some about historical changes and are like "Wheee, that means I can wrtee whiheever Iwant evvery one steel nowz ane wai waht Imeen shhutup gramannazhi perkriptonist!!!!!!!")
but I do feel like XP has fallen out of use.I mean, my point stays even if no one ( ... )
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I think you and I are Spiders Georg outliers and should not factor in to things like this ;P
by this time there might be written rules for emojis, who knows...
If they really are gestures, as this book posits, that's less likely, but I suppose some gestures do become "petrified" to the point that you could be doing them wrong. Although even with something like a handshake, people do them in various different ways, from hand-over-hand power clasp to "dead fish"
In this case, I need that study prove me it was really the "boys are linguistically slower in general" thing,I hesitate to keep going from memory (the book had a couple of paragraphs on the specific study and also academic references, which I didn't check) but I don't think that the argument was that boys are linguistically "slower", just that girls tended to pick up and spread slang more. Which matches my own anecdata experience, but that's neither here nor there. (It wasn't a neurological ( ... )
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