My cartoon for the Guardian Books autumn reading special.

Mort by Terry Pratchett

According to his response to an ask on Tumblr, one of Neil's favorite books by Terry is Thief of Time. It's the last in the Death series, and the Death series is one of my favorites, so I'm reading/rereading all of them in order, starting with Mort, which was originally published in 1987. A year before I even existed. Three years before Good Omens was published.

Here are some vague thoughts.

Lobbying to get this started up at our local bookshop STAT

A lot of talk about why fandom seems to be “dying” and, just for myself, I know I participate in fandom less in the past couple of years because of RL imposing on my time and energy. Especially post-2020. It seems like this is a “me problem” but I wonder if I’m not the only one. Honestly, I wonder if this is one more thing affected by living through a pandemic.

Trying to find out (non-scientifically, but still interested in seeing answers, especially if this can break containment) with a poll:

I participate DIFFERENTLY these days, but I wouldn't say more or less than before. In parts because I've been at this so long now that time/energy/platforms have varied over time and it's hard to really have one point of reference for pre-lockdown fandom engagement.

Regardless of living situation (in uni vs after uni, office work vs retail work vs working from home, depression vs not depression, PTSD vs not PTSD, pre kid vs having a kid) the thing that always contributes the most to my engagement is New Fandom Energy. That's far more important for my creativity than anything else going on in my life. It doesn't even have to be an active fandom, it just needs to be new to ME.

Co-signing this! New Fandom Energy is definitely the thing that most drives my engagement levels. I think there are times when I'm most likely to get really into a new fandom that are not entirely unrelated to stress levels... but it's still the case that I have had MANY different levels of fandom activity both pre- and post-covid (including falling deeply for fandoms both before and after), to the point where it's hard to take meaningful averages.

yeah, it's a little hard to quantify if "different" is more, or less, or just different. i started out years ago just reading fic voraciously on line. (message boards, and then ao3) then lurking on tumblr via web browser, then finally with an account, which shifted the reading somewhat from ao3 to tumblr. like, nowadays, i spend that "reading before bed" time on tumblr, where before it would have been on ao3. so still participating, just, different.

[IMG Description - A Victorian magazine cover with an illustration of a man in a red suit lighting a lamp. Reads Letters from Watson - A Study in Scarlet by A Conan Doyle. The first Sherlock Holmes novel Email Book Club Starting January 1st 2024]

Email book club/substack Letters from Watson will be reading through the Sherlock Holmes novels in 2024!

After finishing reading through the short stories in 2023, I'm pleased to announce that Letters from Watson will be moving on to reading the novels, beginning with A Study in Scarlet in January!

We'll be following with The Sign of Four in April, The Hound of the Baskervilles in July, and The Valley of Fear in October!

Sign up to the substack here!

Join the discord server here!

(Reblogging and spreading the word appreciated <3)

Because I was legit shocked when someone told me they think the synopsis on the book jacket usually gives too much away.

I LOVE knowing what I'm in for.

Honestly. Tell me the plot, the premise, the spoilers, the happy or non-happy ending.

I eat it up.

Silver platter.

Fancy pinky with my tea sip.

hmm. excluding fic on ao3, i have to admit i have not read all that many physical books lately. not sure whether to also exclude audiobooks...

at the moment, i am stuck halfway thru a book (fiction) loaned to me with enthusiasm and catchy description of characters and plot, by a trusted friend. i like it, but then good omens came out, so mostly i am reading meta on tumblr instead.

i also have from the library, paul mccartney's new book, eyes of the storm, because it's him. (same for when i got the lyrics out last year ish) and it's so wonderful, and i am making it last, except it's going to have to go back, so i also want to spend all my time with it.

Round 1

-The Maze Runner, James Dashner

-Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

-Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

Round 1

-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

-The Bible, Various

-Spindle's End, Robin McKinley

Round 1

-The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater

-The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman

-The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley

Round 1

-Amber Skies, @cryptotheism

-Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, Brandon Sanderson

-Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett on libraries, 2012

Terry: It when I found our local library + because I wanted to read and have every book in the library - once I found reading, reading itself just filled my veins, and I absolutely read everything. And so I went up to the head librarian, this was a small local library, And I said, [in a child's voice:] 'Please, Sir. I want to be a librarian when I grow up. Can I come and work here on Saturdays?' And he said, Oh, okay. We can't pay you anything - And I was very grateful, because I was being prepared to pay him.

I used to leave a library every day - every day when I was there - with two very very big bags full of library books, they showed a blind eye eye to this, because they knew that I would bring them back, because I didn't have any room in my room for any more books anyway. And I read and read and read.

So I was reading every damn thing in the library that there was, eclectically. That was it. But I was only doing it becauseI just wanted to read everything. I wanted to know everything. I read about the Silk Road.The trouble was, I taught myself more in the library than school taught me. More history, more interesting history, more just about everything.

Yet again apropos of nothing, but one of the most interesting things hanging out in both fandom and around various forms of internet self-publishing - as well as haunting various conversations about video-game plots, TTRPG plots, and now pondering the world of actual play podcasts and fiction podcasts and drama podcasts and so on - has let me to contemplate is the wide range of shit that people actually do want to consume* in terms of story, and how it does not, necessarily, map to any formal tradition's decisions about What A Good Story Contains.

[*I know there are people who really object to the use of 'consume' and 'produce' in terms of talking about storytelling and being an audience for storytelling in terms of art, and while I get where those arguments arise from, I don't actually agree with them necessarily, and also it's really hard to find another word that briefly and concisely covers all the various forms of story and audience therefor so we're just going with this one.]

It's actually something I first noticed when discussing re-reads of favourite books with friends, as it happens - it is common wisdom that you need to have A Plot beyond, say, "people in a secondary constructed world go to school and explore the world they're in". Except it turned out that an awful lot of us would go back to reread the bits of the story that were literally just . . . the bits where someone was exploring the new world they were in, and then peace out when the Plot happens.

One then contemplates the Little House books and their enduring popularity† and how for the most part they are literally just . . . a whole series of books about people Doing Normal Things in a landscape that's different enough from the readers' to be fascinating and exciting because it's different, with small domestic excitements and so on.

[†there are other factors here including their active propagandizing in the settlement/colonial narrative of the Americas and how that works, but there are many other books that did the same thing and also disappeared off the face of the planet and did not, in fact, result in endless generations going back to read carefully emotive descriptions of How You Do Sunday Dinner In This Kind of Setting.]

And then of course one discovers the literal entire genre of the "some kind of mundane AU", or the same sort of thing where literally several hundred thousand worlds are just The Characters Deal With What's Going On For Them even with all the magic or weird heritage still in place.

Now are there also people who nope out of them and go "oh god this is boring they do nothing but eat sandwiches and have feelings"? Sure. My point is emphatically not "so this is what people ACTUALLY want, and everyone else has been lying forever". That would be Very Stupid, as an argument, so I'm not making it. Hell there are times when I don't want a "character explores universe" type story because I'm just not there. I'm not making a blanket statement about what single type of story is A Good Story/A Well Done Story/etc at all.

Rather, I've observed with fascination the way in which the comparative ease of distribution** that comes with the internet and its aspects has uncovered the vast, vast range of kind of story that people actually do enjoy, at one time or another, and the way in which the previously hyper-limited formats tended to require a story to partially please a large number of people all of the time in order to get out there.

[**comparative is an important word here. The digital divide is real, the Bad River's monopoly and bullshit is real, etc etc etc - but it is impossible to argue that it is not easier, with the internet context, to distribute one's work, than it was when doing so would emphatically require the physical production of a paper version of said work and its physical geographical shipment from place to place, or the ability to put that work onto incredibly limited and controlled mass broadcasts or even the incredible barrier of equipment entry required to independently broadcast. "Comparatively massively easier" doesn't mean "totally easy".]

For instance: I know a couple of people who at one point or another have made significant money on really "niche" porn; and anyone hooked into fic and art circles in fandom knows there's definitely a market for very specific very "niche" (scarequotes on purpose) porn and smut and other stuff, but the ability to even be able to charge a couple dollars a pop for an e-copy of the same and make enough for a house downpayment, or to pay for a degree, or whatever, speaks to a significant audience. And that kind of thing really is niche.

I know others who make a very reasonable living off a very specific form of romance-novel, a form even more specific than the paperback market was ever going to allow for - it turns out that on a very regular basis people do actually want this specific kind of story. I know a few others who do the same in niche fantasy or niche sci fi and so on.

And of course as a fic writer there are thousands of consumers who want all kinds of things (and in fact repeats of that kind of thing) for the cost of logging into AO3 and maybe leaving a comment.

A lot of this has to do with ease of and low cost of distribution: fanfic, obviously, is free; and a lot of these niche markets have prospered off the back of very low cost e-book platforms and so on. And there's definitely a discussion about whether or not that is a fair recompense for the artistic labour involved for the creator - essentially it seems that enough people are willing (nay, eager!) to access this kind of thing for free but balk once there's some fee attached to it, and balk even more once that fee hits paperback levels. That's a separate set of conversations, though.

The thing that fascinates me is more that actually it turns out that people want all kinds of stories. Lots of people, and lots of kinds of stories, and what will become the endless repeat favourite darling of the heart is not necessarily what conventional wisdom argues is The Best Craft - even "the best craft" for a story that isn't trying to be high art, but just a fun thing.

Turns out there were a lot of people like me who would in fact probably have been delighted with a story that's mostly about rebuilding after an apocalypse and the long list of Skills and Building Things and so on, sans any complex plot at all. And reread it a lot. (And every other kind of story.)

yes, this, so much!

and i would love to have the opportunity to examine the data, if i could tonight make minimum wage, oh , let's say, $30/hour, how would that impact the balking at paying a fee for reading niche stories. just out of curiosity. wouldn't that be interesting. how many more home down payments would that boost. etc. just as a for instance. not to derail this excellent discussion. <3<3<3

getting real tired of people being like “this book, from 1503, is not woke, and so no one should ever read it again” like y’all just use some critical thought

I am reblogging again because my thoughts arrived late, but this is basically liberalism's version of the satanic panic.

Like the entire point of reading is to learn, think and question ideas regardless of whether they align with you ideologically, morally or not. Reading this is how you prevent what happened in the past from happening again.

How else are you going to learn? You guys like to bash the narrow mindedness of people who ban books and restrict access to information, but don't realize you're subconsciously doing the same.

As a challenge, fight the cognitive dissonance, try to understand and learn. There is a lesson, a truth and piece of wisdom to be found and learnt in all things. Rather than letting ideology, religion or your own morals restrict your perspective, use the knowledge in these pieces of literature to enhance and even grow it.

my dad and I just finished listening to a fascinating (and really pretty alarming) podcast about American literacy education recently—Sold a Story by Emily Hanford—and it got me wondering what my peers’ experience was, so here's my first poll! This pertains to people who learned to read in the U.S. specifically, so even if one of the other options matches your experience, I'd politely ask you to refrain from picking one (presumably you guys have better school districts than we do anyway). 

(the most horrifying part out of the entire thing was the fact that dubbya was the one to realize something was wrong. even a broken clock, I guess...?)

My parents did not teach me to read so much as read to me a lot, and then assume I'd memorized the first few books they found me reading on my own. They figured out it wasn't memorization when I started reading them a book they hadn't read to me before. I was three. This tells us absolutely nothing about US education, as I hadn't started that yet.

hey, same hat!

my parents found out I could read when we were on a road trip, and I asked them for gum. They told me there wasn’t any. I pointed out the window at a sign saying PHARMACY and said “can we get some at the pharmacy?”

I was also three. they had not taught me to read yet, as far as they knew.

They did stop and get me some gum.

i was three also! my sister was in first grade, and would come home and play school with me. she imitated her teacher, and i was apparently a quick study. we had learned letters at home by our parents pointing them out on anything around the house, and of course reading to us a lot.

Source: https://bit.ly/3Rpki4X

Source: https://bit.ly/3PjCnQr