Hobbies — Reading Fiction Again

At one point around the end of high school or the beginning of college, I heard about Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase in an interview with an indie band I liked. I enjoyed the magical realism. It was something I hadn't encountered before, and while I continue to like that kind of book, I think sometime around that point I overcorrected too far in the direction of seeking out weird stories in mundane settings. I forgot how much I like sci-fi with adventure and action, and I think I had also somehow internalized a sense that stories with “action” in them weren't as “grown-up” to enjoy.

Because I wasn't being honest with myself about some of the kinds of books I like to read (as well as being very busy with school), I haven't read a lot of fiction in several years. Now that I'm out of school, I've had the time and energy to try reading fiction again, and my relationship with the Internet has given me a particular push in that direction.

I mentioned in a previous post the idea of “social networks” versus “social media.” In other words, using platforms to interact with friends versus using them for entertainment. I've come to the conclusion that I want to do the former and avoid the latter, and in trying to do so, I realized how much I've been leaning on social media for entertainment.

I struggle to keep hobbies that are clearly separated from my work. As much as I love composing and working with computer music, I like to have activities that I do for fun that aren't just a continuation of my job. In trying to only use social media to interact with people, I'm finding gaps in my time where I'm not occupied and enjoying myself. Rediscovering my love of reading sci-fi has been a major help in finding enjoyable things to do that fit with how I want to interact with the Internet.

In keeping with my previous habit of reading about weird things happening in mundane situations, I was reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski earlier this year. I'm currently about 3/4 through it, and I was enjoying it, but at a certain point reading it was starting to feel like work.

A few weeks ago I got Neuromancer by William Gibson from the bookstore, and I just finished reading it the other day. I'm currently reading This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Both of these books feel a lot more “snappy” and exciting than some of the things I had been reading, and they're both relatively short. My book choices seem to be working for me a lot better now, and I'm finally starting to feel like I have some momentum in reading fiction again. I'm very excited to have rediscovered this part of my childhood.

Fun Fact of the Day

This Is How You Lose the Time War is written as a series of letters between the characters “Red” and “Blue.” I read this article interviewing the authors of the book — Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. The authors also wrote the book by sending letters to each other, and El-Mohtar had this to say about the writing process:

...we were still talking in other media, like we'd communicate on Twitter and stuff, but it felt like we'd begun a conversation in letters, and that was happen­ing with a different texture and a different quality. We were bringing the selves to it that you would bring to a friend. If you were actually sitting in a friend's home and having a really intense conversation into the night and stuff like that — it felt more like that space. Even then, there's a differ­ence. We talk about letter space as its own kind of quality. Letter space is its own thing.

I like that in one of the books I'm reading as I think about how I want to communicate online, the authors were thinking heavily about how they communicate.