I haven’t listened to an audiobook in about a year. I don’t know why, really – I have several I’ve not listened to, and just haven’t gotten around to putting them in iTunes. The wrap-up posts across the book blogging world, especially among my Twitter friends, prompted me to get back to it, though, with many rave reviews of Wil Wheaton’s narration of Ready Player One. I’ve just finished Chapter Zero, and I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Have you read and/or listened to it? Drop a link to your review below and I’ll check them all out when I’m done (unless you specify that there are no spoilers in your review – then I’ll head over now).

Now, back to the game!

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It also got me thinking about more of the books I remember from my early childhood and middle youth. How the main characters were always ones with whom I shared some integral likeness – above-average intelligence, heightened empathy, and low self-esteem make the most frequent appearances – but who also had something I didn’t. Sometimes it was the means to pursue an Ivy League education seriously; I’d read about people who owned houses with, you know, guest rooms and matching dining room sets and things. Sometimes they were stunningly beautiful, which made it possible for them to be popular AND an egghead. Sometimes they could move shit with their brain-power focused through their eyeballs. Things I couldn’t even dream of, because they were so far removed from my reality.

Now, I’ve learned enough about life and experienced enough of it for myself that an author can’t woo me so easily. I find myself critiquing rather than simply appreciating. I don’t see the world many authors write about as an unfamiliar one anymore. One that seems as far removed as the distant planets of science fiction, or the alternate realities hiding in fantasy. The world of adult emotions, responsibilities, opportunities, and dreams-turned-reality. Now, I have so much of all of that that I miss that childlike ability to view it from the outside and *want* it.

And I still really wish I could move shit with my eyes.

What’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed in yourself as an adult reader versus a young reader?

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So anyone who has participated in Dewey’s Readathon knows that there are dangers – not the least of which is the explosion of your chosen feed reader both during and in the days following the event. Nearly every blog I subscribe to is one I discovered when I very first started blogging in the bookish world, and many are from Readathon connections. Part of me is tempted to unsub from anything whose author I’m not also connected with on Twitter, LibraryThing, etc., or to remove those blogs without an entry in the last year. But you know what? I’ve gone months at a time without updating here, and while my subscribers certainly haven’t grown, they haven’t dropped, either. So instead, I’ve marked my 1000+ unread as read, will make a point to actively go through my reader each day until the readathon, and only weed out those blogs I really don’t get anything from reading. Any blogs that aren’t updated will be put into a single folder together, and I’ll go through that one every once in a while to move updated blogs either into a category folder or unsub.

I’m also going to organize my reader more categorically; currently, it’s rather a hodgepodge, with book blogs in a couple of different places, social media and networking blogs mixed in with random internet funnies, and it really just needs tidying once and for all. I think that’ll make it far more manageable, not to mention that when it’s organized, I won’t be as overwhelmed by the sheer number of unread posts.

How do you read your favorite blogs and websites; do you use a reader, subscribe primarily via email, use browser bookmarks? Do you read daily, read everything at once once a week, give up and mark all as read and promise to do better next week? :)

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So my Banned Books Week ended up falling a bit short, but I did get through two and start one more, which I’ll finish this week for sure. I’d often heard of Brave New World, but knew absolutely nothing about it going into it, which makes it all the more interesting. The world-building is quite well-executed, which is important in alternate realities or far-future novels, and, like The Handmaid’s Tale, and Fahrenheit 451, the explanation of how their society evolved from present-day norms feels chillingly possible.

I found myself thinking about dystopia and its categorization – is it, by default, Science Fiction? Does it always involve a very clear social commentary, almost a fable-ish moral? Are the fears explored in a dystopian novel usually based on the struggles of author’s own nation, or relevant to human nature in general? And, in connection to discussions I’ve had recently about authors and their beliefs informing their work, is the alternate future always something the author fears, or is it sometimes something s/he believes would be utopian?

I personally don’t often feel “preached at” by books, especially if they’re well-written and I haven’t gone into a story with the expectation that it’s a doom-and-gloom, “This will happen if X Y Z powers that be don’t do something drastic right NOW,” sort of tale. With the explosion of The Hunger Games and the usual slew of similar stories popping up in the series’s wake, I wonder if this trend is facilitated by the media coverage of declining economies and countries on the verge of bankruptcy and political unrest in various regions of the world, and if these books, especially those that are popular among a broad range of ages, are contributing to the general sense of public unease.

Literate Housewife (@LitHousewife) posed the question regarding the Sci Fi Classification on Twitter last night; Tanya Perez (@dogearedcopy), who works in Studio Services at Blackstone Audio and blogs at Dog Eared Copy, made a good point about science versus a change in social conventions driving the difference. If you separate physical science from social science (which is a sticky enough debate in the first place), and if government or what serves for it in the society portrayed is involved, which seems to be the case frequently if not always, then Political Fiction seems to work. And of course, it all fits neatly under the umbrella of Speculative Fiction, which Jen pointed out (@DevourerofBooks). As Literate Housewife and Devourer of Books both just reviewed When She Woke, which is what spurred the conversation, and it already has a 4.44 star rating on LibraryThing, I have a feeling this is one I’ll want to get my hands on sooner rather than later.

As for the question about authors’ opinions of the worlds they create – once that idea popped into my head, my inner monologue went kind of like this: “How could you possibly think that an author might want a world where people are conditioned into social strata from the moment the gametes fuse, or a time in which women have been demoted until they are entirely powerless, or for books to only exist in the minds of an few renegade former professors riding the rails???” Honestly, I don’t believe they do. I do believe that dystopia is a vehicle for authors to express concern for a direction they think we (as a society, as a nation, as a species) may be headed, and to warn of the dangers they foresee. On the other side of the coin, do I think some dystopian fiction has its roots in paranoia? Do the authors really fear that their creation will be our reality in two or five or ten generations if we don’t get our act together? Similarly, no, I don’t think they do. I think it’s a creative means of drawing attention to the ways fanaticism about utterly controlling a population through religion, science, politics, or other means can lead to abhorrent circumstances.

Soooooo, what are your thoughts on all of the above? Have you witnessed anything that’s made you think, “Wow, that’s eerily like that one part in 1984,” or read a dystopian novel that truly made you feel like its proposed reality was not only possible, but probable? Do you stay away from dystopia because it’s too preachy, or too depressing? Do you have a favorite I should check out?

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This does NOT mean I’m going to convert entirely to e-books from here on out, nor will I get rid of any of my physical books just because I can get them on my Nook. I have chosen to check out e-book versions of some titles I own but hadn’t read yet simply because my books are still mostly in boxes and it doesn’t cost me anything to use the library, but bookbuying is one of my greatest pleasures, and browsing online doesn’t even remotely touch the feeling I get lingering in a brick and mortar store, particularly one with lots of awesomely musty volumes.

So, your turn – do you own an e-reader? What would you say, if any, is the difference it has made in your reading?

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I’m just going to post a brief wrap-up, as I’m deeply into my third book of the weekend and want to get back to it :) So, Here are the prompts from Jenn (thank you for hosting!!!) and my responses:

• Did you read as much as you hoped? Not even remotely, but family obligations come first.
• How many books did you finish and what were the titles? Two: The Weird Sisters, and The Alchemist
• For how many hours did you manage to escape into your books? I’ve honestly no idea; maybe ten, if you include the Tuesday/Wednesday hours?
• Did anyone else in your family take time to read? I managed to get Joshua to read…. an issue of Sports Illustrated. Le sigh.
• What was the winner for the weekend? Definitely The Alchemist – I truly feel as though I was meant to read this exactly now, given recent and upcoming changes I am working to process and must prepare to face in my life. I know this will be a regular re-read for me.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by this weekend; it was great to make some new connections! I hope you all enjoyed the reading, and I’m very much looking forward to next year :)

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How about you, what community feeds you the most book-related goodness?

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I had to snap the picture pretty damned quickly, because Iliena’s typical response to eyeshadows is to knock them off of whatever surface they’re on – including this chair. I also tried to get Xander and Iliena in on the shot together, but as soon as I started positioning the pigments around Xander’s comfy nest on the bed, he scattered. This is to be expected.

What does this have to do with books, you may ask? …..

Nothing. Deal with it. :D

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