Right What You No – Page 18

If Western Philosophy is just footnotes to Plato, does that mean western society is just all Greek to us?

Professor Roochnik presents 24 lectures as an introductory course to Greek Philosophy… as it says in the title. This was quite a good overview of the pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Like any lecture, insights are given into the further scholarship that can inform a topic – such as how Plato structures his writing so as to make you think rather than tell you what he thinks – and some points are hammered repeatedly for the sleepy students in the back row.

Having recently read The Republic, the insights this book offered would have been handy beforehand. The advantage of having a philosophy professor step you through philosophy rather than just winging it yourself is well worth it. So as a background pre-reading, this is a good place to start.

I was also reminded during one of the earlier chapters of how much knowledge has been lost to history. We have this common misconception about great works rising to the top and being revered through the ages. But the example of the prolific writer Democritus whose works have largely been lost shows us how even recognised intellectual giants can’t be guaranteed their works will be preserved.

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Blog Topic, Reading, Video

Book vs Movie: The Lost World – What’s the Difference?

This month’s What’s the Difference from Cinefix compares the book sequel written because the movie adaptation was successful and the director wanted more source material to ignore. Jurassic Park: The Lost World.

Honestly, I can never keep it straight in my head which parts of the novels ended up in which movie. As mentioned in the video, the opening scene of The Lost World was actually from the first book. There are other examples, like the “birdcage” scene in one of the other movies was in the first book… I think.

One thing is for certain: Spielberg knows how to make a film. He knows how to build tension, he knows how to establish sights, sounds, and characters so that sequences hang together, and he knows not to have a talking dinosaur in an aeroplane.

nwrb8yd — Yes, this is an actual scene from Jurrasic Park 3. Take a moment.

But The Lost World is an example of one the worst reasons you write or film a sequel: because the first one was successful. I don’t know exactly what Spielberg’s motivations were for the sequel – maybe he was under contract, maybe he needed a new wing on his house – but the film was dull. It was trying to recapture the lightning bottled in the first film. The same can be said of the book. Crichton didn’t originally want to write a sequel and was only convinced by Spielberg saying ~~he’d give him lots of money~~ that he would be keen to direct a movie adaptation of the sequel if one were written.

I’m on record as not being much of a fan of Michael Crichton’s books. He has a tendency to write solid thrillers that act as vehicles for anti-science rants by a raisonneur or mouthpiece. There is nothing wrong with doing this, per se, but science is awesome, so make sure your criticism is on point. Or don’t, depending on whether you want to impress me or someone who thinks chakras are a thing.

Needless to say, I was a fan of the first film, less so the book. The sequels… Put it this way, I haven’t bothered watching the new ones starring Chris Pratt yet.

Blog Topic, Book review, Reading

Book review: Obscura by Joe Hart

Obscura by Joe Hart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In space, everyone goes a bit crazy.

Dr Gillian Ryan is frustrated. She is trying to develop a brain scanning technique in order to help her daughter to avoid the same fate as her late husband. Losian’s disease is thought to be caused by the rapidly increasing environmental destruction and affects memory and concentration. Then a team from NASA show up promising money and technology to help her work if she agrees to go to a space station to figure out what is wrong with their crew. Of course, NASA hasn’t been completely honest with her about where they are going and the risks involved, but that’s okay, she didn’t tell them about her painkiller addiction.

This novel was a lot of fun. Joe Hart has mixed together sci-fi, thriller, and suspense in good measures. The main character’s addiction and frustrations pour out on the page as you wonder if she is going mad or something more nefarious is happening. Added to that is the brisk pacing that doesn’t get bogged down like some novels with similar themes tend to. I don’t know what a hydro is, but after reading this novel I feel like I need one.

Well worth a read for sci-fi and thriller fans.

NB: I received an advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading, Science, Sciency

Why everyone should read Harry Potter

Because I said so!!

And because of this:

REFERENCES 📚

1. Harry Potter, Benjamin Bloom, and the Sociological Imagination, Joyce Fields (2007

2. The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice, Vezzali et. al. 2015

3. Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds, Keith Oatley, 2016

4. Magically Empathetic: An Investigation of Empathy and Theory of Mind through the Character of Harry Potter By Lindsey Layman, 2017

5. Becoming a Vampire Without Being Bitten: The Narrative Collective-Assimilation Hypothesis, Shira Gabriel and Ariana F. Young, 2011.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Science, Sciency, Video

We don’t know the world

A few years ago I saw a fantastic talk from Hans Rosling about the world and statistics. Okay, I probably lost a few people by implying statistics are fantastic, and now I’ll lose some more by saying statistics ARE fantastic. Unfortunately, Hans is no longer with us, but his son and daughter-in-law – Ola and Anna – are continuing his work with Gap Minder.

Recently they released the results of their 2017 survey of world knowledge. After looking at the results they decided to call it the Misconception Study.* You’ll see why.

That’s right, less than chance. People really don’t know that much about the world.

Do you think you could do better? Well, find out! Take the 2018 quiz here. Of course, this is the part where I say that I passed the test. Humble-brag. But in fairness, as I’ve already mentioned, I’ve been following Gap Minder and I like statistics.

Could you pass the test?

*They probably called it that prior, but I’m making a point here, dammit!

Blog Topic, Fun Articles

When is the future?

I came across a very cool article about when the future is for science fiction. The question is interesting because we often think of THE FUTURE as being a long way away, but as the saying goes, some infinities are larger than others.

In response to a Tweet, iO9 and researchers Ben Vrignon and Gordon Jackson decided to look at the proportions of science fiction set in the near-future (0-50 years), mid-future (51-500 years) and far-future (+501 years). They took a random sample of 250 science fiction works (books, comics, movies, and TV) created between 1880 and 2010 that were available in the USA in English. Because only the USA matters. Eye rolls are appropriate here.

The results are interesting and broken into decades:

As you can see, some periods of time emphasise some futures more than others, whilst other periods are more equally spread. The most notable of these is the shrinking of far-future science fiction from the 1970s until the late 1990s. It could be argued that the lack of far-future sci-fi in the 1990s could have been due to the rapid rise of technological change in society, such that everyone viewed the future as being just around the corner. Then after that time, we start to realise the technology just gave us cat memes and we still had a long way to go.

In the original article, they suggest that the changes were due to uncertainty about the future post-2001.

It’s possible that during periods of extreme uncertainty about the future, as the 00s were in the wake of massive economic upheavals and 9/11, creators and audiences turn their eyes to the far future as a balm.

Now it would be remiss of me to draw too many conclusions from this, nor try to offer explanations for any “trends”. We are talking about a dataset that only covers an average of 2 works per year. Two is hardly enough to be representative of any year, and 20 works is at best a smattering of any given decade. E.g. Futurama could be the only representative of far-future sci-fi in the 1990s yet Asimov’s Foundation Series was still going (he wrote his final novel for the series in 1993), the Xeelee Sequence had just started, as had the Hyperion series. Clearly, there were many works not being counted.

It would be interesting to see someone add more data to this analysis and do some breakdowns by media type. Make it so.

Supplemental Materials: More Detail on Middle Future Dates

One of the interesting discoveries we made was that the mid-future (51-500 years in the future) seems to be the most popular period for science fiction, across the last 130 years. So Stephanie created this chart breaking out our data on mid-future SF so you can get a sense of which periods are most popular — you can see that the 100-200 year future is common.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading

How literate are we?

An argument that is often raised among the head shaking admonishment brigade, is that there is a woeful level of literacy in society. The argument usually points to comments on social media as examples of falling literacy, or to emoji laden messages, or is writ large in speciously reasoned blog posts like this one.

The reality is held within these charts:

Yes, as you can see, for over 200 years the world’s literacy rate has been improving. If you go to the source article at Our World In Data you will be able to highlight the 1870-2010 trends. This shows that even quite well-educated nations have improved their literacy rates.

So what exactly are people complaining about? Well, let’s take some of the examples that are often proffered.

I recently reread a number of pulp novels from the sixties and seventies (with an occasional eighties and nineties thrown in for fun) – not literary fiction by any means, just thrillers the likes of which I grew up reading. What immediately struck me is how erudite the books were compared to modern fare. They were written at a much higher grade level than current popular fiction, because, bluntly, the average person was more literate, and the assumption was that folks wanted a little intellectual stimulation with their car chases and explosions – that words with more than a couple of syllables could be salted through a tome without fearing a slew of one star reviews written in Pidgin English bemoaning that the author was trying too hard or must have once seen a thesaurus. Source.

This is, of course, a personal opinion expressed by the blogger rather than hard data. You only have to look at the above charts to see that the average person they are referring to is actually more likely to be literate now than in the 1960’s. I think the blogger has leapt to the assertion that people are less literate now as an explanation for a style change that has occurred. Or just wants to whine about kids these days. Because what blogger doesn’t want to do that?

Now, why would a style change occur in the last 30 (or more*) years? Interestingly, some research suggested that the way we write changes the style of our writing. With the rise of word processors and computers, writers measurably changed their styles.

But has anything else has changed in that time period that could have impacted writing styles? I’m not sure if these are familiar to people or not, but television, gaming, internet, media, are all more popular now than they were 30 years ago. I.e. books now have to compete with more entertainment than ever. So stylistic changes will occur to capture and keep an audience’s attention, lest it strays from the latest literary masterpiece about a dog caring for its cat with terminal cancer to a YouTube video about how white nationalism is okay now for some reason (because of post-modern cultural marxism apparently).

Has reading and writing (literacy) actually changed much, though? It is one thing to say that people have passed the minimum standard level, but it is quite another thing to suggest high levels of literacy are being achieved by more/less people.

Studies on this were actually hard to come by. Yet there is certainly concern about reading and writing proficiency for high-school and university level students:

Three-quarters of both 12th and 8th graders lack proficiency in writing, according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress. And 40 percent of those who took the ACT writing exam in the high school class of 2016 lacked the reading and writing skills necessary to complete successfully a college-level English composition class, according to the company’s data.

Poor writing is nothing new, nor is concern about it. More than half of first-year students at Harvard failed an entrance exam in writing — in 1874. Source.

Given the last sentence in that quote, it is probably more accurate to say that the standards are changing. We now expect more of our literacy because more people are schooled and meeting basic literacy standards. For example, in the USA Master’s degrees are now as common as Bachelor’s degrees were in the 1960’s. People are expecting more of education and setting different standards than were held previously.

As an article on The Conversation concluded on this topic:

In 1997 academic Paul Brock gave an enlightening address to educators in which he carefully recounted the ways each generation has bemoaned the falling literacy standards of the younger generation whilst laying the blame at the feet of modern educational methods.

Apparently, we’ve been doing this since literacy first became a thing back with the Sumerians some 5,000 years ago.

The problem is not that literacy standards are falling, it is that literacy demands are changing – and we are not keeping up.

Schools have their role to play, and they can up their game in order to keep up with the times. But employers must also realise that workplace literacy is their core work, not a supplementary remedial program, and plan their businesses accordingly. Source.

In other words, declining literacy standards are a perennial myth that people love to complain about. Styles have changed. Literacy demands have changed. But that doesn’t mean things are going backwards. Much like kids these days arguments, we can expect to see these same points raised again and again with no evidence to support their claims. Because if there is one thing that never gets old, it is complaining about how things are different now than the good old days.

*The blogger’s larger post talks about a change occurring in the more recent 20-30 year period, despite referencing books from the 1960-70’s. You’ll also notice more links to evidence in my post… just saying.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor, My Writing

Writer Advice: Alcoholism

Tip #1: Ice Tea looks just like whisky.

Do you need to hide just how much you are drinking from friends and family but can’t bring yourself to drink gin or vodka? Then “Ice Tea” might be your new preferred drink.

Tip #2: As long as you drink wine from a glass people will assume you are a connoisseur.

Wine is regarded as a classy drink, so as long as you drink it in a classy way, few will notice that some glasses can fit an entire bottle in them.

Tip #3: Don’t use crystal decanters.

Crystal decanters may look classy but they are expensive and are slowly giving you lead poisoning. Instead, just rub the label off of one of your bottles. A cheap and easy solution that won’t be poisoning you.

Tip #4: Wine and Whisky Clubs are your friends.

Even if no-one else loves you, subscription wine and whisky clubs love sending you a new supply of alcohol direct to your house. There is no longer a need to be reminded just how much you hate the rest of the world by having to venture out to the liquor store when home delivery is now a reality.

Tip #5: These lists always need to be five or ten items long.

Seriously, have you ever noticed that? Never four or seven, always five or ten. Sometimes if people are feeling keen, or have an auto-amalgamating post generator, they will stretch to twenty or thirty. Magazines used to do fifty and one hundred lists. Remember that? Of course, no one really cared to read the whole list. Usually, you’d just scan through for things that would catch your attention and then make note of the number one spot. And then write a comment arguing how the list was rubbish.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading

Banned books

Recently in Australia, there was a lot of moralising outrage about books being banned in school libraries. Was this Political Correctness Gone Mad?

No. No, it wasn’t.

Yes, that’s right, the moral outrage brigade hadn’t even bothered to check any details. That shouldn’t be particularly surprising to anyone who, you know, thinks, but what I did find interesting is the sort of hyperbole used on this issue that never seems to make it to the actual censorship that exits.

I’ve previously discussed the Banned Books Week, an awareness-raising campaign in the USA. Since the USA is a big and influential book market, there are flow-on effects of books being challenged and banned there – although the Streisand Effect can apply here and be a net positive, just ask Dan Brown. Australia also has a censorship board and historical lists of previously banned books have been made public.

When you read through the lists of books that were previously banned in Australia but are now available, you can see how we aren’t/weren’t allowed to talk about sex. We also don’t talk about Aboriginal history. Not talking about sex is still a common theme in today’s Australian censorship standards:

Publications will be refused classification (RC) that:

describe, depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified; or

describe or depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not); or

promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence

Publications (except RC publications) will be classified as Category 2 Restricted that:

explicitly depict sexual or sexually related activity between consenting adults in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult; or

depict, describe or express revolting or abhorrent phenomena in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult and are unsuitable for a minor to see or read

Publications (except RC publications and Category 2 restricted publications) will be classified as Category 1 Restricted that:

explicitly depict nudity, or describe or impliedly depict sexual or sexually related activity between consenting adults, in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult; or

describe or express in detail violence or sexual activity between consenting adults in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult; or

are unsuitable for a minor to see or read. Source.

Now obviously the classifications could be very broadly interpreted and implemented. Plenty of books have themes around drug use and abuse, crime is an entire genre, cruelty is in any political memoir, and violence could be retitled thriller. We don’t tend to see those titles banned or restricted. So what does get restricted? As an example, American Psycho has a Category 1 restriction on it and is sold in shrink-wrapping… you know, just in case the words leak out and accidentally encourage someone to take up cannibalism or investment banking.

The number of books impacted by an RC classification is minimal. The 2016-17 figures show none were banned, as compared to video games which had 2 titles banned.

2017-figure01 — Publications Classified in 2016-17. Source.

But it does show that a large number of titles were restricted in some way. This is without even touching on the censorship that occurs in access to titles, such as which titles are stocked in stores, which sites can be accessed to buy books, and what ends up in libraries. The restricted categorisation is clearly going to have impacts on where those titles will be available. So I wonder where the moral outrage is over this. Isn’t this Political Correctness Gone Mad? Or is it okay because the people who got outraged in the above video would be the “reasonable adults” who would be offended by these restricted titles?

Or maybe this would all require too much reading on behalf of those wanting to complain about books being banned.

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics

Philosophy explained, with doughnuts

This chart has been helpful for my recent reading dalliances.

Blog Topic, Book review, Reading

Book Review: The Republic by Plato

The Republic by Plato

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Old white guys sit around discussing how to set up a totalitarian military state with them as the rulers.

Plato’s famous text covers a lot of ground as it tries to establish what justice is. It covers politics, personal and political ethics, idealised states (democracy ranks third out of four), education, and virtue. The Republic is a heady read, whilst being fascinating.

The strawman style to the interlocuter dialogue did annoy me as a reader. Whilst it was in service of making a larger point, it did make the discourse feel more shallow than it is. Plato’s thinking was also amazingly progressive for an age that predates the enlightenment by the best part of a millennium. But this thinking was also confined by the times.

Plato, along with Socrates and Aristotle, were the drivers behind western society. Books like The Republic put forward a lot of ideas for discussion and dissection, opening the dialogue that would lead to progress. That alone makes The Republic worth reading, but I also found it was worth reading if only to see much of it in context rather than discussed second-hand. E.g. The famous allegory of the cave takes on a slightly different light when not viewed in isolation.

For a more detailed understanding:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/

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Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Video

Book vs Movie: When the Book Is Better

PBS Digital Studios have a new video series It’s Lit! which is part of The Great American Read, an eight-part series that explores and celebrates the power of reading. Featuring one of the premiere video essayists in Lindsay Ellis, this series should be brilliant.

The first video briefly discusses a topic I’ve frequently discussed here, what makes a good adaptation and why the book is so often regarded as better.

Lindsay has very concisely summarised why movies so often don’t make for good or faithful adaptations of the source material. But she also touches on why they can sometimes improve the book, or make an adaptation that uses the source material in an interesting way to tell a different story.

If you aren’t already subscribed to Lindsay or PBS Digital Studios, you may want to do so now.

Blog Topic, Pics

Tintin The Lovecraftian

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Growing up I was a huge Tintin and Asterix fan. So when I saw this article on artist Muzski’s take on Tintin I just had to share it.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading

Reading is awesome even when you don’t do it…

Scrolling through my feed I came across this little gem:

How could I not click on this article? I have several years supplies of paper books on my shelf to read, and even more on my e-reader. Justifying this state of affairs is clearly something I need.

Pity the article is rubbish.

The first hint that this story is nonsense is how they start by commending readers as smart – softening everyone up a bit. They list a few famous people who read and say you too can be just like them if you read. Somehow reading = lifelong learning, so you’ll be happier, earn more, stay healthier, and become president – I’m tempted to dive into those claims for a fact check, but one piece at a time. I’m willing to accept the claim that reading = lifelong learning… for now.

Lifelong learning will help you be happier, earn more, and even stay healthier, experts say. Plus, plenty of the smartest names in business, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk, insist that the best way to get smarter is to read. So what do you do? You go out and buy books, lots of them.

Then it suddenly announces you don’t have to read.

But if it’s simply that your book reading in no way keeps pace with your book buying, I have good news for you (and for me; I definitely fall into this category): Your overstuffed library isn’t a sign of failure or ignorance, it’s a badge of honor.

Oookaaaayyy. Please explain to me how not reading is just like reading.

That’s the argument author and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes in his bestseller The Black Swan. Perpetually fascinating blog Brain Pickings dug up and highlighted the section in a particularly lovely post. Taleb kicks off his musings with an anecdote about the legendary library of Italian writer Umberto Eco, which contained a jaw-dropping 30,000 volumes.

Did Eco actually read all those books? Of course not, but that wasn’t the point of surrounding himself with so much potential but as-yet-unrealized knowledge. By providing a constant reminder of all the things he didn’t know, Eco’s library kept him intellectually hungry and perpetually curious. An ever-growing collection of books you haven’t yet read can do the same for you, Taleb writes.

An antilibrary is a powerful reminder of your limitations — the vast quantity of things you don’t know, half-know, or will one day realize you’re wrong about. By living with that reminder daily you can nudge yourself toward the kind of intellectual humility that improves decision-making and drives learning.

This is what is commonly referred to as a non-sequitur, or a bullshit argument. Nassim Taleb is notorious for these sorts of nonsense arguments. That and blocking people on Twitter* for not agreeing with him and praising the ground he deadlifts upon.

It is hard to decide where to start with this. The irony of suggesting you need to surround yourself with knowledge in an article on the internet is amazing. Even if we take it, as Taleb implies, as requiring a physical reminder, we already have libraries, bookshops, universities, experts, friends, enemies, who all exist with knowledge we don’t have. It isn’t about the reminder, it is about awareness.

I’m not sure you can take people seriously when they talk about knowledge in terms of what you don’t know. One list is considerably larger than the other. If I was to provide a resume of what I didn’t know it would run to libraries worth in length. Who would suggest we think in those terms?

“People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did,” Taleb claims.

Of course he would suggest that. I guess I’ll mail Taleb a résumé of the Dewey codes** for the stuff I don’t know to become his deadlift partner.

How do they rationalise this anti-library?

Why? Perhaps because it is a well-known psychological fact that it’s the most incompetent who are the most confident of their abilities and the most intelligent who are full of doubt. (Really. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect.) It’s equally well established that the more readily you admit you don’t know things, the faster you learn.

So stop beating yourself up for buying too many books or for having a to-read list that you could never get through in three lifetimes. All those books you haven’t read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you’re way ahead of the vast majority of other people.

Actually, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is about how people with low cognitive ability are exactly those who lack the ability to realise they are of low cognitive ability so they will rank themselves more highly. High cognitive ability people incorrectly assume others are at their level, so will rank themselves lower (see also Imposter Syndrome). You can see from this explanation of the effect why surrounding yourself with knowledge doesn’t really achieve anything.

It’s about awareness.

You would have to be aware that your knowledge is lacking, not just have a reminder of it. If you are ignorant or arrogant then you won’t benefit from the stacks of books around you. We are already surrounded by knowledge in our society – I mean, we’re on the internet here, you can look up literally anything and potentially get the correct answer… potentially. But this article – and Taleb himself – are proposing a form of arrogance. Surround yourself with books and you’ll be better than the vast majority of people.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy heaps of books, I myself already own more than I’ll probably be able to read in a lifetime. But don’t be fooled by these sorts of feel-good pieces that give you a pseudo-justification for doing so. It doesn’t say good things about your mind, nor make you better, it just says you like books and would like the authors to be able to afford to eat this week.

* Seriously, check out his profile or this search to see how often he justifies blocking people. As someone whom he has blocked, I can say that he really hates engaging in discourse. Oh, and the reason I was blocked was that he Tweeted about disease resistance in plants and how it works, except he got it massively wrong. When I pointed this out I was immediately blocked.
**Get it? The joke is that there are more library classification systems than just Dewey Decimal. I’m hilarious!

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Reading, Video

Book vs Movie: Dr Strangelove – What’s the Difference?

This month’s What’s the Difference? from CineFix delves into one of the few Stanley Kubrick films I’ve enjoyed.

Everyone remembers Dr Strangelove but very few remember Red Alert, the novel that was the basis for Kubrick’s adaptation. Peter George’s book was an early nuclear war thriller and having got there first tended to be copied (or is that emulated?) by many other authors. This was an important point since Kubrick and George decided to sue the production of another movie based upon a nuclear war thriller that was deceptively similar to Red Alert. I’m not exactly sure why this was important as George teamed up with Terry Southern to change the super-cereal novel into a timeless satire.

Did you know that Dr Strangelove was originally going to end with a pie fight? Apparently, the farcical element involved in that was deemed too silly for a poignant satire, despite how metaphorical it was to the destruction of the human race. I guess many would have missed that point. Comedy needs to take itself more seriously if people are to get the point.

I think Dr Strangelove is a great example of a movie being better than the book. The way it does this is by not taking the source material seriously. What would have been another by-the-numbers thriller was elevated by satirising war. Landing not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the film managed to capture sentiments of the absurdity of mutually assured destruction and the ineptness of the cabals of military and political elites deciding fates.

Plus, Peter Sellers.

Fun Articles, Reading

Can you name a book?

Sounds like a simple challenge, right? Name a book, any book at all.

In the long tradition of asking Americans general knowledge questions on the street and filming their glorious ignorance, I present this video from Jimmy Kimmel.

Before we all laugh and point at the Americans and insult their intelligence, let’s remember that you could do this just about anywhere. Although, Americans do make this stuff easy at times. I’ve previously discussed the reading figures for the US, UK, and Australia. I’m sure those numbers are at least in the same ballpark as other countries, if not outright representative.

Wait, why guess when I can actually use the wonders of the greatest information resource in human history to look that up? Why have an unfounded opinion that I then rant about in indignant outrage, arrogantly assuming I’m right and belittling anyone who does bother to look up the data? To the research!

Let’s start with the data that the above video was citing from Pew Research.

ft_18-03-22_nonbookreaders_whohasnt — Source

As we can see, the 24% figure is showing that older, poorer, less educated, men (just), and Hispanics read less in the USA. This isn’t a new conclusion, as data from Pew in 2016 shows. The conclusion around the number who don’t read is also similar to the 2016 results of 26% not having read a book in the last 12 months. I’m not sure you can interpret much change over time in the number of people reading, but numbers might be slowly decreasing (although, look at the uptick in audiobooks as that format has come down in price).

ft_18-03-07_bookreading_printbooks — Source

Now we can look at how the USA sits in terms of reading. I’ve previously discussed how Aussies spend roughly 23 minutes per day reading (ABS figures), or an hour a day if you believe the Australian Arts Council report (I suggested there was possible survey bias in that figure). Below you can see that the NOP World Culture Score puts Australia at 6 hours 18 minutes – which I think makes this an “ALL-YOU bench-press” set of numbers.

chartoftheday_6125_which_countries_read_the_most_n — Source: Statista

This chart suggests that the USA is probably typical for English speaking countries, but that many other countries read far more on a weekly basis in terms of hours. Unless reading is code for something else in non-English speaking countries. Maybe they thought they were being asked about how many hours they spent having sex per week.

If we then look at the countries and how frequently they read books you can see in the chart below that they were afraid to include the bars for “didn’t read a book”. The high end has only 14% of Chinese people not reading a book, whilst the low end has the Dutch at 43% not reading (USA comes in at 29%, UK 28%, Australia 38% – I demand a recount!!).*

Screen Shot 2018-05-25 at 7.50.23 pm — Source: Statista

How about the number of books people read, or at least what they claim once they round up?

number_of_books_read_in_the_last_12_months2c_2011 — Source: Eurostat

Screen Shot 2017-10-08 at 6.24.23 PM — Source

What this all shows is that there are plenty of countries where you could ask ten people on the street to name a book and have one or two of them fail. You could ask those ten people what book were they reading today and only three of them could. Isn’t that sad? I reckon people would really enjoy reading if they made time for it. I’ve commented before on why I think people don’t read, suggesting that they don’t because they get told to read literature when they actually enjoy thrillers, sci-fi, and romance.

Maybe it is time to change that before someone sticks a camera and microphone in our faces.

*Be careful with my assumption here. Depending on how the question was asked and any other unreported categories, I may be very wrong in assuming the unreported numbers are non-readers.

Blog Topic, Book review, Reading

Book Review: Electric Dreams by Philip K Dick

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes you learn that aliens are better than people, so don’t be a jerk and you could stop an invasion.

Electric Dreams is a small sampling of an array of Philip K Dick short stories that were used as the basis for 10 episodes of a TV series of the same name. Dick wrote a huge number of short stories in his career – publishing 121 in a 30-year career, alongside 44 novels. So this selection (collection?) is probably best described as a taste-tester of PKD.

I find it hard to classify PKD as an author. What I have read of his works so far have left me thinking things like: “I was expecting more from this classic”*; “More interesting than engaging”; “Oh look, Deckard realised he lacks empathy so suspects he might be an android.”*** While I think PKD deserves to be acknowledged as a highly influential author I feel this is mainly for his ideas rather than their execution.

This collection was enjoyable on the ideas front and makes for a good sampler of PKD’s work.

*We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
**The Minority Report
***Really? You don’t know what book that is referring to? Would it help if I quoted some lines from the movie?

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Blog Topic, Fun Articles, My Writing, Writing

My Fellowship at KSP

It feels like only yesterday, but it’s actually just over a week since I finished my Fellowship at the KSP Writers’ Centre. What’s a Fellowship? I hear you ask. Actually, I didn’t hear you, but I do hear voices in my head – no, I have an adequate sufficiency of matches, so be quiet. Anyway, I applied for a writing retreat to focus on (finishing….) my novel Evil Corp. Twelve-and-a-half days to do nothing but writing in a purpose built hut.

The writing huts are modeled after Katharine Susannah Pritchard’s own writing retreat and are very much focussed on having a room to write in. Your desk faces out onto the garden – I had a view of a gum tree with a beehive in its trunk – you have amenities for snacks and drinks, a chair for quiet contemplation, and a bed for… well, you know what beds can be used for.

I had a whiteboard… which I didn’t end up using. And a giant pencil… which I also didn’t use.

The hut was quiet and felt ideally suited to writing. Or painting. Or reading. Or slowly going mad and deciding to live like a hermit. All good options.

The best feature was definitely the lack of adjoining accommodation for young children, who slowly steal your hopes and dreams as they consume more of your life than you’d ever imagine, such that you wake up at 40 wondering why you haven’t published a novel yet.

Welcome Pack: Welcome letter, KSP sticker, KSP Fellow card, CHOCOLATE!

With the welcome letter in hand, my computer set up, I was ready to ~~right~~ write!

Getting my author on

Reading Anne's story at KSP Open day 2018 — Not sure if I made this picture blurry by drinking too much caffeine, or if it was the wrong lighting for the camera to focus.

For my stay at KSP I had set a few hard and soft goals. Hard goals were things like: relax and enjoy being able to pursue my hobby uninterrupted for a fortnight; not wake up at 5am because my kids weren’t going to be there; refrain from buying a beret and neck-scarf; write more than 1,000 words per day. Soft goals were things like: wake up before noon; eat properly; get some exercise; try not to feel guilty about leaving my wife alone with our kids; write 20,000 words during my stay. Try to guess which goals I achieved.

I didn’t want to place too much pressure on myself to, say, “finish my novel” or “write 5,000 words a day”, because that would have sucked the fun out of the Fellowship. Having previously won NaNoWriMo, I knew I could write 2,000 words a day for a sustained period, but I was surprised at how having more time to write didn’t necessarily increase output. I’m going to claim that it was higher quality than NaNoWriMo writing though. A low bar I’m willing to jump over. But I did manage to write 20,000 words, do some plotting, create a few characters, outline several chapters for the future, review a couple of books, and come up with two plots for other projects, so it felt productive.

On the first weekend of my Fellowship the KSP Writers’ Centre held their open day. It was a fun event and well attended despite the threats of rain. As the above photo shows, I was asked to do a reading for the event on behalf of one of my writing groups. I read Werespoon by my fellow Fantasy Sci-Fi Horror group author Anne Forbes. Gillian Clarke read on behalf of my other author group, the Thursday Night group.

Another thing that made me feel authorly was mingling with other authors.

Surrounded by other authors

Me Kaaron Warren and Rachel Mead — Rachael Mead, Kaaron Warren, me being told to smile more.

Writing is generally regarded as a lonely occupation. Well, unless you take your laptop to a coffee shop so you can tell anyone who has the misfortune of coming too close that you’re an author and that sitting in a coffee shop telling people about your WIP counts as writing. The KSP cabins were decidedly setup for writing. On your own. Uninterrupted. ~~I brought a guitar.~~ But I still managed to hang out with other authors.

Kaaron Warren and Rachael Mead were also at KSP doing a Residency and Fellowship respectively. Kaaron has been publishing stories since before I’d figured out Coco-Pops didn’t need extra sugar. She was shortlisted for an Australian Shadow Award while she was in residence, and just last week released Tide Of Stone. One evening we were discussing awards (she is a judge for the World Fantasy Awards this year) and she casually mentioned being beaten by luminaries Stephen King and KJ Parker… I’m not sure that counts as losing.

Rachael has a PhD in creative writing and, like Kaaron, an impressive list of awards to her name. She has published multiple poetry collections, including one that came out earlier this year, and regularly contributes arts reviews to magazines. She also writes short stories and was working on what appears to have become a collection themed around paramedics during her time at KSP.

Which made me the bumbling rookie trying not to sound like an amateur around the two pros.

It was invaluable to chat with them over dinner, or at drink-o-clock, or at procrastination time. For example, Rachael helped me with a chapter I was headed in the wrong direction with. But it was also good just to be able to have a chat and socialise, including catching up with an old friend who is a mutual friend of Kaaron’s. If that wasn’t enough wordsmiths to hang out with, we also had a lovely dinner out with some other KSP Fellows. See the blurry photo below that proves kids aren’t necessarily good with technology.

2018-05-10 20.10.41 — Dinner with some other KSP Fellows.

Summary

It was great to have the opportunity to feel like a writer and make some progress on (one of) my works in progress. I met some lovely people, got some writing done, and didn’t get woken up by a toddler wanting to find the teddy that is lying right next to them in bed even once. I very much appreciate the board and staff at the KSP Writers’ Centre for awarding me the Fellowship.

Blog Topic, Book review, Reading

Book Review: The Hoodoo Man by Steve Harris

The Hoodoo Man by Steve Harris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Budgie as a weapon? Sure, why not.

Danny Stafford was an ordinary kid until his brother shot him in the face. It was an accident that changed Danny, but it isn’t until his 30s that the change fully takes hold. Now in a stable relationship, renovating a house, and working a dead-end job, Danny’s life is turned upside down. And that’s before the Hoodoo Man starts coming for him.

Back in my formative years, the local librarian introduced me to the adult section of the library after I’d read everything on offer for young adults and kids. This novel, The Hoodoo Man, was the first she pulled off of the shelf for me to try. A brand new horror novel by a UK author. Bit of a leap. But I was hooked. I clearly remember devouring this book, to the point that I missed at least one meal.

Twenty-six years later I wanted to test if my memory of this novel held up. Was The Hoodoo Man as good all these years later, or was I just an impressionable kid who had just discovered his first horror novel? Oh, it stands up alright. It has aged very well and I wasn’t disappointed at all. My immediate response upon finishing was to exclaim “Well, I’m going to have to find more of Steve Harris’ books.”

This is where this story becomes interesting. The Hoodoo Man was Steve’s third novel and it was his most successful, it put him on the map, and became his website’s name. But his career was all but over by the time his seventh novel was released and he retired at the end of the 90s. His career came to an end after his publisher was bought out and he was dumped. He had one completed novel he was shopping around, another in the works, and a third that had originally been intended as his sixth novel but was deemed too terrifying*. Harris’ novels went out of print and after no success in finding a new publisher, he retired from writing and ran to the hills**.

In this day and age, a writer in this situation would probably take their back-catalog and self-publish, then release their new material. Of course, a publisher would be unlikely to let an author go out of print. But it does make me wonder how many authors are in a sense lost to us because of the machinations of the publishing world. I guess they won’t be getting any money from me*** hunting down Harris’ back-catalog in the secondhand stores.

*The Switch was an attempt by Steve to bring the reader as close to feeling actual pain as possible. Back when his website was active I read an excerpt and can confirm that he succeeded. I have never looked at liver the same since.
**This bad reference to Iron Maiden’s bass player of the same name brought to you by the number 666.
***Obviously, Steve won’t be either.
http://www.shadow-writer.co.uk/kinter…

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