Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

ceros.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#21

Post by jansho »

This looks super interesting. Like putting mini books in the margins of a big book, plus the novelty factor of the book design itself.

But would it have the same delicious effect that Mr Abrams had when he first found said book that inspired his project?

> "It made me smile, this optimistic romantic idea that you could leave a book with a message for someone."

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#22

Post by lvoudour »

munchbunny wrote: post #19
lvoudour wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't believe it so I timed it. Took 15s for me, which is still absurd given the fact that civ 5 takes about the same time to generate a new game. Fancy or not it's just a website. I'm not an expert on the subject (web dev) so could someone explain why more and more websites have significant load times when all they do is load a few images and text? Is it a server issue, a dev issue or a browser issue?(pretty sure…

Back in the day this would happen because somebody needed to load a whole Flash applet. Web 2.0 was supposed to take us away from that. I suspect the main reason people do it is because progressive loading has the potential to leave your page half-rendered, which looks bad. So you block the whole thing until you can present it in its entirety. But it's the web. We're used to pages half-loading, and we're used to star…

Since mobile browsing is so prevalent, you would expect websites to be more optimised for mobile cpus/bandwidth and therefore very fast on ethernet connected desktops. But more and more I find sites that take so much time to load I feel I'm back to dial-up days. This blog doesn't even have ads. It's absurd considering the fact we can stream full HD content in several devices on the same connection

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#23

Post by scandox »

I saw a copy of this sitting on a table in a bookshop in Dublin a couple of years ago and picked up and read it for a while. I would have liked to have loved it and maybe as a teenager I still would have been able to invest it with the a little bit of the real magic it seemed to lack for all its technical accomplishment...but I guess I've exchanged those powers for something else - or just lost them.

The thing that still amazes me is how words themselves - without any other props - can still engender the kind of mystery and sense of romance which they were aiming for. Even when we're used to entertainments with far more sensory power.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#26

Post by brandur »

Xoros wrote: post #12

Had anyone read The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski ? A book in a book in a book. I feel some similarities with this one.

I've read it. I liked the premise for The House of Leaves and really _wanted_ to like the book, but to be honest, the whole experience felt a little gimmicky to me. I got to parts that were obnoxiously annoying to read (e.g. the shrinking tunnel), and the story didn't really feel worth it.

S. has some of this too (the handwriting in the columns takes time to make out), but because the quality of narrative and the overall refinement of the product were so high, I didn't mind. Given a choice between the two books, I'd certainly start with this one.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#27

Post by oh_sigh »

briga wrote: post #20

'Unlike any other' might be a stretch. Writers have been playing these sorts of meta-narrative games for decades now. Nabokov's Pale Fire comes to mind. House of Leaves is another example.

Would you read an article titled 'J.J. Abrams wrote a book similar to some other books'?

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#30

Post by morsch »

combatentropy wrote: post #9

It amazes me that they could make it in bulk for $20 ( https://www.amazon.com/Ship-Theseus-J-Abrams/dp/0316201642 ). Among the pages are cards and other items that the two fictional readers shared or saved.

How well does the Kindle adaptation work, I wonder.

(Also, thinking this would make a nice parent for my father, but the German edition was a limited run; $130 used, $180 new, jeez.)

Post reply on HN