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

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

#41

Post by finnh »

brandur wrote: post #26
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 ove…

By "the shrinking tunnel" do you mean the section where fewer & fewer words appear on each page (and the rest of page is blank)?

If so, that's funny - that's one of my favorite parts of the book, and something I refer to often when talking about the book. The reason I like it so much is that it's at a very tense/dangerous moment, and normally in those situations it's impossible to actually read the content in exactly the order written - instead, my eyes will saccade forward and give my little subconscious "hints" at how the tension is resolved.

By placing only a few words per page (by the end, just one word per page), House of Leaves kept me in a state of fairly breathless anticipation for the whole time I was reading that part. Danielewski managed to get a film-like control over the pacing, which I thought was brilliant.

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

#43

Post by autarch »

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.

Yep, read about this and thought of House of Leaves. It's not quite as elaborate (no additional objects) but the intent is similar, I think.

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

#45

Post by empath75 »

criddell wrote: post #8

I've just started reading this book. As an object, it's pretty neat. My big complaint is that all of the stuff they've put into the pages can fall out and that ruins the experience quite a bit. I wish they had an index for all the cards and other things so that I could put the book back together. Edit: if the site doesn't link for you, go to Amazon and search for Ship of Theseus . That's the book the article is about…

Yeah, it's beautiful, but boring, imo. And it's really just a blown out version of the old infocom box inserts.

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

#48

Post by omaranto »

I take it this website did display text for other people. I wonder what it said... I only got a series of alternating dark and light grey rectangles to scroll through, without any text. Thinking maybe there was a problem with the CSS and the text was there but not visible, I pressed ctrl-A ctrl-C to copy all the text and pasted it into an editor: I only got the header and footer, there really was no article!

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

#49

Post by cwyers »

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.

The webcomic Schlock Mercenary has done a tie-in where they did a hardcover version of "The Seventy Maxims Of Maximally-Effective Mercenaries," an in-universe self-help book that characters constantly refer to, with annotations written into the book by the characters.

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

#50

Post by spc476 »

munchbunny wrote: post #17
Arzh wrote: post #5

This website has a reading experience unlike any other, by that I mean it has none since it work load.

I thought it was just a video buffering, but then I scrolled down and the loading wheel followed me. Why can't the text just load first?

Because there is no text. I used Firefox's "View->Page Style->None" and there is literally no text from the article on the page. I did, however, find this:

    SECURITY WARNING: Please treat the URL above as you 
    would your password and do not share it with anyone. 
    See the Facebook Help Center for more information.
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