101–110 of 166 posts
Interesting: The connection between Pale Fire and hypertext was stated soon after its publication; in 1969, the information-technology researcher Ted Nelson obtained permission from the novel's publishers to use it for a hypertext demonstration at Brown University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Fire
This is hilarious. I bought the book after watching Blade Runner 2049. There's a scene where some of book was being recited as part of the protagonist's anti-empathy test and I figured it had to have a deeper importance to the writers so I grabbed it on a whim. It's been sitting on my shelf. Now I'll have to move it up the list after seeing this.
You might enjoy this video: _Blade Runner 2049 | "Cells Interlinked" and Pale Fire (LITERALLY ME! INCELS INTERLINKED)_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtLvtMqWNz8
Sounds absolutely fascinating. I just started the second Hyperion book, but I might have to put it down to prioritize this. It does seem like somewhat of an investment though; as if reading it in bed might not be the most optimal way to enjoy the experience. It might require some more dedicated reading sessions from what I'm seeing in the other threads.
If you are going to read Pale Fire, get it on paper. I tried to read it on my Kindle and the UI is not up to task of lots of flipping back and forth between the poem and the prose sections.
When I tell people the UI of paper books is in most ways superior to ebook readers, this is the kind of thing I mean. They do take up a shitload less space, which is a pretty big advantage, though.
The e-reader UI is generally so much better than paper, if a book is not available for kindle, I'll usually find something else to read. Pale Fire is a special case book where you want two have bookmarks where you are currently working. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on paper, and an e-reader would definitely have ruined it.
Technical books with a lot of charts, diagrams, monospaced code examples, etc can highlight the weaknesses of e-readers. PDFs are almost always better on a tablet.
But for like, words-in-a-row novels that don't mind being re-wrapped, there is no comparison, for me. e-Reader every time.
When people recommend Russian literature I'm always curious what they think about the other great Russian literary works. Because I find unnecessary complexity unbearable. I have no desire to read literature with 100+ named characters, unreliable narrators and Escher-like chronology. For some people narrative complexity is a draw but if I can't put a book down and come back to it two weeks later without having to sta…
Admittedly The Brothers Karamazov has a lot of characters, but, it does run linearly! And it's not so hard to refer to the Wikipedia article for a character list as necessary. I think the problem is some people expect to not have to do any work when reading literary novels.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I tell people the UI of paper books is in most ways superior to ebook readers, this is the kind of thing I mean. They do take up a shitload less space, which is a pretty big advantage, though.
I would disagree strongly with this. :) The e-reader UI is generally so much better than paper, if a book is not available for kindle, I'll usually find something else to read. Pale Fire is a special case book where you want two have bookmarks where you are currently working. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on paper, and an e-reader would definitely have ruined it. Technical books with a lot of charts, diagrams, monos…
lest the reader feel the awful stammering of suppressed terror quavering through my words without knowing what they are feeling. What?
> Pale Fire is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. It is so great it is terrifying to write about. This is not something I would normally confess, but in this case it seems better to just come out and say it, lest the reader feel the awful stammering of suppressed terror quavering through my words without knowing what they are feeling. It is terrifying!
The sentence fragment then means, "I wouldn't have mentioned that it's terrifying to write about, except I worry that the reader could tell that something was wrong by the way I wrote, but not know what."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the Cambridge English Dictionary: > refrain, n. a short part of a song or poem that is repeated, esp. at the end of each longer part, or any phrase that is often repeated Verbing nouns is a very common feature of the English language.
That's true but in this case the noun and verb forms of refrain have distinct meanings and come into English from different sources: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/refrain#word-hist... It's don't think I've ever read refrained used this way. I wonder if she was thinking "reframed"?
If you are going to read Pale Fire, get it on paper. I tried to read it on my Kindle and the UI is not up to task of lots of flipping back and forth between the poem and the prose sections.
When I tell people the UI of paper books is in most ways superior to ebook readers, this is the kind of thing I mean. They do take up a shitload less space, which is a pretty big advantage, though.
I'm the kind of reader that goes back and forth when reading a novel. I like to go back and re-read when a character was introduced, or simply go back a few pages.
The UI of the Kindle sucks for this. It excels at finding a specific sentence, of course, but not for the kind of flipping pages I enjoy doing.
If you are going to read Pale Fire, get it on paper. I tried to read it on my Kindle and the UI is not up to task of lots of flipping back and forth between the poem and the prose sections.
Some readers say that paper sucks too. The right scheme is to get two copies that advance together. So they could be either Kindle or paper or a mixture.
What people who adopted e-readers often say is that e-readers can be more convenient and take less space.
But nobody says "paper sucks".
When people recommend Russian literature I'm always curious what they think about the other great Russian literary works. Because I find unnecessary complexity unbearable. I have no desire to read literature with 100+ named characters, unreliable narrators and Escher-like chronology. For some people narrative complexity is a draw but if I can't put a book down and come back to it two weeks later without having to sta…
Nabokov's stories and reputation are intimidating, but if you drop your anxiety over missing the point, he's still a very entertaining, passionate writer. I definitely missed a lot when I read Pale Fire, but I still enjoyed it a lot, even being naive and taking everything at face value.