Misc comments 48
Here's another collected comment post, written over a longer period than usual:
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bluejo linked to her Tor.com post about skimming, which she finds a very odd practice. I don't remember what if anything I said on Tor.com, but in the comment thread on LJ I wrote:
It occurs to me: I don't skim fiction on purpose. Sometimes I lose my place on the page/in the story, if I'm reading on a train or I put the book down and my eye lights on the wrong place when I pick it up again. Sometimes I notice, but not (I think) always: neither my memory nor every author's attention to detail is so good that I can be sure, if I miss something, that it was there, let alone where in the book it was.
I also sometimes wind up rereading a paragraph or two, for the same reason: I can think I'm on page 23 instead of 22. That's more noticeable.
(I sometimes reread bits on purpose, especially if I was tired when I read them the first time, or if they're confusing for other reasons, but that's a different thing.)
dhole was talking about a critic who argued that "Do I like this?" is not an interesting question, because adults already know what kind of thing they like.
I said:
People change. They may change less from 30 to 40 or 55 to 65 than from 20 to 30, and certainly less than from 8 to 18, but people change, and what they like changes, and the "you already know what you like" attitude shuts people off from new things. Not everyone who notices "I used to like Tom Holt's humor and now it falls flat for me" is going to wonder "okay, what did I used to dislike that is worth trying again?" And if someone rereads less than I do, they might not even notice that the change is in them; they might think the writer's later books aren't as good.
In response to a locked post about "guilty pleasures"
Things like this are why I dislike the whole concept of a "guilty pleasure." …
I really wish people would stop attaching moral judgments to watching television. It winds up being one of those lose-lose things. Don't watch, and you're assumed to be a weirdo (or people assume you're lying). Watch, and you're told to feel guilty about doing so.
I don't watch television because I don't like watching television. That's all. You like watching, so go for it. There's a difference between "I need to be cooking dinner/writing my term paper/doing my taxes, so I should turn the television off" and "I shouldn't do this, I should read a book." If there are programs you dislike, either at the time or afterwards (if they give you indigestion or nightmares, for example), you shouldn't watch them, even if they're on right after something you do like. And long periods of idle channel flipping might be a bad sign.
That it can be overdone doesn't mean it shouldn't be done at all. (I could over-exercise; that someone can eat either too much or too little of something doesn't mean that nobody should eat it at all.)
In a locked post, a friend of mine was wondering when it’s worth getting involved in certain political discussions online. They didn’t give examples, but I wrote:
It's hard, yes. None of us has the time and energy to fight all the battles, and I know sometimes my style of discourse may be all wrong for a specific person.
At the same time, if someone is espousing policies that hurt me (e.g., to do with gender or sexual orientation), I have to either say something, and risk alienating them, or say nothing and let them alienate me. I don't have to agree with my friends on everything, certainly, but there are positions that are going to make it hard for me to maintain more than polite acquaintance. (For example, I have plenty of friends who believe in gods, and that's fine: they don't mind that I don't, and I don't mind that they do. But there are also people who believe that atheists cannot be good or moral people: I probably can't be friends with those people.
bluejo linked to her Tor.com post about skimming, which she finds a very odd practice. I don't remember what if anything I said on Tor.com, but in the comment thread on LJ I wrote:It occurs to me: I don't skim fiction on purpose. Sometimes I lose my place on the page/in the story, if I'm reading on a train or I put the book down and my eye lights on the wrong place when I pick it up again. Sometimes I notice, but not (I think) always: neither my memory nor every author's attention to detail is so good that I can be sure, if I miss something, that it was there, let alone where in the book it was.
I also sometimes wind up rereading a paragraph or two, for the same reason: I can think I'm on page 23 instead of 22. That's more noticeable.
(I sometimes reread bits on purpose, especially if I was tired when I read them the first time, or if they're confusing for other reasons, but that's a different thing.)
dhole was talking about a critic who argued that "Do I like this?" is not an interesting question, because adults already know what kind of thing they like. I said:
People change. They may change less from 30 to 40 or 55 to 65 than from 20 to 30, and certainly less than from 8 to 18, but people change, and what they like changes, and the "you already know what you like" attitude shuts people off from new things. Not everyone who notices "I used to like Tom Holt's humor and now it falls flat for me" is going to wonder "okay, what did I used to dislike that is worth trying again?" And if someone rereads less than I do, they might not even notice that the change is in them; they might think the writer's later books aren't as good.
In response to a locked post about "guilty pleasures"
Things like this are why I dislike the whole concept of a "guilty pleasure." …
I really wish people would stop attaching moral judgments to watching television. It winds up being one of those lose-lose things. Don't watch, and you're assumed to be a weirdo (or people assume you're lying). Watch, and you're told to feel guilty about doing so.
I don't watch television because I don't like watching television. That's all. You like watching, so go for it. There's a difference between "I need to be cooking dinner/writing my term paper/doing my taxes, so I should turn the television off" and "I shouldn't do this, I should read a book." If there are programs you dislike, either at the time or afterwards (if they give you indigestion or nightmares, for example), you shouldn't watch them, even if they're on right after something you do like. And long periods of idle channel flipping might be a bad sign.
That it can be overdone doesn't mean it shouldn't be done at all. (I could over-exercise; that someone can eat either too much or too little of something doesn't mean that nobody should eat it at all.)
In a locked post, a friend of mine was wondering when it’s worth getting involved in certain political discussions online. They didn’t give examples, but I wrote:
It's hard, yes. None of us has the time and energy to fight all the battles, and I know sometimes my style of discourse may be all wrong for a specific person.
At the same time, if someone is espousing policies that hurt me (e.g., to do with gender or sexual orientation), I have to either say something, and risk alienating them, or say nothing and let them alienate me. I don't have to agree with my friends on everything, certainly, but there are positions that are going to make it hard for me to maintain more than polite acquaintance. (For example, I have plenty of friends who believe in gods, and that's fine: they don't mind that I don't, and I don't mind that they do. But there are also people who believe that atheists cannot be good or moral people: I probably can't be friends with those people.