The dictionary or encyclopedia is a poor-fit marginal use of the book format but the canonical textual experience in hypertext. That says something. Notable that hypertext has eaten all dictionaries and encyclopedias but largely failed to touch long (> short story) fiction.
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Personal experience: not counting my blog/newsletter compilation ebooks, my first real book Tempo was composed directly in LaTeX out of a rich stream-of-consciousness fugue outline on a 5-hour flight, filling out a paper notebook. I *never* blog that way.
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The book I’m trying to write now, recently potted into Roam, is really fighting me. It wants to be an encyclopedia, not a serialized ludic narrative. We’ll see what comes out the other end of the Epic Struggle.
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A few video games seem more like books to me now than nominal books tortured out of online content. Serialized? Check Ludic-immersive? Check Common-grounding of finishers? Check Good recent example: Monument Valley. Or the Room trilogy. These are book-games.
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A few classic books, if written today, would have been written as blogs. Like Les Miserables with its digressions from the main Jean Valjean — Javert story. I read an abridged edition as a teenager that left out all the side blog posts within the book. Never read the full thing.
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Trying to define “future book” in a way that I actually want to write it. Something deeply depressing about the idea of writing a traditional book in 2020. It anti-excites me. Also seems more honest since my reading of books has also changed. I now “read” more like a shredder.
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Unbundle and rebundle the book. Easier said than done.
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Brendan Schlagel
Yep, this is the limitation of one-size-fits-all summaries/reviews, and reason I stopped doing them. The largest part of context is the reader and where they're trying to go. Unless that interests you or coincides with you/your direction, limited value.https://twitter.com/schlagetown/status/1211711797864083456 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
Brendan Schlagel @schlagetownReplying to @vgrI think we need fewer reviews / analyses; more contextualization. Following the idea of the antilibrary: antireading; antireviews. Many interesting books defy summarization, or at least demand something more; writing & reading about them can be rewarding if approached obliquely.2 replies 0 retweets 7 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @vgr
Good point, I think a cool frame could be writing about books w/ the goal of situating their historical / cultural relevance & helping readers decide how / in what contexts it's worth diving deeper. Go more meta. And more personalized, if possible, even better.
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Replying to @schlagetown @vgr
Agree largest part of context is the reader, but the reader doesn't always know where they're trying to go. Often hard to articulate why I read stuff! A good review (antireview, w/e) ideally can help reveal some unknown unknown / adjacent possible interest / direction to explore
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True, but you still have unconscious motives and curiosities that make you a very non-random context. It's not a blank slate, just an invisible one!
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Replying to @vgr
Yeah definitely :) I wonder what sort of writing (or curation, lists, etc. generally) might be most useful for helping illuminate those unconscious curiosities & better match books / readers. "If you liked this, try this" = one example I've seen…
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