4.5/5⭐️
This one was a little slower and felt a little dragged out.
Nitin Khanna
Playing with a new iOS app
Playing with new quick notes app called Funnel. Pointed by Agam on his blog.
The power of such apps is to quickly get to a writing place. The problem with such apps is that they need a prominent place on your homescreen.
My homescreen has been locked to the current set of apps since a very long time. The second page is flexible. But I don’t see how the first page would be. I’m not sure what the fate of this app will be either.
I mean, I literally have the free version of Drafts sitting on the second page and I rarely use it. Maybe I should just use the back tap feature of iOS to do quick thoughts capture?
Deleted some node_modules
Recently realized that when I backed up some old code a few years ago to my Dropbox account (I know, not the best practice, but whatever), I also backed up a lot of node_modules folders. Sent them all to the trash the other day.
Dropbox emailed me after the deletion process completed to tell me the final count of files deleted.
It sits at 400385.
400,385.
Four hundred thousand, three hundred and eighty-five.
It boggles the mind.
Finished: Vita Nostra by the Dyachenkos
5/5⭐️
An awesome book! Dark academia, loads of twists and turns, and a page-turner to boot.
Some folks have called it the anti-Harry Potter, simply because in Harry Potter, you want to go to Hogwarts, but you do not want to go anywhere near the Institute of Special Technologies in the Vita Nostra universe. But this comparison is false. Vita Nostra is nothing like it. To get selected to study at the Institute is more about destiny than choice. That’s all I’ll say on that topic.
Also, a fair few reviewers have said that they were shocked or surprised at the ending. I don’t know why. The ending was almost foregone after the events of the book. I’m not saying it was predictable, but it was just the perfect ending. No surprises there.
Utterly immersed in the audiobook for Vita Nostra. What a mind blowing book! Calling it an anti-Harry Potter is such a disservice to the brilliance of the Dyanchenkos.
Watched: Saltburn (1/5⭐️)
What a pathetic waste of time.
Saltburn is a decadent and windy art film. It has a story, yes. But it’s rather linear and further ruined by a rather dull and obvious cast of characters. Ten minutes in, you’ll know who the antagonists are. Midway through, you’ll know what the climax will be.
What does that leave the movie to show?
Only cringy shock-value scenes. That’s it.
2/5 stars because it could be sat through, if you feel like wasting an evening of your life.
Go for a walk instead. You’ll feel much better.
Update: After careful consideration, I’ve reduced the rating from 2/5 stars to 1/5 stars. This was a horrid movie. Skip it. Do not watch.
Finished: Berlin by Bea Setton
Just finished listening to Berlin by Bea Setton. Utterly loved the book. It follows in the tradition of A Year of Rest & Relaxation but is even more funny and dark and has a much more satisfying ending. I adore unreliable narrators and first person narratives with all the narrator’s thoughts and whims interlaced with the story.
I borrowed it from the Seattle Public Library and finished it just in time before I had to return it. Towards the end, I was listening at 1.5x instead of my customary 1.25x and it still held fine. The last minute, I heard at 1x and after speeding up the audio, 1x always feels like a drawl. But it was also satisfying and luxurious because the final sentence of the book is just beautiful.
Parents on Art Advice
She said that you have to be willing to disappoint other people in order to be a writer.
Source: How Do You Write a Book?
What an interesting thought! And so true, not just for writing but for all art, all hobbies, all creativity; heck, even spirituality and meditation. All of these are deeply personal. The satisfaction from these is almost never monetary, by which you could justify the time spent on the activity to the world, but more importantly your friends and family. Instead, the satisfaction is deeply personal too. You’ll be called selfish and greedy. “Your time and your energy”, instead of being devoted to this abstract thing, “should be devoted to people around you”, they’ll say. You’re going to ignore children and thus force your partner to take up more work. You’re going to eat into their personal time or into shared personal time, which is even rarer for parents.
But it’s worth it. In the end, you get a book, a piece of art, a more settled personality, or none of these. But the journey is important, no matter who it may disappoint.
I changed the title from “How do You Write a Book?” to “Parents on Art Advice” simply because there’s so much more that this advice applies to. Maybe it shouldn’t be “Art” but “Life”, because Life is all about balancing other people’s disappointments with your own needs.
Sticky is good, brimming is better
In my last post on the topic, I said that when I reached into my memory for alternatives to Goodreads, I remembered only StoryGraph and Literal.
This is good. Whatever is sticky is what we use in the end.
Recently, it went a little further. Lately, I’ve become a fan of a lot of alternatives to books. 13 out of the 18 books I “read” this past year were audiobooks. Another 3 were actually Harry Potter fan fiction web novellas from a series called Ever Upward. It’s worth a read.
There’s another web novel which I’m reading right now, on and off, which I have no hopes of finishing soon. It’s called Worm and it’s three times the size of War and Peace, which took me well over 2 years to read.
But the significant thing is that both the fan fiction and the web novel are online entities that have no ISBN, publishing house, or even profit motive. They are purely labors of love, freely given to the world, published online in a format that may outlast humanity or may disappear tomorrow.
Which means there’s no serious way to track the fact that I’m reading them other than putting them in my notes or on my blog. Goodreads doesn’t acknowledge them. Neither does Literal.
But StoryGraph does.
A few months ago, I wanted to record that I’m reading Worm. None of the services – Goodreads or it’s alternatives seemed to have Worm as a “book”. But StoryGraph did. I added it. But I’ve not really used it to track my progress. Mostly lack thereof.
A few days ago, I felt like adding my progress on the Ever Upward series to the reading services. Sure enough, StoryGraph is the only one that has it, with each numbered novella a separate entity. I added it and quickly marked the first three novellas as “read”, adding them to my 2023 Reading list.
I like Literal. It’s got a nice interface, a very good community. They have this cool feature where you can create Clubs based on any random criteria and people can join them and add recommended books as well as posts to those Clubs. I’m an active member of a club called “Complex Females” and the creator of a club called “Short books“. But like most other non-Goodreads platforms, Literal suffers from a lack of records. Books are missing or not available in the format I’m reading them in. To fight this, Literal created a program called Librarians where you can contribute information about missing books and editions. Still, there doesn’t seem to be a way in Literal to track non-ISBN books.
StoryGraph doesn’t have a program like this per se. But any member can import a ISBN based book. What they also have is a feature that says that if you don’t have an ISBN, you can manually add a book and plug in information about the work. This is probably what some kind strangers used to add Worm and Ever Upward to the platform. I’ve found this to be a rather unique option that’s not present anywhere else. In general, if you want to track something you’re reading on the web, your main options are Read Later tools like Instapaper or Omnivore. I do not want StoryGraph to track every article or LongRead out there, but the idea of tracking web novellas is unique and very satisfying.
I want to give my money to StoryGraph. It’s $50 a year for the annual plan (or $5 a month for the monthly plan). That seems like a reasonable way to support the platform. Literal on the other hand, has a “Patron” system where you can contribute $5/$10/$20 a month to help keep the lights on and improve the platform. Seems reasonable too.
Literal has a social aspect that StoryGraph lacks. StoryGraph has Stats. Who doesn’t like stats?
Ideally, I’d like these platforms to merge so I can have exceptional stats as well as a social aspect that’s entirely around book clubs. But that’s just wishful thinking.
What do you think dear reader? Where should my money go?
Oh, and about the title of the post. I am leaning towards StoryGraph because it’s brimming with more than just ISBN based books. It’s helping me track web novellas which I would have no way of tracking through a “reading platform” otherwise.
DNR’d two books back into 2023
Not a 2023 roundup post.
Just wanted to note that I was trying to finish 2023 with two audiobooks – To Her Credit and Classic Women’s Short Stories. Could not finish either of them. To the point that these are the only books that I picked up in 2023 that I will not finish.
“Classic Women’s Short Stories” is just too dated to read. There are a few short stories in there by some famous authors – Katherine Mansfield, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf. But most of the stories were just too… boring… to read. Ultimately had to drop the entire book. Woolf’s story, A Mark on the Wall, and Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Daughters of the Late Colonel, were the only ones I finished. I would recommend you to read these stories individually instead of through this book.
I thought To Her Credit would be similar to Figuring by Maria Popova, the book that kick-started my love for Feminist Memoirs. Instead, it was just a series of “here’s a woman who did amazing things and here’s a man we want to put down through her”. We need more writing like Popova’s which celebrates women’s accomplishments (or non-accomplishments, like Three Women by Lisa Taddeo) without demeaning them with comparisons. I’m still looking for anything as well written as Figuring.
I’m starting 2024 with a wondering book named Berlin by Bea Setton. It’s very along the lines of A Year of Rest and Relaxation. I’m loving the inner monologue of the main character and the audio narration by Ell Potter.