Forgive me for filling your inbox on a Sunday. There’s a few pieces of programming business I want to draw your attention to. First and simplest: from Monday, 10/18 to Sunday, 10/24, I am taking my first vacation since starting this Substack last March. My girlfriend and I are heading north for fall foliage, hikes along nature trails, a warm fireplace, and time away from the internet. I have a spooky season-appropriate post queued up for one of those days and the next chapter of
I just bought Far Cry 6. Looking forward to comparing notes with you, Freddie. Left off the book club last week as I was visiting family, but I plan to mount a glorious comeback in the days ahead. FWIW, I would be one of your Umberto Eco diehards.
Yay, more book club! I'd love to do The Name of the Rose someday, though I agree it might be a risky choice. (I've tried to read the damn thing at least twice, but it ultimately winds up staring at me reproachfully from my nightstand after a few chapters.) As a former lit major, "classics I feel guilty never getting around to reading" is a broad category I'd also be excited about.
I read Demian in high school and remember exactly nothing about it, so this is great! Have you ever watched Felicia Day on Twitch as she plays games and talks to her fans? She's the only person I follow, though I follow a few other channels that show specific movies. I think she does a nice job keeping the viewers engaged while seeming to have fun gaming.
Is it weird that whether or not I'd view the Twitch has to do with whether or not I'm interested in the game being streamed?
I avoided the first book club because of my fictionphobia. But Demian was a book I was assigned to read in German Civilization as a college senior and blew it off because, well, I was a college senior. I would actually be really interested in finally reading it and would do so if it was in the book club.
Here at my house we just discovered Discord. No description would be fully helpful, maybe you already know. Just… get ready for memes. And cue up the film theorists, so you can add edumacational contentext to the… um… stuff and things out there. If you do this long enough you will collect 10-year-old fanboys. But they’ll swear at you, unprintably.
I for one have really enjoyed the book club. My reading life is mostly solitary, and I had not tried a club or any sort of online community thing before. It was great just to hear from people interested in reading. I am down for whatever book, however long. Looking forward to this next one.
You're not posting too much writing for me. I find that one of the great joys of being retired (fairly recently) is that I have far more time to read. Keep it coming. I really enjoy your writing. Thanks.
"Demian" is an interesting choice. I read "Siddhartha" back in my teen years, and I have a copy of "The Glass Bead Game" that I've never quite got around to reading, but that's it for my experience of Hesse.
As for Eco, while I enjoyed "The Name of the Rose", the theological discussions and the detailed picture of life in a medieval monastery are really all that separate it from any other Sherlock Homes-style detective story. "Foucault's Pendulum" is a more intellectually challenging book, but it's far less well-known, I think -- though I had a weird experience about 20 years ago where a group of people who happened to share a small mailing list suddenly realized that nearly all of them had read it.
Another (shorter) book that might be interesting for people: Yukio Mishima, "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea".
I also really enjoy the book club. The short reading assignments make it accessible even when I’m busy (I can always find time for 2 chapters), and the weekly posts keep me on track.
I’ve tried other book clubs where there’s just one date to discuss the entire book, and that never works as well for me. Plus, discussing a couple of chapters at a time makes me read more closely, since every part gets a discussion.
1. There’s a light paywalling you can do where only Twitch subs can chat (or you can make their chat more prominent, or give them FdB emoji, shit like that). Not essential but can be helpful if you want the chat to be troll-free. (Anyone with an amazon prime account is given 1 free twitch sub per month, so that’s $2.50 to you for something most people don’t even know they already have)
2. If you plan to do this long term, you could consider a Discord server that the Substackers get an invite to. I think a few Substack accounts do this (Charles … the NYT tech guy….sorry I’m not looking it up)
3. I understand you probably have a good setup for this already but consider a capture card (amazon has plenty) if you want to be able to potentially stream non-PC games. I am fairly sure you’ve mentioned Mario Kart and other Nintendo games before. (Just a thought, feel free to ignore)
Good luck and looking forward to the twitch experiment
i really enjoyed the cement garden and it's not the type of thing i would have normally picked up so you've won my trust and i'll follow the book club wherever it goes. the commenter community is great as well.
Warning: When you sign up for Twitch you have to pick a username, and the app is like, “You can always change it later.” Then when you try to change it, it says you have to wait 60 days. 😮
lol at the Twitch thing, but i’m here for it.
I just bought Far Cry 6. Looking forward to comparing notes with you, Freddie. Left off the book club last week as I was visiting family, but I plan to mount a glorious comeback in the days ahead. FWIW, I would be one of your Umberto Eco diehards.
Book ordered, looking forward to joining in on this go around! (Content of The Cement Garden wasn't something I could see myself handling.)
Glad you've got a vacation planned. You put a shit ton of work into this substack and it shows.
Yay, more book club! I'd love to do The Name of the Rose someday, though I agree it might be a risky choice. (I've tried to read the damn thing at least twice, but it ultimately winds up staring at me reproachfully from my nightstand after a few chapters.) As a former lit major, "classics I feel guilty never getting around to reading" is a broad category I'd also be excited about.
I’ve enjoyed hearing your thoughts in a less scripted space, podcasts and the like, so I’m excited to see what Freddie on twitch brings us.
I read Demian in high school and remember exactly nothing about it, so this is great! Have you ever watched Felicia Day on Twitch as she plays games and talks to her fans? She's the only person I follow, though I follow a few other channels that show specific movies. I think she does a nice job keeping the viewers engaged while seeming to have fun gaming.
Is it weird that whether or not I'd view the Twitch has to do with whether or not I'm interested in the game being streamed?
I avoided the first book club because of my fictionphobia. But Demian was a book I was assigned to read in German Civilization as a college senior and blew it off because, well, I was a college senior. I would actually be really interested in finally reading it and would do so if it was in the book club.
Twitch!
Here at my house we just discovered Discord. No description would be fully helpful, maybe you already know. Just… get ready for memes. And cue up the film theorists, so you can add edumacational contentext to the… um… stuff and things out there. If you do this long enough you will collect 10-year-old fanboys. But they’ll swear at you, unprintably.
I for one have really enjoyed the book club. My reading life is mostly solitary, and I had not tried a club or any sort of online community thing before. It was great just to hear from people interested in reading. I am down for whatever book, however long. Looking forward to this next one.
You're not posting too much writing for me. I find that one of the great joys of being retired (fairly recently) is that I have far more time to read. Keep it coming. I really enjoy your writing. Thanks.
"Demian" is an interesting choice. I read "Siddhartha" back in my teen years, and I have a copy of "The Glass Bead Game" that I've never quite got around to reading, but that's it for my experience of Hesse.
As for Eco, while I enjoyed "The Name of the Rose", the theological discussions and the detailed picture of life in a medieval monastery are really all that separate it from any other Sherlock Homes-style detective story. "Foucault's Pendulum" is a more intellectually challenging book, but it's far less well-known, I think -- though I had a weird experience about 20 years ago where a group of people who happened to share a small mailing list suddenly realized that nearly all of them had read it.
Another (shorter) book that might be interesting for people: Yukio Mishima, "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea".
I also really enjoy the book club. The short reading assignments make it accessible even when I’m busy (I can always find time for 2 chapters), and the weekly posts keep me on track.
I’ve tried other book clubs where there’s just one date to discuss the entire book, and that never works as well for me. Plus, discussing a couple of chapters at a time makes me read more closely, since every part gets a discussion.
Do the people who complain that you write too much have no personal agency? Are they not able to just not read stuff they don't want to read? Or what?
A few notes on your Twitch idea:
1. There’s a light paywalling you can do where only Twitch subs can chat (or you can make their chat more prominent, or give them FdB emoji, shit like that). Not essential but can be helpful if you want the chat to be troll-free. (Anyone with an amazon prime account is given 1 free twitch sub per month, so that’s $2.50 to you for something most people don’t even know they already have)
2. If you plan to do this long term, you could consider a Discord server that the Substackers get an invite to. I think a few Substack accounts do this (Charles … the NYT tech guy….sorry I’m not looking it up)
3. I understand you probably have a good setup for this already but consider a capture card (amazon has plenty) if you want to be able to potentially stream non-PC games. I am fairly sure you’ve mentioned Mario Kart and other Nintendo games before. (Just a thought, feel free to ignore)
Good luck and looking forward to the twitch experiment
i really enjoyed the cement garden and it's not the type of thing i would have normally picked up so you've won my trust and i'll follow the book club wherever it goes. the commenter community is great as well.
Warning: When you sign up for Twitch you have to pick a username, and the app is like, “You can always change it later.” Then when you try to change it, it says you have to wait 60 days. 😮
See you guys there maybe. Ignore my username.