Curious Serpents Need to Know
30/04/2014 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaSo another Camp Nano adventure is over and it is time to return to mundane reality. That includes choosing some new books to toss in the serpent sack for all those spare moments waiting or lurking when out and about. Extra attention is always reserved for certain special occasions. This usually include the obvious such as the new year and Halloween but Good Friday and Mayday are also on the list. Those times are saved for the spooky or spiritual sorts of stuff, Dan Brown included.
The most recent of these was James Herbert’s ‘Sepulchre”. Never heard of the man until he died recently. He was apparently a pretty famous writer of horror and spooky stuff and his most famous books were “The Rats” and “The Fog”. Just the titles alone is enough to make a serpent curious. Ever since reading Orwell’s “1984” at an impressionable age (and recommended by a religion teacher too along with “Animal Farm”) the Izzie has had a thing about rats. A creepy movie also added flies to the list.
So this one was snaffled at charity book sale at the recent senate election. A haunted house, dark secrets, a strange psychic and a multinational mining corporation were just the sorts of ingredients to make me most interested indeed. The opening quotes from Genesis about a certain creature in the Garden of Eden was guaranteed to get this book on the Good Friday reading list.
I finished it on Sunday and saved the ending specially for a visit to an old historical graveyard in the eastern end of the city. It had been raining and the cemetery was filled with the fragrance of eucalyptus leaves. It was a creepy book with a wicked twisted ending and filled with so many ideas worth snatching.
The next book on the menu is one from Amazon. Had been looking a long long time in the local libraries but most Stephen King books on their shelves are of the page turning spine tingling varieties.
So many folks with so many different tastes have all raved about his book on writing that it seemed very likely that they were the real thing and not a bunch of paid shills. It’s not like he needs them. Quite a few have said that they have lent this book to friends who never gave it back. Books are funny like that. It seems that even the libraries must have suffered the same fate with their copies if they ever had them to begin with.
Then there was the recent online course covering sci fi and fantasy literature. It was a wonderful opportunity to read books that had been on the long finger for far too long and to be reacquainted with some old favourites such as “Dracula” and “Alice in Wonderland”
Thanks to this course H G Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe have been added to the serpent reading list.
The last book on the list Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” was just the excuse needed to sign up for some online Linux and Python courses and this time making sure that nothing else is going on at the same time so they can get the attention they deserve this time around.
Now another writing course has started from the UK Open University.
Got to thinking that aside from a ridiculous number of books lurking in the Lair, having membership of 5 libraries and squillions of free online courses means that most of the things that I really love are available for very little monetary outlay. Bus trips to the libraries and monthly online internet charges are a tiny outlay for such great value.
Maybe less than 5 years from now this time will be regarded as the golden age of online education (or MOOCs as the geeks call such courses) The goblins will not wait forever for their payback and even now some courses are resorting to having physical certificates only which of course have a big fat price tag even if the course is only a couple of weeks long.
It’s funny. Finished at least a dozen courses at this stage and most of the ones I have taken seriously have ended up with scores in the mid 80-90% range (although most of them are aimed at the USA market where high scores do not require extraordinary effort) The exception is the recent sci fi and fantasy literature course where a ridiculous amount of work will snaffle a score of just over 70%. But there were other benefits that more than make up for that. I've done pretty much nothing with the new knowledge at all. It’s just another one of those things to hoard. But I guess some folks are fitness and gym junkies, others get their fix with cycling or sport. The Izzie just loves learning stuff simply for the sake of learning.
But then again, when one’s addiction is squiggling, nothing is ever wasted.
The most recent of these was James Herbert’s ‘Sepulchre”. Never heard of the man until he died recently. He was apparently a pretty famous writer of horror and spooky stuff and his most famous books were “The Rats” and “The Fog”. Just the titles alone is enough to make a serpent curious. Ever since reading Orwell’s “1984” at an impressionable age (and recommended by a religion teacher too along with “Animal Farm”) the Izzie has had a thing about rats. A creepy movie also added flies to the list.
So this one was snaffled at charity book sale at the recent senate election. A haunted house, dark secrets, a strange psychic and a multinational mining corporation were just the sorts of ingredients to make me most interested indeed. The opening quotes from Genesis about a certain creature in the Garden of Eden was guaranteed to get this book on the Good Friday reading list.
I finished it on Sunday and saved the ending specially for a visit to an old historical graveyard in the eastern end of the city. It had been raining and the cemetery was filled with the fragrance of eucalyptus leaves. It was a creepy book with a wicked twisted ending and filled with so many ideas worth snatching.
The next book on the menu is one from Amazon. Had been looking a long long time in the local libraries but most Stephen King books on their shelves are of the page turning spine tingling varieties.
So many folks with so many different tastes have all raved about his book on writing that it seemed very likely that they were the real thing and not a bunch of paid shills. It’s not like he needs them. Quite a few have said that they have lent this book to friends who never gave it back. Books are funny like that. It seems that even the libraries must have suffered the same fate with their copies if they ever had them to begin with.
Then there was the recent online course covering sci fi and fantasy literature. It was a wonderful opportunity to read books that had been on the long finger for far too long and to be reacquainted with some old favourites such as “Dracula” and “Alice in Wonderland”
Thanks to this course H G Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe have been added to the serpent reading list.
The last book on the list Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” was just the excuse needed to sign up for some online Linux and Python courses and this time making sure that nothing else is going on at the same time so they can get the attention they deserve this time around.
Now another writing course has started from the UK Open University.
Got to thinking that aside from a ridiculous number of books lurking in the Lair, having membership of 5 libraries and squillions of free online courses means that most of the things that I really love are available for very little monetary outlay. Bus trips to the libraries and monthly online internet charges are a tiny outlay for such great value.
Maybe less than 5 years from now this time will be regarded as the golden age of online education (or MOOCs as the geeks call such courses) The goblins will not wait forever for their payback and even now some courses are resorting to having physical certificates only which of course have a big fat price tag even if the course is only a couple of weeks long.
It’s funny. Finished at least a dozen courses at this stage and most of the ones I have taken seriously have ended up with scores in the mid 80-90% range (although most of them are aimed at the USA market where high scores do not require extraordinary effort) The exception is the recent sci fi and fantasy literature course where a ridiculous amount of work will snaffle a score of just over 70%. But there were other benefits that more than make up for that. I've done pretty much nothing with the new knowledge at all. It’s just another one of those things to hoard. But I guess some folks are fitness and gym junkies, others get their fix with cycling or sport. The Izzie just loves learning stuff simply for the sake of learning.
But then again, when one’s addiction is squiggling, nothing is ever wasted.
