Updated with least effort on your part!
I WANT TO SEND YOU BOOKS.
Birthdays make me uncomfortable for some reason so I usually hide them from the world. Also, on a birthday, I prefer to give things rather than receive them. So happy birthday to me.
I went through the most recent 'great books', 'recommend me a book', 'what are you reading' threads here and counted up the titles, ranked 'em, and compiled a list: the choice of a new Hubski generation.
The entire list: some sixty-odd books – a few too many for my plan – so I restricted things to the top eight titles.
I want to send 'em to Hubski folk. Then when they finishes 'em, I'd like him or her to write their name and a tiny message in the book and send that book on to another Hubskier. A physical, literary, postal echo of the Hubski logo.
So if you want to participate, throw in a reply here with a tale from your life illustrating a moment when reading and literature touched you deeply.
The eight with the most up-clockwised hubspokes get books.
Let's keep this open until Friday 9th, Midnight GMT, then count the spokes.
Edited for clarity after KB's comments.
Also:
USPS Media Mail will let you send a book anywhere in the US for around $2.50, International seems to be $8-9.
UK Royal Mail will send a book to the US for £3.65 ($5) or UK for £1.17
I'm emphatically in! I'd like to receive a book I guess, but I mostly want to read it and send it along and then receive a personalize one. Ebooks and audio files fucking suck booo. I mean they're convenient but this little shebang just ain't about convenience. Anyway I worked at a library for five years and in the spirit of not ignoring your bit about sharing a story and earning my way into the process, I'll just mention that I've been heartbroken recently because my beautiful local library got rid of the poetry section and probably just about everything else except BLANK FOR IDIOTS and shitty memoirs by millennials who haven't done anything with their lives worth writing about. Or neocon biographies. (Conversations with Newt? Maybe an actual title? Can't remember.) Uhh anyway I'm really busy and this is what my posts look like pre-editing so there's an insight into that frantic little world. Anyway this sounds super cool, I volunteer to send books anywhere stateside (and possible even to Europe if I can swing it, who knows).
I think this is a great idea that deserves a little pruning. One book is a task. Twelve books is an ordeal. One book is a priority mail flat rate box for $5.35, two days anywhere in the US (and like $9 outside). Twelve books is a large priority mail flat rate box for $18. I find that ambitious things are best started modestly - having one book show up on your doorstep is an invitation to read. Having twelve books show up... well, shit. I've got both the Nausicaa collection and Toynbee on one shelf, staring out at me, daring me to begin. Have had for nine months. In that time I've gone through several dozen books.
Good point. Maybe a bit biblical too. Eight? The number of seats around the table? (People may already have read 'em, may not want to read all of them.) Or, you know what, let it be the eight (or twelve) most hubwheeled replies here, one book a piece. Edit: Although to be clear, the idea wasn't that each person finished all twelve books and sent them out together, rather the first person received all the books and then, book by book, as she finished, sent one out to various other people over the course of the year.
I think that works just great if Patient Zero is you. There's one person with a demonstrated desire to get this project going, and there's one person in your scenario upon whom the lion's share of effort is heaped. Make those two individuals into one individual and I'll bet things happen. COMPLETE OTHER THOUGHT Just about everything I've done for bl00sreviews was an audiobook. It's child's play to crack those down to an m4a that can be played by anything. I could also just distribute the bl00sreviews books far and wide without any postage or international boundaries coming into play, and as bl00sreviews was kind of the patient zero for this endeavor, it dovetails.
I like it. The epidemiology of literary gifting. I take your point about digital, and infinite distribution rules, but in this case I'm drawn to the idea of dirty, massy matter traipsing the world and picking up the oils from Hubski fingers like an international Name Of The Rose without the poison or the murder. When the singularity uplifts us all into a silicon dream, the books will be left behind, their pages curling in the almost absent wind.
Sending these off one by one and having a network of mailers is a much better idea, imo. It would end up that way, regardless, with the original receiver forwarding them, so might as well just skip the first step. Plus, seeing others' progress will reinforce the need to contribute.
Sounds very beautiful, can't participate unfortunately - shipping things over the Atlantic is not cheap.
Many Hubskiers are based in Europe. Don't rule anything out!
Okay, another reason. I live with my parents, if I start getting packages with stuff and say "they came from my internet friends" they would and should not react well.
True enough. You should have Poste Restante in Sweden though.
What? I'm sorry but i don't know what you are trying to say.
Poste Restante is an international system of mail which allows people without residential addresses (or people travelling the world) to have packages arrive at a local post office and to collect them in person. https://www.posten.se/sv/Kundservice/Sidor/Poste-restante.aspx
We have that, it is the only way we get post but since I live with my parents they might get the message that something has arrived before I do. And that would not lead to a pleasant situation.
Edit: redacted. I like this idea and I will participate whole-heartedly
Your redacted text is heartfelt and not cheesy at all; worth sharing (even after removing the initial revelation) but I understand if it's too personal.
I appreciate that. Very much. I feel more comfortable here at certain times than at other points, and that changed for me after I posted. There's always some degree of a schism that is present when tossing things out into an open forum, and my redaction wasn't driven by shame or embarrassment, but there are some things I need to be looking into a person's eyes to talk about, ya know? Still, this project is a great idea, and I'm definitely looking to it as already put many of things in the threads you're drawing from onto my reading list!
This is a wonderful idea, and I check the mail frequently enough to probably slide it past my parents. Awesome. I read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother when I was like 12ish. Fantastic, wonderful novel. I'd never really thought about the technology I was using before, so it was a serious eye-opener to see not only the underlying mechanisms of what I did with most of my time, but also the ways that those mechanisms could be twisted and re-utilized both in order to work basically against me (in terms of surveillance etc.) and in order to subvert the work that was being done that I disagreed with and felt a right to subvert. It's been about 3 years now, and I still haven't learned how to program (sidebar: if anyone wanted to tell me where to start learning specifically security/privacy-related programming you'd pretty much make my year), but I've spent the last portion of my life deeply involved in the fight for the internet, following the issues, getting angry about the NSA, supporting the EFF, teaching my friends about taking their own privacy, etc. Not only did Little Brother get me into all this, it also acted as a gateway to basically my entire politics right now, which is predicated on the belief that the world is super fucked up not because people are fucked up, not because it has to be this way, but because of the way the global socioeconomic system is designed. So it's kind of Cory Doctorow's fault that now my "tags used" on Hubski are as follows:
Oh, I remember being younger, maybe 10 and finding my parents math books from when they were 16. That's the day I learned about negative numbers. I felt so smart that day. Like the whole world was open in front of me, for me to do what I wished with. I felt powerful. Because I had power. Knowledge is power and I now knew something that people my age didn't. I knew about something that I could explain, and they couldn't. When I was older I read that book again. I read a section about computers, written when computers were new and exiting. That's when I realized that I could get a computer to do anything I wanted. ANYTHING. Today it is a matter of pride that I can mod The Sims myself. If I want my sims to lead horrible destructive lives with teenage pregnancy they will. Because I am their god. I AM THEIR GOD! Eh... Haha... Didn't mean that...
Happy birthday! This sounds like such a lovely idea. Maybe readers can write mini-reviews or comments in the books. It's always nice to read people's notes in books, especially if it's from people I know. But: logistics. There's an Atlantic between me and most people here. Meaning I have two options: if the book is not big and not fat (38 x 26,5 x 3 cm, so it fits in a mailbox) I can ship it for a similar rate as yours. Otherwise it's $40 to ship a small package back. So I'm totally in, but either with a smaller book or two / three at once.
I'd like to both receive and pass on books! I think one book apiece sounds perfect to start. English was my favorite subject in school as a young kid, but mostly because I didn't mind reading and always got an A. When I was 14, I read Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," and overnight I found myself starving for comparable literature, bouncing with excitement at my discovery, and babbling about the book to anyone who would listen. Nothing had ever made me feel so deeply before. I felt as though Vonnegut had reached out, listened to, and understood my insecurities, questions, worries, and the burgeoning 14-year-old interest in the human condition and complex problems like war. Then he reaffirmed what I'd been feeling and commiserated with the rest, all while leaving a bitter-sweet laugh on my lips. Somehow that book made me feel like I did have a place in the universe and in humanity, that I wasn't alone, and that science fiction could be meaningful. He was my first favorite author, and I've since read nearly everything he's ever written. I even have a tattoo of the "Cat's Cradle" cover art on my back. It's my favorite Vonnegut book. Anyway, Vonnegut sparked a true love for prose and, a few years later, a passion for poetry as well. Now I'm 21 years old and almost done with a degree in English Lit. I'm going to be a teacher, and, hopefully, I'll be able to instill some of my passion in students, and show them what books have to offer.
Slaughterhouse is also my favorite Vonnegut, but it's the only work of his I've read so far. A couple more remain on my oft-expanding, intimidatingly vast reading list, and I look forward to them. Did you, by any chance, also find yourself adopting "So it goes" as a sort of mantra for some time after your completion of the book? It remains one of my most-used (nonoriginal) phrases.
Slaugherhouse is great, but I would also recommend Breakfast of Champions. It was my first foray in to his work. I read it the same month I read Jack Kerouac's On the Road. -I was 18, both of those books had a tremendous impact on me. Later I would read, The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada and decide to be an anthropologist. I should have stopped at On the Road. -A 300 level Archaeology course stopped me dead in my tracks. Never got the anthro degree. Later it would be found that Casteneda was a fraud, but his book is none the less entertaining.
Ha. This is the problem with living in an interesting world with interesting art and being a curious person. The lists are ever-growing.
Imagine what it would be like the other way round - living in a boring world with terrible art where you struggle to find anything interesting or rewarding.
Time management is one of the keys to successful living. No doubt about it.
I love Breakfast of Champions as well. Really, I don't think I've disliked a Vonnegut book yet. I would like to read On the Road. I haven't read any Jack Kerouac, and he kinda keeps getting pushed down on my reading list I guess. It seems to me like people are often very polarized when discussing his writing. Many readers are fanatics, but a huge portion of readers are also disgusted by him. What's your take on this?
Gosh, it's been so long since I've read him that I can't really say. I can only say that the 18 year old version of me LOVED it. I felt challenged by it, like I was living some sedentary life and needed to be an adventurer. I was not going to college at the time, smoking tons of pot and had no direction. As much as it may sound odd, the book made me want an adventure and I chose college as that adventure. -I moved from Michigan to Montana and attended the university of montana. I think that book had a lot to do with it.
Also yes, "So it goes" pops into my head at some point every day!
I have too many books. Just let me talk about Larry Brown for a second. He was brilliant, raw and rough like Bukowski, but with plots not lifted from his life, seedy characters but with the possibility of redemption (redemption and regret are very not Bukowski). The end of his first book, Dirty Work, is emotionally destructive in its shocking turn after a very intimate two hundred pages. Nic Cage was in a movie based on his novel Joe this summer but it wasn't widely seen but it was appreciated by critics who saw it. I guess I could send a Larry Brown book to someone who's interested. Not one of mine, I love most of them, but one off of Amazon marketplace
I hadn't heard of Larry Brown. Sounds worth a read. But ... does this mean you do want a me to send you book and that you do want to participate in the #hubskiliterarything ?