Isn't it cool when books bring people together?

[hatman]

For those who don't follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter (or read his blog):

This Halloween, there will be a convention of fans of Neil Gaiman's American Gods at The House On The Rock (a real-world tourist attraction where a scene from the book takes place).

Neil linked to this announcement as well as The House On The Rock blog.

Should be a very interesting gathering.

But besides the idea of the delightful weirdness and the coming together of a certain class of geek, what really speaks to me about this is that what's really the driving force behind it is a book. The love of a book. The shared reading experience. The pull of the story.

Harry Potter and Twilight aside, that's not so common in this day and age. And yet, at the same time, it's our modern global connectivity that's making it possible.

Comments

[martyna]

...that's not so common in this day and age.
Was it ever common?

[hatman]

In a different sense, it was. Back in the days before video games and the internet (I'm ancient), people read more books. Books mattered more. I don't think people planned conventions based around books, but I think they were more of a connecting force. Families reading books together, people talking about books they'd read, etc. Not that everyone did, but just... they were a bigger deal than they seem to be nowadays.

Now get off my lawn. Whippersnapper.

[feuervogel]

Dude, you're the same age as my kid sister.

People did *not* read more books pre-internet. It's a nostalgic fantasy for a golden age that never existed. (Also, SF cons existed LONG before the internet.)

I can also assure you that, pre-internet, when we had a TRS-80 without a modem and no access to BBSes, my family still didn't read books together or talk about books they read. I was hard-pressed to find books in the house that weren't Barbara Cartland or Harlequin romances, or a 1905 copy of Emily Post, or the dictionary. My falling-apart copy of LOTR from a used book store was my solace.

[hatman]

I'm aware that there was some nostalgia factor going on there, hence the tongue-in-cheek signoff.

(The references to being "ancient" were also tongue-in-cheek. I expected that to come across to the person actually being addressed, who is a personal friend.)

Also quite aware that Trek cons and Trek fic, for example, date back to well before the internet. That did not seem relevant to the point at hand.

However, my personal anecdotal experience does differ greatly from yours. My family did read books together. We did take weekly family trips to the library. I did discuss books with my friends.

But that's me and my family. And you and your family. We all have unique experiences. And those experiences color our perceptions.

You know what? I don't want to go digging through looking for actual sales numbers of books or historical records of how people read and discussed books. My point here was something positive - people are coming together over a good book, and isn't that cool? I'd like to focus on that.

[feuervogel]

The problem with posting in communities is that there are other people who read it than people who know you and know whom you know.

The first SF convention was in 1936. The first WorldCon was in 1939. How is the fact that people have been traveling great distances to meet up with other nerds and nerd out over nerd books since the 1930s somehow not relevant to your assertion that getting together to talk about books is some new-fangled thing courtesy of the internet? Other than being evidence that it isn't true, I mean.

Yes, the internet makes it *easier* to do these things, but people still did them sixty years before the net.

[hatman]

Yes, I realized that there was a risk of someone coming along and misconstruing my comment. But I decided that I was talking primarily to the person to whom I was replying, and that I wasn't going to change the way I talk to my friends just because we were in a comm instead of a personal journal. I take responsibility for the consequences of that choice.

I also realize that it can be easy to misread tone in text-only. That perhaps what I meant to be tongue-in-cheek would not come across as such to others. (Or that perhaps you don't intend what I read as needlessly condescending and contemptuous.)

What I don't understand is why you feel the need to put words in my mouth. Or, more saliently, why you feel the need to continue picking a fight I've explicitly said I'm not interested in having.