|
Post by shilgia on Jan 29, 2019 10:31:43 GMT -5
I've heard very mixed things about Sing, Unburied, Sing shilgia - for the two reasons you mention: the style and the supernatural element. Interesting, and I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who didn't love it. The bowling book sounds like it could use some tables in an appendix that one could choose to look at (or not). YES. It's ridiculous. It has a lot of tables and graphs, too, which is fine, but then why does the text need to be like this? Just put that stuff in footnotes! I'm still holding out hope that it will get better, though. I'm almost at the end of the first of the four parts in this book, which is called "Trends" (and has almost 150 pages!). Maybe the other parts will be less numbers-heavy. I mean, I actually like numbers, but who wants to read 150 pages of written-out statistics?
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2019 15:07:40 GMT -5
I suppose some people want to read 150 pages of written-out statistics, but not in their spare time.
One of the publications I work on has a rather Proustian style that goes something like "in 50, 85, 13, 2, and 5%, respectively, of this, this, this, this, and that, the thing..." and it goes on forever, and I really wonder who can follow that.
|
|
|
Post by shilgia on Jan 29, 2019 16:50:14 GMT -5
Argh! Here’s a random page from Bowling Alone. (Hope it will come through legibly.) I swear I did not cherrypick the page; most pages are more or less like this.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 29, 2019 18:02:58 GMT -5
If it was work related, I’d probably be skipping most of the numbers, and just reading the beginnings and ends of paragraphs. What is Bowling Alone supposed to be about?
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2019 18:14:31 GMT -5
OK... right. That looks like a great book for just before bed, shilgia!
ozzie, it's supposedly about how people are much less likely to join community groups than they were in earlier decades (right?).
|
|
|
Post by shilgia on Jan 29, 2019 18:17:39 GMT -5
Right. About how “people aren’t joiners anymore.” I have tried to read this before and gave up, but I keep seeing references to it in other books, so I feel like I should struggle through it this time, but yes, this would make an excellent bedtime book.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2019 18:32:28 GMT -5
I wonder if it's differentiated by interest area/region/socioeonomic class/etc, though, because all the classes I sign up for etc are packed. Maybe we're all just maniacally involved here in DC.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 29, 2019 19:39:24 GMT -5
Given the title, it must be USA-centric at least. Bowling isn’t a common pastime in other countries! For this Aussie, there was no connection between the title and statistics.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 29, 2019 21:13:35 GMT -5
Ok, that page should be a table showing all the numbers he's mentioning, and then the text should just speak to it. POint out the trends, make the points about the periods of growth. For me, at least, that would be far more readable.
I just finished my "schlock". HErman Wouk - The Caine Mutiny. It was a little more than just schlock, really. Probably not art, but very, very good at what it is.
Anyway: about a kid, Willie Keith, who goes into the Navy when his draft number comes up in WW2, and serves under a terrible captain. The first half of the book, maybe more, is pretty much what you'd expect - immature rich kid grows up; Captain is incompetent and horrible; his crew seems completely justified in hating him and you just want him to get his comeuppance. Title event occurs. Court martial follows. But it doesn't go just the way you think it's going to. Turns a corner from being a great but facile story, to something a little deeper. Or at least, something that makes you think more than you expected.
It was pretty quick reading - about 800 pages, but according to my kindle I was 62% finished when I started reading on the plane at 3:00; when we landed at 4:30, I was 92% done.
|
|
|
Post by shilgia on Jan 29, 2019 22:15:21 GMT -5
scrubb - totally. That page could have been written so much differently. And every other page in this 500-page book also. That's some speed reading, btw! 30% of an 800-page book in 1.5 hours. ozziegiraffe - the book is US-centric; most of the data are about the US, but it's not about bowling really. He talks much more broadly about how fewer people are involved in local clubs, civic organizations, unions, religious organizations, professional associations, etc. He chose "bowling alone" as a title because he thought it was a poignant image that some people now bowl without having other people to bowl with. Liiisa - your classes may be outliers, but it's also possible that they're not. For example, he talks about how regardless of generation, late-middle-aged people are more likely to join new groups and likely to be more involved in social activities than they were earlier in their lives. So it doesn't mean that no new activities and groups arise and people don't do things together. But there are inter-generational differences. Older cohorts were even more involved when they were late-middle-aged. And so things that older people used to do (bridge clubs, say) die out. It's also possible that current trends just no longer follow the patterns described in the book. It was published in 2001, so . . .
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Jan 30, 2019 1:51:15 GMT -5
I'm currently translating a massive document full of statistics like that. It would be so much better if it just relied on the Graphs and tables, but no, it insists on writing out all the stats, like "In 2017, there were 123 ABCs, compared with 150 in 2016". For every, single thing. Nearly 500 pages of it. Definitely don't Need that in that my spare time as well!
|
|
|
Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 30, 2019 4:30:13 GMT -5
6. Yuki Chan in Brontë Country - Mick Jackson An interesting little book. Yuki, a Japanese girl, is still struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother 10 years ago. She travels to the UK and retraces her mother's trip to Haworth in West Yorkshire. It was certainly rather strange at times but the sense of dislocation was well done.
7.Peril in Paris - Katherine Woodfine Middle grade novel - historical story of young female spys before WW1. This is a sort of spin off from some mystery novels which I never really managed to get into, so I wondered how I would go with the spy version. I would have loved it as a kid, and found it fine now - will look out for the second in the series.
8.Things My Mother Told Me - Tanya Atapattu After a break up, Anjali wonders about her life, relationships with her family, her work etc. Better than the standard chick lit offering, this one deals with the cultural divide of a Sri Lankan young woman growing up in Bristol.
9. The Fragments - Toni Jordan
Loved this - need to muse a bit longer.
Inga Karlson was a world famous author in the 30s. Just before the publication of her second book she died in a fire, along with her publisher and all the copies of the book. All that remains are some fragments.
Caddie lives in 1980s Brisbane and after dropping out of uni works in a bookshop. She visits an Inga Karlson exhibition in the city and runs into an older lady who quotes from the lost book, including a line that is not known from the fragments.
The book is told in alternating chapters of New York in the 30s and Brisbane in the 80s as Caddie tries to solve the literary mystery of the quote, and of who really did kill Inga.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 30, 2019 7:07:39 GMT -5
shilgia My mom plays bridge like four times a week! But then she lives in a retirement community, and they have Activities. I should read that book, but I probably won't.
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Jan 30, 2019 15:18:06 GMT -5
the first word my eye landing on in that photo was 'breathtaking' which is rather funny.
i wonder if people might join more groups if they weren't working 50 hrs a week, or two jobs, or feeling they had to take their kids to a club 3 times a week?
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 30, 2019 18:45:30 GMT -5
the first word my eye landing on in that photo was 'breathtaking' which is rather funny. i wonder if people might join more groups if they weren't working 50 hrs a week, or two jobs, or feeling they had to take their kids to a club 3 times a week? GOOD POINT THERE SPRITE; once more we have a phenomenon being blamed on people's individual foibles that's actually all about the failures of capitalism. #grumble
|
|
|
Post by shilgia on Jan 30, 2019 19:02:20 GMT -5
I won't make you read the whole 500 pages, but his point is more nuanced than that. Groups of people who have more leisure time than they had 30 years ago spend less of that time volunteering or in church or in a sports league or visiting friends, for example. Or, also for example, 1-on-1 type volunteering (reading to an elderly person in a care facility, e.g.) has not diminished, but group volunteering has. Liiisa, I just came across a passage where I learned something that you may be interested in: that "small group" activities (book clubs and patient support groups are examples he mentions, but maybe local courses are another example in this category) were actually an exception to the general trend. Solo activities are still going strong, but large-group activities are/were (as of 2001) in decline, with some (but far not all) of the slack being picked up by small-group activities.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 30, 2019 20:12:34 GMT -5
That is interesting. I wonder if it's because it's easier to find small-group things because of the internet, and they're more varied and interesting. I mean, I know one woman who's a member of the DAR and a couple people who go to church, but everyone else I know is more into a cafeteria style thing. Like I have two separate Spanish groups, writing classes, nature classes from two different places, a gym (that I go to, uh, occasionally)... wouldn't it all be much less interesting if I spent all my time at the Moose Lodge with the same 30 people all the time?
|
|
|
Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 30, 2019 22:23:44 GMT -5
what is an example of a large group activity? Because everything I can think of, even the friends who do the night bus food runs for the homeless, are small group things. Sure, the food vans go out every night and are overseen by a larger organisation, but various small groups have their own night that they are rostered on for.
|
|
|
Post by shilgia on Jan 30, 2019 22:27:06 GMT -5
That is interesting. I wonder if it's because it's easier to find small-group things because of the internet, and they're more varied and interesting. I mean, I know one woman who's a member of the DAR and a couple people who go to church, but everyone else I know is more into a cafeteria style thing. Like I have two separate Spanish groups, writing classes, nature classes from two different places, a gym (that I go to, uh, occasionally)... wouldn't it all be much less interesting if I spent all my time at the Moose Lodge with the same 30 people all the time? Right, but I think that's exactly the theme of the book. (Although who can know for sure, because 200 pages in he still hasn't gotten to explaining why the trends are what they are.) That people seek different things now. It sounds like you pick your activities (Spanish, writing, nature, gym) for the substance they offer and not for the community aspect. (And I think many or most of us do these days.) And so it's quite possible you gain more in a substantive sense from them than you might have if you were living in 1960 but less in a community sense. Maybe 1960s Liiisa would have picked a club whose activity she didn't particularly care for, just because a neighbor or someone from work suggested it and the people seemed nice. 1960s Liiisa would have learned less Spanish, but would have had a wider network of stable, both close and casual, social connections. I think that's the idea of the book. So far he hasn't been all that moralizing about what's better or worse, though he implies here and there that he would like some of the social trends to reverse themselves. But I think it's fair to say he believes that people today (i.e., in 2001) choose what they do based on the benefits each option offers in a direct sense, and are less likely to join vague clubs like the Rotary and show up to their meetings based on some vague notion that it might be pleasant and/or useful to get to know the other members or that it's just nice to have a club to belong to.
|
|
|
Post by shilgia on Jan 30, 2019 22:39:41 GMT -5
what is an example of a large group activity? Because everything I can think of, even the friends who do the night bus food runs for the homeless, are small group things. Sure, the food vans go out every night and are overseen by a larger organisation, but various small groups have their own night that they are rostered on for. He talks about each category of activity separately (and ad nauseam). So the small-group thing was specifically about social activities that are not volunteering or religious or work-related, etc. So as it relates to your post, he says: 1. Volunteering of this kind has become less common.* This kind being the kind of volunteering that requires some coordination in a group. Someone needs to figure out where the homeless are, coordinate the food, set up a schedule, etc. It's not a type of volunteering that would be easy to do solo. 2. Social leisure activities involving large organizations have become less popular. Think Rotary, sports league, amateur orchestra. Some (but not all) of that activity has been replaced by smaller-scale socializing like informal book clubs (which apparently have become much more popular), and also by support-group type things like AA (which in his overview are also relatively new on the scene). *NOTE: for none of what we're discussing is he saying that it no longer exists or no one does it anymore. He's talking about trends. In 1960, 40% of people did X; these days only 20% does X. Etc. And so there isn't a whole lot of use coming up with individual examples of people who still play bridge or still are in a bowling league or still volunteer in a soup kitchen. He's not saying that they don't exist. He's just talking about how there are fewer of these people today (2001) than in the past. He isn't saying that nobody volunteers anymore, but that fewer people do and that the type of volunteering people tend to do has changed. He isn't saying that people don't meet with friends anymore, but says that for the average person it happens less frequently. Etc. etc. etc. (500 pages.)
|
|
|
Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 31, 2019 0:03:49 GMT -5
Well yes, fewer volunteers fro some of these things because more women are in the paid workforce.
|
|
|
Post by shilgia on Jan 31, 2019 0:08:04 GMT -5
Ok.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 31, 2019 5:57:19 GMT -5
9. Bloodstream, Tess Gerritsen. This was a great audiobook for a long road trip. It combines many of the things that pique my interest, small towns, troubled teenagers and a medical mystery. The characters were well drawn and believable, as was the setting.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 31, 2019 6:11:31 GMT -5
Thank you for taking the time to explicate all this stuff, shilgia, thereby saving us the trouble of reading it!
I think Hal has a point about women in the workforce.
Given her druthers 1960s Liiisa probably would have been living in a squat in Greenwich Village or on the beach at Big Sur or something, but sadly she was only 8 years old.
|
|
|
Post by scrubb on Jan 31, 2019 15:05:01 GMT -5
Women in the workforce is part of it, sure. But why are mens' service organizations losing numbers so dramatically? And kids' groups like Brownies?
I belonged to a girls' organization between 11 and 20 or so that took up a LOT of my spare time. I was deeply involved but so were a lot (the majority) of the members. It was more or less a service organization but also intended to help mold young women, yadda yadda yadda. We did things to raise money but the money generally went to support charitable endeavours, as well as paying for us to get to our annual provincial meetings and the occasional activity. We did stuff like visit old folks homes, support a kid in Africa, ring bells for the Salvation Army Christmas kettle campaign, work at the Terry Fox run, and random other stuff. I remember taking challenged kids swimming once, and I forget what all else. But of course the fun part was having a social group. There were enough kids participating that we all had others we got along with. We did all kinds of fun stuff - sleepovers, pool parties, scavenger hunts, etc. - and I loved it, up till my older teens when I had other social stuff that really pulled at me.
That organization still exists but instead of having the ~80 kids in the 2 groups in our city that we had back then, they now have fewer than 20. And the city is much bigger now. And there are not other, new organizations that have taken over the same role.
|
|
|
Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 31, 2019 15:24:29 GMT -5
For the kids groups I can easily see it still goes back to women working - so loads of the kids are in after school care, which means there is less time for other activities like Brownies. The abuse scandals that went with some of the organisations also mean parents are less willing to send their kids to those groups.
And again, Australian experience, but swimming lessons are seen as more important here. At a guess, there are more swim schools and more kids going to swimming lessons then there was when I was a kid.
|
|
|
Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 31, 2019 15:31:34 GMT -5
Anyway, thanks for the discussion around the book - I am not sure if I would be able to wade through the loads of stats and numbers on all the pages. And I am sure there are loads of different reasons things have changed. It all seems rather fascinating, really.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 31, 2019 16:01:54 GMT -5
Interesting and observable phenomenon. For older people, what used to be men’s organisations are now mixed. I attended a Probus function on Australia Day which was well-attended. Same for younger organisations. I can see the difference when I go to Solomon Islands, which still needs groups aimed at empowering women and girls.
|
|
|
Post by mei on Feb 1, 2019 1:57:47 GMT -5
#6! Het geluk van de Chinezen (roughly translated as Chinese happiness) by a Dutch journalist in Shanghai. A collection of essays about normal life for regular Chinese people. Not 'new' but quite well done, I thought.
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Feb 1, 2019 17:04:48 GMT -5
The abuse scandals that went with some of the organisations also mean parents are less willing to send their kids to those groups. anecdote is not data, but i personally know more people afraid of being falsely accused/smeared than i do parents worried about kids being attacked. i don't mean these people think 8 yr olds will lie about them, but that they worry they would constantly be under suspicion because they've chosen to work with kids--especially if they don't have kids themselves.
|
|