Real Men Read Books
This is a really heartwarming story from Cory Doctorow; a Navy sailor deplyed in the Mediterranean and short of books has been printing out novels and stories from Cory's site Craphound and sharing them with his shipmates.
A couple hours later, the only noise in the place was when one of the half-dozen guys sitting around would look up and ask, "Hey, who's got page 41 of Down and Out?" It was... well, I'm not sure I can express how weird it was. These are men who aren't normally readers, much less consumers of slightly wacky science fiction, and they're now getting impatient with each other to finish chapters so they can find out what happens next.
It's starting to change the very *tone* of where I work on the ship, six hours on and six hours off: instead of the ever-present three B's of talk to pass in the time in the plant -- beer, babes, and bodily functions -- it's discussions of which novel (or short, since we've now got printouts of every piece of fiction on craphound.com stuffed into a file cabinet) we liked best, and why, and what makes this stuff cool, and where can we get more like it, and even starting to talk about the copyfight, and why that's important.
I spent about two hours last night as I was reading glancing up every so often, and grinning like an idiot every time 'cause there were five guys whose talk usually revolves around how drunk they were this one time head-down in some pretty intense reading.
Thank you. This is really something else.
That's really cool. Congratulations to Cory for making a difference in some people's lives. Man, having the internet on your ship sure does improve things about a million percent, doesn't it? Being able to IM your girlfriend from an undisclosed location beats staring at the bottom of the upper bunk, for sure.
jholbo-at-mac-dot-com
ACTUALLY, REAL MEN, LIKE MYSELF, EAT CORN DOGS CONSTANTLY WHILE WATCHING SWEET SWEET STAR TREK PORN ON THE OLE MAGNAVOX. OR, WHILE READING STAR TREK PORN ON FANFICTION.NET. WHICH I GUESS IS READING. OH WELL I JUST CONTRADICTED MYSELF. I'LL JUST GO BACK TO WATCHING SULU GO DOWN ON CHEKOV.
LOVE,
DANNY FRATINA
1-617-669-2468
Posted by: DANNY FRATINA | September 11, 2006 at 08:39 PM
um, what? I mean, WHAT?
Posted by: belle waring | September 12, 2006 at 09:04 PM
My advice is that you don't go to Mr. FRATINA's url.
Posted by: ben wolfson | September 13, 2006 at 12:32 AM
This has to be the only time that getting the internet has increased book reading.
Posted by: yoyo | September 13, 2006 at 05:23 AM
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Good luck! :)
Posted by: prevacid | September 27, 2006 at 02:30 AM