Alternative Identities: Appleinsider

I'm a regular poster on the Appleinsider Message Boards, mostly posting on non-Apple and non-tech relatied things. As message boards go, I find it one of the most well-educated boards on the internet, and there I'm able to discuss politics, humor, geeky things... basically whatever my heart feels like at the time, with a bunch of people I feel to be intellectually similar to myself. It's nice to have such an outlet, which is why I've been an avid poster for about 10 years or so, with dry spots here and there, but always going back there instead of somewhere else when my fingers get itchy to write.

Here's one of my recent posts there:

Whatcha Reading Now?

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Couldn't find the old thread on the first 2 pages, so I thought I'd start one afresh.

I've recently finished reading David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, and although it was well written as are all of his novels, I can't say I liked it nearly as much as either Cloud Atlas or Number9Dream. Right after reading this book, about a middle class English public schoolboy, I read Irvine Welsh's Glue, which is about four Scottish lower class public schoolboys (who grew into young men of various levels of success), which I have to admit I found much more pleasurable and rewarding. Maybe I missed some profound insight or something in the Mitchell book... not sure.

Now, I'm reading Nabakov, specifically Ada or Ardour, which despite having thouroughly loved Lolita from start to finish and having also enjoyed a collection of Nabokov's short stories, I found difficult to get into early on. Fortunately, I kept at it, and about halfway through I'm really enjoying it. This is despite the fact that, like Lolita and unbeknownst to me prior to reading it, Ada is another story of a love too taboo to be written about by any other than this eccentric Russian overliterary genius.

Was it that having just finished something written in vulgar Scottish proletariat dialect (and following that with a brief return to horrorsmith Clive Barker), my brain wasn't tuned to the complex sentence structures and roundabout descriptions Nabakov so loves? I don't know, but I suspect that it was!

This has caused me to formulate an interesting hypothesis:

Does our brain tune itself so quickly to the language to which we are exposed?

I've also noticed a transference of the intellectual style of what I've been reading to what I've been writing. Case in point my post in PO about the definition of "victory" in the War on Terror. I don't think I could have written that a month ago when I was reading Welsh or Barker. While I admit I can never come close to being a Nabakov (and who the hell can?), or even a Mitchell, I do think what I read greatly affects how I write. Having observed this, I've come to the conclusion that were I to immerse myself in sophisticated literature of the style of Nabakov and Huxley, I may be able to maitain a certain style that I respect of myself within my own writing.

Of course that would all become boring very quickly...

Maybe it's time to read some Chuck Pahlaniuk so I can better flame the likes of SDW and Trumptman... LOL

Actually, it looks like the next book I'll be reading will be Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island so maybe you can look forward to me spewing out violent sexual annhialism in the near future.

But I digress...

So, whatcha reading?