Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for May 10, 2020

I’ve read it 3 times !!! And each time it seemed different

Nice analogy. But even on Netflix, I won’t binge-watch something that I don’t actually enjoy most of the times.

A repeat, but a really good one!

Wiley’s strips to encourage young readers are excellent.

ARISTOLESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

“This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying… but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice… but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks… but nobody loved it.”

Audiobook for Denae?

Try reading the unabridged Les Miserables. As I recall, it was a little over a thousand pages. I didn’t push myself so it took me about a year to get through it. I can see why it has been abridged. It has a lot of interesting stuff that does nothing to move the story along.

I’ll have you know that I watch Netflix all the time, and MY brain gets used… um, my brain’s usage… um, what were we talking about…?

Has there ever been a better opening to a novel? Not even “In the beginning …” matches this.

Funny thing is, you start reading it and if it’s a really good book, then you may find yourself wishing for MORE pages near the end.

IIRC, it was a book we read in English class in 8th grade. I might have enjoyed it more if it had been something I found myself. Anyone here read all five “Leatherstocking Tales”?

Danae has a brain?

Books are for old folks like me. Young people should specialize in modern techniques. If they like Netflix as entertainment, there’s nothing really wrong with that. Different time, different preferences. Old nags will always think their days where better.

Recommendation for Ms. D.: “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.” (The Princess Bride.)

I love this strip.  It’s a re-run from 2016:

https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2016/04/10

I wonder if that whole week will be re-run this week.  Unfortunately, that week was made of separate strips instead of a beautiful short arc like we had a chance to revisit a couple of weeks back.

By the way, today’s strip is also connected to this strip from 2013:

https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2013/09/15

I liked the movie.

Good analogy, Kate. And I don’t understand how people have the patience to watch TV for hours on end. Maybe reading a lot of books has made it harder for me to concentrate. Although that sounds wrong, somehow.

I like to read, but not classics. I did read Anna Karenina, just to see what it was about, but it took 3 months off and on as it was plodding. Also the ending was like the Sopranos ending, disappointing.

Sitting in pandemic isolation, looking out the window as the May snowfall covered the grass, I turned to my wife and said, “These are the worst of times, these are the worst of times.”

If you want someone new to water to enjoy swimming, don’t start by throwing them into the pool’s deep end.

Dickens’ historical masterpiece, “A Tale of Two Cities,” is a highly complex work of fiction one shouldn’t breeze through like a summer beach read. It confronts the ugly truths of humanity and a dark time in France head-on, without flinching and eyes wide open. Several of his other novels would much better serve to jump-start a love of reading.

Reading a book, any book, is similar to being teleported into the mind of the author. You see and hear and experience what he/she devises. You try to intuit the answers to questions or problems before you reach the actual scene. You finish with the same set of questions as the author, i.e., does the end satisfy the beginning / are the characters realistic or contrived / is the story compelling / does it all hang together well or is it tenuous. In short, is it a good read or a compelling read. Is it something to be remembered or even treasured?

I can’t say how many times I have been through that process in 80 years, but there were many books I loved. There were whole new universes out there. My one regret about ‘progress’ is that most of them are no longer in print or available on-line for modern readers to experience. Their perspectives might be changed forever.

I absolutely love the way you portrayed Kate in this Wiley. Approach…trepidation…leaping in…unmitigated joy!I

I owe you a beer sometime, for the joy your strip brings.

Another one of those tomes that would have died long ago if not for high school English teachers.

D should start with something easier like Lord of the Rings.!

My reading has gone in cycles. As a child and even high school student, I did not like reading – perhaps because I was forced to read what the school board thought I should read. I get it. They wanted us to have as much exposure as possible. At least I walked away knowing the kind of literature I DON’T like to read.

Oddly enough, when I was tested for college entry, I was reading at 90th percentile in speed and 95th percentile in comprehension!

As a younger adult, I could not read enough. I became a compulsive reader. I would read cereal boxes, soda cans, ads for feminine hygiene products. If there were words on it, I would read it.

I would spend at least an hour every night in bed reading a book.

Now as a much older adult, I spend 5 minutes a night reading a book before I fall asleep.

So wonderful.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there.

The first chapter of “Dune” was BORING. It took me about 10 tries to get through it. After I did, I was So glad. it became one of my favorites.

I like reading and I have done quite a bit of it, but speaking of bingeing, now that I’ve caught on to audible I’m bingeing book series for hours. I have lost track of TV stuff. What the heck is all this ‘Tiger King’ stuff?

Such a wonderful book, such a wonderful comic.

Every time I read a book it ends the same, sleep.

Kate understands how to enjoy reading – dive in and let the story take over. My parents read to me when I was very young. My first grade teacher, Miss Welnick, not only taught us how to read, but also to LOVE reading. After that I was hooked. I would read almost anything. Here is a short interview with Miss Welnick, just before her 103rd birthday. Articulate, and still reading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhxAl7R1pEM

The bookplates in all my books as a child were images of a ship in full sail, and the phrase below that said “A book is a journey.” And in 75 years of living, I have discovered that every journey is a voyage of discovery. Or at least, it can be if we keep our minds and hearts open to see what is there.

The debate between video presentations and printed word will go on forever. In video mode, you get the view of the story that was created by someone else. But it is very true that what we read causes our minds to present internal images. Those are unique for each person, because the experiences from which they are drawn and created are different for each of us. So a printed story presents the reader with a version of the writer’s tale that is unique to them.

The process your brain uses to absorb video information is rather complex, but you have done this for most of your life since birth. The process of absorbing printed information incorporates that same video process, yet it is vastly expanded beyond that because your brain has to convert the printed words into your video rendition. The same is true of listening to a story being read to you.

The amount of brain activity is vastly greater when absorbing either audio or printed material than it is for absorbing video information. Much of the difference is in the imagination your brain has to use.

The first time I read LORD OF THE RINGS, I was so immersed that I felt that the real world was fake every time I stopped reading.

Interesting coincidence, I’m reading this book now.

I feel the same way. I just received my copy of The Annotated Alice. It’s the two Alice in Wonderland books by Lewis Carroll, edited and annotated by Martin Gardner, expanded and updated by Mark Burstein. It’s a tad intimidating.

I have the Closed Captions turned on, that way if anyone asks what I do I can tell them I spend most of my time reading.

Good books; accept no substitutes.

I haven’t seen Wiley Bears on Sunday for months. I know they can’t still be hibernating….

Priceless, Wiley……….. Great book – A Tale of Two Cities.

I have “War and Peace”, it makes and excellent paperweight.

I had to read 2 Cities in high school, expected it to be plodding and abominably boring, and was astonished at how accessible it was.

“My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.”

- Gene Wolfe

In Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt said that some adults told him to stop reading so much because it will ruin his eyesight.

Every book that an English teacher made me read did nothing but turn me off fiction. I’ve got close to 2000 books on shelves all over my house, most of which I’ve read (and the rest are in line) but only a handful of them are fiction. Reading satisfies my bottomless curiosity.

I find, Dickens, hard to read, because, he scatters commas, very generously, throughout the text.