Tag Archives: reading

Pronoun Woes

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This old reader/writer knows the difference between singular and plural pronouns.

I just finished an audio book that kind of bugged me. The problem: the use of plural pronouns to apply to a singular person.

It was jarring. Most of the characters had the usual singular pronouns of he/him/his or she/her/hers so the text I heard as I listened was extremely easy to follow when the reader read about those characters. But one main character used the they/them/their pronouns. As a result, anytime the reader referred to that person, it sounded as if he were talking about multiple people. My listening brain came to a complete halt every time.

I’m old school. Although I understand the reason why people don’t want to use a male or female pronoun, I really wish we’d come up with a pronoun that didn’t already exist as a plural.

It’s difficult to understand text that refers to one person with a plural pronoun when the text could easily refer to multiple people. Many times that the reader referred to this character, I had to figure out if it was just that one person or multiple people. It was extremely distracting from the story.

I want to blame the writer, but I know why he did it. He wants to help make gender neutrality more acceptable to the general public. He wants us to get used to it. It’s a noble goal. But it drives some of us nuts. I would definitely have enjoyed the book more — with a lot less distraction — if he stuck to standard pronoun usage for his characters. Hell, he already had two lesbian couples in the book. How much did he need to support gender issues in what was basically a science fiction drama?

And now I know folks are going to step forward here and comment that we’ve been using “they” to refer to singular unspecified gender individuals for years and that it’s in the dictionary or that it’s in some widely used style guide. But it’s only been in common usage for people who don’t want a specific gender identity for a short while now. And I’ve been reading and writing for more than 50 years. It’s not as if I can flip a switch in my brain and it all works out fine for me. “They” refers to more than one person in my brain and most of the brains out there.

Clearly, we need a new set of singular pronouns. Can we fix this please?

Words of Wisdom from a Graphic Novel

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It can be deeper than you might think.

When I was a kid, I glazed over the comic book phase a lot of kids go through. I don’t think I read more than 10 of them. They just weren’t interesting to me. I preferred regular books.


I read The Watchmen at least 15 years ago.

So it’s understandable that I wouldn’t be too interested in graphic novels. In fact, I didn’t know much at all about the genre until years and years ago when I read The Watchmen. This is before it was made into a TV show on HBO (which I still haven’t seen; I’m not an HBO subscriber). It struck me as interesting, but I didn’t really get much out of it. Maybe because I was reading it the way I read books? Fast to get through the story?

I’m older now and I’m more interested in expanding my horizons. That includes what I read. I generally don’t enjoy the latest bestselling literary fiction; I find it dull: too many long, meandering stories that have no satisfying end. The Goldfinch, although beautifully written, was like that. I read a lot of action fiction (think Jack Reacher and Jack Ryan) and mystery fiction (think Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler, and yes, even some Agatha Christie). I’ll read one book by an author and, if I like it, read five more. (That’s what ruined Robert Ludlum’s work for me: his plots are so totally formulaic, which is obvious when you read five of his books in a row.) I also read Star Wars fiction beyond the movies and television shows. I didn’t realize until a few years ago that there are scores of books in the canon and many more that were written before there was a canon.

Anyway, I was reading a book of Neil Gaiman’s essays, The View from the Cheap Seats, and was enjoying the way it made me stop and think about things I’d never really thought about before. I’d read some of Gaiman’s fiction — Coraline, The Graveyard Book, American Gods, The Ocean at the End of the Lane — heck, I didn’t realize I’d read so much of his work until I drew up this little list — but had little knowledge of his graphic novels. But the Sandman series, which is apparently his magnum opus in that genre, was mentioned in one of the essays and I decided to check it out.

I’ll be the first to admit that I avoid buying books these days. It’s embarrassing for a writer to admit, but there it is. I simply read too fast to invest in a book I’m likely to read just once. I’m. not saying I don’t buy books at all — unfortunately, I do. I buy too many books. I have hundreds of books at home, some of which I never even bothered to unpack after my 2013 move from Arizona to Washington. This year, 2022, is the year that I will begin to liquidate my library. (I need to downsize for an upcoming lifestyle change anyway.)

Instead, I use the library where I get books in two formats: ebooks and audio books. I read ebooks in the morning with my coffee and sometimes in the evening before I go to bed. I read audio books while I’m driving or working on jewelry projects in my shop. It’s not unusual for me to be reading two very different kinds of books at the same time. (I’m extremely fond of Random House productions of Star Wars books. Great narrators who voice each character individually and sound effects/music that really dramatize the work.)

I tracked down The Sandman Volume 1 at my library using the Overdrive app and put it on hold. A week later, it was available and I was able to read it on my iPad using a web browser.

I absolutely loved the art that started each chapter in the edition I was reading (which may differ from the edition I linked to above), but really did not like the actual art within the book. But I looked past that and read the story. Or at least tried to. My brain was not accustomed to reading the graphic novel format. I often read things in the wrong order. I found myself missing things because I was too focused on words and not focused enough on the story told in the images that went with them. I got the main gist of the story and enough details to enjoy it — despite the gruesome violence in some parts. But, at the same time, I wasn’t much interested in trying Volume 2 (which my library does not have anyway), especially if the same artists illustrated it in the same style.

The last story in Volume 1 introduced the Sandman’s sister, Death. On a whim, I decided to give Death: The High Cost of Living a try. It was available in my library in a Kindle-compatible format, which turned out to be great for me. This format didn’t show a page at a time unless that’s what you wanted to see. Instead, it used a zoomed in technique to show one or more frames at a time. I’d swipe to expose more frames or zoom to the next frame. It made it impossible for me to read text in the wrong order and it magnified the content so that it was easier for my old eyes to read and enjoy.


Death is portrayed as an attractive goth chick.

I’ll start off by saying that the book is dark. The main character, Death, is portrayed as a friendly, attractive goth girl/woman. (Older than a girl but somehow younger than what you might think as a woman.) The people she meets with in most stories are people who are contemplating suicide or will die shortly or have died or are facing the death of someone else. So the main theme that is explored in various ways is death itself.

As I read, I worried over and over about young people who are contemplating suicide reading this book and thinking its okay. But that’s not the message that comes from it at all.

The book is really about life. That life isn’t always easy. That we make our own lives. That we have to take the bad with the good because the bad helps us see how good the good really is.

The first piece of dialog that really hit me hard is something that I’ve always believed and try so hard to tell other people — especially young people:

… Let me tell you what you get. You get life and breath, a world to walk and a path through the world — and the free will to wander the world as you choose.


Death and Destiny share some good advice with a suicidal teen.

This was said by Death’s brother — I think it was Destiny, although his name was never mentioned — to a teenage boy who had climbed to the top of a Ferris wheel one night to kill himself. He’s depressed because his mom died at the World Trade Center and he blames God for letting it happen. He wants to die so he can ask God why he let it happen. Destiny tells him that God doesn’t answer questions. Later, Death joins them in the panels shown here.

This book is full of stuff like this.

Anyway, I’m enjoying this book a lot more than The Sandman. Part of it is the artwork. Another part is the clear messages it’s sending about life and death.

It’s a quick read for me, especially since I don’t linger much over the artwork. I’m nearly done. But it was on my mind this morning so I thought I’d blog about it.

My Twitter friend Juliana mentioned today how re-reading books at different times of her life bring out different aspects of the books. (I’m paraphrasing a conversation here.) I think she’s right.

I think it’s time to read The Watchmen again, just to see what I missed the first time around.

How to Follow Just the Content You Want on This Blog

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I explain how to follow this blog in a way that weeds out the content you don’t care about.

One of the things in my life that I’m proud of is that I’m interested in a lot of things. My friend Bill refers to this as curiosity — I’m curious about things so I learn more about them. But while others might be content with getting quick answers to any burning questions about a topic, I’m often willing to do a deep dive and learn more, sometimes firsthand by doing. That’s what got me involved in things like beekeeping, jewelry making, glass fusing, and other “hobbies gone wild.”

And then I blog about it to share some of what I’ve learned.

I’ve been blogging since 2003 — yeah, I’m coming up on 20 years now! — and this blog’s 2300+ posts cover a lot of topics in a wide variety of ways. Back when I first started blogging and people were writing about making “successful blogs,” they all recommended one thing: stick to a topic. If you’ve explored this blog at all, you know that’s a recommendation I have been unable to follow. I write about lots of topics because I’m interested in lots of topics. And while it is possible to maintain multiple blogs, I simply don’t want to do that.

What does that leave my readers with? A hodgepodge of posts about all kinds of things: jewelry making, flying helicopters, cooking, computers, reading/writing, video creation, etc., etc. The list goes on and on.

I’m not too naive to realize that not everyone is interested in everything that I am. And not everyone comes here to read every word. In fact, I’m sure I lose a lot of new readers by delivering up posts about topics that don’t interest them nearly as much as the topics that originally brought them here. I get it.

I addressed this the other day after a comment from a reader named Susan brought it up:

Comment
An exchange on this blog between me and Susan, who likes the fact that I cover a lot of topics here. That weird symbol is supposed to be a shrug emoji.

With all that said, I thought I’d take a moment to help readers zero in on just the new content that interests them using several techniques.

Subscribe and Choose

Subscribe Form
Here’s what the form looks like. You can find it near the top of the sidebar on any page of this site.

The easiest way to learn about new content that might interest you is to subscribe to the blog via email. You’ll find a form on the sidebar on every page. Put your email address in it and click the button. You’ll get a confirmation in email to make sure you really want it.

From that point forward, you’ll get an email message every time I post something new — generally two to 20 times a month. See a topic that interests you? Click the link in the email to come here and read it. Otherwise, just delete the email.

And you can always get off the list. The unsubscribe feature really does work.

I don’t use this for anything other than blog post updates. I don’t share email addresses. I don’t spam.

Follow Me on Twitter

If you’re on Twitter and you don’t want your inbox to take in any more subscriptions, you can follow me on Twitter. I’m @mlanger there. All of my new blog posts are automatically tweeted to my account, so it’s the same as subscribing to the blog. But you also get a running commentary of maximum 240-character posts of what I’m thinking about or doing.

(Some folks would likely prefer the blog subscription.)

Bookmark a Topic

All the blog posts here are assigned a category (topic) and most are assigned at least one tag. (Topics are listed on every page in the sidebar; tags are listed on the home page in a cloud format in the sidebar.) This makes it easy for readers to find the content they want that interests them. But did you know that you could bookmark a category (topic) or tag?

Share This
You’ll find a Share This area at the end of each blog post.

On a post that interests you, scroll down to the Share This area. In addition to icons you can click to share the post on various social media and via email — which I do encourage you to use if you think your friends might enjoy it — there is a “Posted in” section and a “Tagged” section, each of which are followed by links. Click the category (topic) or tag link that closely matches what interests you. You’ll see a page with the most recent posts with the same category (topic) or tag.

Bookmark that page. This is something you do in your browser and I’m not going to explain how because there are lots of browsers and each has its own method. I know that in Firefox, which I use on my computers, the shortcut key to get started in Command-D (I’m on a Mac).

New Jewelry Making Topic

If you’ve got sharp eyes, you may have noticed the new Jewelry Making topic in the sidebar. I added that the other day. I’d been using the Hobbies Gone Wild topic for posts related to jewelry making and realized that that particular endeavor had progressed far beyond what one would consider a hobby. So I pulled those posts out into their own category, mostly to make it easy for folks interested in jewelry making to find them..

Once you’ve bookmarked the category or topic, you can check in periodically to see if there’s anything new of interest to you. I recommend once a month, although you could come by more frequently. You might want to do the same thing with any other sites/blogs that interests you. Then make check in part of your routine — maybe a rainy Saturday morning coffee routine.

And do you see that Add a Comment link in the Share This area? Here’s a tip: you can click that and add a comment about what you’ve just read and maybe encourage me to write more about it. After all, it was Susan’s comment (shown above) that got me to write this.

Subscribe to an RSS Feed of a Topic

In the old days we used Feed Readers to follow blogs without having to go to the blog itself. Do those things still exist?

Although I know I’ve written extensively about feeds in the past, I’m not going to do so again here. Instead, I’ll share this from the WordPress glossary:

A feed is a function of special software that allows “Feedreaders” to access a site automatically looking for new content and then posting the information about new content and updates to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive summary of feeds. Feeds generally are based on XML technology.

If you’re a bit of a techie and want to use feedreader to follow topics in blog, be aware that you can modify a blog’s feed URL to specify a specific category (topic) or tag. For example, if you’re interested in flying and want to subscribe with your feedreader to a feed about that category (topic), you might try

http://www.AnEclecticMind.com/category/flying/feed

(Too techie for you? Me, too. When I stopped writing computer how-to books around 2012, I stopped being a techie and became a mere user. Now I don’t research and write about any tech unless it’s related to something I need to do with my computers.)

The idea is to set up your feedreader with all the blogs that interest you and open that application when you want to check in on your favorite blogs.

The Point

The point of all this is that you don’t have to visit the blog and wade through whatever’s new that doesn’t interest you to find something that might. You can either get a list of new posts delivered to your inbox and click links to explore the ones that interest you or use various techniques to bookmark or subscribe to a feed for the categories (topics) or tags that interest you.

Whatever you decide, don’t be discouraged by the wide range of topics here. If you found this blog, it’s likely because there was something here you liked. There may be more now and in the future. Any of these techniques will help you keep on top of what’s new.