(no subject)

[khiemtran]

How long has it been since you read a book you could talk about at the water cooler[1]?

In my case it's been quite a while. We do tend to talk about Robert Jordan occasionally. Yep, still dead. Yep, still waiting on the last book. Kafka came up last week, mostly because the work I'm involved in does tend to be Kafkaesque, but the conversation foundered when it turned out that no-one else had read Kafka.

I don't mind reading as a one-on-one engagement with the author, but conversation is also important to me.
It's getting to the point where it's almost worth watching television I don't care about, just so I can get my share of social dialogue (beyond the "I liked it/I didn't like it/It was alright" which also tends to pass for conversation sometimes around here). Well, maybe not quite desperate.

It's interesting how few books have reached the flashover point where you can find other readers easily out of a random population (note that my work environment is already heavily selected for geeks, so it's not that random a population). Maybe Harry Potter was the last one. What must it have been like when Dickens was writing and everyone was waiting for the next installment, just as people talk about the tv show of the moment now?


[1] Coffee table. Smoker's corner. In my case, the office lunch area. Any place you tend to meet casually with people you know.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Good question. My colleague who has just retired read Dan Brown and Harry Potter, she'd also read LoTR, but we didn't really talk about them beyond the "liked it/didn't like it" level. Now she's left, I don't think anyone in my office reads much. :(