Books Read

[dsrtao]

62. Worm, John McCrae (Wildbow) reread.

1.2 million words about the end of worlds and the nature of heroism. I think of it as being a response to Alan Moore's MarvelMan/MiracleMan and Watchmen, agreeing on some points and disagreeing on others.

Comments

[squirrelitude]

I started reading Worm in August 2016, binged on the archive for a while, and then slowed to one chapter per week. I'm still reading it, now at the 287th chapter (as counted by Comic Rocket's custom RSS feature.) At this rate I will finish in... November. :-D

[dsrtao]

I was just talking with metahacker about how I had been thinking of gamifying my reading log. Worm should count as ten books, really, just on length, but then I would be steering myself to short books unless I gave them fractional valuations, and I just don't want to be guided in what I read by anything other than "I want to read this".

metahacker was also saying that I was reading at an incredible rate. Surely not by James Nicoll's standards. On the other hand he probably has 8 more hours a day to read.

My point is: I like books, and I like that other people like books. Speed is not an issue; it is not a competition, or a measure of anything other than how many books you get to read before you die. That exposes you to the possibility of more good books, though...

[squirrelitude]

I guess an easy approach would be to count pages. But then you might spend all day speed-reading children's board books at the library!

With Worm, part of the reason I'm reading it in this drawn-out way is that I have an awful tendency to binge. I have to limit myself, or I get drawn into and don't want to put it down, and attempts to extricate me, get me to go to sleep, etc. are met with snarls. I walk around with my head in the book all day. Spacing it out helps avoid this, so finding a book that was *serialized* is fantastic. The funny thing, though, is that since Wildbow is such an ungodly fast writer I'm actually reading it more slowly than it was written.

The result is that I've spent a longer time span with this book than any other book. My daughter was born a year before I started it, and now she's 4, and it has been a constant in my life for most of that time. It's an odd experience.