Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by jenkepesh
Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock
3.0
For one of my 2017 challenge categories, I was to read a book from a genre I was unfamiliar with. I looked up a lot of genres and sub-genres, and pretty much knew them all, except "ergodic," which involves non-trivial work to traverse the text--you have to go beyond just reading line by line. So even difficult-to-process texts and texts with lots of footnotes don't count. Hypertext fiction does. I tried to read a book that is cited as an example of this, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, but I really didn't like it. Though I very seldom abandon books, Steve told me that I hadn't gotten far enough into it for it to count as abandonment, but rather, I'd just sampled it. Grateful for a plausible pretext, I abandoned stopped sampling it.
But then, what ergodic book could I read? Here it is December, and I have this and one more category to complete in the challenge.
Steve suggested Griffin and Sabine, a book/series that was all the rage in the '90s. I had never paid the slightest attention to it; I had the idea that it was a series of love letters between characters, and it sounded like some sort of romance. But Steve said that he'd heard people liked it because it involved studying not just the words of the letters but the form of them as well, so it ought to count, and I figure--hey, he's an English professor, that's a pretty good stamp of approval, so I ordered G & S.
I can see why people would enjoy this as a series. It has beautiful, strange illustrations that are linked to one another and to the story; it involves an odd, perhaps magical, intrigue; it does indeed involve long-distance love. There is very little to read--the whole thing is only about 40 pages long, nearly half of which is illustration or dead space. It's practically a picture book for grownups. And the story then carries through several more volumes, so the serial aspect would be fun.
I'm not inclined to buy more of them, though; one was pleasant but the story, especially the character voices and interactions, didn't spark enough interest for me to follow through.
But now I have my ergodic book completed. And now I understand a little bit more about this genre.
But then, what ergodic book could I read? Here it is December, and I have this and one more category to complete in the challenge.
Steve suggested Griffin and Sabine, a book/series that was all the rage in the '90s. I had never paid the slightest attention to it; I had the idea that it was a series of love letters between characters, and it sounded like some sort of romance. But Steve said that he'd heard people liked it because it involved studying not just the words of the letters but the form of them as well, so it ought to count, and I figure--hey, he's an English professor, that's a pretty good stamp of approval, so I ordered G & S.
I can see why people would enjoy this as a series. It has beautiful, strange illustrations that are linked to one another and to the story; it involves an odd, perhaps magical, intrigue; it does indeed involve long-distance love. There is very little to read--the whole thing is only about 40 pages long, nearly half of which is illustration or dead space. It's practically a picture book for grownups. And the story then carries through several more volumes, so the serial aspect would be fun.
I'm not inclined to buy more of them, though; one was pleasant but the story, especially the character voices and interactions, didn't spark enough interest for me to follow through.
But now I have my ergodic book completed. And now I understand a little bit more about this genre.