All posts by Mark Watkins

Literary Curiosities

Taormina, 51 Shades of Grey.

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I have been, for reasons I will leave to the side for the moment, researching the mythical background of Sicily, which I visited last year. Of particular note, my traveling companions and I spent a lovely day in Taormina, an ancient city on a ridge, south of Messina. Absolutely stunning place, home to a beautiful medieval town and a striking Roman amphitheater.

Roman Theater in Taormina

Sicily has any number of interesting ancient myths attached to it. Scylla and Charybdis of Odysseus fame, the Fata Morgana (a nautical mirage in the Strait of Messina, named after Morgana of King Arthur fame), Mount Etna and the Forge of Hephaestus, Odysseus and the Cyclops, and more. As I researched, I learned that, at least in Sicilian legend, Sicily became the home of Dionysus, the god of wine, revelry, religious ecstasy, lavish festival orgies, Bacchanalia, and all that.

Dionysus? Sicily? Sounds off. He’s Greek, right? So I decided to research a bit. 

A quick google of “Dionysus sicily” does not produce anything definitive (for maximal confusion, one of the early rulers of Sicily was Dionisius, a completely different fellow). It does, however, produce this: http://whitealmond-privatesicily.blogspot.com/2016/07/villa-dionysus-taormina.html

From this, I learn a few interesting things: Taormina has been a destination resort for literary types since ancient times. Cicero, Aeschylus, and others. Goethe, Guy de Maupassant. Slightly more recently, DH Lawrence came here, and reportedly wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover here, inspired by a true life love affair between an English lady expat and a local Sicilian gardener. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra here. The canonical cover, left, takes on new meaning for me knowing it was written in Taormina.

I also learned that there is a lovely B&B called Villa Dionysus (“Dionysio”), run by the host “Eros”. Ahem. We then learn that Eros is “professional novelist, analytical psychologist and adventurer who’s [sic] main themes are erotic philosophy, sensuosity [sic], the psychology of Carl Jung (a Swiss psychologist) and the philosophy of the early Athenian hedonists.” Double Ahem. And that he has a charming female assistant. Triple Ahem. Definitely moved on to throat clearing now.

How could I have missed this place when we came?  And who is this Eros character, and are his books any good? Googling the villa itself to learn more about Eros came to naught. So I went to work finding the fellow himself. After about 15 minutes of Googling, I came upon this: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/lonely-hearts-job-advert-seeking-6626254

Job ad for ‘charismatic literary assistant’ is more like a ‘Lonely hearts’ post

The listing, which has since been removed, has been called ‘sexist’ and the ‘worst advert ever’ by online commenters

From which we learn: Eros is Eros de Grey, a nom de plume, and he’s apparently written a job advertisement for a Literary Assistant (“Miss Moneypenny cum Bree van de Kamp cum Archetypal Muse cum Lara Croft” sheesh), according to the ad. Well then. And apparently this ad has gone viral and is widely mocked as “the worst job ad ever.” It does, of course, read much more like a bad Tinder profile than a job ad.  Still, he has an assistant named Emily, so something worked. 

Mr. Grey is apparently actually “Stratos Malamatinas, who last made headlines as one of the directors of a company selling essays to university students.” HAHAHAHAHA of course he is.

None of Mr. Grey’s porn novels appear to have been published as near as we can determine, so the quality of his “erotic philosophy” are yet to be judged.

Still, it might be a fun place to stay. 

Dionysus indeed. 

Books

Brave New World

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Haven’t written here in awhile, been busy with Richard the Lionheart over on my medieval blog, here: https://medieval.substack.com. But I just finished reading Brave New World, the first time since high school, and thought I’d post a few thoughts.

As a dystopia, BNW provided plenty of food for thought. Drugs and sex and infinite distraction as the defining characteristics of how people are controlled. The echoes of today’s modern society are hard to miss. The presence of science as a driving force in society is pretty overpowering. The invention or Huxley’s near-invention of soma, helicopters, sex-hormone drugs, and other science seem ahead of their time. 

The erasure of mother, father, family seem to lead to a well-behaved, polite society. Which is, on reflection, a bit odd, as the last 50 years or so would suggest the breakdown of the family seems to trend to the reverse. I suppose with enough soma everyone becomes well-behaved.

I found the intensive Shakespeare quotations and allusions interesting for a time, although it seemed a bit much by the end. 

There is an old saw about civilized vs. savage people, that a savage man has a much easier time acting civilized, than a civilized man has in being savage. That might be from Tarzan, or perhaps Rousseau, or somewhere else, I can’t remember? Anyway, spoiler, that proves not to be the case here. And while I found John’s ending to be tragic, as an ending to a novel I wasn’t completely convinced. I could certainly imagine him remorseful; suicidal seems a stretch. 

Perhaps it is because of my own preoccupations with the negative influence of media on our lives, and the dual and troubling issues of media censorship (left and right both!) and surveillance capitalism, I find 1984 a far more compelling and frightening novel, as a novel, than BNW, and a more disturbing dystopia. I think I am in the minority compared to most public review/criticism, which seems to favor BNW as the better book. But to my mind, BNF suffers from having little narrative tension throughout most of the book (nothing bad happens to anyone for nearly 3/4 of the book), a weirdly-shifting view of who the protagonist is, and an over-focus on society itself, rather than the characters being impacted. 1984 was grim and ominous from the beginning and I turned almost every page waiting for something evil to happen, and was often not disappointed. In contrast BNW felt more like an amusement park ride, a bit light-hearted even, until the last few pages. Interestingly, while 1984 focused quite a bit on the control of information, BNW did not focus on equivalents of the media much at all, except to mention that books were forbidden and history not taught. 

Not to mention Huxley’s apparent fixation with the word “pneumatic”, which occurs no less than 15 times. 🙂 And the threat of getting sent to Iceland – I would take that punishment in a heartbeat!

Still I am glad I re-acquainted myself with it, had not read since high school. It’s good to be reminded not to drug ourselves, or let someone else do it to us!

By the way. There’s a TV show. Link.

Books, Bookship, The Hawaii Project

Introducing TBR

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Hot on the heels of being featured by Google (huzzah!), we’re excited to announce our new app TBR.

TBR is a fast, elegant and modern place to track your reading. The books you want to read (your TBR, To Be Read), the books you are reading, and the books you’ve read. You can also organize your books into custom lists of your own choosing. 

Get inspiration by reading Book News from our 1000+ curated book news sources. TBR contains a Book News browser, essentially a curated collection of RSS feeds, with links back to the original sources. Bookship will identify books in each story and easily let you save them, remembering where you found the book.

Don’t worry, Bookship isn’t going anywhere. Bookship will always be our home for social reading. 

But let’s face it, not all reading is social. And keeping track of all those books on your TBR is (for most people) a jumbled mess. A big spreadsheet. Books piled by the bed. Notes on your Phone. Samples locked away in your Kindle. Why not keep them all in one place? Searchable, sortable, book covers visible, accessible any time. 

As an added benefit, get inspiration by reading Book News from our 1000+ curated book news sources, including news about the books you’re reading right now!

TBR is $4.99 (or your local equivalent), available for iOS (iPhone, iPad and Mac) and Android. Get it here:

If you are a Bookship user, once you have the app, you can sign in with your Bookship credentials and your books data will be shared and synced between the apps. Or use a new sign in, if you want to keep them separate. 

There’s also a web/browser version you can use on any device with a browser: https://tbrapp.co.

Happy reading!

Books, Music, The Hawaii Project

Can you hear me now?

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Sugai Ken in “concert”

So, I’m working on my nearly-finished first release of my book tracking app, TBR. 

Did I mention I had shoulder surgery back in January? I’ve been doing rehab exercises every day, three times a day, since January. It’s become something of a habit. But I keep reminders, because otherwise I get caught up in things and forget. I started with the simple iPhone todo list app, but awhile back I switched to the Not Boring Software’s Habits app. A game-like experience for forming habits, or as the founder Andy puts it, the World’s Most Satisfying Checkbox. And it kinda is…. animations, 3D models, and sounds. And it’s pretty. Just won one of Apple’s App Design Awards. 

Face-palm. My app has no sound! (for that matter, neither does my existing app Bookship). Duh. 

I’ve never done it before, so I start reading. In my head, my app is making bookish noises like a page turning, etc. As I read I learn that audio UX has similar design styles to visual design, and “Skeuomorphism” (things sound like / look like what they are), may not be the best approach for sound ux. And more importantly that sound design is another path to creating a compelling brand.

Just as there is a place for visual designers, who can create something beautiful and connective, the same is true for audio. There are firms that do nothing else, for example. 

OK well I’m not ready to belly up to the bar and hire a composer, and my needs are pretty modest. So, I go digging for sound effects. Well. There’s a lot of them, and a lot of places to look. I poke around a bunch of sites (Freesound, SoundSnap, Mixkit, Artlist.io etc), talk to my son-in-law game developer, who recommends Pond5 and reminds me to make sure I get licenses for everything. “Free is free, but sometimes it’s worth paying”. 

I poke around and prototype with 5 or so free sounds from different sources but realize they don’t hang together – individually good, but all different and kind of random, and the possibilities are overwhelming. I realize I need to take a step back and think about what I want.

What is this sound for? What am I trying to convey? What is my brand about? And then look for a package (a sound pack) of thematically consistent sounds.

Well, to me, books are about learning, and being transported; a means of adventure, and a place of peace and escape from all the noise out there. Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, your job, etc. ad nauseam. I want something tranquil, restful, non-invasive, almost kind of Zen. Yeah, that’s it. Zen. I start building a soundboard, googling and listening, of some concepts that have the feel I might want.

Turns out Not Boring’s Habits used a composer named Thomas Williams. Mostly games, but some utility apps and even some short films. Here’s a soundtrack he made for a game, it’s actually nice to just listen to.

Nice. Since I’m thinking Zen, I start googling for Zen sound effects, and stumble upon Ableton, which is audio editing software, and reading their blog. I find this article. Mentions a Japanese composer, Sugai Ken, who does field recordings and integrates nature sounds into his music.

Yeah. A lot of natural sounds, pings and echos, things that could be at home in a quiet app about books. I take that as a vector and run with it.

After about a million listens to random chirps and squeaks and pings (my wife says, “What the hell are you doing over there?” :)), I stumble on a few things that feel promising. 

After letting it sit for a day, seeing how the sounds feel after a lot of listens, and prototyping a bit, I feel like this one is the answer: Sound Ex Machina’s UI Sounds Musical. I found it on Artlist.io, when I go to buy it it looks like it’s $10 a month to subscribe. Fine. Go to subscribe, realize no, I need the premium version @ $15/month to get the rights. OK fine. Go again to purchase, get something that says, “Oh you want SFX?” That’s $20/month. Just enough annoyance and friction in the process to make me go looking elsewhere. I try to find their real website and see if I can buy it, it says “Down for Maintenance”. A few days later it still is. I wonder if they’ve gone under…anyway in the meantime I find a direct purchase on itch.io. Even better, the Artlist package only has ~30 sounds, but this “real” package has 300, and for about the same money. I go for it. At which point I learn that the sounds I bookmarked on Artlist have Artlist-specific names, so I have to go match up the ones I’ve chosen against the 300. No big deal, just realize, if you like a package of sounds, look for the original if you can – more sounds, better pricing, etc. 

The other bit of advice all the blogs give is, don’t do too much; it gets overwhelming or irritating pretty quickly. I try to restrain myself to key actions and errors. 

Anyway, after that it’s all downhill. Just integrating the code (I’m on Ionic, there’s a simple plugin for playing audio, which I use, and it’s all integrated in under a day). Oh. Don’t forget haptics too – vibrations, the “feel” of the app. I do that too. I don’t know if people will like all this or not, but the app just feels and sounds so much more real, more tactile, more professional. 

Fingers crossed :). 

Here’s a short sample of the sounds I’ve ended up using:

I hope you get a chance to check out the app, and our sounds. (Oh: bonus: the first sound you hear is a Ukelele, the native instrument of Hawaii where I live. Not a factor in my decision, just a happy accident.

Some background reading I found helpful as I was working on sounds:

And some sound resources, places to look for interesting sounds:

https://www.pond5.com
https://freesound.org/
https://www.soundsnap.com/
https://mixkit.co/free-sound-effects/
https://www.storyblocks.com/audio/sound-effects
https://www.artlist.io