Spliced Book - Alternative Reading Methods

created, $=dv.current().file.ctime & modified, =this.modified tags: Booksbooksexperimentlist

NOTE

Coming up with alternative reading methods. Maybe they aren’t strong, but I’m more curious how an arbitrary, misguided task would affect the reading experience.

Nothing is stopping you from these methods.

We all have natural, characteristic (sensible) methods of reading, such as those more conventional like “monogamous readers” who can only read a single book at a time.

One thought that sticks with me that I’ve read. It’s that adjacency of books, in a library, can form connections more readily between the two. I see this borne out of this project of infinite digression, where reading two books next to one another, will end up with connections (often more frequently, though connections occur elsewhere.)

Reading two books, as one and as three.

Decametric: Read 10 books at once.

This is done in sequence, with 10 pages open. A page is read, the head is shifted to the next book. At the end of the reading sequence, the reader wraps around and then turns the page of the first book (or possibly better, retraces leftward, turn each page till returning to the first.)

Due to unequal page counts, books can be replaced immediately.

Trilogic: Read a trilogy in the same fashion, with three books in the series open at once.

Palindromic: Get two copies of the book. Start one at the beginning as usual. and other on the last page going in reverse.

Stochastic: Get a book and read a random page, front and back. Rip out the page. Select a random page from the remainder.

Reversed: Read a book back to front.

Skimtastic/Barnesnoblic: In the whole of a library, read one page of every book.

Indexed: Read only indices pages.

Dimly: Read only in low light, at the precise point where the page text is barely legible and becomes partially imagined.

Referenced: Select 5 books to read pages from but they are read from the point of reference from the referring work. (i.e. book mentions Lord of the Rings, and LotR is the new connective tissue to next work.) Deeper buried, and more abstruse connections are better.

Aural: Two audio books are played simultaneously. The reader has only access to a crossfader, or they must both be at a fixed low sound. Or perhaps there is a parametric push/pull where each parameter change in one track reflects opposite of the other (increase in volume in one track lowers the other, speed changes will slow one track and speed up the other.)

Replicative: All text read must be transcribed either in typewriter or handwriting. Completion of reading a book results in a replica.

Marginastic: Notes of one book must be left in another unrelated book, which is to be read next.

Liquidic: Pages must be dosed in water prior to reading.

Iced: Cut up a book pages, and encase in an ice block. Read through ice.

Reviewed: Read a book only with reviews and not the actual text. Construct a summary of the book from this.

Pugilistic: When completing a page, punch through the sheet to the next, ideally leaving the last page ringed around your fist.

Singular: Read one book for the rest of your life.

Mirrored: Read only in mirrors, never the page directly.

Inverted: Read books only upside down.

Translated: Read a book and its translation.

Neglected: Go to your friends house, and take a book from their collection that they’ve never read and read it. Tell them about it when you are done and lie about a piece of the story.

Choral: Read an audiobook, read aloud, read a physical book, all at once. For added effect add more voices, like a synthesized voice, or have a friend or stranger read with you aloud.

Paired: rel:Library book anti-date Read side by side the entire book shared.

Magnified: Read through a high power magnification lens, single words. If magnification can change, start fully zoomed and slowly zoom out (or vice versa) as you scan the page.

Journalistic: Daily Journal with minimum of two books at your side. Book on the left is your previous year, centered is current day and rightmost is a blank book. You can slip pieces of random text into the rightmost (future) book from the other books. Each day read from the leftmost book, write in the center and rightmost (future) book.

Diaristic: Read a book, and begin each reading by writing about a moment of your day on each page.

Dreamlapsed: Read 1 page before bed. Read next page upon waking.

Laddered: Read series of books arranged like a ladder, from top to bottom (rather that LtR linear read.) First word of the sentence top to bottom, then second word of first sentence.

Labyrinthian: rel:Labyrinth Cut out and number all words from the book. Place the first word in the center and corkscrew outwards, placing words as you read them and creating a space-filling curve.

In Love: Read, or don’t read at all with someone close to you.

Cosmological: A book is constructed so that at first glance it appears to have a non-obvious read (through complexity, like not adhering to a standard Western left to right read). The key to unlocking the read, is tied to viewing the sky - in that there’s some manner of corresponding the stars positions to a correct sequence of words. The book must then be read with a night sky and possibly telescope as an aid.

Closed: Read a book with the cover closed. Never open it.

Through another: Take two of the same book, or two different books. Open one book and rest it in the crack of the other. Imagine a read from the outer (shell) book.

Surveilled: Read a book and record yourself reading it in its entirety. Watch yourself reading it.

Stolen: Read only stolen books.

Lended: Read only books sourced from lending libraries.

Deceased: Go to estate sales or places where the book owner had passed away, and read only from these sorts of neglected books.

Decomposed/Scattered: Pull all of the pages out of the binding of the book. Let the wind carry them. Find them and read them in that order.

Abandoned: Leave books around the town. Wait 10 days and read the ones you find.

Publicly Shared: Tie a book to a place where it’ll be touched frequently, or the pages ripped from. For example you can use a page as one of those “tear off” notices where strips are ripped if interested. Read from what is remaining.

Collaborative: Mail pages of the book to random people in the United States.

Swollen: Copy every page of the book onto a piece of paper with the thickness of the book itself. This will create a book that is the size of the book times the amount of pages. Read this book.

Linked: Go to a book cafe or library. Read but only turn pages, and be forced to turn a page, when someone nearby turns a page. Turn the page at exactly the same time as them.

Summarized: Take all of your digital books and throw them into an LLM for summarization. Complete your backlog by reading these summaries.

Summarized (swelling variant): Read a book by a generated Automatic Summarization. If you enjoy that book, grow the summarization so that it becomes more detailed. Continue successive growths till the book in the original form remains (perhaps if you enjoy it, swell the book beyond what was written so that text is generated in excess, but connected to the original text). This method is flawed and you’ll hate the book.

Distinct: Read words only once. So read a book. Note all words used in the book. All subsequent books cross out the unique words that were used in the original book. Read only the remaining distinct words and add them to the removal list for future books.

Playlistic: Only read via poetry written in playlist titles selection. (The titles of tracks can form a running poetic verse or prose, like “Imagine” / “Sweet Child of Mine” / “I Will Always Love You”)

Sorted: Alphabetically sort the words in book and read it like that. The first couple of pages should be only punctuation. You can preserve the punctuation order, and maybe infer that a sequence like .?!...! has some difference in emotion than .......!

Unperioded: Remove all periods from the text. Remove all spaces. Overlay all the word on top of each other.

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Future Reading Method

created, $=dv.current().file.ctime & modified, =this.modified tags:conceptfuturereading rel: Future Camera Process Spliced Book - Alternative Reading Methods

NOTE

I hate this accelerated/cursory reading method, but I am playing with the idea.

Woody Allen solved that problem by taking a speed-reading course and then reading War and Peace in one sitting. “It was about Russia,” he said afterward.

Read only summaries of things. Maximize the extraction of information and speed. I’m trying to imagine a world (new book form) I would hate, where all reading was just interfacing with impressions that resolve. No infinite digressions, but just extractions and concise necessary parts. No reading complete books.

Maybe like this.

You get a book. It starts with a summary (the traditional store-bought form a book access, where you read the blurb on the back and look at the cover and decide. Only one level of summarization.). Maybe there are adjacencies to other summaries on a macro level, like related books.

This future reading comes at different levels of magnification. You’re provided with options to summarize the book, then you dip into the pages and they expand to summaries of the chapters, and the pages and the paragraphs (or maybe using some kind of semantic tokenization that makes more sense, such as scenes or concepts).

Reading is more like swimming underwater into a cave, your two hands push through the water like a breaststroke and further details emerge. The page summaries resolve to paragraphs, should you dive deeper. And then the sentences.

This can happen at two levels: one option it unfolds and you read the new summary (so you’ll be repeating parts, as summary falls for detail if desired), or the other where what you’ve read so far is taken into account and only new segments are “resolved.”

Each level is more indicative of the original next, and rely on less automatic summarization.

The fully resolved book, is the original book as written. Some readers resolve to bits of detail (no more room to magnify any more) mixed with summary sections.

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It’s conceptually a bit similar to headings that start in a default collapsed state and reading is a matter of opening them.

Page Summary

Paragraph 1 Summary

sentence summary

actual words of the book.

Paragraph 2 Summary

words

Paragraph 3 Summary

words

Link to original

Hypertextual: Read sentences in a book. While reading, at any time, you may transfer to another book, but only by matching the word or concept you are reading. Leave whatever book you link from, open. You may freely jump between them.

Edged/Peaking: Read a book or access text, by looking at the pages in the front edge, particularly if there’s some edge bleed, such as a worn book, where you can see different chapters or movements by vague dimensions and color variations across each pages’ also infrathin edge.

Maybe the page itself is infrathin to the text, and the sum of the pages and their different blemishes is a kind of macro-infrathin?

Structure may be inferred by the edges, like with a thumb index too, or just often edge colors. Perhaps if it is a used book, the wear.

Maybe an alternative to this method, would involve splaying all the pages, at once so thin but growing, so that each page has a small section visible at the left edge, all at once. (like opening a magazine, so 50 percent of the page is visible, and half is concealed by the adjacent bulk of pages, and repeating the process in smaller and smaller dimensions)

Replaced: Buy two books, or multiple books that are identical. Rip each page from the binding, so that only the front and back cover remain. Place the pages of one, in its identical partner while reading.

Unwanted: Read only books you don’t want to read. Never make a decision because you want to. Maybe, you may follow the likes and reading habits of another, or random others. The second you find yourself with the slightest bit of enjoyment of your read, or any sense of self, immediately stop reading and select something else.

Challenged: Read only books of the most esoteric, and challenging of specialized work, that you have no background of. For example, Inter-universal Teichmüller theory. You must read specifically in the deep end first, skipping fully over a prior life segment of attempts at understanding. You should strive to have no mental connection, at all, to the concepts. It is impossible for you to appraise, fully in the space where illusory superiority cannot even be touched upon and disorientation is all there is.

Feigned: Read only by proxy, through subtle influence. Speak highly of books you’d like to read to your friends but state they you have read them. Muddle your way through the conversation after they’ve read it, to attempt to grasp what you’ve not read.

Errata: Read only the errata of books. Read only the changes between editions.

Childish: Read only books made for children under the age of 3.

Menued: Read only menus of restaurants for a year. Collect them.

Consumed: Convert all the words of a book into an edible format – i.e. alphabet soup and read and eat.