fine whine

I've been reading lately in part because I enjoy reading and also because the library's doing their summer reading club, whereby I stand the slight chance of winning things in a drawing. Entries are based on the number of books I read.

I recall the reading clubs of my youth, which netted me many a free McDonald's hamburger or Pizza Hut personal pan pizza. Back then I would sometimes play one local library against the other, checking the same book from both and getting credit twice, and other times I'd claim I'd read books I hadn't finished. Guilt aside, the only problem with the latter approach was when the librarian would quiz me on a random book, and occasionally I'd find myself fabricating a book based on the cover image and the rest of my imagination, or another book altogether. I wasn't caught once.

Now, for the adult program, I don't even need to summarize the books or give a report. All I need do to enter the drawing is to write the title, my name and numbers, and throw it in a box. What could be easier?

Now while I am tempted to enter books I'd read before the contest began, or books I have at home, I've been trying to be somewhat honest with this. Every entry records my library card number, and it is probably trivial for the librarians to check if I have, in fact, checked out a book I've claimed to read. In the spirit of total disclosure, though, I've begun checking out books after I've read them, though only one so far: Cory Doctorow's Down and out in the Magic Kingdom. Then again, I read it after the contest began.

I read it online in minutes here and there, in a tiny browser window at the bottom of my screen. It was an easy enough read, and though heavily Disney-otaku-esque (it takes place in the park, after all) it was a fairly enjoyable book/HTML page. I read it in less than a day, and still got my work done. It was a light day.

Cory also offers his other books in free digital formats, and I'd attempted to start Eastern Standard Tribe but wasn't able to focus on it that day and still get my work done.

It did not help that the latter book is not conventionally linear, but two parts of the same story that alternate chapters. In the end it all fits together, but it's difficult to begin, particularly when I'm only able to read one or two lines at at time. Not to worry, I realized, as I had just reserved both novels from the library.

Well, since then I have read EST and it too was enjoyable enough. But that's not what this is about.

In Down and out the concept of 'deadheading' is mentioned, a form of cryogenic sleep or some such preservation of living people over long periods of time. In that book people do it as a form of one-way time travel, waiting around until the timer stops or something interesting triggers them to thaw and rejoin the living and breathing.

Another book I've read, Iron sunset by Charles Stross, mentions 'deadheading' but in a sense more like its current (well, current as of Abagnale's Catch me if you can) airline meaning--namely, a pilot who is a passenger--though only in the sense that it is for travel. Stross's deadheads are passengers on interstellar liners who paid for the economy class and are deep-frozen or otherwise in stasis. The richer passengers get to experience the luxuries of the ship and so on and so forth.

I just found it odd that both authors used the same word. This is by far not the only time two writers have 'coined' the same thing, nor will it be the last. Like I said, it was just odd, particularly since I'd read the books so closely together.

Personally, I'd use the term 'hiber-nauts'. Or, if you're a burgeoning writer, you can. Without the quotes and the hyphen, if you're bold enough. Just drop me a line, okay?

One of these days I might write a story about that sort of thing, and then, well, I'll use it. Which will make me look like the copycat, if the hypothetical burgeoning writer used it first. Such is life.