hobbies cost money; interests are free

[topaz]

This is the LJ Interests Meme. The results were a lot more unusual and intriguing than I expected:

1. steven brust score: 6
2. boiled in lead score: 4
3. wilkie collins score: 4
4. steeleye span score: 3
5. october project score: 3
6. buckaroo banzai score: 3
7. mercy score: 3
8. first amendment score: 3
9. peter s. beagle score: 3
10. vernor vinge score: 3
11. impeach bush score: 3
12. sacred harp score: 3
13. doonesbury score: 3
14. ethnomusicology score: 3
15. china mieville score: 3
16. will eisner score: 3
17. cool hair things score: 2
18. talk.bizarre score: 2
19. mun score: 2
20. c.j. cherryh score: 2

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I found it interesting because:

It's accurate in ways I didn't expect.  I do like Boiled in Lead but only learned recently that I do.  I am not precisely a fan of Sacred Harp singing (beyond being generally interested in American musical traditions), but that's a pretty offbeat interest that's shared by several people on my friends list, so it makes some sense that it would pop up.  I never would have thought to put "cool hair things" on my interests list, but now that it has appeared I can't imagine why it escaped my notice in the first place.

I don't even recognize some of the people it lists.  Steven Brust?  China Mieville?  Mun?  Wilkie Collins?  I am sure that I had never heard of these things before seeing them on this list.  Even now I am not sure what "mun" is supposed to be.  Perhaps I am interested in it, but I suspect that I may never know for sure.

Comments

FWIW

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I read Miéville's novel Perdido Street Station and found it almost equal parts inventive and irritating--enough of the latter to put me off the sequel. But a co-worker is reading Un Lun Dun and says it's intriguing without most of what made PSS offputting.

Re: FWIW

[dervishspin.livejournal.com]

I am in the middle of this book right now, and I completely agree. Irritating. I want to like it more.
I don't.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Brust and Mieville are authors, in the fantasty/SF&F realm. Brust is more adventure with a nod at times to Dumas; Mieville is more political fantasy and magical realism.

Per the above, Perdido Street Station and the two sequels are distinctly fantasy with a strong political take, very 1800s-industrial-revolution-Britain. Un Lun Dun is a fantasy aimed more at the youth audience; I have not read it, but it seems hard for Mieville to write anything superficial, so it likely has a lot for adult readers as well.

ETA: The Docstrange House of Coffee and Lending Library is only 30 minutes to your north. Poke poke.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What magical realism has Miéville done? There's not a hint of it in Perdido Street Station.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

See Looking for Jake - shorts and novellas where some of the pieces are, at least IMHO, in a magical realism vein.

sacred harp ;-)

[lcohen]

first one's free!

i've met steven brust but never read anything by him. china mieville was a GoH at wiscon one year that i went but i've never read anything by him, either. (he's very witty, though--his GoH speech was really good.) wilkie collins is dead so i think he's safe from meeting me.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

mun= model united nations?

Steven Brust is one of my favorite fantasy authors. You should try reading some of his books!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I believe Brust collaborated with some song lyrics on one Boiled in Lead album, and might have even played drums on it.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Jiminy cricket, and I thought at first you were just feeding me more bullshit. (http://cdbaby.com/cd/stevenbrust)

[malefica-v.livejournal.com]

He was part of Cat's Laughing for a few years, and parts of that band reformed as The Flash Girls.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

China Miéville is a science-fiction author and Trotskyist activist: when the folks at Boing boing (http://www.boingboing.net) mention him, which they do fairly often, since he is friends with Corey Doctorow, they usually refer to him as a "second generation Marxist." (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.debian%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=nyK&q=%22second+generation+marxist%22+%2Bsite%3Awww.boingboing.net&btnG=Search)

His novels are pretty good, except for the Trotskyist ranting, which reaches "Objectivist on speed" levels of irritation.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

On the subject of the meme itself, having a brief Interests list completely flummoxes it. I've got 14 listed, but every one of the dozen or so suggestions I got is based on "հայերեն" (and consists chiefly of the same small set of words rendered in three different scripts).