The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

For me I'm not fully "dreaming" yet. It's sorta in that in-between state of consciousness and dreaming...

Hmm. I have no such state, actually, or if I have, I've never been aware of it. Either I'm awake or I'm asleep, no in-between for me.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I often read to help me fall asleep. I know it's time to put the book down when I'm struggling to keep my eyelids awake and my brain, with eyes closed, starts auto-generating the rest of the page I was reading before my eyes closed.

Sometimes I do read in bed. When I find I'm getting too tired to continue, I'll close the cover and put my Libra 2 on the nightstand and go to sleep.

[Apache]

I need 6 hours max sleep a night. I do not dream. I fall asleep as soon as I close my eyes, and I am instantly wide awake and standing next to my bed. I have never been someone who wakes up gradually. My wife thinks I am weird.
Apache

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Apache

I need 6 hours max sleep a night. I do not dream. I fall asleep as soon as I close my eyes, and I am instantly wide awake and standing next to my bed. I have never been someone who wakes up gradually. My wife thinks I am weird.
Apache

I'm the exact opposite - it takes me a while to fall asleep and to wake up, and I dream basically all the time, so much that sometimes I wish I could sleep without dreaming. Not that my dreams are particularly bad, they're mostly neutral (not good or bad), but often it seems to me that I'm living most of my life in dreams...

[Renate]

I always find it funny with kids when some of them take literally an hour before the oil in their brain is warmed up enough to allow the internal parts to move.

Usually I wake like a light switch. Once in a rare while it's a brain fog and I have no idea where I am. I dream a lot, especially with "second sleep" if I try to grab an hour when I woke up at 4 AM.

[JSWolf]

I'm a heavy sleeper. I don't always wake easily. I don't remember any dreams. I do fall asleep usually pretty quickly.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

For me I'm not fully "dreaming" yet. It's sorta in that in-between state of consciousness and dreaming--like when you wake up ten minutes before your alarm goes off and you're trying to fall back asleep but you know you're gonna have to be awake in a few minutes anyway.

Dunno why that particular semi-conscious state seems to amp up the brain's creative juices. I have a Dyson fan in the bedroom as well, and sometimes quiet, high-pitched static sounds given off by the fan get interpreted by my brain as electronic musical notes while I'm trying to fall asleep. If I focus too hard on it, it stops, but it's interesting when I'm at least passively aware of it to see what my brain will "compose" from the random electronic noise.

Would be nice if I could get it to channel some of that creativity on-demand!

If I remember rightly I once read somewhere that an important part of sleep is that we let go of our inhibitions which allows our brain to sort through the crud we've picked up during the day - it allows our brains to work through problems without any conscious barriers, keeping our mental state healthy. I wonder if this lowering of inhibition, which is essentially a filter the brain puts in place to protect us, allows your brain to pick up patterns in the fan noise that would otherwise be 'filtered out' by the brain when fully awake?

[Apache]

I did have dreams and nightmares as a kid. In college the professor asked how many of us had dreams of falling. I along with everyone else in the class raised our hands. She then commented that we wake up before we hit the ground. I raised my hand and told her I had some where I dreamed, I hit the ground. Everyone laughed. It was never funny to me. When I dreamed, I hit the ground I would wake up feeling like I had hit the ground. My heart was racing like crazy; I was drenched in sweat and every muscle in my body hurt. It took me ten or fifteen minutes before I could even move. I am probably lucky I never had a heart attack. It may also have something to do with my not dreaming or waking up unable to remember my dreams.
Apache
Apache

[Karellen]

I have no problems falling asleep but do wake up exceptionally early at around 4am. I used to put it down to the noisy environment I live in, but I no longer think that is the reason.

I tried using a brown noise generator for a few weeks. Created the audio file and then plugged it into a sound bar in the bedroom. Seemed to work ok for a few nights. Then I started dreaming (which I rarely do) of voices in the brown noise. Gave me nightmares for a few nights and then stopped using it. Just use foam ear plugs now.

Weird thing is that when I wake at 4am, I feel ok. On those very rare nights that I sleep in to say 5:30 or thereabouts, I feel like crap. I am groggy, still feel half asleep, which lasts until at least mid-morning. I hate waking up at 4am, but would rather that than being groggy.

[ownedbycats]

I have to wake to take my medication at 6am. I sometimes can get back to sleep but not always.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Apache

I did have dreams and nightmares as a kid. In college the professor asked how many of us had dreams of falling. I along with everyone else in the class raised our hands.

I've never had any dreams of falling, or flying either. At least none that I remember.

[Cactus Chef]

So anyway going back to Reading...

When you're trying to look at a Book Preview/Sample and the sample is so weighed down with introductory copyright crap, forewords, publisher padding, TOC, etc that the preview stops before you've reached the actual book part of the book...

[JSWolf]

Some eBooks have a version number in the copyright and some don't. I wish all publishers did that. And I wish all copyright was in the proper place after the title page.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Some eBooks have a version number in the copyright and some don't. I wish all publishers did that. And I wish all copyright was in the proper place after the title page.

As far as I've seen, most ebooks from major publishers that have a version number have some variant on 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 or text that reads First/Second/Third Printing date. Most self-pubbed ebooks don't bother since the author probably is not looking far enough ahead to make a new version necessary.

As for a proper place for the copyright page? Can you let us know what standard states that immediately after the title page is the one and only correct page for the copyright page? Or is this yet another confusion between IMO and it's cast in stone?

I just checked 24 physical books. 12 of the had the copyright page between the title and half title page, 6 had the copyright page after the half title page, 5 had the copyright page after the dedication page and 1 buried the copyright page at the end of the book.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I often read to help me fall asleep. I know it's time to put the book down when I'm struggling to keep my eyelids awake and my brain, with eyes closed, starts auto-generating the rest of the page I was reading before my eyes closed.

Yes, that happens to me too. I'll realise that the story I'm 'reading' isn't actually in the book.

I don't 'see' an image of an invented page, my internal voice just carries on with the story as if I were reading.