I used to commute to work by bus and/or train for some years. While I can read without effort to almost any music I like, it’s much harder for me to concentrate on my book while people are talking next to me. So I’m used to drowning the constant “How was your weekend; Did you watch the game last night” etc. ad inf. in music.
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Same. Although my brain DOES work like that (parallel thinking) It doesn’t work with music. Music requires my full attention. Reading, I’ll literally be in that world.
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For me, it’s either music or reading - just can’t do both. But I can be pretty oblivious with my nose stuck in a really good book. 
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I have this problem, sort of. When I’m reading I’m so absorbed that most anything can be going on around me, but words can be a problem. If music has lyrics the words get into my mind and force the train of thought to switch tracks. So obviously…
Same. I too listen to music in this situation, but it has to meet certain criteria. It has to be instrumental, and the pace and aesthetic need to complement what I’m reading. No punk rock or electronic with the classics, no classical with sci fi, etc. I do mix genres sometimes, just not to the same extent that I do odd things with food. A current example: Still reading Who Censored Roger Rabbit and my musical selection has gone from John Coltrane to the Fight Club score, and it made a couple of stops in between at the Madlib Beat Konducta albums and Shades of Blue.
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PKD and Claptrap in a punny combination. I LIKE it!
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Just put the last nails in Who Censored Roger Rabbit? I love it, but I think that’s just because I love pulp-type fiction. I think I’m gonna spend some time with the Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa.
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I’m in Vancouver visiting my family - I got in last night. Over dinner my brother asked me if I would proof his new book that he finished probably 2 hours before I arrived.
I haven’t started it yet but this will be my weekend task 
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Do you know about Manybooks.net? It’s all free ebooks available in a variety of formats. They have a whole pulp section. 
It’s where I got my Maurice LeBlanc Arsene Lupin books.
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It’s his first full novel actually, which is why I’m so pumped. He tends to write absurdist and/or fairy tale stuff though.
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It really pleases me that John Buchan is in that category 
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I found it interesting that Sherlock Holmes is there when I first found it. I guess I saw all the adaptations and just assumed that it was not just literature but Literature. It’s a pleasant reminder that today’s pulp could be tomorrow’s fine stationery.
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Indeed! It’s ages since I read 39 Steps so I can’t really remember how ‘classy’ it is, wikipedia tells me it was published by quite a reputable firm but I can see it’s not going to make it into many true “Canon” lists (far too entertaining).
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This is my favorite thread that isn’t related to Borderlands. And it’s populated with bibliophiles and narrative junkies, my favorite types of people. 
I’ve been reading the Book of Disquiet on and off for about 6 years. It has no narrative thread, it’s a lot of little scraps that Pessoa wrote before he died that someone put together after. Some sections are larger than others, and there have been several that were just a sentence or 2. Those are usually my favorites. I hit this one earlier.
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I like it!
Oooh, the subject of pulp reminds me of my favourite thing in cover art (other than the glory that is foreign POD companies slapping wildly inappropriate images on text dumps from Project Gutenberg). Pulp! The Classics.
http://pulptheclassics.com/index1.php?imprint=8
I have the Heart of Darkness one, it’s a thing of beauty and I used it as a teaching aid (can’t really remember what my point was, other than to make the poor things more miserable about the dry over-annotated student editions they all had to use).
Planning to get one of the posters, but I’m not sure which one… probably the Ryan Gosling one…
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So. Proof reading is a lot more work than reading reading. I’m exhausted. My brain’s not used to this activity 
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