cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 34

And including Emperor Joseph II!

from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:

Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.

(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, interesting, thanks. It's reassuring to know that you also need aides-memoire!

I use multicolor paper to mark passages in (printed) books while I'M reading them, and with e-books I use the text marker functions.

Do you do this on the first reading, though? My problem is that on the first read-through, I have not a clue which things I will end up wanting to talk about. Furthermore, trying to think in those terms while I read just slows me down to the point where I never finish the book. Experience has shown me that it only makes sense for me to start compiling "what I want to talk about" highlights on the second reading. And it's having to do a second reading immediately after the first that makes me not remotely motivated enough to see the process through for most books. (I usually need a year to pass before I'm willing to reread a book, for most books.)

I do make heavy use of highlighting in my e-books, and few-word notes like "Mitchell?!?" (lol), but only

a) If there's something small and specific that jumps out at me on the first reading, like "Is that OUR Mitchell?!"

or

b) On the second readthrough when I'm deciding what's important enough to share.

The problem is that (a) on the first reading isn't going to help me put together a coherent picture of the highlights of Joseph's life story, aka (a) is trees and (b) is forest. Compiling a picture of the forest as I read the first time is basically where my brain throws up its metaphorical hands. Yours...can actually do this?

From:

cahn

Hmm, I'm gonna say that I think this might be you being an alien :P I feel like it's connected to your reading literature in school and not being okay with the "reading one chapter at a time and talking about it" method, and you wanting spoilers for everything before you read it -- most people, including Selena and me (I am pretty sure), have a much more linear approach to reading. (I hate spoilers, myself, with a few exceptions connected to emotions rather than to making sense of things.) But I think that one of the things the linear approach does is that while I'm reading (or watching) something I'm also simultaneously constructing my view of what it's about and what I want to talk about, so that once I'm done with the first pass of whatever-it-is, I have that at least in outline form in my head. (I suspect Selena works this way even more than I do -- that it's the way most people work.) Whereas I think you work in a way such that your brain sort of needs a distributed form of the information, or something, before it can even start pulling things together.

(Not that I can write up things like either of you, because apart from anything else I simply don't have the context -- but anyway, the reason I don't write up more of my reading -- I keep thinking I should say something about Game of Queens at least -- is partially because no time, haha, but also in large part because I usually read while multitasking which makes it hard to take notes when I read, and also my kindle has this problem where sometimes it just randomly deletes my bookmarks, so I've kind of stopped doing that, adn without the bookmarks or any notes I forget what I want to say. I should try to bookmark things on my phone, maybe that would work better. And I hadn't thought about colored tabs for paper books! I should totally have done that while reading King's Touch, for all the questions I wanted to ask Selena but just totally forgot!)

From:

selenak

What she said, and alaso hooray for colorful paper, say I. When I was a young student, I sometimes made annotations with my pen and felt ever so guilty - writing into books!

(I hate spoilers, too. And not blindly - I did try to consume media with spoilers, that’s how I really know. Mind you, of course for something like Lehndorff’s diaries it’s useful to have a rough outline about his life and the who is who. That’s what I read prefaces for. :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I feel like it's connected to your reading literature in school and not being okay with the "reading one chapter at a time and talking about it" method

Yeah, you know, I figured it was probably related to this, but...the thing is, I understand how you guys do this with fiction. What I don't understand is how you do it with non-fiction. How do you know what's going to be important? When there's a battle, how do you know if it's going to be some skirmish or whether it's going to be one of the two battles you want to talk about at the end? When a new character is introduced, how do you know if they're going to be a major player or if they're going to disappear in two pages and die off-page without being mentioned again?

Case in point: when I set out to learn about the War of the Spanish Succession, I picked up a book by that name that covers the war.

Chapter 1 covers 1659-1700.

Chapter 2 covers 1700-1701.

Etc.

By chapter 5 out of 13, I'm reading about an army marching up this hill and down into this valley, and I don't even know who won the war! (There was no preface. :P) This is the book that made me realize that military history should be written like this:

1. Short political overview. What are they fighting for, who was on whose side and why, what was the outcome of the war?
2. Strategic overview. How did what they were fighting for result in where and when they fought, and how did the outcomes of the major campaigns lead to the outcome of the war?
3. Major tactics: What were the most important battles, how were they fought, how do they fit into the big picture?
4. Full detail: Chronological presentation of all the material the author wants to share.

Instead, authors start with (4) and expect you to foresee that the tactics of this one battle will be worth telling

cahn and

selenak about and therefore you should bookmark this passage, but that this other battle will not have any strategic or political effect and can safely be ignored.

In this case, when I had gotten all the necessary info into my head, I presented it to you in the order above, where you knew who won and why Malplaquet was important before you started having to keep track of the the Dutch guy's repeated suicidal charges against the French lines. Are these charges going to turn the tide of the battle or is that just one of many events? You don't know until you've finished reading! Is the Dutch guy going to get the Stadtholderate he wants and influence Dutch participation in the war and therefore you should keep track of these suicidal charges that play a role in his getting the Stadtholderate? None of this stuff is signaled!

I need spoilers!

Next time I summarize a war, I'm going to present it to you in chronological order and see how you like it. :P

Not really. But notice how I grouped the 1720s diplomacy by topic rather than chronological order. Because otherwise you get, "And then the Dutch told the British to put pressure on the Austrians to shut down the Ostend Company. But the Austrians said they didn't like the British ambassador. So the British yielded to French pressure to send their unpopular ambassador in Paris to Vienna, where the Hanoverian minister was trying to get the investitures to Bremen and Verden," and you're wondering, "Did anything happen as a result of one party telling another party to tell a third party to do such-and-such? Did a war break out? Or is this going to go nowhere? Will the ambassador get fired and we'll never see him again? Will he get sent to another country to negotiate a major treaty and I should keep track of his movements?" Find out after 10 pages of more excruciating detail on the negotations presented in chronological order!

My presentation in non-chronological order: Here is a topic, here is who cares about the topic, here is why they care, here is what happens as a result of the negotiations. Next topic.

So I'm still at a loss how I'm supposed to know what I want to report on in the first readthrough before I know the significance of a person or event.

Ah, well. I suppose my alien brain will continue presenting topics rather than books. ;) Thank you for the insight into how you can just spontaneously build the outline as you go. (But how do you knooow??)

Edited Date: 2022-01-17 03:23 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

ahahahahaha yeah, um, since I don't read books like this that are trying to explain wars or negotiations in excruciating detail, I will defer to the Royal Reader on this because honestly my strategy for this particular thing is to get you guys to read the books and explain them to me :P I always kind of assumed that Selena's magic here was that she usually had enough context from her historical background that she already always knew what the important bits were going in.

(Or, in my case, only read books where one of you has pre-vetted them and the author has already helpfully set out already what they think are the important points! I thought Game of Queens, for example, was pretty good at that; I usually was pretty sure what Gristwood thought the important points were. But she also didn't go into super detail on the things she wasn't interested in.)