Reading recommendations for serial story I can read over e-mail
June 25, 2015 1:36 PM Subscribe
I need something chapter-by-chapter or so to read online/in e-mail after I finish Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Special snowflake requirements within.
I have certain hours during the week where (a) I am being scrutinized heavily, all eyes are on me, and I need to Look Busy without surfing the Internet or using pocket gadgets in any way, and (b) I frequently run out of things I can do/work on during this time period. The latter situation can't be helped due to natural fluctuation/restrictions on my activities during this time, so I need to keep busy in a hidden sort of way.
I have been copying and pasting chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality into my e-mail and reading them while I wait, and that's worked great. However, I'm nearing the end of the series and not at all nearing the end of Look Busy time. I need recommendations of something else I can read without anyone figuring out what I am doing--"I'm just writing e-mail!"
Requirements:
(a) I need to be able to copy and paste and read whatever story in pieces over e-mail, so probably something that's already published online would work. Subscriptions to serial stories might also work, depends on how the web subscription works. Not sure how I feel on finished vs. unfinished stories, I'll consider both, I guess.
(b) Long serialized chapter stories is what I'm going for, though if something's really awesome in some other way I'll consider it.
(c) I like sci-fi/fantasy/mystery-ish stuff, though my tastes can be pretty flexible and I'm willing to consider other genres as long as they're not boring or super gross. As for fanfic, most of the time I'm not super into it except for HPMOR, but maybe under the circumstances I should consider some of that?
Thanks in advance for saving my sanity during periods of boredom!
I have certain hours during the week where (a) I am being scrutinized heavily, all eyes are on me, and I need to Look Busy without surfing the Internet or using pocket gadgets in any way, and (b) I frequently run out of things I can do/work on during this time period. The latter situation can't be helped due to natural fluctuation/restrictions on my activities during this time, so I need to keep busy in a hidden sort of way.
I have been copying and pasting chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality into my e-mail and reading them while I wait, and that's worked great. However, I'm nearing the end of the series and not at all nearing the end of Look Busy time. I need recommendations of something else I can read without anyone figuring out what I am doing--"I'm just writing e-mail!"
Requirements:
(a) I need to be able to copy and paste and read whatever story in pieces over e-mail, so probably something that's already published online would work. Subscriptions to serial stories might also work, depends on how the web subscription works. Not sure how I feel on finished vs. unfinished stories, I'll consider both, I guess.
(b) Long serialized chapter stories is what I'm going for, though if something's really awesome in some other way I'll consider it.
(c) I like sci-fi/fantasy/mystery-ish stuff, though my tastes can be pretty flexible and I'm willing to consider other genres as long as they're not boring or super gross. As for fanfic, most of the time I'm not super into it except for HPMOR, but maybe under the circumstances I should consider some of that?
Thanks in advance for saving my sanity during periods of boredom!
Wikisource is workspace-neutral formatted and if you want to read The King in Yellow or At the Mountains of Madness or A Princess of Mars or whatever, it's a good site.
Otherwise, there's always the plaintext versions of Project Gutenberg ebooks. You can always more a .txt file from a terminal window.
posted by sukeban at 1:56 PM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
Otherwise, there's always the plaintext versions of Project Gutenberg ebooks. You can always more a .txt file from a terminal window.
posted by sukeban at 1:56 PM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
Are you specifically looking for current works? Otherwise boy does Project Gutenberg have you covered. How about Frankenstein? The Oz books? Sherlock Holmes?
For more modern stuff, tor.com publishes a lot of fiction which could be cut and pasted easily. Not much serialized though.
posted by tchemgrrl at 2:02 PM on June 25, 2015
For more modern stuff, tor.com publishes a lot of fiction which could be cut and pasted easily. Not much serialized though.
posted by tchemgrrl at 2:02 PM on June 25, 2015
Fantasy publishers Small Beer Press and Baen Books offer some of their books online for free, legally, in HTML format. I particularly enjoyed The Baum Plan for Financial Independence by John Kessel and Stranger Things by Kelly Link.
[NOTE OF CAUTION] As another person who has killed a lot of aimless company time by reading, I would encourage you to break up your pleasure-reading with occasional bouts of nonfiction books and/or articles relating to your employment field. It makes you look and feel less like you're sneaky and hiding when/if you get caught. "Look how helpful and industrious I am in educating myself to become a better worker bee!" Remember also that if you're using company email or Internet access, your employer can see what you're accessing at any time. [/NOTE OF CAUTION]
posted by nicebookrack at 3:52 PM on June 25, 2015
[NOTE OF CAUTION] As another person who has killed a lot of aimless company time by reading, I would encourage you to break up your pleasure-reading with occasional bouts of nonfiction books and/or articles relating to your employment field. It makes you look and feel less like you're sneaky and hiding when/if you get caught. "Look how helpful and industrious I am in educating myself to become a better worker bee!" Remember also that if you're using company email or Internet access, your employer can see what you're accessing at any time. [/NOTE OF CAUTION]
posted by nicebookrack at 3:52 PM on June 25, 2015
If you're looking for more long, serialized web fiction, you could take a look at Wildbow's Worm, a superhero-apocolypse story with over double the wordcount of HPMOR, and which I actually found through the HPMOR author notes. Wildbow also has a current serialized biopunk story I've been enjoying, Twig, which (unlike HPMOR) regularly updates several times a week.
posted by JiBB at 4:31 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by JiBB at 4:31 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Pretty much any ebook released in the epub format could meet your requirements.
An epub file is is pretty much just a bunch of html documents compressed into an archive. If you unzip them you can open the html documents in your browser and easily paste the text into an email. The books are even broken up into nice sized chunks for you.
This might work for other ebook formats but the only other type I've tried it on is mobi and doesn't work for that.
posted by Television Name at 12:37 AM on June 26, 2015
An epub file is is pretty much just a bunch of html documents compressed into an archive. If you unzip them you can open the html documents in your browser and easily paste the text into an email. The books are even broken up into nice sized chunks for you.
This might work for other ebook formats but the only other type I've tried it on is mobi and doesn't work for that.
posted by Television Name at 12:37 AM on June 26, 2015
I would just head over to Wattpad and find some cool multi-part stories you can again post into your email.
posted by SassHat at 11:55 AM on June 30, 2015
posted by SassHat at 11:55 AM on June 30, 2015
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posted by Stacey at 1:47 PM on June 25, 2015