One Thing Leads to Another

A lot of folks carp about how the internet has pushed its way into personal interactions. In fact, Isaac Asimov once wrote a mystery novel—that happened sometime in a future a lot like our own—in which people had become so little inclined to be in one another's company that they actually feared human interaction. (Which raises questions about how the next generation was to be created but that's another posting.)

And being the half-Luddite that I am, I buy a lot of that argument against the web.

But there are some ways that the web increases our interactions and here's an example.

As mentioned earlier, I'm a Netflix fan. I use my queue as a way to keep a running list of films I want to see some time or another. As of this writing, I have over 300 movies and TV series and documentaries on it which is going to take me a long time to get through considering I get only one movie at a time and average watching only one a week.

The one occupying the top spot in my lineup recently is a Brit series called Lark Rise to Candleford. Now I have a confession to make—I'm the type of reader who often flips to the back of a book to see how it ends long before I get to that spot in the text. I figure if I don't like the ending, it's not worth reading and time is short.

I'm also not above searching for episode descriptions so I'll know ahead of time what's going to happen to my favorite characters in a series. I've never bought the argument that it ruins the journey to know where you're headed.

So I was trolling on Netflix recently to see what I could find out about Lark Rise to Candleford and came across a member review that said something to the effect that "if you like the actor Brendan Coyle who plays Robert Timmins, you should see another BBC production called The Glass Virgin based on the Catherine Cookson book by the same name."

OK, I thought, who's Catherine Cookson?

So I flip over to Amazon, search for this author's name and lo and behold, this author is widely popular in Great Britain and writes books that look promising to my readerly eye.

One trip to the Quechee Library later and I have a Cookson of my own to peruse. I have no idea whether I'll like it or not but I love the idea that a retired Limey (as the Netflix reviewer called himself) could lead me to a new-to-me author with the potential of giving me hours of pleasure.

One things leads to another if you're willing to follow the trail.