Hacker News Books

Fantastic creation! I had a blast "reading" The Call of Cthulhu.

Amazing idea, really I'm impressed. This intrigued me at first glance as a fun typing exercise, as I've always struggled with typing - I started using computers way before they started teaching typing around here, so my typing is far from the optimal 10 finger method, but I've always found typing exercises mind numbingly boring.

However, as I started typing The call of Cthulhu, I'm now much more intrigued by this as a new way to read books. It is a very different literary experience from just simply reading. I'm way more attentive to the text itself, rather than just the meaning, if that makes sense. Though it's very possible that this effect is going to go away as I get more used to it.

Any chance of typing out custom uploaded books? Maybe copy pasted plaintext?

Also kudos on the execution, the site is really nicely made.

This is a cool site, though I did notice something that I haven't seen anywhere before: the URL paths are JSON objects. Is there a reason for this? For example, for "The Call of Cthulhu", the URL is this:
https://www.typelit.io/chapters/%7B%22bookTitle%22:%20%22The...

Why not just use this?
https://www.typelit.io/chapters/5f468ca35e91c10be0883a57/The...

Also, the JSON object is fault tolerant and will display whatever you want for a title, even if there isn't a book available:
https://www.typelit.io/chapters/%7B%22%64%69%73%70%6C%61%79%...

Well that just cries out for a quote :)

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H.P. Lovecraft "The Call of Cthulhu"

It's funny how religious folks always go for the body horror. There's no existentialism here; no Kafka's "The Trial", Camus' "The Stranger", nor Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" to force us to contend with each other and our cold vast empty universe. (Indeed, reading each of these three authors today, we are forced to grapple with their sexism, racism, and theology, because like all humans they were deeply bigoted and hateful.)

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining it its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” -From the opening paragraph of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, H. P. Lovecraft

It's a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu".