Tag: reading

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: jubtimism. (Yes, that’s a weird combo of jubilant and optimistic, weird in face of the dark news that keeps spitting in my face.)

Hey to all who are doing time with me on the third rock. Today is Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024. Completely gray on gray today, again, with sunshine shifting and sliding through cloud breaks when it can. Daffs have broken out to spread their color across the sprinter landscape. 50 F now, no snow on the ground in the valley or nearby peaks. If you need to see some snow, hop onto I5 and drive a few miles south to Mt. Ashland. If you don’t turn off for Mt Ashland but keep going toward California, Mt. Shasta, just fifty miles away, will present a postcard image for you as the Interstate rises and falls.

I watched the Super Bowl last Sunday and saw some NFL commercials about bullying. That woke up some Neurons, who came up with a 1989 Chris Rea song, “The Road to Hell”, and have it playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark coming in two weeks). See, these big NFL players quoted children and adults who were bullied. The survivors talked about facing daily fear. Terror. Likewise, we have this election campaign where fear and terror are being employed in lieu of policies or intelligent discourse. If Trump wins, he promised to be a dictator. Some of his followers tried overthrowing the election results back on Jan 6, 2021. They now promise greater violence if Trump loses, as do members of Congress who carry his water. Contrary to all presented facts and evidence, they insist that Trump win the 2020 election, but was cheated out of staying in office.

And now, facing all manner of trials and criminal charges, which seem to be stacking up, Trump wants to be declared immune from anything criminal he did while President. As the first judicial panel ruling on his claim noted, that would remove the POTUS from the checks and balances built into the Constitution. If that happened, what, beyond his character, would stop President Biden from saying, “Gosh, if Trump is immune, so am I.”

So there are fears out there for our democracy and republic. Hence, The Neurons pulled up the lines from Chris Rea’s 1989 song, “The perverted fear of violence chokes the smile off every face. Common sense is ringing out bells. This ain’t no technological breakdown. Oh, no. This is the road to hell.”

Sorry if I’m as dark as my coffee this morning. Been reading Rachel Maddow’s book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, yesterday and today. Illuminating, of course, but sometimes history can be depressing. She traces the efforts of paramilitary groups trying to end democracy in the US back in the 1930s to give fascism a chance. They worked under names like The Christian Front, the Silver Legion, and the American White Guard. These were lunatics with powerful friends, which aptly summarizes much of the MAGA movement and QAnon. In summary, both in the past and now, I didn’t realize that so many Americans harbored an authoritarian mindset. Being a Star Trek fan, I though boldly heading toward a new era of equality, freedom, and justice. I didn’t realize that a block of people exist who abhor those things.

On the flip side of my dark street, Jamie Lee Curtis’s performance as the matriarch in The Bear was powerful stuff. Yes, we’re just catching up with the second season. I’d heard about the hit series, and decided to check it out. Glad on did.

Also on the bright side, the house painting is moving closer to fini. That’s pretty darn exciting. Looking back, the project’s genesis was in the early months of 2020. We were just collecting names for bids when COVID landed and the shutdown commenced. In 2021, we moved toward getting quotes but supplies were limited because of supply chain issues in response to the COVID shutdown. Not much was done in 2022 about the painting because…(cough, cough) COVID. Finally, in 2023, quotes were gathered and agreements made, but the painting backlog pushed us back to this year.

I’ve had coffee, thanks. Be strong, remain positive, lean forward, and voOte. Register first, of course. Pitter patter, get ‘er at her. Here is Chris Rea with his slide guitar. Cheer

0

Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

When Blackouts: A Novel by Justin Torres won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2023, I read a summary of the book and thought, oh, I want to read that. I went online to my library, put a hold on it, and learned that I was number sixteen. My wife then told me that she’d put a hold on it and was number seventeen.

Yesterday, I received a notice that the book was available for me. My wife, being nice, offered to pick it up when she was downtown. When I came home from my writing session, I asked her where it was.

“I’m reading it,” she replied. “But they told me that my copy is available, so you can go pick that up.”

Duped again.

0

Surprised

I overheard two strangers chat a little in the coffee shop. One asked the other about the book he was reading. The other replied, “It’s Dostoevsky. It’s written as a series of letters.”

Poor Folk, I guess, sneaking a glance over. I’d read it, I remembered, wondering if that was the book he was reading. I took a minute to hunt down when I’d read it, remembering it was the summer of 1989, when I was living in Germany. I took summer college courses which addressed different Russian, Jewish, French, and American authors. Dosteovsky was one of three Russian writers.

Over thirty years ago, I suddenly realized with a mental thud. The race of time surprised me once again. I’ll be 68 years old this year. That just amazes me. It shouldn’t, I know, yet it does. It feels like just yesterday that I was thinking, wow, Dad is 68 this year. Gonna be seventy in a few.

And now it’s me.

0

The Writing Moment

I love reading and writing. I think I’m learning to love editing and revising, but they’re more challenging.

Writing is a matter of switching on my imagination and playing various games. These games are typically, ‘what if’ and ‘who did’ variations, putting the characters into interesting and challenging situations, and then finding the resolution of those created problems. I write these in bursts and then spend time refining and expanding on them.

I’m a pantser, as it’s called. Pantsers are also sometimes called organic writers; we don’t outline, or outline very little.

A problem with my method of writing from the hip is what happens next is often a surprise. Characters often go into unexpected directions. As I write then, I need to address how they veered from my original intentions. Then I edit to some degree, to confirm it all somewhat fits together.

Editing and revising requires me to delve more deeply into these matters, also addressing pacing, and clarifying as I do. These activities are seriously embraced once a draft has become solid enough to start resembling a novel.

Editing and revising requires more discipline, and I’m not the most disciplined individual. Burdened with its own challenges, editing and revising also brings greater reward. As many writers will say, the first few drafts are learning the story, finding the plot, and understanding the characters. For me, the editing and revising parts are about developing authenticity and depth.

Then comes reading. I mean writing others’ works, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, and any of the sub-genres.

I often limit my fiction reading while I’m writing. I know from my experiences that fiction reading causes me to challenge what’s up with my own fiction in progress. So I avoid it.

But all reading also inspires me to write. Non-fiction pulls me into a different direction, of course, which ends up costing me time as I pursue knowledge and expansion of things I seek to understand more deeply or clearly.

Once I’m finished with drafts and enter the editing and revision stage, I happily jump back into fiction reading. Where fiction reading now becomes a problem in that stage is that I need to divide my time between the book I’m enjoying reading, and the book I’m enjoying creating.

You know, though, I have it pretty good if that’s the summation of my life’s problems.

Just for the record, I’m now reading the second book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. A creation of alternative history, it’s written like historic fiction with a fantasy kicker. That kicker is the existence of dragons. These dragons are intelligent and well-spoken. Yes, they speak, and they develop solid, beautiful relationships with their people.

They’re also used as instruments of war. A great deal of the first book dealt with dragon strategy in conjunction with naval warfare, and the tending and treatment of dragons.

It’s all set in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, but fascinating politic variations emerge, as well as challenges built into that era regarding class and sex roles. Lot of fun to read. I can imagine writing it was terrific fun.

As far as non-fiction reading, I’m now into The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. I’d previously read his books, The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. I enjoy his writing style and the information they convey about things that I didn’t know. I know so little about this world, and it’s fun and exciting to learn more.

I don’t hesitate to recommend any of the mentioned books. My hope is that someday at least one of my efforts will be regarded and enjoyed in the same way that I enjoyed these.

2

Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

There are perils in reading which I was never warned about.

For example, have you ever felt a need to use the restroom, and decided to read a book as you sat on the commode?

And then you ended up sitting there reading for so long, engrossed by the book, that your rear end and a foot ‘go asleep’?

No? It’s just me, then?

For the record, the book which caused me a numb butt and number foot is His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik, published in 2006. The writing style for this historic fantasy novel about dragons during the Napoleonic Wars reminds me of Patrick O’Brian’s style for Master and Commander and the Aubrey-Maturin series. Besides those, I see the same style in CJ Sansom’s terrific Mathew Shardlake series, as well as the historic fiction series by Bernard Cornwell — Sharpe’s rifles, Saxon stories and The Last Kingdom — among others.

His Majesty’s Dragon is set in a world where dragons exist, critical for the plot. These dragons think and speak, and display human personality traits. They’re breed and used in war as aerial forces. The focus of this book is a large black dragon named Temeraire, and his aviator, Captain William Laurence. Captaining the Reliant, Captain Laurence wins the dragon egg in a naval battle. After that, the book is about the developing relationship between man and beast. Along the way, we discover how dragons are employed in war, and the social issues about being a dragon aviator. Such fine, and so finely detailed, it’s wonderful story telling.

If you pick up Her Majesty’s Dragon, you might want to limit your toilet reading time. Trust me on this recommendation.

2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑