I feel like reading everything in the house, and i also want to get new books.
I’m in the middle of Midnight’s Children, I want to read Cosmos and The Fault in our Stars and A Casual Vacancy and Operation: Family Secrets and something else but I can’t remember.
But recommend some epic books so I have other awesomeness to read this year.
If you haven’t heard of this, you really should check it out.
It’s a sketchbook that was passed around between 71 fantastic artists, the ones you look up to, the ones you wish you could be like. Then, when they finished, they auctioned off the original and gave proceeds from prints to a charity called Room to Read, which basically builds libraries in places that don’t have them. There is nothing bad I can see about this project.
Check out the site, and if you haven’t gotten a copy, you seriously should.
Oh yes, almost forgot to post this. I can’t imagine anyone buying this.
Why?
Just…
If the art looked better I might see a point but..
(I am probably being catty again.)
Book Cupcakes (by Victoria’s Kitchen)
These are awesome but this is also the most random grouping of books I have ever seen.
Does anyone want to make me cupcakes?
Worked on The Bestiary Project a bit. Here, if you like. I didn’t accomplish much on it, but I did get something typed in and therefore I have done what I set out to do. It’s the DMV scene, just after she’s discovered Dugal is a kelpie and he’s run off with her.
What I’m Reading: Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
I’m not a big fan of drug novels, or drug scenes really. I do think the author keeps good control over his characters and the language. Even while they are stoned/high/whatever other term they use for each substance, the story is still clear enough that the reader doesn’t wonder whether the author was also high while writing. We perceive exactly what we need to for each chapter, so that while we don’t learn more than a character does while limited to his or her perspective, we are also not left totally lost and floundering through a psuedo-drug-haze of our own. The control is what I’m focusing on, and there’s a 90% chance that control is the main part of a short response paper about the craft of this novel will focus on.
In other news, the way that unfamiliar terminology is used, couched in enough familiar language to make it clear what the terms (at least probably) mean, is another point I think I’ll bring up.
If you’re into psychological stuff, action novels, the drug scene, Vietnam, that sort of thing, you may enjoy this. Also, it has NOTHING to do with the film by the same title. No actual military stuff in this novel.
What I’m Reading:Time’s Arrow
This book is fantastic. You must read it. The whole timeline is reversed, so the narrator sees life going backwards. He’s not quite aware of it either, so he keeps thinking things arrive in the trash and are made pretty and then sold to stores, things like that. Also, best line went something like, “Creation is easy. Destruction takes a long time.”
Read it!
What I’m reading: Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Well, I’m not going to lie, I’m no fan of Dickens. I’ve decided to go into this with as little prejudice as possible, especially because I have to read the whole thing, like it or not, for class. So far I’ve read little and my opinion hasn’t changed much. As an older, more experienced reader, it’s not nearly as inaccessible, but I am still having trouble not drifting off and thinking about Pokemon and whatnot in the middle of reading.
What I’m reading: To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
While I can respect her as an author, this particular piece is not something I will ever enjoy. The modernist approach, relegating any and all action to the backburner in favor of mucking about in the character’s head, that is annoying. It’s something I’ve been warned away from in my own writing on multiple occasions, so to have it held up as an example of this period’s best it irritating to say the least.
The narrator and Mrs. Ramsey have very similar voices, which I can understand to some extent. What I can’t understand is why Mrs. Ramsey can’t let the other characters finish a paragraph before stealing the narrative back. There are a few instances where this happens in the same sentence and that is the worst.
It has been a long time since a book literally put me to sleep. As it was in the bathtub, that could have been very bad.
