Tag: books

Hand Basket

My current audiobook is making me feel like an immature child and it is giving me the giggles.

I am listening to Recursion by Blake Crouch. I’m about 2/3 of the way through and I am really digging it. I keep thinking I know where it’s going and then it curves off to someplace totally unexpected. That’s not what this post is about though.

This post is about how I am a nine year old goofball. One of the characters is named Helena. Every time one of the two readers says the character’s name I insert the words hand basket immediately after it.

Helena (hand basket) said hello.

Helena (hand basket) did something.

Every time I do it I feel like I am going to giggle. What a goof. Sometimes I think that I am going to stop it and I do… briefly. I stop inserting hand basket but instead I insert the word bucket.

Helena (bucket) walked down the hall.

Helena (bucket) opened the door.

Yeah, I am a child. A goofy, lame, immature child.

Movies vs Books

Why am I in such a Tolkien phase right now? It’s probably due to the second season of Rings of Power, but I read The Silmarillion and I am rereading Lord of the Rings and I am watching Rings of Power and I am (finally) watching the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies. I’m about 15 minutes away from finishing the second movie. It is requiring more suspending of disbelief than I am really willing to give. I’m in a weirdly completist mode now and have to get through all three movies (even though it is laughable that Jackson took a 400 page book and adapted it into a nine hour movie).

What’s the point of this post though? The point of this post is a spoiler free comment on Rings of Power season two episode four. I saw the first two Lord of the Rings movies before I read the books. When I was done with everything I was able to look back and consider if the books were better or worse than the movies. I think they are pretty even. There are a couple of things about the movies that I prefer to the books though. First, there is a whole lot less singing in the movies. In Fellowship, especially, people are singing all over the place and it just gets tedious.

The other thing that I like better about the movies eventually became my absolute favorite thing about the movies. Literally the thing I like best. Simply, they left Tom Bombadil out. I mean… The Hobbit was a kids book. Lord of the Rings was not. Somehow it seems that Tolkien must have tried to make Fellowship a little more kid-friendly by throwing this insufferably boring, painful character named Tom Bombadil into the story. In my current re-read of the books I am in the middle of the Tom Bombadil arc right now and I cannot get out of it fast enough. It’s just awful. Jackson left him out of the movies and it makes me love the movies that much more.

I just finished this week’s new episode of Rings of Power. Season two, episode four. Without giving out any spoilers, mostly because the news has been out since we saw a trailer months ago, Tom Bombadil is in the episode.

Why? Why, Amazon Prime Video? Why are you torturing me like this? I will say that he’s nowhere near as awful in the episode as he was in the books, but all the same… why would you do this to me?

Up and Unmotivated

It’s an office day today. I’m up early to start my exercising and to get some shite* done and here I am typing in this completely useless blog post.

Motivation level = Zero.

Hey! I am trying to pick off another episode of Torchwood because I am trying to finish off the show (even though I don’t exactly love it) and here is season three episode one and Peter Capaldi is in it! Doctor Who Number 12’s actor in his second of two Doctor Who related roles from before he was actually cast as The Doctor. Fascinating.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. The morning routine. Let’s start my exercising and maybe get some shite done before I have to drive in to work.

*Back in the 1980’s I started obsessively reading the novels and short stories written by Clive Barker. Mr. Barker, in at least one of his works, used the word “shite”. I had never heard or read that word before. Mr. Barker is from Liverpool. Is shite a Liverpudlian thing? I don’t know. I do know that I am currently a little more than half way through the audio book version of Weaveworld and hearing the word shite get used again is making me feel nostalgic for the old days of language discovery and shite.

Books

Daily writing prompt
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
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This question is pandering to the religious folks, right? 95% of the responses are going to be the bible. I know it. You know it. We all know it. Insert my frustrated sigh here.

Three books… I don’t know if I can narrow it down to three. They’ve all had an effect on me to some extent or another, even the crappy books.

Okay, the first one we’ll go with came from my school days. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. I was born in the 1970’s and came of age in the 1980’s. The cold war had a big influence on who I was. I don’t think all of my friends were obsessed with imminent nuclear annihilation, but I sure as hell was. We lived close enough to a major city and, more frighteningly, a couple of air force bases and one army base that the chances of me and my family surviving a nuclear conflict was pretty much zero. When you’re 13 years old and have a vivid imagination and a bit of a dark side… well… that leads to quite a bit of near panicked fear. Alas, Babylon was written in 1959 and it tells the story of a town in Florida trying to survive the aftermath of world war iii. I was both terrified and fascinated by it. I forget what grade we were in when we had to read it for English class but I loved the book and didn’t sleep for weeks after I read it. I knew that the situation described in the book were not accurate by 1980’s nuclear capabilities (the bombs described in the book were wimpy by comparison) and it ignored the whole nuclear winter thing. Still, it made me want to read more post-nuclear fiction in some weird attempt to prepare myself for the inevitable.

On to book number two. This one also goes back to my school days. 8th grade, if I remember correctly, but it could be earlier than that. Hot Rod by Henry Gregor Felsen. This one hit me hard because there is an extremely graphic and violent twist in it. It was bloody and gory and I couldn’t believe we were asked to read it in school. At that point in my young, innocent, sheltered life I was not allowed to watch R rated movies. This type of violence was not something I was used to. The book was written in 1950 and was about teenagers driving souped up cars way too fast. You can probably guess what the graphic, violent twist entailed. This book clued me into the idea that a novel didn’t have to be PG rated. There was more to life than that, and books could give me a glimpse.

The third book I am going to go with is Weaveworld by Clive Barker. In my last year in high school I was exposed to the horror genre through a movie written and directed by Clive Barker called Hellraiser. It scared the every loving shit out of me. I was terrified, I was grossed out, and I was instantly obsessed with the genre. When I found out that Clive Barker was better known for writing short stories and novels I checked him out. I can’t remember if Weaveworld was the first of his books that I read. It might have been The Damnation Game, or one of the Books of Blood collection. I’m going with Weaveworld because it was the best of them all, by far. My new horror movie fandom morphed into a horror fiction fandom almost instantly. I tore through everything Barker had written up to that point. Weaveworld is amazing. It’s not really scary, though there’s some gore to be found. It’s actually more of a fantasy novel, I think. Really… it’s just a Barker novel. It’s a little of everything thrown into one super imaginative setting that no one else could have ever come up with. It’s very hard to explain. There’s one other item of note here. When I ran out of Barker books to read I needed to find someone else to hold me over until more books were released. That’s when I started dipping my toes into Stephen King. Yeah… we’re still drowning in that particular literary pool today. Talk about a master, right?

Okay, there’s three books. I could have mentioned 1000 others, and none of them are about a guy who is his own father.

Brain Drop

Daily writing prompt
Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.
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The first thing that comes to my mind? What if it is completely uninteresting? Worse, what if nothing comes to mind? What if my brain is entirely empty? Oh no! That doesn’t leave us with much to discuss. This might be pretty weak as a writing prompt, eh?

Fortunately for me and my tiny old person brain, there was a thought that came to mind as I read the prompt. Unfortunately for you, my readers and only friends* it is nothing interesting. Just before I sat down at my desk and brought up wordpress.com, I had finished my daily exercise. 46 minutes of running (jogging, pronounced “yogging” with a soft J**) in place. The thought that was going through my head at that very moment was…

Holy crap my legs are dead. 46 minutes of jogging (yogging) in place is tough to pull off.

That is it. That was the first thing that came into my sad little brain. I wish it could have been something more interesting and exciting and intellectually stimulating but alas, no. My sincere apologies, friends.

*This is not a movie quote. It’s a paraphrase of a movie quote. A Clockwork Orange. In my teens and early 20’s it was a huge movie for me. When I was a little older I had a friend who had dealt with some bad things when she was young and it changed my perspective on the movie. It was triggering for her, though we didn’t use that term back then, and I saw it in a new light. Once I met Jen and Bellana I suddenly understood her problem with it and felt like even more of a fucking idiot for not having seen it before. The movie includes A LOT of violence against women and girls and now that I had a woman and a girl who were more important to me than anything else in the entire universe I understood that I could never watch that movie again. Now the movie is triggering for me too, in a different way but still pretty painful. Never again. Never ever. I still find myself quoting a few lines now and then because they are so completely burned into my brain, and the language created for the story is pretty unique and amazing. The treatment of the women in the story though… yikes. What the fuck was I thinking when I was a kid? How could I have been so blind and selfish? Never again.

**This is also a paraphrase of a movie quote. Anchorman. This one is something I can watch over and over again. Yeah there is a lot of misogyny in the story, but it literally exists to show how stupid men were toward women back in the 70’s. I mean, 60% of the time it’s accurate every time.

My Slightly Defective Brain

In 1982 King Crimson recorded a song called, “Neal and Jack and Me.” It’s on the album called Beat.

Recently I have been listening to an audiobook version The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. There is a character who often refers to her parents by their first names. Their names are Neil and Melanie. Every time this character says the name Neil my brain inserts “and Jack and me.” It’s driving me a little crazy. Neil (and Jack and me) and Melanie did this. Melanie and Neil (and Jack and me) did that.

Can you imagine?

Tonight my wife was telling me about someone she’s working with. His name is Neil. Every time she said his name my tiny little broken brain inserted “and Jack and me.” Neil (and Jack and me) said this. Neil (and Jack and me) said that.

Somebody stop me! Somebody fix me!

Re-Reader

Daily writing prompt
What book could you read over and over again?
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I could give you a list for this prompt. A long list. I’m not one of those folks who reads a book once then never returns to it. I am a regular re-reader. I don’t re-read everything, but there have been a lot of books that I’ve read multiple times.

Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is probably the big one. Every time he added a book to the series I would re-read all of the previous books in preparation. After he finished the seventh and “final” book of the series I went back and tore through the whole thing again. I may have actually done that 2-3 times. The only book I haven’t re-read is the one he wrote after he finished. The eighth book in the seven book series. I’ll get to it some day.

The Harry Potter series has been re-read a bunch of times. The Lord of the Rings has too. All sorts of Clive Barker and Stephen King books have had many reads. When it comes to scary, those two are just the best. Just within the last couple of weeks I’ve re-read a book. I picked up an audiobook copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments which is a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Before I started digging into it I went back and re-read The Handmaid’s Tale so that I could be clear on the differences between the book and the Hulu series (even though the second book is sort of more a sequel to the show than the book… sort of).

To sum up, there have been so many books that I have re-read over the years that I can’t even remember them all. There have been some books that I have read through five or six times, or maybe even more. Why not? A good movie is re-watchable, right? Why not a good book? There’s always more to dig in to. Always.

My Effin’ Life

Bloganuary writing prompt
What books do you want to read?
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I used to read constantly. I’ve worn reading glasses since I was a kid. A few years ago my eye glass prescription needs changed and I had to switch to progressives. That made sitting down and reading a book more difficult. It’s more stressful on my eyes and they get tired very fast. 

At the time I was commuting to work over and hour each way four days a week. I had a very active Audible account and I was listening to piles upon piles of audio books. When the pandemic hit I inactivated the account. I don’t do well with audio books when I am not a captive, driving audience. That means there have been very few books read (in any manner) since early 2020.

I am going to need to have a new eye test one of these days. There’s a part of me that wants to get a set of reading glasses again to go along with the mid-distance computer glasses I have and the progressives I wear when I am not sitting at my computer. That’s a lot of money for specs though so probably not.

There is one book that I started reading a little after xmas though. I’m only on chapter three and have only been reading a few pages at a time. It’s a memoir. It’s Geddy Lee’s My Effin’ Life. I am very driven to get through it but it’s hard to find the time or the energy. I will read it. I have to. It’s a moral imperative. 

Reading/Writing Nooks

Daily writing prompt
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
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Wow… did the B-team write this one? Are the daily prompt writers on break this week? Did they just ask ChatGPT for a list of dumb questions? Today’s daily writing prompt thingie is just… bad. Really bad. Utterly bad.

I guess here it goes. My response today is a photography response. I took some pictures of my favorite writing and reading nooks in our house. Why? Because I’ve already built my perfect reading and writing spaces. The writing space is a desk with a laptop and the reading spaces are comfy chairs with lights. Perfect. So detailed and worthy of a writing prompt. Ugh.

Writing nook, which also doubles as a music recording nook. My home computer desk in the cellar:

As for reading nooks, I will share three. This one is my main go-to, even though it is not in the usual place due to the xmas tree. It is also missing it’s usual reading light and end table, but it still works. I just open the curtain and use the bay window for both end table needs and lots of extra light:

118/365

Reading nook number two is on the other side of the living room. I don’t use this one very often, but it works perfectly:

The fourth and final image for today’s masterpiece of a blog post is the reading nook in the bedroom. Sorry that the lights were off when I took this with the Hipstamatic app so it’s pretty dark. I don’t use this one often, but I love that it’s there. I often sack out here while I am cooking dinner in the kitchen, which is the room next door. Fascinating, I know:

There. A pointless, shitty response to a pointless, shitty daily writing prompt. Yippee.