Much of the reading I have to do is textbook reading which is very boring.  Unless you find that certain textbook author (whom I have yet to come across) textbooks are pretty lifeless.  Even if they are describing something amazing.

The textbooks aren’t really the issue for me, though.  I skim them, rather than get in-depth with the reading assignments.  It’s being forced to read other books–in the case of my Literature class, they are classic novels.  Reading for pleasure is one thing, but being required to read a novel, with time constraints, is another animal altogether (when coupled with other readings, there just never seems to be enough time).

There are three novels I will be reading for my class: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway and Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. I am also reading, for my Anthropology class, a fascinating look at the ancestors of humankind called Our Kind, by Marvin Harris.

We received our assignment for The House of Mirth just days ago.  I am halfway through the novel, and need to be done by Tuesday.  I just can’t bring myself to stick with it.  I feel like my brain is rebelling.  Does anyone else have this issue?  I’d like to hear about how you wonderful readers deal with it.

The good thing about this assignment is, that it’s a book review.  After I finish (Fates willing) The House of Mirth, I get to write a review of it.  If there is one thing I enjoy, is reviewing!  And getting a grade for it can’t hurt.

I will some fodder for articles here on the site after Christmas (since I asked my mother for some new books to read as gifts).  You can look forward to–and I know this, because I had to place the order for the books–reviews for The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing by Tarquin Hall (another in the Vish Puri series that I covered before), The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens and The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice by Trevor Corson.

I look forward to reading these books, and sharing my opinion of them with you.  Until then, I am going to try to post here and there to keep myself writing for the site, and let you know what’s going on.

I got a novella started.

I know. Because that’s exactly what I needed added on to my goals: another book, right? While contextually speaking it is canonical to the overall novel, the theme, subject matter and even the culture of it is entirely different. Pieces of it will be in another language. It definitely calls for some research (which thankfully I have already enlisted in the form of a person). There’s nothing better than personal experiences to add some life to a story.

This thing is going to be written in big chunks, just to keep me from devoting too much damn time to it. Plus the plot is simplistic in nature, so I’m hinging all the value on character and dialog emphasis. Fingers crossed that I can get this thing going somewhere, because I’m kind of excited by it.

About 900% of this movie took place in this forest...

Let me get this out of the way: I don’t want to write a movie review on this, so I won’t.  This won’t be a review in the strict sense of the word.  I am not going to pick it apart, scene by scene, etc.  I am just going to state a few things.  I know I am late on this bandwagon–especially considering I went to a midnight showing of the movie last week–but I feel some things need to be talked about.

Since I am not in a tryptopha-induced coma (and my originally planned shopping excursion has petered out), I figured now would be a good time to talk about it.  Sadly, this write-up doesn’t fulfill my normal Thursday writing schedule.  Anyway, on to the movie.

The short of it is, I really enjoyed this movie.  A lot.  There are completely intense moments in this movie, and it’s so very dark, especially when compared to the rest of the series.  It is a marked improvement from the last film in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Deathly Hallows is much more faithful to the source material–and it can be, since it’s split into two separate movies.

The long of it is…well…that exactly.  It’s LONG.  Though it doesn’t have the run time of some of the other movies in the series, it felt like it took forever.  I found, however, that the book tended to do the same thing.  I know that the scenes that take place while Harry, Ron and Hermione are on the run contribute to the story, they were–quite frankly–some of the the most boring in the movie.

That’s not to say that there isn’t any action.  There are plenty of action scenes interspersed throughout the film, but they seem to take forever to get to.  I blame it all on the forest scenes, of course.  I honestly think that the darkness–and I am talking literal darkness here, nothing to do with tone–also made it seem much longer than it actually was.  There was so little in the way of the day-night cycle, that it messed with my perception.

All-in-all I really enjoyed it.  I laughed, I cried (for those who have read the book, Dobby’s big scene is a KILLER!), I squirmed a little.  Most importantly, though, I had a great time with my sister (even if I did have to wake up to go to class a few hours after getting home).  I also got pretty excited for the next film which is due out next year.

One thing I will definitely be looking at is the newest release in the Harry Potter movie franchise: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I.  I am going to see it tonight, with my sister.  Sometime tomorrow–after classes, and when I am more coherent–I will post some thoughts about it.

I should also be posting a review of Lafcadio Hearn’s In Ghostly Japan soon, as well.  I am reading it for a paper I am writing for Geography (the paper is about spiritual Japan), and am really enjoying it.

I don’t think I will have the chance to post anything over the Thanksgiving holiday, as I have the aforementioned paper, and another one (about Anthem) due just after the holiday break.  If I don’t have a  chance to post, I wish you all the best over your holiday!

I’m 26 now. That novel has yet to be written.

That is (I hope) until now. A myriad of triumphs as well as an assortment of disasters have waylaid any attempt to get that book off the ground. This is the attempt to give something I’ve always dreamed about wings.

A year ago, I decided I would actually do it: I would churn out that great idea for a novel bottled up in my head and have that gigantic monkey flung from my back, hoping that he screamed as he hurtled into the darkness. I was drafting up story ideas, characters, plot threads and outlines, even ordering textbooks on making narratives stronger and more fluid. I started looking into buying a domain name for a writing blog, and I felt a little excitement stirring a part of me I’d forgotten exists. But something else happened a year ago as well: I got a new job.

Not a dream job, mind you, but a good job. A job some people (me not being one of them) settle into for the rest of their lives and retire. Comfortable. I started working absurd hours. I took shifts that no one else wanted, and before long I was the guy people called a workaholic. I’m talking spans as long as 42 days straight in the summer, only taking a day off to go to a wedding. Even my best friend told me I needed to slow down but I didn’t care; I’ve always tackled new challenges that way, with some primal need to dominate whatever it is I do, trying to become a perfectionist. Still, in the moments when I actually took a minute to catch my breath, the book would call to me. I kept working.

Eventually, I finally started to break down from the work load. Despite the fact that I consider myself disciplined (and irrationally invincible), things started to catch up to me. I had to finally admit I was… normal. I needed rest. It was probably the best thing I ever did.

I spent a few days flipping through my old moleskine notebooks, reading the sporadic ideas that appeared to come from a complete stranger. I would look at a passage and say, “I could have done so much more exposition here”, or “this whole section should go” and then I realized something: I had changed. Not my personality, but just the way I percieved things.

Turns out all those crazy hours I had put into working on building maintenance and learning snippets of engineering technology had actually rubbed off. I could approach the same ideas from new angles, with fresh insight and perspective. Not only that, all the time I’d spent conversing with coworkers made me realize I’d never had much life experience to write off of when I was younger that I could now call upon. I wouldn’t say it was equivocal to Neo rising from the dead, but I certainly felt hopeful again.

I stopped working 7 days a week. Or, at least I’m trying; I work a lot less than I used to.

Then I answered the book’s call, finally. I blew the dust off of old character concepts and ideas and started putting them together with themes that had been running through my head, and I almost laughed at how easy it was to draft a plot. I actually had a story to tell. It felt amazing. Still, I knew it would only get me so far.

I needed motivation. It’s cool for someone to be all talk and no sizzle, but that just doesn’t work for me. I need a fire lit under my ass every now and then, and I needed no excuses to not do it. So I actually started taking care of myself again. Eating a little healthier, working out again, and actually finding time for a social/dating life. Then, I took a vacation… a real vacation – with beaches and stuff -just so I couldn’t complain about being burned out. I’m looking into joing a writing group at the moment, but this blog is the final piece.

Yes, I am finally writing a blog about… well, writing. This is to remind me of the promise I made to myself at age 11 after reading Battlefield Earth and The Elfstones of Shannara back to back. Don’t bother looking up the books; I can just tell you they’re both nerdy, but they mean a lot to me. It’s also a thank you and a promise to the friends who have supported me as I make a headlong rush into the burning building I call love… er, I mean writing. At this point, I equate both scenarios to be identical.

This blog is also a reminder that I remain skeptical of my ability to finish this especially in my predicted timeframe of spring 2011, hence the title.

Yeah, Write.

I was absent from my posting duties last week, and it makes me feel incredibly guilty.  I guess that’s why I am writing this short musing piece.  A nice way to alleviate any guilt I hold, I suppose.

We are reading Anthem by Ayn Rand for my English class, so I am glad to say I will have something to write about when I finish.  This is my first foray into Ayn Rand’s works, and I am enjoying it completely.  I am trying to follow the assignment schedule, and read the chapters as they are assigned.  I am not sure I will be able to stick with that.

I plan on taking part of the Japanese Film Blogathon over at Wild Grounds.  I am contemplating which movie(s) to watch, and I am pretty sure Kikujiro will be the first.  I will post a link somewhere, when I get started so you can see what I think of it.

Vampire Hunter D, drawn by one of my favorite artists, Yoshitaka Amano.

As I don’t forsee much work being completed this weekend, let me fire off a shot before this mad weekend begins… HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Now that I got that out of my system, let me say that if I don’t dress up as War Machine this time next year, my life can be summed up as an all-around failure. Until then, we got some good stuff coming in the near future. I’m charging through Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings (literally 75% done), and hope to have a review done for the coming week. I also have something major to announce on the site next week in honor of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month!), as well as some tips to get my other aspiring writers on their grind.

Good things are coming folks, so stay tuned!

p.s. – we’re also looking for a few good writers for the site, so if you’re interested, get in touch with me at shaka@paperspaceships.com

And since I actually have been using it lately (to stalk great writers), hit up the twitter account and we’ll make fun of the internets. TOGETHER.

I remembered a post I had written mentioning my literature class, and the short stories we have been reading.  Well, in lieu of my normal review, I would like to take a look at a short story that was actually pretty interesting to me.  Part of the reason I am fond of the story is that it was quite…odd for the time period it was written.

The short story I am going to look at is called “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner.  In class we read two selections from Faulkner’s work, the other being “Barn Burning”.  While I enjoyed “Barn Burning”, “A Rose for Emily” was much more interesting.  And, frankly, it was less difficult to read (as “Barn Burner” had a lot of southern speech, which took some getting used to).

A Rose for Emily is a Gothic tale, which isn’t all that uncommon for the time it was written (1930).  What is uncommon about it, is the lengths that Faulkner took the story to.  There will be more on that later.

The narrator–which is basically an inhabitant from the town that Miss Emily (as she is called) lived in–opens the story by talking about Miss Emily’s passing.  Miss Emily was a respected member of society, though she was a bit of a recluse.  While the town remembers her, they speak of her odd behaviors.

Years before, Miss Emily’s father died and she refused to relinquish his body to anyone.  She even went as far as telling them that he was not dead.  Three days after his death, officials forced themselves into her home to remove the body.  It seems, to the reader, that Miss Emily is a bit of an eccentric.

After her father’s death, Miss Emily begins to seek company in the form of someone from the other gender–something her father made sure never happened.  Much to the town’s chagrin, she began seeing a man who was a known homosexual, and well below her social status.  Though it seems she truly enjoys the company of this man, Homer Barron.

Not only was Miss Emily seen around town with someone below her, she also starting acting kind of strange as well.  This includes going to the pharmacy in search of the most potent rat poison that they offer (pure arsenic).  She demands the arsenic, and refuses to tell the druggist what she plans on using it for.

The townspeople fear that Miss Emily and Homer had a falling out, and plans to kill herself with the poison.  Miss Emily gets a bit of a reputation as someone who is…unhinged.

Miss Emily is later seen around town buying some items of an intimate nature.  She purchases a man’s toiletry set with the initial HB engraved on them.  She also buys a full set of man’s pajamas in Mr. Barron’s size, as well.

Though he isn’t seen much after Miss Emily purchases these items, they are sure he has proposed.  The town never seems to become suspicious, when they stop seeing him all together.  When a foul smell exudes from Miss Emily’s house, they chalk it up to an animal’s death in her cellar.  Men from the town spread lime, and the smell goes away.

Until Miss Emily’s death, no one has much of a chance to enter her home.  At the funeral, they decide to enter the other rooms of the house, even a boarded up room that hasn’t seen the light of day in many years.  In the room, they find the decomposed corpse of Homer Barron atop the bed; the toiletries Miss Emily bought for him on display nearby.

Upon inspection of the corpse and the bed, they notice an indent on the pillow next to his.  Within the indent, they find a long strand of hair that matches Miss Emily’s.

The intrigue of the story really grabbed me.  From Miss Emily’s fierce watch over her father’s body, and her denial of his death, to the fact that she dated someone much lower–at least socially–than she was, Faulkner plays up the intrigue well.  It’s not all social intrigue, but honest mystery, as well.

Where Faulkner may have gone too far with the story (for the 1930s, at any rate) was the implication that Miss Emily was a necrophiliac.  That wasn’t something that you had chance to read about, and it spoke of some unheard of depravity.

Since my summary of the story didn’t do the story justice, I recommend that anyone who wants to read it should!  You can even find it online if you can’t find it in print.

One of the best of the year, hands down.

Hey, you. Pay attention for a second.

If you read good books and you have yet to touch Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series, it’s time to get on board; this is easily one of the best fiction series to come out in years. YEARS. Don’t make me come knocking on your door.

Ahem.

For the already enlightened readers who just haven’t gotten around to it just yet, let me break Mockingjay, the finale in the trilogy for you without spoiling it: Holy crap this book was good. Since I’m aiming for an anti-spoiler review, this will be very brief.

Mockingjay picks up a month after the events of Catching Fire, with Katniss Everdeen and crew prepared to make their final stand against the Capitol. Much of the first third of book is Katniss trying to adjust to her image as a heroine in the eyes of the people, this time in the form of the Mockingjay. One thing keeps consistent throughout this entire series is Suzanne Collins’ ability to make Katniss such a refreshingly honest character it’s ridiculous. She’s not overly polite or mean; she just calls things the way she sees them and deals with the consequences afterwards. Honestly, I love her slightly more for her ability to say what she feels not to be vindictive, but merely to get it off her chest.

If you’ve read the other books, you’ve come to expect that a lot of characters die in every book – it’s kind of the point – so you can expect more of the same in this regard. Here’s something else to expect: Mockingjay is totally unpredictable. Collins really drove this vehicle off the road (a major compliment) to really bring the action and suspense home to the reader. I swear, there were at least a few times I read paragraphs over, not because I missed something, but merely because I couldn’t believe I just read that right. Things get really dark and unforgiving in Mockingjay, and in hindsight I’m really grateful Collins doesn’t just settle and give people what they want – she gives them more. This will be a book I will be revisiting in between other novels just to remind myself of the right way to keep a reader off their feet.

I still have a lot of books to read to finish out 2010, but to date Mockingjay is certainly the book to top this year. It’s strange to look back on the first book – at some point early on in its reading, I felt like it was a YA pilfering of Battle Royale, one of the most disturbing (and coolest) films I’ve ever seen. Nothing prepared me however, for the ride I went on, as this trilogy has matured and come well into its own, to the point where that same comparison almost seems ludicrous. If you’re a book enthusiast like me, expect to chomp through this one in about 3 days (and some late nights) of restlessness.