Starting at the action

I'm listening to Kafka's Metamorphosis, and the first sentence is him waking up as a giant insect. This is how stories should be told. So many other writers, amateur or not, would write however many thousands of words about the day before it happened--but why waste time getting there? Since the story is about him …

Too many books for patience

I started listening to Remains of the Day by the new winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Kazuo Ishiguro. After 15 minutes of nothing happening, and multiple restarts cause I zoned out thinking about something else, I gave up and returned it. I know I have criticized today's people for having no patience, for …

Thanks for existence, universe!

I'm thankful to exist, to be able to experience pleasure and thought and excitement and wonder, and even to experience sadness and longing and melancholy--because these are all things, all flavors of the world that mix together to make the meal of life. I'm thankful I can write without pain, and think without pain, and …

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Reading this was a bit of a wake-up call to how vapid and soulless(hehe) vampire movies and books are today. Dorian Gray, in a fit of youthful exuberance, trades his soul for endless youth, and gets more than he expected. Not only does time not affect him in any noticeable way on the exterior, nothing seems …

Random Game of Thrones thoughts

I really wish Jon Snow would have stayed dead. All the rumors and articles and talk of him coming back made it into an expected, taken for granted event. There was no tension, no curiosity. And it undercut the power of his death, which was a nice mirror of his father's death. His coming back …