I apparently like writing short novels
The Saints Go Dying is a pretty short novel, roughly 204 pages or so. The Marinara Murders, if the first draft is anything to judge by, is only 20 pages longer. Unless I find some major major issue, as I did with the first draft of The Saints Go Dying, I doubt it will grow very much. Maybe 10 pages at the most. I worry that these are just a little too much on the short side. As a published book, they’d either have thin spines, or big fonts. (On the flip side, I have heard that debut novels are Read more…
On a children’s lit kick
For whatever reason, I've been reading a lot of children's lit this past month. So far that includes: The fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman I've only read the first two books so far, The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife. I still need to get to The Amber Spyglass to round out the trilogy. These are excellent fantasy novels, but stridently anti-religion. The Golden Goblet, a Newberry honor from the 60s set in ancient Egypt. The Bungalow Mystery, #3 in the Nancy Drew series. I read the original version from the 1930s, not the sanitized 1950s version Read more…
James Madison
via whitehouse.gov I read a short biography of Madison, our fourth president, in my Presidential reading series. The book is from the American President series, which was also the series I chose for George H.W. Bush. I suspect it will be the only option when I get to presidents like Taylor and Polk. This one was interesting because it was the first biography of a President I’ve read that was pretty down on him. Madison was the “father of the constitution” and his significance as a Founding Father is pretty high. But that doesn’t guaranteed he’d be a good President. Read more…
William Gibson’s “Blue Ant” trilogy
Or maybe it's the "Hubertus Bigend" trilogy. Anyway, I finished his recent trilogy this past weekend, and really enjoyed it. The books are: Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). They are primarily about marketing, art, design, technology, and such, but they are also spy thrillers to a certain extent. I found all of them to be really interesting. Good stories, a good touch of irony, some action, strong leads, and a lot to think about. Gibson is known for his science fiction work primarily (in the 80s he coined the term cyberspace in his debut novel). Read more…
The City of Falling Angels
John Berendt, who wrote the wildly popular and very funny Midnight in the Garden of Evil about Savannah, Georgia, wrote another book called "The City of Falling Angels" about Venice. Like Midnight, the book is funny, interesting, and filled with a colorful cast of characters. Also like Midnight, it starts much better than it ends. Midnight was ostensibly about a murder, but it was hard to get into the details of it by the end when what you really wanted to do was just keep meeting interesting people. The same is true about Falling Angels, which focuses around the fire Read more…
Twilight Tourism: Volterra and Montepulciano
Yes, Twilight fans, Mary and I visited Volterra, home of the Vulturi (For the non-Twilight readers, the Italian hill-town of Volterra is the setting for part of the second Twilight book where vampire royalty live) and Montepulciano, where Twilight New Moon was filmed (the city was a stand in for Volterra). Rick Steves has recommended both towns long before Stephanie Meyer re-invented Volterra as a vampire home, so it's not like we went just to see vampires. But I have to say, seeing the cult of Edward and Bella that has developed was one of the highlights. Take for example Read more…
This Park’s For People
I was recommended Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" before our trip to Utah in June. It's a memoir of Abbey's time as a ranger at Arches National Park. Mary read it before the trip, and everywhere we went at Arches she'd mention something about Abbey. I read it after the trip and really loved it. The experience of the park in the 1960s was very different than the park today. Abbey's vision of a National Park is that all visitors should be greeted by a 50 foot tall statue of Smokey the Bear that says this: A noble vision, to be Read more…
Books Panel this Wednesday!
I'm really looking forward to our books panel this Wednesday. Some familiar names from Tacoma (Tom Llewellyn of Beautiful Angle and local author, sweet pea of Kings Books, and Neel Parikh of the Pierce County Library system) will join the publisher of the Mountaineers Kate Rogers and Sheryn Hana of the Book Publishers Network to discuss the future of books. RSVP today by emailing office@cityclubtacoma.org. Mention you saw it on my blog and we'll welcome you at the member rate.
The Sun Also Rises
When getting ready for a yard sale a few weeks ago, I stumbled onto a box of books I read for classes in high school and college. In it was my copy of The Sun Also Rises from junior-year of high school. I decided it was worth checking out again and it turns out it was a pretty good book. Part of the problem of reading books like that in high school English classes is that you just don't pick up on everything you should. I don't meet metaphor, allusions, and allegory so much–that's what we were being trained to Read more…
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