A foreword
I love literature. Ever since I was little I've always be reading something. Be it a book, a magazine, the newspaper, hell even cereal boxes. I liked comic books to a limited degree, but they had too many pictures and not enough words for my taste. Given the choice of "X-men" or "Of Mice and Men", I'd take the latter every time. This love of books was one of the reasons I decided to do an English minor. I figured as long as I enjoy reading and to a certain degree, writing, I might as well get some sort of recognition for doing things I like to do anyway.
My dad once commented that I would probably end up as an English professor one day. I knew that would never happen, but he can be forgiven this flight of fancy for his progeny as I had brought Paradise Lost as my book of choice along with me on a family ski trip. While it wasn't for a class so much as my own enjoyment (in a semi-masochistic way; it is Milton after all), it did have some practical applications: 340-year old poetry about Heaven, Hell, and Satan makes for good taunts for Counter-Strike.
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire
who durst defy th' omnipotent to arms.
Heh, very Pulp Fiction. Useful for scaring "teh n00bs", or at least distracting them long enough with words like "omnipotent" to stab them in the back.
But I digress. The real reason for this post is this: I'm testing the waters with writing some book reviews. Nothing fancy. Just my thoughts on some books I've read. It'll mostly be stuff that I like, maybe even some commentary on a series as a whole. Maybe I can also get suggestions on new books for me to read. I've been kinda slacking on my reading for awhile, partially because I've just been busy and distracted but mostly because I just haven't branched out in a while. I tend to get really focused on an author I enjoy, and while I find that focus is wonderful for absorbing the whole of an author's works, it also means that once I'm done I have trouble pulling myself out of one dreamworld and plunging into another.
You'll mostly see sci-fi and fantasy books here. That's because I like fantasy and sci-fi. Sure I enjoy the fascinating look at a man's descent into madness in Heart of Darkness or the dark, brooding musings on the nature of crime and suffering in Crime and Punishment as much as the next person, but give me the sweeping battles and rich detail of Lord of the Rings or the mind-blowing dystopian view of the future in the cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer and Snow Crash.
Will I actually manage to review anything? Maybe. But for now, has anyone read any good books lately?
3 comments:
Well, just at the moment I'm about a quarter through Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's "Good Omens," which is a pretty good light read. It's pretty derivative; you can't help but notice what a blatant attempt it is to write "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" with angels and demons instead of aliens. But then again, HGttG is so damn good that they certainly could have done worse in choosing someone to imitate. (-:
I've actually read "Good Omens." I drew the same conclusions you did about it's similarity to HHGttG. It was interesting at least. On the same note, I'm currently listening to part 1 of "Heaven" by Mur Lafferty. Pretty good stuff so far. Podiobooks.com if you're interested. Lots of free fantasy/sci-fi related podcast novels. I recommend "Earthcore", "Ancestor", "Singularity", and "The Pocket and the Pendant."
Right on. I've been on kind of a Gaiman kick lately, ever since I learned that the library has most of the Sandman TPBs in its catalog. Those were all right, but hardly the be-all end-all of comics-as-literature that fans make it out to be. In my book, nothing will ever touch Alan Moore's "Watchmen" in that category.
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