Beautiful Handcrafted Animals

I’ve been re-reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods on my Amazon Kindle this week, going rrrrealy slowly and catching lots of stuff I hadn’t caught in previous reads.

“Reads”?  Yeah.  I think this is my third time through.  The Kindle is funny that way — I’ll pick up new stuff I might not ever look at and really enjoy it, but I’ll also fill it up with “comfort food” for when I just want to curl up with an old friend.

It’s also funny in the stuff that you can’t read on it.  J.K. Rowling remains adamant that she won’t allow the Harry Potter books to appear in any electronic forms (even though you can download pirated versions of all seven).  Do I really need to re-read those again?  Not just yet, but I’m sure I will eventually, and I’d really appreciate not lugging around monstrous hardcovers when I do that.

I want to read Jose Saramango’s, Blindness, though that’s not on the Kindle, either.  Same for Cory Doctorow’s, Little Brother, which queerly enough WAS available, but only for a couple days (I missed my shot on that one).

There are a few Robert A. Heinlein books available, like Glory Road and Stranger In A Strange Land, but not his whole booklist, stuff like Time Enough for Love or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Some of the choices are downright odd, to be honest.  And I’m a bit of whore when it comes to “collecting” stuff like this; doubly so when its stuff I can collect that won’t pile up in my house-of-many-piles.

I’ve also grabbed a couple “Complete Works Of” collections for the Kindle, finding them to be, almost universally, utter crap.  Why?  Well, I got “The Complete Conan”, which I thought would be a funky thing to have.  Problem: they formatted the text wrong so, instead of flowing from line to line when you read, it cuts off every 1.5 lines so it looks like some extended damned poem, or something.

You try to read it and you find yourself trying to squeeze the lines into meter and/or rhyme — NOT a pleasurable way to read.

What started this sort of free-association post going, by the way, is I was thinking about re-reading some other, non-Kindle stuff.  Stuff like the Hellboy collections and the Sandman Ultimate editions we have in the house.

Plus, with the Watchmen movie coming out this Winter, you sort of have to give that one another go, no matter how many times you’ve read it before, right?

Unless that’s just me.

I doubt I’m the only person who reads and re-reads stuff ad infinitum, but I have to wonder sometimes.  I mean, it takes a while to chug through all 75 issues of Sandman — do lots of other folks do that on a regular basis?  Do folks just read them once, think, “hey that was nice” and then move on with their lives?

Dunno.  I figure in a given year at least a quarter to a third of everything I read is stuff I’ve read before.  I couldn’t guess if that’s grossly high or grossly low or what.  It works for me, though, and the “comfort food” is good to hit between the really big meals.

Just like the title says, I’m a lazy bastard. Blogging, it turns out, is something I’m only good at in the abstract. See, I feel like I should have something interesting to say if I’m blogging and lately . . . well, not so much.

Okay, so we’ve seen a couple movies, so that’s something.

And I started writing a new book. I figure that’s something, too.

Movies first, then? We haven’t seen anything surprising, I’m afraid. Iron Man was uniformly excellent. If you actually cared, though, you’d have already seen it, and made up your mind for yourself.

The new Indiana Jones movie was uniformly not excellent. The most enthusiastic reviews you’ll find online or in print sound like nothing so much as rationalizations or apologies. People reach to emphasize the stuff that worked for them (like hearing Harrison Ford talk “as Indy” again, or the swell of John Williams’ score). Others — like me — just can’t get past the crap.

Here’s my one sentence review of Indy IV. Do with it as you will: “In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we’ve got the “Star Wars Prequel” effect in full force; bits and pieces are good, but overall it feels like the storytellers are talking down to us, explaining where no explanations are necessary, and making us feel, not the joy of youth, but the, “don’t talk down to me” feeling so many kids have.”

Also, I’m going to start using, “Nuked The Fridge” from here on in when describing entertainment which has moved, ahem, past its freshness date. Used to be, “Jumped the Shark,” but in my opinion, that phrase has, heh, nuked the fridge.

Other stuff? I’ve read a couple books, re-read a couple old favorites. I wish more Robert A. Heinlein was available for my Amazon Kindle. Suppose that’s just a matter of time.

Oh, and the book. Yeaaaah, that . . . okay. Beautiful Handcrafted Animals is right where we last visited it: resting. First draft is done, or all-but done, which is really the same thing. The next words I’ll type for that beast will be for the Second draft which, hey, let’s all keep our fingers crossed that’ll be the Final Draft, eh?

But.

But I had another idea. More to say, it’s an old, old idea which I’ve been tossing around for a long, long time. Out of the blue, all of a sudden, boom, I had an idea which I like very much pop into my head. So I’m playing with it. One of the nice things about being an unpublished novelist is you can sort of flit here and there at will. Nobody’s breathing down my neck to finish finish finish by a certain date. So if I want to monkey about, I’m free to.

What’s the story with the new book?

The title, and some folks are going to start getting the idea I have a thing for weird book titles, should be, “Lions Together Are Called A Pride.” I’ll be referring to it internally as, “Lions Together”, mostly because it’s less to type.

What’s it about? Hmm, another one that’s hard to sum up. Essentially, it’s the story of a woman who experiences something extraordinary. Possibly she’ll learn something about herself, even though I’m not really a big fan of self-discovery.

If that seems vague, it’s purposely so. To explain what the, “something extraordinary” is, or what she takes away from it would be to give the whole thing away. Suffice it to say, I think it’s an interesting idea and, more importantly, an interesting character to write about.

Her name is Nicola, “Nikki” Arlen. Not that it matters. But if you see me talking about Nikki, you should know who I’m talking about.

I’d tell you about the other characters in the book, but so far they’re all dead. You’d be amazed how hard it is to write for dead people . . .

Oh, and for a final move, as far as, “what’s up now?” the answer is . . . stuff. Writing. Reading. We’re moving to a new house towards the back half of the Summer months. Things are good, and feeling good.

I’m going to work on posting here more regularly. That seems to spur me to write more regularly, which is, of course, a good thing.

So, there you go.

I’m not sure if I can embed a video in this, or not, but if you want to imagine the song from the end of Portal while you read this post, that would be just fine by me.

Here’s a link: SONG

I could spoiler-tag that, as it’s the end of the game, but I imagine anyone it might mean anything to has already seen it, etc., etc., worlds without end.

So, how’s everyone doing?

As some folks, who’ve asked me in person (or the internet variation on such) know, I’ve been having the devil’s own time connecting to this blog. Until just now, of course.

Clearly, I have gotten back in.

Beautiful Handcrafted Animals still sits, neatly piled up, waiting for me to dig back into it (just in case that’s why you’ve found yourself here). It’s resting right now, as am I.

Also, I got myself an Amazon Kindle. If you don’t know what that is, it’s essentially an e-book reader on steroids. Electronic paper means you can read without eyesore, and using minimal battery life. Plus, you can buy a book “on-the-go” which is really just a non-fancy way of saying you can flip a switch, connect to Amazon.com and buy (at a heady discount) any of the 90,000+ books currently available via their Kindle store.

It’s pretty sexy.

We got my Dad one for his birthday, back in December, and it’s taken literally until right now for mine to arrive. It sits, waiting, charging, next to my keyboard.

One of the very nice things about this Kindle is you can download, for free, a sample of any book you might be interested in reading. I’m sure normal humans would use this to test out a book, or see what they thought of the author, but I’m using it as a sort of “shopping cart” for Kindle books. Grab the first chapter, and then I don’t have to worry about remembering what it was I wanted to read later on.

When you buy a book, it takes about a minute to download. When I think of all the crappy books and magazines I’ve bought, over the years, racing through Penn Station, so I’d have something to read on the ride home . . . well, its’ very nice.

Right now I have some twenty-odd books on my Kindle. These include:

• Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter books
• W. Somerset Maugham’s, Of Human Bondage — which seems to just be too damned thick to take with me in any other format
• All three His Dark Materials books
• Heinlein’s, Stranger In A Strange Land (I hope it’s the unabridged version)
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (for like, six bucks — how could I resist?)
• The Caitlin R. Kiernan, Beowulf movie adaptation, which I also could not resist.
• A couple Douglas Preston / Lincoln Childs books, mainly solo efforts I haven’t read yet
• William Gibson’s, Neuromancer
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby (I think it was $0.99, for pity’s sake)
• Clive Barkers, Imajica (great, heavy, book)
• Joe Hill’s, 20th Century Ghosts
• Aaaand, another twenty or so “sample chapters” of other things.

This crazy thing weighs about the same as a trade-paperback. So I’m carrying all that around with me, in a form-factor about the same size as a book I could blow through going downtown and back uptown again.

Amazing.

I’m reading a lot now (as you might imagine — I’m just polishing off Christopher Priest’s, The Prestige, the basis for the Christopher Nolan movie), and that usually means I’m not writing. That’s okay. I’m getting ready for a break and that means writing, writing, writing.

What else? Oh, we went for a double-feature this past Saturday, catching Enchanted (we loved it) and The Orphanage (uh-mazing). We still want to see No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, and we’re aiming to catch at least one of them this Saturday.

So, what’ve y’all been up to?

Shouldn’t be any spoilers here, though I can’t promise someone won’t actually use the Comments feature down there to be a dick. Up here, though, it’s safe.

I had a couple thoughts, in no particular order.

(1) I re-read the last 250 pages or so last night. Wasn’t feeling well and it seemed a nice thing to do and it was. A reservation or two about the penultimate chapter have now been put to rest. I dig this book very much, and a lot of the things I thought were great, continue to be great.

(2) I’ve been trolling a few different forums’ discussions on the topic of Deathly Hallows and I have to say, aside from the morons who exist only to ruin everyone else’s fun, most folks with a poor reaction to the book seem to be having said reaction because the final tale did not match their expectations. Which is to say, they thought X, Y and Z were going to happen and since it didn’t, they are ticked off.

It’s interesting attempting to reason with these folks. Some of them want resolution to some of their favorite characters’ storylines, and don’t get that the storylines are there, resolved or not. They’re there waiting for you to sit back on a long car ride or a rainy day (or a sunny day at the beach — wherever, really) and wonder about. This is a good thing, a very good thing indeed.

(3) This is gonna be a hell of a movie to film. Wow.

(4) A lot of folks, based on their posts, didn’t really understand the implications of a lot of things that took place in this book. Again, no spoilers or anything, but I kind of get the impression that some folks are just blowing through, waiting for the words, “and then xxxxxx died,” and not actually reading what takes place between the deaths.

The conclusion to this story was not simple. It’s not so complicated that an attentive reader can’t get it, and if you’re reading the actual words on the page, Rowling spells it out pretty straight for you.

There are deeper implications to the actions in the last few chapters in the book, though. It’s here that some folks just seem lost in the wild. What’s strange, here too, is that it seems pretty well spelled out for folks . . . maybe they’re ignoring it because, like I said up top, it’s not what they wanted it to be?

Definitely a strange phenomenon. It is kind of amusing, though, to see someone rail, incorrectly, against something that’s plainly stated and then have someone point it out to them.

Read it for yourself, though. There’s an in-depth plot-summary over on Wikipedia, but ruining a fine book and the close to an incredible story with that kind of Cliff’s Notes version . . . blech.

Done!

Blew through it in about 7 hours today (I wanted to get through it before someone could spoil it for me — mission accomplished).

Now the rough part is nobody else I know has read it . . . so I can’t talk about it with anyone.

/grumble