Early 2015 book thoughts

Some people are great at blogs, their brains seem to link straight to the fingers and they end up producing copious amounts of jealousy-inducing text, while others (i.e. me) tend to talk instead.

I have been dancing between a number of different posts from general creative writing to more reviews and discussions about various media, most notably of which was some thoughts on Atlas Shrugged, however in the end there wasn’t really much to say about it, except that it’s really long and a bit like listening to that person that everyone has in their lives, who missed some kind of big opportunity in the past that through some bizarre happening is not their fault at all, that constantly talk about it bitterly.

I could have also talked about Ready Player One and joined the dizzying number of bloggers and Youtubers, redditors and internet stars who read it and felt like it really spoke to them in a way no book has before and sums up all of their experience of the 80′s and geek culture despite the audience age range varying by about 40 years.

Or I could have mentioned The Once & Future King, the most inspiring fantasy book from this century (when you cut out a big LOTR hole in the century) and how despite it’s gorgeous language and humourous dialogue, had an entire book on Lancelot and Guenever which is about as interesting as hearing about it for the umpteenth time would be expected.

It wasn’t all bittersweet though, I read The Wasp Factory which is written by the late Iain Banks, most well known (in my spheres anyhow) as a Sci-Fi writer, but who has written a number of novels for ordinary and not-so-weird folk, except that… the book’s really weird. If you read The Catcher in the Rye and wanted Caulfield to act like more of a sociopath, then you’re in luck!

I also had a manga/comic week, where I basically run through a host of aforementioned media that has built up over the time I’ve read novels and crack on it.  Tintin was pretty uncomfortable, Monster by Naoki Urasawa was every ounce as good as the hype and Nausicaa was like the film except this time I understood what was happening.

I have recently read a bunch of books about Mars which seems like an interesting idea for a short series of features on the red planet in fiction, but for now I am just worrying about finishing up Majora’s Mask which I have been playing for about 3 weeks and have only finished the third dungeon, so yeah, that’s how it is.

Early 2015 book thoughts