Quitting a Job and Getting Back to Work

I gave notice at one of my jobs. Don't worry--I've still got two (!?) others. But now I'll have weekends off again, which means I'll have time for what's really important: making friends and living a rich, full life reading and 'riting. I already know what book I'm going to read next, and I think I'll have a long post afterwards. So. Look out for that!

But until then, and despite my busy schedule, I've done a tiny bit of reading here and there. Let me catch you up.

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins

After a minor personal disaster a few weeks ago, I called in sick on a Monday. I went on a hike, commiserated with a friendly bartender over gin and tonics, wandered around a Home Depot, and eventually found my way to the poetry section of a Border's Books. The store was big and mostly empty. Even the shelves were weirdly bare. After flipping bored-ly through Neruda and Cummings, I picked up a slim book because it had a neat picture of a black bear on it, and then I sat in a chair and I read the whole thing.

I like poetry. I like it a lot, actually. But I came to the game late. That is, I have about a decade of serious prose reading under my belt now, but it wasn't until I was a junior in college that I realized that poetry was actually pretty OK, too. As a result, I don't really have the terminology to talk about poetry. The jargon, or whatever. ("Oh yes, the sonic qualities of stanza two! How evocative!") But Billy Collins is fun. He's funny sometimes, too. Which is nice. He just has a really accessible voice, and writes poems I really like? Read some of his stuff! This book was very good.

Also, afterward I wrote a Billy Collins-ish poem of my own. (You can laugh. It's supposed to be kind of funny!)

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

I didn't finish this one.

This is the second book in a Fantasy Trilogy called The Kingkiller Trilogy. These books are a big deal in the Fantasy world. People like them a lot. The books are about Kvothe, who is a really cool guy. That's basically it, actually. He's a guy who is just really cool, and he is now tending bar at a tavern and telling the story of his cool life.

I read the first book, called The Name of the Wind, last year. I enjoyed it! I mean, sure, the characters were terrible and silly and the world wasn't super compelling. But the pacing was just incredible. That man knows how to get you from one scene to the next, knows how to make the stakes seem realistic and interesting, and knows how to make the book feel... meaty, despite it's speed.

But this time I was skipping pages. One of the two big problems with High Fantasy novels (more on other one in a second) is that they tend to be bloated and sluggish. They get too caught up in the details of their made-up world, or something. Anyway, they just tend to be big, fat, slow awful things.

And the other reason they are lame is best exemplified by The Wise Man's Fear. Kvothe is ridiculous. He is too cool. He is cool to the point that I felt embarrassed for the author. He's just... literally the best at everything there is. The best swordsman, the best magician, the smartest student, the hardest worker, the best actor, the best singer, the best bartender. These are all actual things that he is the best at. What? Okay, okay. How about this: He has sex for the first time ever with a supernatural sex demon. He is so good at having sex that instead of killing him (which is what usually happens?) the sex demon is compelled to send him out into the world to tell everyone how good he is at having sex. Yes. Really.

That's your character Patrick Rothfuss! Ooops!

 Sorry, nerds!

See you soon, everybody!

Mini Reviews, April 2011

 Hello!

Recently I was offered a THIRD (!!!) job. The position is an incredible opportunity, and I'm very excited about it! But it adds and ADDITIONAL 40 hours of work each week to my already full-ish schedule. The position is a temporary one, so I'll be back in the swing of things around July. But until then I don't have much time to read or to post here.

But I've read a few books since I last made an entry. Here are some quick thoughts about them!

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen


Jonathan Franzen has basically become my new favorite author. I liked Freedom better than I liked The Corrections, which is saying something, It's not that Freedom is a better novel. They're the same good. Same-sies. But Freedom had things to say that were more immediately relevant to me. I know that the title of the book isn't precisely central to the interests of the story, but I'm a person at really specific age and of a really specific temperament that happens to have held some really specific ideas about the notion of "freedom" that are... changing as I enter my ripe mid-bigenarian years. Franzen has had (roughly) this to say about the notion of freedom (not a quote): that we're told that it is basically the most important factor to the happiness of a person, but maybe happiness really comes when you finally give up all that freedom and just deal with the fact that you are person you always were. I'm just at the right place in my life to find that idea fascinating and dangerous and important. Good timing, J-Franz!

Empire Falls by Richard Russo


Empire Falls is about the manager of a diner in a small town in central Maine. It won a Pulitzer. It's my kind of thing, guys. But Franzen may have ruined other books for me. His characters are so uncomfortably realistic that I feel a little embarrassed reading more timid character authors, now! Miles Roby--the protagonist--is essentially perfect, or anyway he's perfectly sympathetic. His flaws are things like, "too self-sacrificing," and "too much of a dreamer." There's nothing seriously wrong with him or anyone else. Even the villains are transparently motivated. These are people who can only populate fiction, and so I didn't feel like they had anything really informative to say about my own life. Russo is a good writer, but this story's seams were sticking out all over the place--I could see his pen strokes on every page, and in every event. Let me give you an example. The story's two central conflicts: whether or not Miles will ever move out of Empire Falls, and whether or not he will ever get together with Charlene (of course: sassy, smart, confident, with huge breasts) never once feel like organic extensions of the characters. They feel like things meant to keep me reading. They feel like things to add pages. And I never cared about them. Anyway, it's a good enough book. No regrets. Just... nothing exceptional.

The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie


There are a few ways to write a "mystery" novel. One of them is the Thriller, where the book revolves around trying to catch an established criminal before he or she commits his or her next crime. Another is the Whodunit, where the book revolves around placing together clues to reveal which--of a cast of possible suspects--committed a specific crime. I read Christie because I don't like Thriller, but I like Whodunits. And this story starts out like a straight Thriller, but ends as a Whodunit. It's one of the better Christie books I've read, though I didn't think I'd like it. Good book!



Packing for Mars by Mary Roach


This book was pretty good. It's about the science that goes into having human beings in space. It turns out this is a hard thing to do! Space is cool, but it sounds awful to be there. Roach is a good non-fiction writer. She's funny, clear, informative. I liked her book about the science of sex better.