I'm buzzing from a high of good entertainment.
Last night, I did my usual cardio and writing routine. I had a couple of hours left in my evening, so I watched "The Curse of Fenric", a story from Doctor Who's original last season that featured cryptography in World War II. A few days ago, I had started reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson which features, among other things... cryptography in World War II. "Fenric" was always one of my favorite Doctor Who stories, and the accidental collusion of the novel and the television show really resonated with me and helped to enjoy each a little more.
Then this morning, work has been proving to be slow. The office can get a little loud, and I've been told I can listen to my iPod at work (which is how I catch up on my podcasts), so I started listening to the podcast of Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword by Tee Morris. It's a story about a fantasy dwarf (axe, beard, gold, the whole bit) transported by accident to Chicago in 1929. After studying the world he finds himself in and realizing he can never go home, he decides to find a vocation... as a private detective. Again, it hits that sweet spot of jazz, radio drama, hard-boiled detective fiction, and dwarves (they are my preferred fantasy race in fiction, although I tend to play humans in fantasy games).
None of this is high art, sure. I get a very different high from reading moving, powerful work like Slaughterhouse-Five and Lolita. But there's a different kind of buzz from reading, watching, or listening to thoroughly enjoyable entertainment that's done well and hits my personal sweet spots in what I like.
What hits your sweet spot?
- Sweet Spot of Fiction
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
eddyfate- May 10th, 2007
hyper
- [Books] Slaughterhouse-Five
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- eddyfate
- April 16th, 2007
curious
I had actually had this on my reading list for a while, but in memory of Kurt Vonnegut I plan to read Slaughterhouse-Five. I have never read it before, so it'll be an interesting experience for me.
- Reading
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- eddyfate
- January 24th, 2007
busy
So yesterday at lunch I finished How To Write Science-Fiction and Fantasy by Orsen Scott Card (which is quite good, packing a lot of useful advice into a very thin book). When I went home, after I did my writing, I was pretty wiped out from work again, so I decided to play around on WoW. Turned out that there was an issue with logging in, and I wasn't able to play. So, I decided to start on my next book, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I got about 50 pages into it and gave up.
I rarely give up on books. Even bad books I try to struggle through most times, because you can learn from negative examples as well as positive ones. However, as I get older, I'm discovering that I have less tolerance for bad television, bad movies and bad books. (Granted, that should be more accurately "things that don't interest me" instead of "bad," but most of the time when it sounds like a duck, it's a duck.)
So, I put it away and moved to a book I have been both looking forward to and dreading, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I've been looking forward to it because it's been recommended to me several times, but dreading because the paperback version is 1006 pages long. That's a hell of a commitment. Still, 30 pages in, and I'm already hooked.
If nothing else, this shows me the value of a good, strong beginning.
- Books I've Read in 2007
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- eddyfate
- January 3rd, 2007
Like last year, I'm going to try to keep track of all of the books (and book-like things) that I read in 2007. The asterisk indicates a book I haven't finished, but unlike previous years I'm going to simply delete books I didn't finish.- Rise of the Exarchs by White Wolf
- The Tao of Writing by Ralph L. Wahlstrom
- The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E. J. Wagner
- Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (audiobook)
- Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett (audiobook)
- The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
- How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orsen Scott Card
- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
- Changeling: The Lost manuscript by White Wolf
- The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett (audiobook)
- Mort by Terry Pratchett (audiobook)
- Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (audiobook)
- Storm Front (Dresden Files Book 1) by Jim Butcher (audiobook)
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (audiobook)
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (audiobook)
- Life, The Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams (audiobook)
- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
- So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams (audiobook)
- Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams (audiobook)
- Fool Moon (Dresden Files Book 2) by Jim Butcher (audiobook)
- The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
- The Secret World Chronicle - Book One (Invasion) by Mercedes Lackey (audiobook via podcast)
- The Writer's Little Helper by James V. Smith, Jr.
- The Feast of the Drowned by Steve Cole (audiobook)
- The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler
- How to Succeed in Evil: Volume One by Patrick McLean (audiobook)
- Earthcore by Scott Sigler (audiobook)
- The Ressurectionists by White Wolf
- Chicago Workings by White Wolf
- Parlor Games by White Wolf
- Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (audiobook)
- Four Max Carrados Detective Stories by Ernest Bramah (audiobook)
- The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
- The Resurrection Casket by Justin Richards (audiobook)
- Cheating Death, Stealing Life: The Eddie Guerrero Story by Eddie Guerrero and Michael Krugman
- The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc (audiobook)
- The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr (audiobook)
- Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson
- Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
- If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell
- Heaven: Season One by Mur Lafferty (audiobook)
- Heaven: Season Two by Mur Lafferty (audiobook)
- The Old Woman in the White Cadillac by Lynn Novakowski (first reader manuscript)
- Science Fiction 101 by Robert Silverberg
- Nina Kimberly The Merciless by Christiana Ellis (audiobook)
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword by Tee Morris (audiobook via podcast)
- The Rookie by Scott Sigler
- The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner (audiobook)
- Grave Peril (Dresden Files Book 3) by Jim Butcher (audiobook)
- Taken Liberty by Steven H. Wilson (audiobook)
- Torchwood: Another Life by Peter Anghelides (audiobook)
- The Girl with the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block
- On Writing by Stephen King
- Torchwood: Slow Decay by Andy Lane (audiobook)
- Doc Savage and the Birds of Death by Lester Dent (audiobook)
- The Maltese Falcon by Dashel Hammett (audiobook)
- Badge of Infamy by Lester Del Rey (audiobook)
- Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse (audiobook)
- Exalted: Second Edition by White Wolf (read twice)
- The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells (audiobook)
- Spirit of the Century by Evil Hat Productions
- Layer Cake by J. J. Connelly (audiobook)
- octaNe by Jared Sorensen
- Army of Darkness RPG by Eden Studios
- Book of Exalted Power: Dragon-Blooded by White Wolf
- Ex Machina by Guardians of Order
- Private Files of the Shadow by DC Comics
- The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Vol. I by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Leslie S. Klinger
- Transformers: The War Within Vol. 2 TPB by IDW Publishing
- Summer Night (Dresden Files Book 4) by Jim Butcher
- Compass of Terrestrial Directions Vol. 1: The Scavenger Lands by White Wolf
- XSW: Impact (tr)ashcan edition by Jim Pinto
- Finis: A Book of Endings edited by Ryan Macklin
- The Damned by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt
- Sam Noir by Eric A. Anderson and Manny Trembley
- 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
- Agent 13 #1: The Midnight Avenger by Flint Dille and David Marconi
- Death Masks (Dresden Files Book 5) by Jim Butcher
- Blood Rites (Dresden Files Book 6) by Jim Butcher
- Dead Beat (Dresden Files Book 7) by Jim Butcher
- Shadowrun, Fourth Edition by Catalyst Game Labs
- Contacts and Adventures by Catalyst Game Labs
- * On The Run by Catalyst Game Labs
- Exhausted
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- eddyfate
- July 10th, 2006
Most of the floors are done (all that's left are my office, the workout room, and the hallways and staircase this week). Sunday was lots of moving, but I now have a bedroom and living room again, and office space (although I'm sharing with the rest of the house this week). I feel a little more human, and hopefully I'll be able to catch up on things. Such as:
* Going to GenCon Indy this year.
* Progress on Sekrit Project C.
* Catching up on email (yeah, right).
* Finishing Blackpool (really good drama series that was on last year on BBC1).
* Watching a little bit of Transformers: Headmasters (the Japanese series that took up after the end of the original cartoon in America) and realizing that bad subtitling isn't just for kung-fu movies. But there was a cool fight scene between Soundwave and Blaster in episode two.
* Finishing up crap on various Cam characters.
* Finishing Jude the Obscure.
* Getting back on track with my journal writing and my workouts (both of which slipped this past week due to the strange schedule).
Tonight, however, probably won't be much productivity. We need to go shopping, both for food and materials to continue the move (like felt pads for the furniture), we need to finish at least getting everything out of the two remaining rooms and the hallways, and somewhere in there is dinner and possibly Raw.
- Useless book recommendations
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- eddyfate
- July 5th, 2006
amused
The What Should I Read Next? website suggests items you might like reading based on real readers' recommendations.
These
were the results:Mansfield Park
- Jane Austen, Kathryn Sutherland, Tony TannerThe Turn of the Screw
- Henry James"A Doll's House
- Henrik Ibsen, Peter WattsPygmalion
- George Bernard Shaw, Nicholas GreneRebecca
- Daphne DuMaurier, Emma FieldingHeidi
- Johanna Spyri, Cecil Leslie, Eileen HallAround the World in 80 Days
- Jules VerneHowards End
- E. M. ForsterSons and Lovers
- D.H. LawrenceWide Sargasso Sea
- Jean Rhys
- Two new books!
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- eddyfate
- June 22nd, 2006
pleased
So in Tampa I got into a conversation withharolds_life about two of my favorite genres of mystery - 19th century and hard-boiled. He pointed me at two authors that I might like: Lee Child and Caleb Carr. I said I would look into them.
Today, I got a box from Amazon.com. Inside were the first novel of each writer, Killing Floor and The Alienist.harolds_life, you rule. My reading list hates you, but I thank you.
- Bronte Threatened with Libel in "Jane Eyre"
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- eddyfate
- May 26th, 2006
- Evacuate!
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- eddyfate
- May 23rd, 2006
calm
I just got back from spending the past hour and a half outside in very nice weather. Our building was evacuated because a construction crew on the seventh floor hit a water pipe, and it leaked down the stairwells and into the elevators. (I'm on the first floor.) I got some reading done - I should be finished with Lewis Black's Nothing's Sacred by the end of the day - and the cafeteria people brought out some cold sodas and waters for everyone while we were waiting. It was a surprising but nice break in the day.
- Love, Conflict, and Bloodrayne
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- eddyfate
- May 22nd, 2006
bored
This weekend was pretty sedate, and I was appreciative of that. I got a good amount of reading done, finishing up my copy of the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday today. I also got into What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. So, there's an upside to not having access to a computer. We also watched Bloodrayne, and it was just as terrible as I expected it to be.
There was a local Requiem game, which was a lot of me helping the local Storytellers out because of some changes locally, as well as building more bridges between games in Missouri. I think a bunch of us are debating going to Columbia next weekend to continue the bridge-building process.
My hard drive should be in my hands tomorrow, so I can get things back on track. I'm hoping to have it all in order by Thursday, so I can catch up on a stack of emails I'm sitting on, as well as stuff like the UWA and Serenity. I would also like to get moving on editing my three short stories so I can start pimping them for publication.
I also have some more motivationsal poster silliness from Midway City.
- Frankenstein throws a bolt
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- eddyfate
- May 18th, 2006
frustrated
Day 3 of computer. Long story short, after a few different tries (including a shot with a couple of Linux distros [1]), my hard drive died. I scavenged one fromgreebotrill's old computer that I wasn't sure worked, and sure enough, it didn't. So now my computer is dead until I buy a new hard drive. Luckily I backed everything significant up, so I'm really just out a little money and a little time. The only thing I'm really behind on at this point is some Requiem email (since I need to reference documents on my computer) and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
uwa_live.
I've also gotten a fair bit of reading done. I skimmed over Serenity RPG again in preparation for the game tonight. I finished 361 and have started on What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. I've also been continuing to work my way through The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes III: The Novels.
Having free time (even if it's devoured by my computer right now) is making me think about my goals for this year. After this week, now that I seem to be past my sickness, I'm going to try to get back into the habit of working out. Then, maybe in a few weeks, I'm going to start a habit of writing for an hour a day as often as I can. We'll see how it goes.
[1] And if I could have gotten the wireless networking and avi playback to work without having to learn a lot of Unix, I would have seriously considered just migrating to SuSe and being done with it, since LINUX can install on my original hard drive, but XP won't for some reason.
- Finals of a Thousand Faces
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- eddyfate
- May 11th, 2006
accomplished
Finished my last class last night. While I'm glad that school is over (as I can focus on settling some other aspects of my life and overcoming my burnout), at the same time it's a little sad. The professor said that both classes were some of the best he's had, and I really clicked with many of the other students, which is rare for me. After class, our professor recommended The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell for any serious writer to read. So I stopped by the library after class and picked it up (even though the only copy available for checkout was missing pages because SOME bastard student ripped them out). I'm going to try to tackle it in the next few weeks, at least giving it a heavy skim to see if it's going to be useful for me. However, I'm currently savoring The Maltese Falcon, and I don't want to rush my enjoyment of Hammitt's prose.
So, I'm waiting for my grades, then I'll talk to the counselor about transferring my credits from my previous schools, and then I'll figure out the second class I'm taking in the fall.
- Content!
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- eddyfate
- May 8th, 2006
(But not much content. Don't get too excited.)
This past weekend, and indeed the past couple of weeks, have been largely me working on my final story while struggling with being sick. The me being sick part isn't me feeling like death warmed over (or even death microwaved for five minutes with a stir halfway through), but rather a low-level malaise that saps the energy out of me. If the average person has X energy to use through the day, I've been waffling between .5X to .75X on any given day recently. I've switched the NyQuil reliance (which gave me deep sleep but made me groggy as hell for part of the morning) to my new medications (which returned me to my normal not-so-deep sleep but make me vaguely exhausted through most of the day).
My story ended up at a little over 4,500 words, which is 1,000-1,500 words more than either of my other two stories, and written in a tighter timeframe. I paced myself decently (especially since I was struggling with said illness), but it was still a fight. I turn in the story tonight, and after critiquing the last few stories for my other class, I'm looking forward to taking a break from a lot of things for the summer to recharge my batteries.
I'm also looking forward to working on my stack of books. We were at Sam's Club yesterday, and I found a stack of twelve hardback "children's classics" for $14.99, but the books were a selection of literary works from the nineteen and early twentieth century ranging from Black Beauty to The Jungle Book to The Secret Garden to Pride and Prejudice. As I have had an interest in or have read all of these at some point, it was a fantastic deal. Of course, I still have stacks and stacks of other books to read, but it'll be nice to read for pleasure again with a new-found appreciation of literary classics.
Over the past month I've slowly finished watching the first season of Battlestar Galactica and have started on the second season. I've also been watching the second season of Doctor Who. Both had a bit of a rocky start, but I'm really starting to get into the groove of both series now. Much fun.
- Random Gift
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- eddyfate
- March 31st, 2006
If anyone feels the need to spontaneously spend $31.50 plus shipping on me for whatever reason, just let me know.
(Note: I'm joking. I'm not really asking for people to buy random books for me. But it looks so cool...)
- "Gaming As Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity And Experience in Fantasy Games"
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- eddyfate
- March 30th, 2006
thoughtful
"Gaming As Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity And Experience in Fantasy Games" by McFarland & Co was released last week. ( Information below. )
- The World Is Ending
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- eddyfate
- March 21st, 2006
surprised
I dislike Hemingway. I've always disliked Hemingway. It's just something that is, like gravity and smelly gamers. I don't know why, but I've just never liked the man's writing style. So I cringed when I was assigned to read The Sun Also Rises, and have been dreading it for a week or so.
And here I am enjoying it.
Just plowed through about 60 pages, no sweat, and looking forward to more. It's not awesome (because, hey, I like to know who is fucking talking every now and then, and apparently Ernest was bitten by the word "said" as a small child and therefore has some pathological hatred of it), but it's been one of the easier books to read in my course thus far. Maybe it's because I just finished Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which is like Ulysses with half the page count.
- Andrew Vachss
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- eddyfate
- March 21st, 2006
I was recommended an author by the name of Andrew Vachss. Has anyone read anything by him? Opinions?
- The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
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- eddyfate
- March 14th, 2006
So today at work I developed a nasty headache. I was able to get some Aleve and tea and it went away, but by the time I got home I was braindead. I had planned to work on one of my papers due Monday, but I have a few days left to do it in, and the only other school work I had to do (a draft of my second story and critiquing three other student stories) could wait a week or so as well. So I decided to sit back and read one of the books on my growing stack. I got a few Hard Case Crime novels for my birthday, and I've been meaning to read them for some time, so I picked up a thin one, The Colorado Kid by Stephen King, planning to read it for a bit and maybe take it with me on the trip to Cincinnati and back, a mental break from reading so much intense literature as I have the past two months.
And I just finished it a few minutes ago.
It's really more of a novella than a novel, but it has much of the pacing and structure of a short story. I was hooked very early on, and the twin plots of the underlying mystery and the interplay of the characters had me intrigued. There's a few bumps in the story from a style perspective, but the story is not only interesting, but it leaves a lot to chew on after you're done. Despite the imprint's slant, it's not really a hard-boiled noir story nor a mystery in the traditional sense, but it's definately interesting. However, some people will hate it and others will love it, so see if you can borrow it from someone or snag it at the library before you plop down your $7.
(crossposted to![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
theshortlist)
- Stack of books
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- eddyfate
- March 13th, 2006
My co-worker Jamie is as rabid a bibliophile as my other friends, but recently decided that he spent more time reading non-fiction and manga than fiction. This past weekend he went through his fiction collection and got rid of a "few" books which he then passed on to me. So, now I own:
* The first nine Anita Blake novels (Guilty Pleasures through to Obsidian Butterfly).
* Ten Robotech novels by Jack McKinney. The first nine (Genesis through The Final Nightmare) and a random one (The Zentraedi Rebellion).
* When Will You Rage? (W:tA short story anthology).
* City of Darkness Unseen (oWoD short story anthology).
* Dark Destiny (oWoD short story anthology).
* Ghost Dance by Mark T. Sullivan.
* Werewolves (werewolf anthology NOT by WW).
* Big Fish by Daniel Wallace.
* Photo Oops by Hal Buell.
* The Crime Oracle and The Teeth of the Dragon by Maxwell Grant (Shadow Pulp Goodness!).
* Nothing's Sacred by Lewis Black.
* and a 1985 edition of the MLA Style Manual.
And he's probably going to give me more once he goes through the rest of his library.
