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Books, books and more books
I will share with you a little secret, my livejournal friends. I define myself as an artist and not as an author. It used to be that the long silences in this journal were times of my life completely dedicated to bettering myself at illustrating. Recently, however, I have slacked at both. I go through creative cycles. It seems that this year will be far more tilted in favor of authoring than artistry.
And how does one author, you ask, when one is not writing at all? My mind is whirling up great piles of words, stacking them one against the other until it finds some combination that will set the whole waterfall in motion - like dropping that last coin into the shover machine at the arcade that sets the whole torrent of stored up tokens over the edge and into the catchbin for you to rake out.
In the meantime, I have been reading. I have conquered several history books, mostly in the order of Napoleonic era France, and I have been reading the Song of Ice and Fire series, which has entertained me greatly. I am roughly a third of the way through War and Peace which I expect is more than most make it through before the extremely dated style drives them off. It is not, in comparison to the other books I have been reading, very interesting. The characters at times drive me up the walls with their idiocy, but it provides a simmilar picture of the era as other period novels do, only with the backdrop of Russia and the war there. I think if Napoleon were not the looming threat and driving plot, I would have given up. I may yet, with five hundred pages under my belt and still a thousand to go.
Yesterday, I began and finished Fahrenheit 451. I must say I have not enjoyed a book as much as that one in quite some time. It feels like something I should have read in high school, it has that literary flavor to it, if you will. I find it more than a little interesting that something fifty years old can still be so relevant to the modern philosophy.
Today, I finished Howl's Moving Castle, at the urging of a close friend. I wonder why that novel has not been such a children's classic as Narnia, or the Dark is Rising, or any of the other novels I read in my (extreme, as I was always an advanced reader) youth. I found myself thinking that I would have liked to have it read to me, or perhaps I would enjoy reading it to my own never-to-exist children. It was quite different from Studio Ghibli's film in overall flavor and plot, but I enjoyed both in the way that I can enjoy L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz and also like Sci-Fi's original Tin Man.
I have two new books on deck, Burndive by an author I was not previously familiar with, and the first of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. In combination with that I have War and Peace in progress as well as Napoleon's Pyramids which is historical fiction dated in my most beloved era and about which I am decidedly uncertain (historical details are at points off, and it is much like watching modern action movies or television series with any working knowledge of how a handgun actually functions - you see things that are incorrect that you would never have noticed before and then you cannot stop looking!). I have also been slogged down in the middle of the fourth book of Stephen King's Gunslinger series for nearing two years now. I suppose I should be more interested in Roland's past - which I have been subjected to several hundred pages of at this point - but I find in fact that I am rather not interested in him as a boy at all, when I have already seen and conjectured about what sort of character developments he must have made to get to the point where he is at in the current timeline of events in the story. It is like seeing the pieces of the puzzle as individuals after having already completed it, or perhaps tasting the individual ingredients to a cake. Eggs and flour are not terribly interesting on their own.
...And as this went on much longer than I intended (as is so often my excuse!), I shall here draw to a close, with the shortest note possible to the effect of the fact that I am also playing Final Fantasy IV: The After, and considering writing some addendum to Castle on the Sand, in which Veld and Vincent's relationship is further explored.
And how does one author, you ask, when one is not writing at all? My mind is whirling up great piles of words, stacking them one against the other until it finds some combination that will set the whole waterfall in motion - like dropping that last coin into the shover machine at the arcade that sets the whole torrent of stored up tokens over the edge and into the catchbin for you to rake out.
In the meantime, I have been reading. I have conquered several history books, mostly in the order of Napoleonic era France, and I have been reading the Song of Ice and Fire series, which has entertained me greatly. I am roughly a third of the way through War and Peace which I expect is more than most make it through before the extremely dated style drives them off. It is not, in comparison to the other books I have been reading, very interesting. The characters at times drive me up the walls with their idiocy, but it provides a simmilar picture of the era as other period novels do, only with the backdrop of Russia and the war there. I think if Napoleon were not the looming threat and driving plot, I would have given up. I may yet, with five hundred pages under my belt and still a thousand to go.
Yesterday, I began and finished Fahrenheit 451. I must say I have not enjoyed a book as much as that one in quite some time. It feels like something I should have read in high school, it has that literary flavor to it, if you will. I find it more than a little interesting that something fifty years old can still be so relevant to the modern philosophy.
Today, I finished Howl's Moving Castle, at the urging of a close friend. I wonder why that novel has not been such a children's classic as Narnia, or the Dark is Rising, or any of the other novels I read in my (extreme, as I was always an advanced reader) youth. I found myself thinking that I would have liked to have it read to me, or perhaps I would enjoy reading it to my own never-to-exist children. It was quite different from Studio Ghibli's film in overall flavor and plot, but I enjoyed both in the way that I can enjoy L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz and also like Sci-Fi's original Tin Man.
I have two new books on deck, Burndive by an author I was not previously familiar with, and the first of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. In combination with that I have War and Peace in progress as well as Napoleon's Pyramids which is historical fiction dated in my most beloved era and about which I am decidedly uncertain (historical details are at points off, and it is much like watching modern action movies or television series with any working knowledge of how a handgun actually functions - you see things that are incorrect that you would never have noticed before and then you cannot stop looking!). I have also been slogged down in the middle of the fourth book of Stephen King's Gunslinger series for nearing two years now. I suppose I should be more interested in Roland's past - which I have been subjected to several hundred pages of at this point - but I find in fact that I am rather not interested in him as a boy at all, when I have already seen and conjectured about what sort of character developments he must have made to get to the point where he is at in the current timeline of events in the story. It is like seeing the pieces of the puzzle as individuals after having already completed it, or perhaps tasting the individual ingredients to a cake. Eggs and flour are not terribly interesting on their own.
...And as this went on much longer than I intended (as is so often my excuse!), I shall here draw to a close, with the shortest note possible to the effect of the fact that I am also playing Final Fantasy IV: The After, and considering writing some addendum to Castle on the Sand, in which Veld and Vincent's relationship is further explored.