I went through a period of time after reading my last book where I didn't have any money to buy any new books and I just wasn't in the mood to reread any of my other books. I was looking forward to so many new books instead!
So this week my long-awaited book came out - The Ocean at the End of the Lane! Neil Gaiman never disappoints in terms of content. He spins such wonderfully epic tales that draw you in and make you forget the rest of the world. That being said, I spent $25 dollars for a book that had less than 200 pages. And I'm not saying that it wasn't worth it, but for a person who generally lives on bread and water, twenty-five dollars is a little ridiculous.
The next day I started reading The Kite Runner, per my decision in the last post to start reading books with more depth. My mom and I walk 6 miles almost every morning, and I spent the next morning walking around the park, struggling not to cry while I told my mom about story that I was reading. Since I hadn't finished reading the book yet, I also told her how I hoped the book would end. Ironically, the book did end in the situation that I had wished for, but it was not at all how I had hoped it would be. It was easily one of the saddest books that I had ever read and at the same time one that I just could not put down.
On a sidenote: I really hate waiting for books to come out in paperback.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Sunday, June 2, 2013
We're Spinning Circles
I finished reading a book today that I started reading back in January but stopped reading for a number of reasons. I saw the book while standing in the Chicago airport, wasting time until my six hour layover would end. I read the back cover of the book, read the first chapter, and then put it back down and walked out of the little airport bookstore.
When I got home from Chicago I bought the book on my nook and began reading it. Will Schwalbe wrote The End of Your Life Book Club, starting with the diagnosis of his mother: pancreatic cancer. She is only given six months to live, but the book follows their family through the next two years of her battling her fatal disease.
Will and his mother, Mary Ann (Maryanne) Schwalbe, start their own book club, using time spent in doctor's offices and waiting rooms as their time to discuss their books and to give each other feedback. Originally I stopped reading this book because I just knew what was going to happen, his mom was going to die. And I cannot stand reading books like that; I have a hard enough time dealing with the nightmares that I have of my own mother some day dying, I didn't want to have to read another's experience with it. But I think that I also stopped reading it because it made me feel very insignificant. Maryanne devoted her life to other people. She gave to charities, she traveled to faraway countries, she welcomed refugees into her home again and again to live. In short, she made me feel very inadequate. She was bad enough, but it seemed like her family was filled with go-getters and overachievers and people who just....live.
I've always wanted to be one of those people that goes to third-world countries and teaches children how to read and to bring them the joy that books will give you. And every time that I've ever thought about doing it, I've become filled with the fear that something would happen to my mom while I was gone, and that I would miss time with her.
I wish that I was the kind of person that wrote down notes while reading books, because there are so many different things about this book that spoke to me and so many parts of the book where I just had to pause and turn into my pillow and cry for a minute. It's a wonderful book.
And it also has helped me decide to expand my interest in books. I love me some Sci-Fy, and I just love Young Adult books, but very rarely do I branch out from what I know. Will and his mom read so many books that just have...depth, and I think that that's something that I normally shy away from because then it seems more like work and less like reading. But I think it's something that I'm going to do. A friend recently pinned something on Pinterest, 65 Books You Need To Read in Your 20s, and I think it's something that I'm going to seriously try to accomplish. I have roughly 5 1/2 years left of my 20s, and I think it's something that I can accomplish. And that I should accomplish. My life needs some depth in it; I can't just keep watching Mulan every day of my life on the Disney channel while reading Neil Gaiman books.* **
*Ironically, Neil is on the list.
** I'm not actually watching Mulan right now. Right now I'm watching Mission Impossible.
When I got home from Chicago I bought the book on my nook and began reading it. Will Schwalbe wrote The End of Your Life Book Club, starting with the diagnosis of his mother: pancreatic cancer. She is only given six months to live, but the book follows their family through the next two years of her battling her fatal disease.
Will and his mother, Mary Ann (Maryanne) Schwalbe, start their own book club, using time spent in doctor's offices and waiting rooms as their time to discuss their books and to give each other feedback. Originally I stopped reading this book because I just knew what was going to happen, his mom was going to die. And I cannot stand reading books like that; I have a hard enough time dealing with the nightmares that I have of my own mother some day dying, I didn't want to have to read another's experience with it. But I think that I also stopped reading it because it made me feel very insignificant. Maryanne devoted her life to other people. She gave to charities, she traveled to faraway countries, she welcomed refugees into her home again and again to live. In short, she made me feel very inadequate. She was bad enough, but it seemed like her family was filled with go-getters and overachievers and people who just....live.
I've always wanted to be one of those people that goes to third-world countries and teaches children how to read and to bring them the joy that books will give you. And every time that I've ever thought about doing it, I've become filled with the fear that something would happen to my mom while I was gone, and that I would miss time with her.
I wish that I was the kind of person that wrote down notes while reading books, because there are so many different things about this book that spoke to me and so many parts of the book where I just had to pause and turn into my pillow and cry for a minute. It's a wonderful book.
And it also has helped me decide to expand my interest in books. I love me some Sci-Fy, and I just love Young Adult books, but very rarely do I branch out from what I know. Will and his mom read so many books that just have...depth, and I think that that's something that I normally shy away from because then it seems more like work and less like reading. But I think it's something that I'm going to do. A friend recently pinned something on Pinterest, 65 Books You Need To Read in Your 20s, and I think it's something that I'm going to seriously try to accomplish. I have roughly 5 1/2 years left of my 20s, and I think it's something that I can accomplish. And that I should accomplish. My life needs some depth in it; I can't just keep watching Mulan every day of my life on the Disney channel while reading Neil Gaiman books.* **
*Ironically, Neil is on the list.
** I'm not actually watching Mulan right now. Right now I'm watching Mission Impossible.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Things Go Hazy.
Holy Balls, y'all. So I had yesterday off from work, and so around 5 o'clock I sat down to read Pathfinder, AND THEN I FINISHED IT. That's over 600 pages. In one day. I finished reading a little after midnight and immediately went to sleep.
Orson Scott Card has a tendency to challenge the fuck out of his readers and their attention spans. Now, I'm kind of the poster child for ADD, so sometimes Card makes me want to bang my head against a wall and then cry. He's so demanding. And he's one of those authors where I'm always like, "what the hell does that word even mean? where's my phone? I need to google this word. And then look at all of the different websites that give examples of this word. Oh, look at that puppy. What was I doing??" And then eventually I get back to reading the book. But he is always so worth it. His books are amazing. The last Card book that I read took me days because it was so complex and demanding and exhausting that I just couldn't stand to read all of it at once. I couldn't do that yesterday though because I had to know who Rigg's dad was!
Oh, wait, backstory:
Earth is going to implode or something like that and so they send out a ship to find a new planet to inhabit. This dude, Ram, and a whole bunch of robots (who apparently look exactly like humans? Which made me think of David from that stupid movie, Prometheus, where EVERYONE DIES in the end) go out into space and them time jump what is supposed to be light years into the future, but by accident they somehow go back into time and then also, somehow, the ship is duplicated 19 times, so that now there are 19 ships instead of one. So anyway, they land on this new planet and while all of the humans, including Ram, are in stasis, the Expendables (robots) set up borders around the planet, making up 19 different colonies and then making it to where none of the humans would even know about the other colonies, and also making it to where the Walls that separate them from each other make a person go crazy when they go close to them.
Sidebar: I was attempting to google the name of the movie with the aliens (which is Prometheus, but I couldn't remember the name of it) and so I just googled 'alien'. Which gave me THIS:
ANYWAY. The book!
All the while, Card is also telling us about present time, which is eleven thousand years in the future from where Ram is now, which is actually eleven thousand years from where he used to be BEFORE he time jumped (get it?) on this new planet where this kid, Rigg, just learns that his dad died (but not really, because he lied, because he's really an Expendable and he can't die. I KNOW) and he has set out on this trip to go and meet his sister that he never knew about. Oh, and Rigg can change the past, and see the paths of other people from all other times, and his sister can make herself invisible. And his only friend can move through time. And he's this back woods boy who grows up with this dude who he *thinks* is his dad (but isn't!!), out learning how to trap animals and crap, and then suddenly he becomes this lost royalty who had been kidnapped when he was young.
It's EXHAUSTING to read. But it's so worth it.
Really, stop reading this very complicated post that isn't doing any good for Card, and just go and read the book.
Which, by the way, is the first book in a series.
Feel free to take a stab at what I'll be doing today.
Orson Scott Card has a tendency to challenge the fuck out of his readers and their attention spans. Now, I'm kind of the poster child for ADD, so sometimes Card makes me want to bang my head against a wall and then cry. He's so demanding. And he's one of those authors where I'm always like, "what the hell does that word even mean? where's my phone? I need to google this word. And then look at all of the different websites that give examples of this word. Oh, look at that puppy. What was I doing??" And then eventually I get back to reading the book. But he is always so worth it. His books are amazing. The last Card book that I read took me days because it was so complex and demanding and exhausting that I just couldn't stand to read all of it at once. I couldn't do that yesterday though because I had to know who Rigg's dad was!
Oh, wait, backstory:
Earth is going to implode or something like that and so they send out a ship to find a new planet to inhabit. This dude, Ram, and a whole bunch of robots (who apparently look exactly like humans? Which made me think of David from that stupid movie, Prometheus, where EVERYONE DIES in the end) go out into space and them time jump what is supposed to be light years into the future, but by accident they somehow go back into time and then also, somehow, the ship is duplicated 19 times, so that now there are 19 ships instead of one. So anyway, they land on this new planet and while all of the humans, including Ram, are in stasis, the Expendables (robots) set up borders around the planet, making up 19 different colonies and then making it to where none of the humans would even know about the other colonies, and also making it to where the Walls that separate them from each other make a person go crazy when they go close to them.
Sidebar: I was attempting to google the name of the movie with the aliens (which is Prometheus, but I couldn't remember the name of it) and so I just googled 'alien'. Which gave me THIS:
 |
| Horrible as it is, I've seen that movie. |
ANYWAY. The book!
All the while, Card is also telling us about present time, which is eleven thousand years in the future from where Ram is now, which is actually eleven thousand years from where he used to be BEFORE he time jumped (get it?) on this new planet where this kid, Rigg, just learns that his dad died (but not really, because he lied, because he's really an Expendable and he can't die. I KNOW) and he has set out on this trip to go and meet his sister that he never knew about. Oh, and Rigg can change the past, and see the paths of other people from all other times, and his sister can make herself invisible. And his only friend can move through time. And he's this back woods boy who grows up with this dude who he *thinks* is his dad (but isn't!!), out learning how to trap animals and crap, and then suddenly he becomes this lost royalty who had been kidnapped when he was young.
It's EXHAUSTING to read. But it's so worth it.
Really, stop reading this very complicated post that isn't doing any good for Card, and just go and read the book.
Which, by the way, is the first book in a series.
Feel free to take a stab at what I'll be doing today.
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