Updates?

Hallo! I haven't read a lot lately, atleast nothing worth writing about here. What I am interested in now is what books have you read, to educate or just satisfy curiosity, that would normally seem very out of place for you.

At the moment I'm reading/finishing Possession from The List, but on the side I'm reading A Child Against all Odds, written by Robert Wynstan, the mustachiod professor who made that Human Body series years and years ago.

It reads remarkably well. It takes into account every single ethic you could want to, plus all religions and they're many different views of when a human becomes a human and gets all those same rights, but it's fantastically informative.

This might be out of place for me, because I'm not looking into IVF for any reason. I have a girl I'm going to marry, but I can't support myself at the moment let alone a whole house, car, etc family feeding them. Two of my siblings are currently trying for children though, so that may be the start of the interest.

Regardless, a Magic the Gathering writer, who also reads a lot of books to educate himself in hopes of being a great writer one day mightn't seem like the first person to read the book, or buy it. But I've always been deeply interested in all sciences. The how and why of how small things works is really amazing, and I consider a book like The Fabric of the Cosmos (Green) a "jaunt through the park" in terms of reading. That's technically a very heavy book, going through the entire history of science and relativity and gravity and the concept of everything, written in a time BEFORE the discovery of the big's boson field/particle.

I think what attracts me most is the games you get to play afterwards. With the basic concepts gained, you can dream up situations where you can tweak things. Existance etc all that. It has a lot to do with my being a judge for Magic the Gathering, too. You can give me the most complicated board situation, and I'll figure it out for you. 99% correct, because no judge is 100%. But it's the proper full control, with no concern for time, that makes it better.

I must admit I feel no pressure, as a writer, to "get something out there." If I write well, and good, and sell, it'll happen when it does. I'm not trying to squeeze anything out. I have two things almost nice and ready, but even then I'd have to spend a good while rewriting them some more before I'd be happy to let them go.

So that's what I'm thinking about lately, and reading. Possession is still a great read, and lots of fun, and it's not the "typical" run around and find old letters from an eon ago style story. You can see where awful books by bad writers get their inspiration from, think of the Da Vinci Code, and how the readers are going back and forth, figuring out puzzles. That is HEAVILY derived from this, only the Da Vinci Code gives you a wee feeling of excitement, as you entertain afterwards the idea that Jesus might have had a genetic descendant anyway, and hey why not, it's in some book some jerk wrote.

If you like that book, I don't apologise for my opinion, but for making you feel bad about liking it.

Possession gives less "fantastic!" chase and much more depth of character, spewing forth an entire collection of writings that the reader must read to understand the story and background of the characters, from both the past and present of the novel, as well as the "unwinding story" of what happens between the 'main characters' of the past, who're still very active and energetic characters, despite being long since dead in the current story. It's certainly thinking about holding hands with Nabokov's Pale Fire, seeing both books endevour to tell a story by way of not telling it straight forward, through the normal written novel format.

So a big thumbs up to such an entertaining book before I've even finished it. Briefly, comparing Possession to Pale Fire again, I have found Possession easier to read, despite the fact that I'm still reading it.

I imagine next I'll set up a short/long book duo, the long book being Gone with the Wind. I love that story, what I've seen from the movie. For the short, possible Catch-22. I know, I know. They're both long books! The problem is how they feel like they read, too. Catch-22 "reads quick" so is a short book, despite length. Gone with the Wind is a long book, and significant, historical and CRAMMED with storyline, so a bit like a Guiness. Catch-22 would be your standard Lowenbrau.