So, I'm Reading This Book ...

THIS BLOG IS OVER. I killed it.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:50:48 -0400

I Need Funding for a Wheelchair!

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 04:46:13 -0400

I’m disabled and spend all of my time in the house because trying to go out and about wipes me out for days. I’d like to be able to be more independent and mobile and not worry about things like going shopping at the grocery store or going out to the park with family.

I want to shoot for the power chair because I could then go off on my own after being driven somewhere and not depend on someone pushing me around. I would not be able to push/wheel myself.

Huge thanks to anyone who donates!

I used to really enjoy this blog. I think it was...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 16:07:55 -0500

I used to really enjoy this blog. I think it was the disappointment of how boring the scifi and fantasy Coursera course was that made me stop doing it. I’m also in pain a lot. But now I have a program that allows me to type by just speaking so I may use that more … who knows. It’s a little awkward and annoying to use the program.

I might be back. I might not be. We’ll see!

Alice in Wonderland

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 05:01:35 -0400

Every good children’s book has an element of exploration that is impossible for kids in reality. This allows them to vicariously explore the world through fiction in a way that is impossible for them in real life. For a child, a story that has no elements of boundary breaking is a boring one.

Most children live in a world of restrictions and dependence. Even those who are allowed to run somewhat free must comply to the rules of society such as being in school, being expected to respect those older than them, and being unable to make their own major decisions.

In Alice in Wonderland the first thing Alice does is to run off on her own without a thought to telling anyone where she is going. This is something most children are not allowed to do. She goes on to make her own reckless decisions about eating and drinking strange foods, and talking with difficult or weird strangers, and solving her own problems.

Alice explores not only the strange and fantastical Wonderland but also different states of being for herself physically and personally. She grows suddenly - as children do - and then wishes to be small again. She talks back to the Queen herself with confidence and fearlessness even at the threat of being beheaded. But she then gets away with this when the king pleads with the Queen saying, “… she is only a child!” So the Queen moves on.

She explores by behaving like a confident adult and then reaches a limit and settles for being treated like a child who gets away with rude things by default of being a child. This back and forth between pushing boundaries and then accepting the conditions that put the boundaries there in the first place is perhaps a common way of all children to explore the strange world around them.

Grimms' Fairy Tales Essay

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:19:31 -0400

In Grimm’s Fairy Tales forests or woods are the setting in seemingly every other story and represent the real dangers and unknowns that peasants of a certain era faced in everyday life. The forests that bordered their farmlands and villages held very real threats. For example, they had reason to be afraid of the wolves that emerged and often attacked and killed the livestock that they so depended on and even sometimes attacked humans, perhaps especially defenseless wandering children. It’s possible that some of the tales, such as The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats (in which a wolf who eats a bunch of young goats is cut open while sleeping and filled with stones in place of the still living goats so that he falls into the water when he attempts to drink and drowns) is a way of using humor to deal with the serious problems and anxieties that wolves caused in their lives.
Another danger in the forests were the bands of criminals that sometimes hid there. This danger is talked of in The Robber Bridegroom in which the bride is unknowingly given over to a robber who lives in the woods and associates with a group of “cut-throats”.

Generally sinister people or magical talking creatures live in the woods in these tales. There is the classic tale of Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Cap, and The Robber Bridegroom, for a few examples. In some of the tales the innocent wanderer in the woods leaves bits of food or stones trailing behind them as a way to find their way out and home. People in those days often spent their whole lives near forests that they rarely ventured into so it’s no wonder that they are not only thought of as places where you could easily get lost but places ripe for wild imaginings of what could be within.

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 08:23:22 -0400

This is maybe the best memoir I’ve ever read and although that opinion may be influenced by the fact that I very strongly relate to her experiences I’m an experienced enough reader to recommend her on the sole basis of her skill as a writer and a storyteller.

I just spent the entire night unable to put this book down. It’s past eight in the morning and it was maybe the best night I’ve had in months.

If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed. For years I would stand with a foot in each sphere, drawn to the exotic universe that lay on the other side of the portal, wrenched back by the warnings that sounded like alarm bells in my mind.

Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:26:49 -0400

Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology:

Cormac McCarthy now writes about serial killers and post-apocalyptic worlds. Michael Chabon writes about alternate realities and hard-boiled detectives. Philip Roth writes alternate history. Kazuo Ishiguro writes about clones. Colson Whitehead writes about zombies. Kate Atkinson writes mysteries. Jennifer Egan writes science fiction, as does Haruki Murakami (and as did David Foster Wallace). And on and on. (The borrowing happens the other way, too: writers like Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Catherynne Valente, John Green, Susanna Clarke, Richard Price and China Miéville, to name a very few, are gleefully importing literary techniques into genre novels, to marvelous effect.) Krystal brings up Gary Shteyngart and his love of Zardoz (not the movie, oddly, but the novelisation thereof), but what he doesn’t mention is that Shteyngart’s last novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is science fiction. These days, I find, literary novelists are much more interested in plot and much less interested in plausibility, or in realism, than literary critics are.

In other words — and here’s the real nightmare, horror-movie reveal, wait for it — literary fiction is itself a genre, just like mysteries or westerns or fantasy. (I can’t resist quoting M. John Harrison here: “The sooner literary fiction recognises & accepts its generic identity, the sooner it can get help.”)

The course “Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind,...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:02:12 -0400

The course “Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World”, by Professor Eric Rabkin from the University of Michigan will be offered free of charge to everyone on the Coursera platform. Sign up at https://new.coursera.org/course/fantasysf

Coursera Course: Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:59:41 -0400

I’m taking this lit course and will be using the blog for a while to write about it. I’ve started on Dracula already which I found to be a big disappointment and now am putting off starting on Grimm’s Fairy Tales (so boring). Later on in the course there will be better readings, many of which I’ve already read at some point which makes the course easier for me.

By the way, this course and many others is free and anyone in the world can join.

Here are the books we will be reading:

Grimm — Children’s and Household Tales
Carroll — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
Stoker — Dracula
Shelley — Frankenstein
Hawthorne & Poe — Stories and Poems
Wells — The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, “The Country of the Blind,” “The Star”
Burroughs & Gilman — A Princess of Mars & Herland
Bradbury — The Martian Chronicles
LeGuin — The Left Hand of Darkness
Doctorow — Little Brother

All of which are available free online except a few and that’s what libraries and/or pirating is for.

Here is the goodreads group. And #courserafantasy on Google+

Books used to have such awesome art on the covers.

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 01:57:18 -0400

Books used to have such awesome art on the covers.

FREE online course from UofM: Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:15:56 -0400

FREE online course from UofM: Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World:

We understand the world - and our selves - through stories. Then some of those hopes and fears become the world.

About Coursera

We offer high quality courses from the top universities, for free to everyone. We currently host courses from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and University of Pennsylvania. We are changing the face of education globally, and we invite you to join us.

Guy Walks into a Bar Car by David Sedaris

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 09:25:59 -0400

Guy Walks into a Bar Car by David Sedaris:

Lost loves and lost years …

Ray Bradbury - Story of a Writer (by scificommons) A 25-minute...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:20:00 -0400

Ray Bradbury - Story of a Writer (by scificommons)

A 25-minute documentary from 1963 about Ray Bradbury

The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury Written and Read by Neil Gaiman...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:09:00 -0400

The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury Written and Read by Neil Gaiman @NeilHimself

To read Neil’s blog - “Ray Bradbury” - from 2012.06.06, visit http://bit.ly/ngjRAY1
To read his blog - “Ray Bradbury: In Memoriam and In Green Town Illinois” - posted in the evening of 2012.06.06, visit http://bit.ly/ngjRAY2

This recording was released via the Kickstarter/fan-funded live album “An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer” - additional info available at http://kck.st/pF2lMG
Recorded on 2011.11.08 in Portland, OR at the Aladdin Theater.

Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Jaron Luksa | @JaronSound
Original artwork by Cynthia von Buhler | @CynthVonBuhler
Microphones furnished by Ear Trumpet Labs

http://www.neilgaiman.com
http://www.jaronsound.com
http://www.cynthiavonbuhler.com
http://www.eartrumpetlabs.com

: #OccupyGaddis

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 02:01:00 -0400

: #OccupyGaddis:

lareviewofbooks:

By Lee Konstantinou

When I started grad school, ten years ago, I was pretty cocky. I felt well-read, confident in my grasp of American literary history. The paradoxical effect of getting a Ph.D. in English is that it leaves you feeling less knowledgeable, less well read than before you…

Audiobook - Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:30:05 -0500

Audiobook - Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:09:24 -0500

It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.

- From Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Kindle Screensaver

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:05:24 -0500

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Kindle Screensaver

Every Book I Read Needs to be at Least 50 Pages Shorter

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:31:37 -0500

Every Book I Read Needs to be at Least 50 Pages Shorter:

I’m not saying that I don’t love big books. Some of my favorite books have sizable junk in their trunks. I just think I would love those big books even more if they slimmed and trimmed down a bit.

Two Horror Novels

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:07:54 -0500

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

I’ve been into horror lately and picked this one up kind of randomly. I wouldn’t really call it horror though; it’s just really weird. It’s written in first person with the protagonist being a clearly slightly mental or retarded eighteen-year-old girl. She lives in an old house with her older sister and ailing old uncle.

This is the sort of book that makes you wonder what’s true and what isn’t. Are the townspeople really so bad? Should she fear and hate them so much? Why don’t they like her family?

It is revealed that the rest of their family is dead because someone poisoned them at dinner one day years ago. The older sister was suspected and therefore shunned by the community. The younger sister survived because she had been sent to bed without supper as punishment. The uncle because he hadn’t eaten much of the sugar that the poison was in.

They live a very routine life and that’s the way they like it. But things start to change when a cousin shows up and the control they had on their lives quickly unravels.

At the end of this book you’ll be saying “… well that was a bit strange …

” and you’ll certainly still have questions unanswered. But to me it was a short book worth reading.

Hell House by Richard Matheson

This one was very typical at first. Your classic group of people entering a huge haunted house to try to detect the spirits and prove they’re real. The scientist who brings them all in. The piles of fancy ghost-detecting equipment. The mediums. I went on with it anyway because it’s an easy read. Everyone in the house has a different opinion on what’s actually going on and eventually you really want to know who will be right. It gets complicated and has plenty of twists and turns so that a seemingly unimaginative haunted house story turns into an irresistible mystery story.

I enjoyed it but usually don’t like books that have this much gore and perversion. I wish I could have seen my own twisted up, disgusted face as I read closer and closer to the ending. It’s not for a weak stomach. I don’t want to give details but just trust me it gets pretty sick.

I also read a few others that were crap and I won’t mention them further. Right now I’m in the middle of one (Odd John) that I will probably not finish because it’s becoming an excuse for the author to preach his opinions and it kind of sucks all around anyway. I have no idea what I’ll read next. I’m being really picky so I keep reading the first bits of books and then moving on for the hopes of something better. We’ll see.