mind like a sieve

It completely slipped my mind to blog yesterday. You may have noticed I’ve used up all of my buffer before November and have been sort of struggling maintaining a pace these past two months. But I apologize profusely.

Yesterday and today have been Pam days. Which include a lot of the eating of the Chipotle.

I put the finishing touches on a short story that I’ve just submitted for Creative Loafing‘s fiction contest. I’ll keep you updated. This one has a pretty quick turn around. They’ll have a list posted tomorrow for readers to pick their favorite.

If I don’t end up making the cut, don’t worry, I’ll put it up here for you to read. I’m rather fond of this little story. It was really fun for me to write and it’s been awhile since I’ve written something short and contained.

The History of Love

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

I really loved this book. My friend Garrett (who shares my major love for Thrice) had a quote from this book as his Facebook status one day and it IMMEDIATELY hooked my attention. I’ll just share that quote with you here:

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

Garrett was quick to point out that he only had half of the quote up, however, I immediately went on a search for this novel. Because, c’mon, who doesn’t respond to romance like that? I saw it at Inkwood one day, but being quite incapable of buying all of the books that I like I waited to get it from the library. And then I started reading one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read (and at the same time quite a confusing novel).

I have a little bit of a pet peeve about this novel: there are three narrators. Two first person narrators that are quite vivid and then one third person omniscient narrator telling the story of another character or quoting passages from the novel The History of Love between the other narrators’ sections. The reason I was annoyed with this was not only does it create some confusion whilst reading… I am working, albeit intermittently, on a story about a couple teenage boys and a road trip and a professor of mine fussed at me for having this same sort of set up (with the three narrators). Oh well. That’s all I’ll say about that, because I’ll quickly start sounding “uppity”.

Anyway, my favourite parts of The History of Love were the passages that were “quotes” from the fictional novel The History of Love that’s sort of the catalyst for the actual novel (yeah, it’s confusing). What makes them so cool is how Nicole through her fictional author expresses very normal, universal experiences in an unexpected way. Like this:

“If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less. ”

from The History of Love, The Age of Silence

The Age of Silence and The Age of Glass are probably two of the best things I’ve ever read. Especially when you imagine a curmudgeonly old man explaining his fear of first expressing love based upon the belief that his rear end is made of glass. He’s honest about the vulnerability of telling someone you love them and messing it up because of fear.

I really, really, really cannot say enough to convince you to read this novel. Especially because if you find one part sort of difficult to read, the other narrator will give you a bit of a break. And there’s an absolutely adorable little boy named Bird who breaks your heart with his sincerity and sweetness.

Let’s just talk for a moment about how Nicole Krauss is married to Jonathan Saffran Foer. And apparently some snarkers on the internet accuse them of writing novels that are too similar (for instance The History of Love and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). My best friend has read the latter and I can’t wait for her holiday break so that we can discuss the two novels together and come to our own conclusions.

The last thing I’m going to give you is the link to the goodreads quote page and I just implore you to go read it. They’re just fantastic quotes. And maybe you’ll pick it up and read it at some point.

Flashback – The Martian Chronicles

The first official day of fall is not until September 23rd so I find myself in a dilemma. Most of my “book reviews” have gone up under a Summer Reading heading. Now I’m curious if I should immediately switch to a General Reading sort of heading as soon as the 23rd hits or still categorize everything I’ve finished before Sept. 23rd as Summer Reading. Ah, the bothersome details of the life of a blogger. These are things you probably don’t even notice about the posts’ categories. Oh well. If you have any sort of feedback, feel free to share. For now I’m going to discuss another book I read a few years ago.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Let’s take a gander at that beautiful artwork, shall we?

1984 Grand Master Series Edition

If you click that picture it takes you to a pretty cool post showing the evolution of the cover art from its original publication date of 1950 until 2009. The 1984 version is pretty much my favourite. There’s also a graphic novel version of this collection.

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation by Dennis Calero

I only just discovered this version. I may look into it a bit further since I do love this collection so much. Earlier this summer I made a foray into the world of Graphic Novels (which made Pam pretty excited) and I have a bit more patience for them than I did before. I’m a fan of the sedate in my entertainment.

Anyway, now that I’ve given you about five billion pictures to look at let’s talk about the collection. Hmm, where to start? Okay, I’ll be honest I most assuredly did not want to read this book when it was first suggested to me. I even went so far as to read just the first short story and half of the second and claim I didn’t like it. Accordingly I gave it back to the friend who let me borrow it and attempted to distract her from her Bradbury conversion of my imagination. (Turns out my kryptonite was Dandelion Wine). Once I read DW I decided to give The Martian Chronicles another go. I’m so glad I did.

Here are the things I love the most about The Martian Chronicles in no particular order

1. It is unapologetically frank about human nature, specifically our tendency to destroy almost everything we come in contact with. Granted, I believe that the created universe is naturally in a state of decline with or without humanity’s intentional help. However, this book takes some of the lessons learned by great explorers of Earth’s history (Columbus, Vespucci, Marco Polo, etc) and provides quite literally an alien landscape that makes the “history lesson” palatable.

2. Sort of continuing on that theme Bradbury does not assume that the future propels humanity into either Brave New World extremism or conversely, the horror of 1984. He treats the future as though it will be pretty much typical of 1950s America. The man is 91 years old and I don’t know what fortune-telling witch he met as a child, but he is for the most part correct. (More so than say, Zemeckis. Regardless, I still expect a hoverboard in four years). In The Martian Chronicles he acts as though racial tension and Communism will still be the major threats of the everyday American’s reality.

3. Perhaps my favourite stand-alone short story of Bradbury’s belongs to this collection. It’s called “Night Meeting”. I wrote about it a little over a year ago here. I think it is my favourite because it deals with the fickle nature of time. Time is one of those things that completely fogs up my brain. I just don’t understand it in a broad sense. I understand how the day to day stuff works. But anything outside of my limited perception? No way, dude. It’s just too big a thing for me to really understand. Too many grey lines. Too many things humans just can’t quite figure out. I love what Bradbury did with this short story. It reminds us that even the vivid civilization right in front of us is a fleeting one in History’s scope.

I could go on and on forever about this collection. Chances are, if you know me in real life, or work with me, at some point I have gone off on some tangential Bradbury monologue and The Martian Chronicles featured heavily. For some more basic information you can read about the book here. I most definitely endorse this collection. Read it. You won’t regret it. I plan on using it to trick any possible future sons I have into loving to read.

On a related note one of Bradbury’s space themed short stories “The Long Rain” (which is actually in The Illustrated Man) is about an attempt to colonize Venus after the colonization of Mars. It’s pretty bleak. But again, fascinating. And reminded me a bit of the torrential rains we deal with here in Florida sometimes.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by too much Bradbury, never fear. Tomorrow will be all about puppies. Maybe.

Cheers!

Sidekick

I’ve been watching A LOT of television shows lately, via Netflix and Hulu, you know those time suckers I’m sure. One thing that has been popping in and out of my mind as a result is the idea of the main character and the sidekick.

See, when you write a blog you tend to think of and write yourself as the main character and occasionally you throw in antics of your sidekicks or a shout out to their blog entity. So, since Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 30 Rock are the two shows I’ve watched the most of recently I will translate this pondering into their contexts and compare it to my relationship with Pam.

One of Pam’s favorite shows, if not THE favorite is 30 Rock. I watched the season finale of 30 Rock today and Pam and I have already established that she is Liz Lemon. In the 30 Rock universe if Pam is Liz Lemon that means I’m either Jenna Maroney or Pete Hornberger… so there’s that.

And Buffy has become pretty much my favorite show (of the summer, maybe longer, maybe I should have a whole ‘Reasons I love Buffy’ blog… maybe… maybe not… whatever). Anyway, if I’m Buffy that gives Pam the option of Willow or Xander.

What’s strange is that I don’t really like any of the options for either of us. We’ve had the conversation a couple of times about if our lives were a movie or sitcom (because I think we’d both rather be in a sitcom than a drama) who would play us and how those stories would flow in and out.  We switch things out. And unlike Pam and another friend we haven’t even talked about what the title to our hollywood-ized story would be… but it would have pretty kick-ass opening credits and probably some sort of indie song. Also, there would be lots of jacket and scarf wearing.

I dunno, I guess ultimately I hope that both Pam and I have better love-life stories than Liz and Buffy (things are looking up for Liz, though, Matt Damon as a Carroll is a good thing; Buffy was just doomed).

Maybe we could be in a musical directed by Joss Whedon… I think he’s proven he’s pretty good at that

I know that sometimes I can be a very self-involved main-character-type person. I often forget that I am part of a lot more supporting cast type roles than just my one main character role. It’s a weird thing to think about; and requires some effort I think. Sorry I keep going on and on… the musical line should’ve been the last bit.