Search Results for “wonder” – Page 8

am I reading too much?

By meghan rose on Tuesday, April 8, 2014

I wonder if I’ve started to treat reading the way I used to treat television, when I had television, just hours of staring at American homes on HGTV when I lived in Halifax, NS with no plans to buy anything. That is, as a way to pass the time. Am I using books just as a way to pass the time? I read and read and read but it feels like enjoyment has been stripped from the process. I get breathless, my heart races, and I start to feel sick when I look at my wishlist on librarything. I’ll never read all those books. Then I put hundreds more books on the wishlist and just hope that something will happen and I’ll just spend every second reading rather than being productive. But there’s not even enjoyment in that, in putting books on the wishlist.

Right now it is March (April really, but it looks like March since winter lingers). Some of this has to do with the dreariness of half-melted snow piles with gravel on top. Some of this has to do with the bragginess of the other kindergarten mothers I meet. Some of this just has to do with small town living. Some of it has to do with my general, melancholic disposition.

But am I reading too much? I’ve read 55 books this year so far, but some of those are Tesfa’s chapter books I read aloud to her over and over again to the point where I don’t even need to look at the words on any of the hundred pages. Those are books. Those count.

I’m reading because that’s like work that isn’t work, procrastination that I can say is important somehow. Expanding my brain with no carpal tunnel from clicking around click-bait stories on the internet. Tomorrow I have a two hour block where I sit and wait for Tesfa’s art class to finish that I can read some more of a book that won’t even stick long enough in my mind that I’ll remember what happened at the beginning when I get to the end. So what’s the point? If it weren’t grey, I’d stare out at nature instead for the two hours. But it’s all grey here still. The snow is so deep that being above freezing hasn’t melted any of it yet. There are piles in the yard taller than me, not that I’m tall. I’d be taller if I didn’t slouch but the piles of grey snow are still there, depressing in the yard.

So I read to pass the time, until something better comes along. Until I can fix my stories that are broken or write new ones or find new books to add to my wishlist, to add to my heart palpitations.

Summer, at this point, is purely imaginary.

books

my failure with the nineteenth century novel

By meghan rose on Monday, March 17, 2014

I am trying again. Someone I knew told me that Little Women was worth my time. And now that I have a kobo and Project Gutenberg is at my fingertips, I have no excuse not to read it. My kobo helpfully tells me I am 42% of the way through Little Women, yet it feels like I will never ever finish this book. I will, of course, just due to stubbornness and the belief that I should give classics a fair shot, but I have come to the conclusion that my three degrees in Mathematics have not properly trained me for reading what is supposed to be the apex-time of the novel. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to read these books and enjoy them.

Of course, that last sentence was probably an over-exaggeration. I thought and thought and thought and have come up with all the nineteenth century novels I have read in my life. There is a skewing towards Russian novels, since I took a course on The Great Russian Novel, and maybe I like Russian novels better because they have that weary annoyance with being alive that I somewhat identify with (the bits of Ukrainian in me peaking out).

So, here, to the best of my memory, is my list of nineteenth century novels I have read, roughly in the order I read them in:

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells: Read in middle school. Don’t remember much other than I got my copy for 25 cents at a book sale.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: Same book sale. Same price. Read the same November. It’s great that my memory recalls I read this in November of my eighth grade year, yet I remember very little about actually reading either of these two books. That much of an impression was left. I mean, I know the story of A Christmas Carol, having seen movies and the like, but there’s nothing specific about the book that remains.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo: Okay – I read an abridged version of this in translation. It was still four hundred pages long and I was twelve, so that’s got to count for something. I read most of it outside on the grass while waiting for my sister’s gymnastic classes to finish. There was a pool there to dip my feet into. It was a rather lonely summer. I think I remember a lot of this, shortened, book though. I should read a full version and see how much I actually do remember.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: I remember being more impressed that I could understand the bits of French in the novel. Book was okay I guess. Didn’t really understand the allure of Mr. Rochester.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens: I read like a third of this in Grade Ten English. By I read, I should say The class read. My teacher was very much about a Dickensian surgical strike saying we didn’t have the time to read all of A Tale of Two Cities, only the points most salient to the plot with the lookalikes and I guess something about knitting?

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: Read for OAC English. I got a bad mark (probably a B or something; I was that sort of student that thought anything less that A+ was a bad mark) on an opinion piece because I said I didn’t really understand exactly what Kurtz did wrong? He got chummy with the natives and that seemed to shock everyone’s Victorian sensibilities, but other than that? Apparently to a high school English teacher, that kinda denotes complete lack of understanding because, and I remember this clearly, written at the top of my page in purple ink was You need to re-read this book because you have missed the point. I guess this also just sneaks in as well, being published in 1899.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: This was the book that told me that maybe nineteenth century novels and I were not to be. I liked it until near the ending when the (highlight to see spoiler) spooky secret society as the real villains. In true nineties (1990s that is) style: gag me with a spoon. This book is forever entwined with the summer I worked at Nortel and reading it on the long, round-about bus ride from Nortel Carling to Barrhaven. Three buses and an hour. Driving from my parents’ house to Nortel Carling takes ten minutes. This was not OC Transpo’s finest hour.

8., 9.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll: Okay, these books I actually like a fair deal. All the silly nonsense. But I don’t really know if they can be considered having the same weightiness as say Dickens or Doestoevsky.

10.

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper: I do not remember anything about this book. Daniel Day-Lewis was in the movie though. I saw the movie on a plane. Come to think of it, I think the person who talked to me about Little Women also likes either this book or this movie.

11.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: Read on the bench of the Barrhaven Mall while waiting for my piano lessons with Tom Pechloff to begin. Again, not much stuck.

12.

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol: Ah, now we are getting into my ancestral compatriots! But firstly, how sad is it that this Dead Souls is fourth on the list when you search for Dead Souls on Librarything? Ian Rankin’s Dead Souls is number one. Really? This makes me make that grrrrr sound I make when I’m frustrated with something over which I have no control whatsoever (frequently heard on airplanes or with family members).

Anyways, I like this book. I really like this book. It’s so bizarre and Gogol went mad and starved himself to death while trying to finish the trilogy and something inside me emo-nods and says I totally relate to that.

13.

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov: This Russian novel I do not like so much. I fell asleep while reading this book, in a cold room, in the middle of the day.

14.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev: A Russian novel I don’t remember much about. I’m guessing there’s a father and a son. I think they go to England?

15.

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: I remember the ending of The Idiot, but I think what I think is the beginning of The Idiot is actually the beginning of Demons, which I was reading at the same time but didn’t finish.

16.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoi: A wonderful story, unfortunately interjected with Tolstoi spew.

17.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Well, this is just the greatest novel ever written. You can’t really say anything other than that. I spent all of May 2002 reading this book and pretty much doing nothing else, ignoring my stupid computer science course I had to take in order to get my undergraduate pure math degree. I learned a lot more from this book than I ever did about Java.

18.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoi: Any long-time follower of my blog already knows my views on War and Peace (specifically, Tolstoi spew). I surprised myself my enjoying the war parts more than the peace parts, in prime contradiction to Anastasia Krupnik’s mom in one of the Anastasia books, but I can’t remember which one.

19.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Another failure. Sorry Rebecca who loves this book. I feel bad I don’t love it too. This was the first book I read on my kobo, so we’ll always have that.

20.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: I liked this one! Yay for me! But this book isn’t actually about the nineteenth century, so maybe that’s why I liked it. It’s about the 1640s.

21.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: Not done this yet, but not loving it either. I have a feeling this makes me heartless.

I think that’s it (although I’ll probably hit publish and remember like twenty other nineteenth century books I’ve read). So what’s the total? Let’s see:

Loved (5): Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, Dead Souls, The Brothers Karamazov, The Scarlet Letter

Okayed (6): Les Misérables, Jane Eyre, Heart of Darkness, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Little Women

Did not like (4): A Tale of Two Cities, The Woman in White, Oblomov, Pride and Prejudice

Cannot remember much of anything that happened (6): The Invisible Man,
A Christmas Carol, The Last of the Mohicans, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Fathers and Sons, The Idiot

So, is that an acceptable attempt at the nineteenth century novel? A poor one? English-lit geeks, help me out.

I want to enjoy classics, but then I try and get frustrated and my brain rebels. Perhaps I need to be older and calmer and less angry with things. Perhaps I need to mellow out to enjoy stories that aren’t post-modern and stories where marriage and riches are the ultimate goal. Comedies of manners. I don’t know. I give myself pep talks but I just can’t get excited about nineteenth century novels the way I get excited about contemporary ones.

So what nineteenth century novel should I read next that will cause me to fall in love with the whole genre? Internet, please advise me.

books fiction writing

where I get my ideas

By meghan rose on Friday, March 14, 2014

Isn’t that the question that gets lobbed out to writers at public speaking events? I remember having a book about being a writer (which my maternal grandparents gave to me in an uncharacteristic show of support for talents. To give you an idea of my grandparents, a few weeks ago my maternal grandmother said that my five year old daughter had a good, slim figure, so, yeah, um, okay) and that was pretty much the entire book Where do writers get their ideas.

So in case you’ve ever wondered where I get my ideas, here is an example. I read a book about a lifeboat. I am now writing a story about …. wait for it … a lifeboat.

There you go. You can all marvel at the intricacies of the meghan mind. Pretty much how I read a book about faeries and then decided to write a story about faeries.

In any case, my lifeboat story will likely be short and have fewer characters. I got confused with the number of characters in the lifeboat story I just read. Also, my story will probably not be that good. But it’s the thought that counts, as long as the thought doesn’t involve too much outright, blatant theft from the book I just finished.

this month I ...

February 2014

By meghan rose on Thursday, March 6, 2014

I read the following books:

Thoughts:

The Closed Circle: This is, of course, the sequel to one of my favourite books and a book I’ve read before, although the first time I tried reading it, I tried reading it before I read The Rotters’ Club and the little message in the front, probably tongue and cheek, probably wry British humour, instead feels arrogant – talking about how like there’d be any reason you’d forgotten what happened in the previous book, the implication being that the previous book is so great that one couldn’t forget what happened. Issue is, the previous book is great. Still, I hate the little forward telling me so.

Savage Love: Recommended as “fucking brilliant” by someone who passed on my work and I can see why if he thought this was fucking brilliant why he passed one me because we’re totally opposite styles. I guess I’m just not a post-modern, non sequitur style person, although I did write a post-modern type story immediately after finishing this collection to submit for the Bronwen Wallace award (no chance of winning, but good to have goals). I can see how technically good the stories are, how well-crafted and theoretically brilliant they are, but in actual fact, I just didn’t like them much at all. And whenever I do start to like a story – the last one in the collection for example – it does a sharp turn and I end up annoyed again by the end.

Accusation: Catherine Bush wrote one of my all-time favourite books and she’s hardly prolific and this book has Ethiopia in it, so everything was coming up Milhouse! This isn’t as great a book as The Rules of Engagement, but it’s still pretty good and full of little details of things that I’d forgotten I knew (such as second-hand stores being called Opportunity Shops in Australia) and another one of the nails in the coffin of Come From Away because I’ll never get all the tiny details as right as this book does.

Sexing the Cherry: I always like Jeanette Winterson (and since I keep talking about favourites, my favourite Jeannette Winterson is Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal) but man, you have to read every single word. Her books require focus. This book is only 140 pages long and it still took me four or five days to get through.

Tampa: Why is the font so large? To trick me in thinking this book is far longer than it should be? This is a novella-length idea stttreeeecccchhhheddddddd uncomfortably into a novel. Why does it take until after the half-way point of this novel for something other than predatory and pornographically detailed statuatory rape to happen? I know all happy stories are the same, but I’m done with reading about rapists and Nazis and pedophiles and looking-for-humanity-in-everyone. I think somewhere along the line we’ve started to confuse complex with repugnant. Being a horrible person doesn’t make anyone particularly more interesting. This book underlines that quite well, probably not on purpose.

Juanita Wildrose: My True Life: A friend lent this to me, saying It’s weird, so you’ll probably like it. I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment. I never know how to rate experimental novels. They’re like the far-end of the bell curve, not enough to compare them with. I did appreciate the poetry here was not italicized. After reading one of the Tolkien books (the second one? I don’t know) in one day at a very long sporting event I was dragged to as a child, I tend to ignore any poetry in italics, assuming it is (a) not very good, and (b) not relevant to the actual plot.

Best book:

Tesfa and I read this last month too, and likely will read it in March, possibly April, possibly all future months. I change the few lines about Cowboys and Indians to being about Spies (the book is from the 1960s so I can’t expect too much) and then we’re good to go.

Edit: Now, on further consideration, I wonder if my favourite book of the month wasn’t:

This is a tough call.

Most promising book I put on my wishlist:

Sleeping is not my strength. I read books about other people’s trials with sleep and feel a little better about life.

I watched:

Thoughts:

30 Rock: Sometimes it says “xciting jazz music” in the intro, which I’d like to think is some sort of secret message I just haven’t figured out yet.

Room 237: Some people have a lot more time on their hands then I do. It reminded me of all the people who bend-over backwards to figure out secrets in House of Leaves where I am like Eh, it’s just a thing I watched and then move on.

The Magic Schoolbus: I’d forgotten, from my babysitting days, how annoying the theme song was.

The Croods: I feel rather bait-and-switchy on this one. The movie starts off with narration from Eep, the female teenager, then drops that and the story morphs into more about her father and Guy while Eep becomes a secondary character just mooning after some boy she doesn’t even really know.

Breaking Bad: Another one where I’m starting to feel that the line between complex and repugnant has been smudged out. When I first started watching this show, it stressed me out so badly because the tension was so well played and now, in the dying end of the final season, I’m just annoyed with everyone involved. Some of it, I know, is personal distaste, having dealt with many “brilliant” men who use their intelligence as a shield to be assholes (I think most women in STEM fields and/or academia have run into their fair share of men like that), but at this point, Walt is the least interesting person on the show, yet it’s still about him and I don’t care about him. He’s an asshole and I read a spoiler so I know what happens, yet I keep watching because I’m a sucker for completing things and it’s nice to have something to do with Geoff in the evenings before Tesfa goes to bed.

Arthur: This is one of those shows where most of the kids act really bratty and I hate shows like that. We only watched one episode and Tesfa didn’t seem to care for it either, thankfully.

Community, Parks and Recreation: Watched these with my parents. My dad usually watches TVO and The Food Network. My mom watches Duck Dynasty and Storage Wars. I do not think they will be letting me pick what we are watching on television together again.

I wrote: Much faerie story, both longhand and typing. I wrote a short story about a psychic in a building I used to pass by on the bus in Calgary. Come From Away falters more. I thought I’d be sad about that, but I’m not. It’s just gone.

Nothing new published. One rejection letter, actually maybe two because I can’t remember whether it came at the end of January or beginning of February. I don’t have too many stories out there for consideration right now. Need to start rewriting and/or starting some new ones.

fiction writing longer stories

where’s my faerie story at?

By meghan rose on Monday, February 24, 2014

A: At a crossroads.

Today I finished writing (in longhand in my ideally sized Dollarama notebooks – dear G-d, what will I do if Dollarama stops stocking these sizes of notebooks? They already raised the price on them from $1.50 to $2.00; what if they become too expensive for Dollarama to produce? What if an emerging worker class in China demands better conditions in their Dollarama factories causing the whole Dollarama empire to collapse and I lose my notebooks for the good of humanity overall?) everything I had written down to do in my previous plan. It left me at what I think of in my head as the End of Book One.

Except now I am starting to realize that to have an End of Book One, one needs to have, at least, a Beginning of Book Two, followed by a Middle of Book Two, and, ideally, an End of Book Two. So now I’m wondering if instead there is some neat-o way I can spend another ten thousand words and wrap everything up instead. You know, if I could figure out a neat-o way to spend another ten thousand words and wrap everything up. My plan only got me to the End of Book One and now I’m stumped. I don’t know if I have the fantasy-world chops to go into the world of the faeries; I’ve sort of stayed near the surface but kept us here in my thinly veiled Maritime small town and put faeries there. Maybe now I have to put my thinly veiled Maritime town in the faerie world instead?

I have to type up what’s left in my notebook, probably about five thousand more words. Then I have to get an idea. Or not. I could just abandon this and go do something else and hope, left in the recesses of my mind, a Beginning of Book Two somehow presents itself to me in that hazy area between being asleep and waking up.

I also hate typing. My notebook is just sitting next to me, laughing at all the words I have to get from it and onto my computer. Maybe I’ll look into some sort of voice transcribing software. Anything to mean I don’t have to spend the next two days bribing and tricking myself into typing something up.

books fiction writing

she’s just a small town girl

By meghan rose on Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Every few months I get a letter from my website hosting company with a coupon for google ads, and to make me feel that they really care about me as a person, they always personalize the letter with such information as they can find on my billing statement.

So every few months, I get a chipper letter saying Hey Meghan Rose (and I’ll stop you right there – no one calls me Meghan Rose anymore, even though I still sign my name like that, and the only reason I sign my name like that is that in high school, the registrar messed up and put my full name in the What you like to be called column and I discovered it was easier to just let teachers call me that rather than explain, every year, that some secretary had switched the two columns for me. So unless my high school Calculus teacher Mr Brown has since moved to Utah to run a webhosting service, I’m pretty sure that this is just robotic scanning of billing information).

But back to the letter: Hey Meghan Rose, Ever wonder how many people in NAME OF TOWN I LIVE IN* are searching for exactly what you have to offer?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can answer that for you. There are 5558 people in the town I live in according to StatsCan. And I’ll bet zero of them are looking for someone who writes literary short stories. But thanks for trying.

* I’m not actually going to say the town I live in, but I think I have before, so someone could probably figure it out if she were so inclined.

I went to the library yesterday. The librarian had locked himself out of his computer system, but said I could just take my books out anyway, which may be pretty awesome because now I have far too many library books out, but if some of the books I have out don’t go into the system, then I’ll have a longer time to read them.

I’m pretty sure though, if there were more than 5558 people in my town, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to just take books out of the library without actually taking them out.

And I’m also pretty sure the librarian knows me as the creepy girl who takes out too many books. But that’s okay, because that’s what I am.

fiction writing shameless self promotion

being positive

By meghan rose on Friday, November 22, 2013

Make a list of all the nice things that people have said about your writing, Geoff said, tired of listening to me complain about feeling unloved. Nice things by people who didn’t have to say nice things, like strangers.

So, in the past few weeks, I’ve gotten:

“I loved it!” via twitter from Reading In Bed.

“Brutal, crushing story” via twitter from Kim Fu.

“Our Editorial Board was really captivated by this original and emotionally stirring piece” via email from Prism Magazine.

“Love the comedic touches! Strong writing, characterization. Would love to see more writing from this author” via email from The Antigonish Review.

The last two, sadly, were part of rejection emails (no Prism or Antigonish Review publications for me yet). But those are better than the other rejection email I got about how they only publish pieces with “meaningful conflict” and my piece’s subtle-women-to-women-undermining (most girls are nodding and know what I’m talking about here) was either two subtle or read by men who, luckily, haven’t been privy to the cattiness that sometimes occurs between girlfriends. I’m giving it a 75% likely the first and 25% likely the second.

So positive rejections and unsolicited nice things, but the feeling-of-failure creep is still setting in. I have a story, the one that has “comedic touches” and “[s]trong writing, characterization”. I think, in terms of short stories, it’s my best one yet. I read a shitload of short stories before writing it (Alice Munroe, Rebecca Lee, Miranda July, Charles Yu, etc.), so I was in a read short-story mindset. I think it’s funny and touching and deserves a really good home. But I don’t know where to put it – I’m sure it could find a great home online, but it feels like a story you flip through the pages to read. Some of my stories seem like they belong on a screen. This one doesn’t.

So I wonder – should I submit it to the Fiddlehead contest? Maybe an online journal I really enjoy like Little Fiction (although they were the ones who thought I had inadequate conflict above) or Compose (although they also recently rejected me as well)? I could go big and try Room? Joyland (they never say no, they just don’t email you when you don’t get accepted, but there rejection turn-around time is a month so at least one isn’t waiting too long)? carte-blanche always rejects my stuff. filling Station too, and they always give the most ridiculous reasons for it.

This list I’m making has me realising I submit to a lot of places and know a lot about their rejection policies. But it’s also making me gigglge, so that’s not too bad.

Staying positive. I’ll submit it somewhere soon, and we’ll see.

fiction writing

how much of the time can I please everyone?

By meghan rose on Friday, October 18, 2013

New mentor’s advice contradicts old mentor’s advice. I do like new mentor’s advice better so I’m not really complaining per se but I’m wondering about that thing in Burroway probably that if someone is giving advice, you don’t have to follow the advice, but you have to admit that there is something in your story that isn’t working.

And there is a lot in my story that isn’t working but I knew that even before I started this course. That is actually why I started this course: to help make some of the problems go away by having impartial eyes upon it.

I also just wish that Come From Away would go away.

And I keep typing LaTeX markup rather than HTML in this post so clearly I need to be doing something else right now.

books math

when copy-readers and typesetters are not scientists

By meghan rose on Tuesday, August 6, 2013

I am reading a book. One of the characters studied physics, which makes me wonder about him, but his focus is astronomy, which is a useless as my pure math degrees, so I warmed to him somewhat.

So character (his name is Nick) thinks about math. Nick thinks about equations. The author decides to write these equations out for us, and we get

z(r) = sqrt(R3/2M)[sqrt(1-(1-(2Mr2/R3)))] for r <=R

Perhaps one is thinking that I do not have $latex \LaTeX$ installed in wordpress and am typing out what the math should be. All that is wrong. Of course I have $latex \LaTeX$ installed with wordpress. In fact, $latex \LaTeX$ comes pre-installed with more versions of wordpress. Secondly, I would have put the slashes, underbars, carots, etc, probably a text box for the for. No, this is, verbatim, what was written on the page, assuming I transcribed the brackets correctly.

Maybe Nick thinks in $latex \LaTeX$-esque thoughts? The book is set in the early eighties, so we’ll reduce that to TeX thoughts? But he isn’t attached to a university, so is that likely? Moreover, in thinking, would someone think sqrt instead of $latex \sqrt{\,}$? I wouldn’t.

So I come to the conclusion that the typesetter and the copy-readers don’t really know how equations work, how equation-thinking people think of equations. I assume this is a real astronomy equation. I assume that the author copied it down from a textbook or paper, where it was written, I assume as:

$latex z(r) = \displaystyle \left(\sqrt{\frac{R^3}{2M}}\right)\left(\sqrt{1-\left(1-\frac{2Mr^2}{R^3}\right)}\right) \text{ for } r \le R.$

Perhaps not exactly that (I haven’t taken physics since high school, a class in which a ninety percent of our work was determining what a Newton scale would read while it held a variety of weights while going up and down at certain speeds on an elevator) but something similar. But I cannot imagine that the author found an equation written as it ended up in her book in a scientific setting. Instead, somehow, via editors and typesetters and copy-readers, we got from the second equation to the first one, probably either under the assumption that the first is more palatable for a non-science audience or via a typesetter who had never seen how to typeset mathematics before.

Either way, this made me unhappy or angry or something in between.

this month I ...

June 2013

By meghan rose on Tuesday, July 2, 2013

I read the following books:

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman: I did not enjoy this book. As I put in a review the execution so poor that any goodwill towards the story is effectively squandered by a few pages in. The characters are flat and their voices barely differentiated; there almost seems no need to have four separate voices since the voices are identical. The situations are melodramatic. The writing is plodding and the book too long. The love others have for this book completely confounds me.

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor: A gentle novel. I can’t think of another novel I’ve read recently that is as gentle as this one.

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson: A book I really wanted to love but couldn’t because this book is sloppy. It has the forward momentum thrust and the cute humour, which I will admit are aspects anything I write lacks, but the book is rushed and reads juvenile in many places. This book, much like the revolution within it, is about potential rather than anything realised. Maybe someday.

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace: Unfinished (that is, the book is – I read all of what is written) by still I liked.

Ten Good Seconds of Silence by Elizabeth Ruth: Another novel of potential unrealised. I read it and worry that if I ever write a first novel, it will end up over-muddied like this one and then lost and forgotten. There is a lot of good stuff here, but then there is a lot of unnecessary stuff as well as big coincidences. I don’t know. I don’t buy it.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White: With Tesfa.

Matilda by Roald Dalh: Geoff had a conference. Tesfa and I spent most of a weekend reading this book instead.

Best book: The Pale King. What else am I going to pick? I didn’t have a very successful book reading month.