Interlude - walt whitman poetry

I needed a quick break today so I decided to find something online to read. It had to be short and it had to be striking. Poetry (well, good poetry) fits the bill and this is what I ended up with A Woman Waits For Me by Walt Whitman

I particularly liked these lines:

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers, 35
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,

Dark Tower 3

Finished up book two of the Dark Tower and have started on Book 3. So far, I am liking this one better. I think what I didn't like too much about the other one was the jaunts into "our" world. I am much more interested in the world that has moved on and is inhabited by lobstrosities and gigantic parasitically-infested cyborg bears.

I got the Battle for the Abyss - a Black Library book about Warhammer 40k but decided to wait til my trip next week to read it.

So yeah, so far, Book 3 is good.

Oh, also, I downloaded The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen from project Gutenberg after hearing Stephen King mention it as inspiration for one of the stories in his new collection of short stories.

Now that I am starting to get the logging of books read more as a habit I think I might start posting some thoughts, lines I liked, things I didn't - stuff like that.

Dark Tower 2, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

For English I had to read "the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock" by T.S. Eliot. The first time I read it I thought, "meh." Dr Berchin made us read and reread it and then write papers on it and told us how wrong we were and sent us back to it. I have to say, at this point, with just a bare understanding of it, I am really starting to like it. It is a classic and for a reason. If you haven't read it yet, it is in a zillion places online - here I will save you the trouble of googling it.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock

This line jumped out at me the first time I read it and it strikes me every time I reread it - "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;"



I am now reading book two of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King - I am about half way through and so far it feels almost more like 3 novellas tied together by Roland than it's own story - presumably that will change. King is very good at creating characters that I don't particularly like as people and can be a bit folksy in his writing, but that is something that I love about him. Art is about feeling, no?

As an aside - it was a pain to find that cover - I didn't realize I had a UK version (got it at the old Page One Too before it was merged.)

And I'd like to close with this nugget of wisdom from Jim Phillips, front man of the great rock band Lousy Robot -

"Lots of things are gonna screw you in this world. Art never will."

Finished Titanicus

Finished Titanicus up last week. Haven't really started anything new yet. Titanicus was pretty awesome. I was just reading it along thinking, okay this is a standard kinda good Abnett book, then about 2/3 of the way in he drops the bomb and it is like, woah...

Another satisfying read from Mr Abnett.

Titanicus

Dan Abnett is about the only author that I get his books in hard cover. He is, in my opinion, quite simply one of the most fun reads out there. His characters are all top notch - valiant, heroic, flawed. All the things that draw me to any kind of character. His action scenes play out like movies. Anyway, enough with the gushing, I am starting up his new book, Titanicus.

Reading to the baby

So, I have started reading aloud at night when we go to bed. The idea is so that maybe the baby will will recognize my voice at least a little upon arrival. Right now we are reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I avoided reading this when it first came out mostly because everyone else in the world was reading it and I have fallen into that trap before (Dan Brown, I am looking at you!) but it is actually decent so far. Rowling has a great way with words, almost a poetry in her word choice which makes her very easy to read. She uses many adverbs (and the fact that they stand out means she probably didn't do a great job with 'em) and that is strangely distracting.

Finished The Beast House

It wasn't bad - the ending felt a little Hollywood and had a bit lower body count that I might have liked. Not a terrible book, not a great one either. The concept was very Lovecraftian but it was interesting to see such a different stylistic take on it.

Catching up a bit

I am going to throw the last couple of books I read here as well - in the last month or so.

The Bourne Supremacy - Robert Ludlum

This book, like the first one is quite different from the movies. Continuing on with David Webb aka Jason Bourne he gets drawn back into a world of black ops and assassination. Pretty decent, Ludlum's dialog is good except when he is doing "lovey" dialog between Jason/David/Cain and Marie and then it becomes almost painful to read. Perhaps he got a bonus every time he wrote "darling". I don't know.

His action scenes are top notch and all of the characters are interesting. A pretty easy read, the pages flew by and while there was a lot going on for the main plot, there wasn't a whole lot in the way of subplots making it even quicker to read.



Psychopath by Keith Ablow

Another quick read, though this one had a bit more going on at different levels. As can be expected his character motivations are really good. I was able to connect quite a bit with the three main male characters but that is my own thing, I suppose.

The scenes of violence were descriptive enough to get the point across but he didn't really linger on them. They felt quite clinical for the most part was almost a bit of a detachment. Anyway, a decent read and I will read Ablow again (though I have been warned away from Murder/Suicide). Interestingly, like the Beast House, this is not the first book in a series and I didn't realize that until after I was well involved. It is to the credit of both authors that it didn't really matter.

Beast House

I am reading Beast House by Richard Laymon right now. I am about half way through. It is okay - a really easy read and I rather enjoy his dialog. It feels very real and flows nicely.

It is apparently a sequel.