Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Book of Flying

The Book of Flying The Book of Flying by Keith Miller


My review


rating: 5 of 5 stars
I finished it few days ago. Having allowed it to sit in my head for a bit, I think it is safe to say that this is my favorite book. Yes, my favorite.

The writing is the most superb combination of prose and poetic language I have ever seen. It is a pleasure to read and to speak out loud. The characters are beloved and entrancing, the world beautiful and fascinating, Pico's journey perfect and poignant. It is a story about stories, an ode to journeys, dreams, love, and flight in every form.

I loved it so much. Read it. You won't be sorry.


View all my reviews.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Odds, Bobs, and Tidbits.

I was supposed to be working on my Genetics essay. Instead, I was sifting through old files, things from high school I had forgotten about. I was expecting to shudder a lot. I didn't. A lot of it, I don't remember writing it. Most of the time, when I looked at my writing from high school in the past, it was much worse than I had thought at the time. Not so today. Did some of it need polishing? Duh. Were there mistakes there that I wouldn't have made now? Of course.
Nevertheless: it was actually quite good, a lot of it. Even with the hyper-unpolished stuff, the ideas were still solid. I had all sorts of tidbits floating around on old Sheila, scattered streams-of-conciousness and little pieces of prose.
It was cool.
Here is a tidbit I found. There file's name was Darkness.doc. No title is stated in the text. I can tell I wrote it, but don't remember doing so.

Wasn’t your usual absence-of-light sort of darkness, wasn’t nearly passive enough. Existed in its own right, like sun beams, but wasn’t as direct as light, coiled around everything, sought to fill as much space as possible, seeped into the marrow of things. Was alive. Could smell fear.

The girl stared at the wisps of shadow winding themselves around her ankles. Think of them as a blanket. A nice, soft, protective blanket. Keep moving. She closed her eyes, found her own darkness, took a deep breath, and slowly blew out her own smoky trail of dark. This one, warm and human, comforted, similar to the darkness of the womb or a deep sleep, but with a life of its own. Spirals moved around her, reminding the greater dark that she was not theirs.

The deeper dark moved in on the spirals, coating them, but not suffocating, like a large, dangerous dog deciding that you had it’s approval. Frightening but harmless, so long as she kept her head straight.


Not bad. I wonder where it came from.
Another tidbit, this one rather priceless and not in the least written by me. The file's name is Letter to Carla.doc. When you open it, your eyes get a nice shock, as the blank parts of the page, usually white, are now neon blue. The text is as follows.

Hey Carla it’s me Armand I just want to say I love you and am so happy that you're coming back!!!! You’re the best sister I ever hade!! Do you want to whach I am legend with Danielle and my Friend and I? IL never ferret you when your gone Carla. Has any one told you that you’re beautiful? Hi Yoshiro what’s up? Take care of her; don’t make her sad our some thing is going to Happen to you. Am watching you.


I like the fact that Happen is capitalized. Also, I love my little brother.
In other news, I actually did get work done today. Yay.
Also, I've realized why, even though I'm not going through a dry spell, I haven't had much to report to Kailyn. Sure I get lots of ideas, but unless I'm actively doing something with them, they drift off. I could try to formulate and plan my stories out, but that always makes for the stiff stuff. I mean, obviously that's important, you can't write a novel as you would a spontaneous scene. But. Butbutbut. All the good stuff I write... I just write it. I won't say I don't think when I do it, cause I do, but only as much as is necessary.
So, I'm just going to make things, and not worry about the fact that I don't have much to say at the story-telling pow-wows.
It's not like when I stopped working on my comic, because I am still storytelling.
The play felt good, and I can feel more stirring from where it came from.
Things are going to be picking up speed soon.