Bad Poetry

Read laugh, scowl, choke, hate, enjoy... whatever... but here's my poem.

Just After

“spiteful koans”
He said
Buttoning trousers
Stumbling towards an open door
“What did you say?”
she asked
Finger knuckle deep in nostril
“Nothing”
He replied
Thinking – Nothing that
a cigarette
and
a train ride through a tunnel
wouldn’t cure.

Thinking About a Nonfiction Book to Read

Until recently I've always thought of myself as mostly a fiction reader. However, in the last year and a half I have read some nonfiction titles which really have me thirsting for more nonfiction titles. One of these books which I really enjoyed was How to Think About Weird Things.

This book was fantastic! Before I read How to Think About Weird Things I had never really read a book about critical thinking. I had always thought of myself as a sharp person and able to see the fallacies in poor arguments, but this book really helped to sharpen my dissection of ideas and arguments. While the book is meant to push the reader to think and to understand the world with a keener eye for mistakes we all make in our day to day lives, it was also an extremely entertaining read. The author uses many many quotes which are both humorous and very poignant. In addition to this countless real life asides are used to illustrate thought fallacies which the book describes.

I picked it up in a used bookstore where it had been miss-shelved… So, I don’t know much about it, but it appears to be a text book for a college or high school course. Having said that, I have to say that I don’t believe I’ve ever read a text book which was so enjoyable. If all of my college texts had been this well conceived, I would have definitely been a more studious reader of texts. (Not that I was a bad student, but well... You know what I mean.)

Books/Internet: Origami

One of my hobbies (other than reading of course) is origami. I’ve been fascinated by it for years. One day, while in college, I came home from classes and sat down on my couch (which my roommate and I had saved from the trash in front of someone’s home). I had a bowl of cereal and I started to watch Levar Burton on Reading Rainbow. The show was about Japan and they did some origami. That was 20 years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Anyway, I often find myself in a book store looking over their origami book selection and I over hear a parent and a child trying to select an origami book. Other times an adult will ask me straight out what a good book might be… Here’s the rub. My answer or comment (to the parent) is always: “Go to the Web.” It’s not that I don’t want them to buy the book and help authors of origami books. Actually I do want them to do just that, but I want them to do it with some experience under their belts.

The Internet is packed with great sites which offer the beginner lots of chance to try out origami and learn a little before they start buying books. I’d rather these fresh minds get a feel for what they like and what they don’t before plunking down the green. Then the person can buy a book that they will really enjoy and not just a book that I might recommend to someone who hasn’t done it before.

In this spirit, I thought I would point out some really good origami sites for anyone who reads this and would like to start doing one of the most fascinating art forms in the world.

http://dev.origami.com/diagram.cfm - This is a site which has loads of diagrams which range from very simple to extremely complex.

http://www.origami-resource-center.com/free-origami-diagrams.html - The Origami Resource center also offers hundreds of instructional diagrams ranging in difficulty from easy to hard.

http://www.origami-club.com/en/- Origami Club is an excellent site for beginners. It offers models which range fro easy to moderate and has a delightful selection of nice looking traditional and new designs.

http://www.oriland.com/index.asp - Oriland is probably my all time favorite site for beginners. It’s extremely well done and has many new models which are very easy to learn.

http://www.origamivideo.net/ - Origami Video is a great site which has tried to collect video lessons of origami from sources throughout the web.

These are some great sites to get anyone started… from there I hope you all go out and support the publishers of origami books by buying some of them. I’ll suggest some of my favorites another day.

Book Review: Aylmer Vance: Ghost-seer

Aylmer Vance: Ghost-seer (Mystery & Supernatural): Ghost-seer (Mystery & Supernatural)… by Alice Askew; Claude Askew
I’ve been picking up all the books in the series as they show up in the used bookstore near my home. So, I bought this one as well. I started reading it shortly after purchasing it, because it sounded like it would be a bit like Sherlock Holmes investigates supernatural cases. At the time that concept sounded appealing. However, it just didn’t pan out. The stories in this collection were mildly interesting at best. They did little to capture the imagination and for short stories they sure did seem to drag on.

That said, I did find the final story (The Fear) well worth the rest of the book. “The Fear” was a great little ghost story which made my hair stand on end a couple of times while reading it. It was good at building suspense and keeping it going for the entire story until near the end. Sadly even this story had a large fault. The ending didn’t live up to the rest of the story. But even with that problem this one story was really good. I can’t say I’d recommend this book to anyone, but I would recommend the story “The Fear”.

Book Review: Moonshadow by J.M. DeMatteis

The Compleat Moonshadow by J. M. DeMatteis
This is one of those books which gives one hope for the future of graphic novels. Unfortunately it was written/drawn about 20 years ago and since then the medium hasn’t progressed greatly. The book shows the possibilities of strong plot, character and allegory use in the medium of comics. Unfortunately the graphic story telling world still (to a greater degree) continues to cling to one genre (superheroes). There’s nothing wrong with that genre. It has its own possibilities, but imagine if the only kind of books written were romance novels or maybe only science fiction, or mysteries. Sounds pretty boring doesn’t it.

Moonshadow shows that a grand story can be told and yet still encompass a simpler tale of coming of age. All this is well told with humor and depth. The book covers its goals with the panache and ability of any well written novel and actually does a better job of capturing that painful point between kid and adult than most novels. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve known who (after reading this book) said that Moonshadow felt like a story of their own coming of age. It's a bitter sweet treat to get a chance to get reacquainted with those awkward years of grasping for adulthood... Those precious moments when enlightenment was an all consuming goal. I say it's a treat no one should pass up.

I can't recommend this one enough.

Moonshadow gets an A+.

Book Review: I'm not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti

I'm not scared : [a novel] by Niccolò Ammaniti

A strange and creepy novel which leaves you with an uneasy feeling.

A young boy from rural Italy stumbles into the dark secret of his village.

I’m not sure I can say I left this book happy but it certainly made me want to read more. The author does a beautiful job of capturing that feeling of being a kid and there are only a very few authors I’ve ever read who do that very well. (Ray Bradbury being the first which comes to mind.) I don’t know how these authors do it but I’m always happy when it happens. Many authors write about being a kid and it feels real (not forced), but writers like Bradbury and the author of this book leave me feeling as though I’ve been a child again (at least for a few short desperate hours). They capture the strange pangs and yearnings that come with being a kid and that is something I find fantastic in a book. For this alone I give “I’m Not Scared” high marks, but because the book is so desperately dark, in the end I had very mixed feelings about it

Book Weeds

I’m slowly discovering that I have a serious problem…

I can’t get rid of books. It’s a compulsion or obsession or some other “sion”. Whatever it is, it’s beginning to drive me nuts. Or maybe it’s the other way around and I do it because I’m nuts. I’m not sure how it started or even when, but it is (literally) physically painful to get rid of a book unless I have accidentally purchased 2 copies of the same text. Deciding which books to get rid of is as painful as killing my own children would be (although, some days it might be easier to kill the kids). I pick up a book I haven’t read in years and think, “Am I ever going to reread this book?” The answer will be NO but then my brain starts in on the “what ifs” and “buts.”

What if a movie version of the book comes out…
But it took me forever to find a copy of that book…
What if I get excited about that genre or topic again…
But it’s a first edition…
What if I read another book with similar ideas and I want to look back over this…
But I made notes in that book…
And so on until I feel sick.

So, I will put the book back on the shelf and keep it. I’ll go through this over and over again, getting rid of maybe 1 out of every 30-40 books I consider. The truth is that half the time I’ve gotten rid of a book I find myself wanting it again at some point in the future.

However, regardless of how I feel I need to remove some of my books. We’re in a state at my house. My wife is looking for a job and it’s highly likely her job search will force us to move. I need to slim down my collection, but I can’t bring myself to abandon one of my babies.

I’m not sure why I’m posting this here… but it does feel better to rant about it a bit.