Words On Wednesday

“The Coworker” looks like a promising murder mystery on the surface, but I hope we’ve all learned not to judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately, it’s more of a poorly written love triangle drama with a backdrop of murder and mystery. This one was a struggle for me to finish. Admittedly, I didn’t exactly pursue it initially on its own merit. I was looking for something to listen to while I waited for the audiobook that I ACTUALLY wanted to hear (the next “Dresden Files” book). I sorted by popularity descending and filtered to available audiobooks. The first few were either random entries in a longer series or autobiographies. Sorry, Britney, I’m not really looking for another autobiography right now. The first book that wasn’t part of a longer series and wasn’t an autobiography was “The Coworker.” Interestingly, my wife had recently purchased another Freida McFadden book as a birthday gift for one of her friends. “The Teacher” wasn’t available, but I figured this might give me some in...

As a fan of both “Blade Runner” and “Blade Runner 2049,” I finally decided to read the original inspiration book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick. At least… I think I did. The book that I read was technically titled, "Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” but that seems to be a rebranding of the original book after the success of the first movie. I read a science fiction book about androids. Beyond that, I can’t be certain. I was curious how the book and movies might compare, since movies based on books are frequently inferior to the source material. The biggest problem that I see with movies based on books is how little time they have to expound on the characters, events, and themes. This is certainly still the case with “Blade Runner.” The book has much more commentary on social class, as well as the dynamic between real and synthetic. Character interactions in the book have much more depth, with much more nuance in reason and motive....

I figured “Dracul” would be the perfect book for this post, as the prequel to the book that I wrote my first book report segment on almost a year ago to the day. Source:  https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91hTAsQX2xL.jpg My first exposure to “Dracul” came from an announcement of a book signing with the author at my local library. As much as I enjoyed Dracula, I was tremendously interested in a related work, written by the great grand-nephew of Bram Stoker himself. Plus, the book serves as a sort of clash between Bram Stoker’s real family and his fictional characters created within “Dracula.” As with many works, the library only offered “Dracul” in physical book format, and I haven’t had the chance to sit down and read a proper book in a long time. I expressed this disappointment on Facebook, in the comments of a post promoting the meet and greet event. Surprisingly, the library’s social media team followed up with me, ordered cd and mp3 copies of the boo...

Over the past several months, I have read through both "The Hobbit" and all three (six?) books of "The Lord of the Rings." I was tempted to write on each of these works individually, but I decided that I didn't want to tie up a third of the year on Tolkien, and would just write on all of them at once. Since I won't count "The Silmarillion," and I would never read it anyway, these books cover my entire exposure to the world of Middle Earth. Since these phrases get me the most dirty looks and criticism of anything related to literature, I'll go ahead and throw them out there. 1, I've never seen any of the LotR movies, and I have only seen the first "Hobbit" movie, and only because some friends were going to see it in theaters and they invited me along. 2, I did not really enjoy "The Lord of the Rings" books. I'll expound more on both of these, but I didn't want to mislead any readers and get their hopes up th...

I’ve always been interested in writing a story, and lately I’ve been revisiting the idea with a more approachable technique. Instead of knocking out a full novel in one fell swoop, I might publish a number of different stories in more of a serial format. When considering what I might write a story about, I’ve had several different ideas: a drug addict who sees large buildings and construction equipment as monsters, a high fantasy work that serves as a more literary telling of the adventures I’ve had across several MMO games, a post-apocalyptic tale of a society rebuilding from disaster. Each of these is obviously unique from the others, and if I were to commit to one, I would be stuck with it for the duration, even if I might want to entertain one of the other ideas. If I let myself switch, the stories might get caught up in the literature equivalent of development hell, and never actually publish anything at all. To avoid this unsavory scenario, I considered that I might write mor...

What is NaNoWriMo? November, for the uninitiated, is National Novel Writing Month. Realistically, anyone can write a novel at any point in the year, requiring as much time as they want. To participate in NaNoWriMo properly, however, you must write at least a 50,000 word novel entirely within the month of November. As such, it’s a little late to start for this year’s NaNoWriMo, but you could always start planning for next year. Source: https://nanowrimo.org/ As Kristian Wilson explains, there are numerous different ways that writers can approach NaNoWriMo. Most notably, there are people who plan a story and characters in advance, and there are others who begin writing at the start of November with very little forethought. Wilson describes these individuals as “plotters and pantsers” (Wilson, 2018). Either method is acceptable, per the official rules of NaNoWriMo. “I want to write a novel one day,” said many a would-be author at some point in their lives. Frankly, I’m sure a...

I figured Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” would be fitting as the first reoccurring Book Report post, being the first book that I’ve read (listened to) in a long time. Considering this single novel is the basis and origin of most modern vampire lore, I’ve always been interested it. I remember playing Castlevania as a kid, even though I knew nothing of the novel then. Basically any modern representation of vampires uses Stoker’s work in some form or another as reference material. Source: https://audiobookstore.com/audiobooks/dracula.aspx My first exposure to the actual text of “Dracula” was in a “Topics in Language and Literature” class at Upstate. The class was a neat fusion of literature and technology, and easily the most interesting English class I’ve ever taken. For one assignment, we had to “not read” a Victorian novel . In short, it was an exploration to  learn about a novel of our choice without actually reading it. For the assignment, all we had to actually read was the fi...

I’ve been looking for a new monthly segment to complement Thirsty Thursday Eve , and I feel like a “book report” or sorts would be the perfect idea for it. Making a monthly obligation to write about a book or short story that I’ve read accomplishes a number of goals. First and foremost, it gives me more incentive to read. I love reading, I just don’t have much free time to do it lately. Committing to at least one piece per month is a fairly low investment, I’d say. Plus, with my recent discovery of how awesome audiobooks are, I can listen to the book while I work. Setting aside 15 hours or so of uninterrupted time during a month for reading is difficult. Listening to 15 hours of audio while I work is something I already do in less than a week with music. I enjoyed writing the originally one-off book report on  John Updike’s “A&P” a while back, but if this is going to become a regular thing, I want to give it a little more structure. Most importantly, I want to have posts t...