Author: Ian

Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis (1951)

Comment

While waiting for a train, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are sucked back into a much-changed Narnia to help the rightful Prince Caspian regain his throne.  I’ve realized that for me the most lukewarm sections of the Narnia books are the battles, which Lewis relates either through dialogue, summary, or another distancing mechanism.  With World War II a recent memory in 1951, these battles are clearly important to Lewis, but fail to capture the modern imagination.  A shame, since the rest of this is quite immersive, with the Christian symbolism once again revealed in a more controlled manner.

Rating

What I Do When I Don’t Feel Like Working

Comment

Some days I just don’t have the energy to sit down and do my creative work.  It happens to all of us, and if you hear someone say that they can work every day despite the circumstances than they’re either lying through their teeth or they’ve somehow found the Holy Grail of Creativity that magically allows them to work at 100% peak performance all the time (which doesn’t seem likely).

Everybody reading this knows that feeling: when you come home tired from a long day at work, when you’re worried about bills, your future, or a breakup, or when you wake up on a Sunday too hungover to do much of anything.  In these shittiest of shitty moments, the last thing you want to do is Continue reading »

The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis (1954)

Comment

A boy raised in the Calormen desert south of Narnia meets a talking horse and flees a life of slavery on a journey north.  Lewis’s Christian symbolism grows even more painfully obvious here, espousing an outdated fable of a heathen from the backward Pagan lands (Calormen) embracing Jesus (Aslan) as he works to get to heaven (Narnia).  This feels more egregious when you consider Lewis’s treatment of Calormen with a Middle Eastern theme, though his protagonist’s skin is “fair and white” like the “beautiful barbarians of the north.”  Combine this with an unimaginative plot and the result is….not worthwhile.

Rating

A Short Post (promise!) About Needing More Economic Freedom to Realize Your Potential

Comment

“But wait!” some of you naysayers might be shouting after my last entry about creating a world where people don’t have to spend all their time working just to get by, “if people didn’t have to work, then they’d just sit around playing video games until they ran out of money, and then society would fall apart!  The only way to keep people from being lazy is to make sure they’re working hard so they can learn responsibility!”

I hear different versions of this argument a lot, and it always irks me because it assumes that the majority of people are innately Lazy and Useless, so we have to force them to work just to teach them a lesson.

This argument falls apart when you consider that being forced to work uninspiring, mindless jobs makes you see work solely as a chore, like that dishwashing metaphor I always use for unpleasant tasks Continue reading »

The Magician’s Nephew, by C.S. Lewis (1955)

Comment

After finishing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I decided to give the rest of the series a try—plus I found a cheap set of the other Narnia books at Salvation Army.  The Magician’s Nephew is Lewis’s prequel, with a Genesis-type story that tells how Narnia came to be, with more than a few Biblical allusions.  Though the first half is genuinely solid children’s lit (magic rings, a lost world, childhood observations, etc.), the creation scenes go on for far too long.  Still, it’s worth reading for the London sections and the introduction of the White Witch.

Rating

October Novel Progress Update!

Comment

It’s been a busy month, but not for novel-writing.

When I last posted about my progress on my new novel I was getting back into the game after a 3 month hiatus brought on mostly by my new job and recent move.  Taking a break from writing helped me get a lot of stuff taken care of, but after so many weeks away I realized I had to get back to the novel or else I risked becoming even more disconnected from it than I already was—and that wasn’t a good thing. Continue reading »

The Wanting Seed, by Anthony Burgess (1962)

Comment

In a vastly overpopulated future, London’s Ministry of Infertility coerces the populace to either stop having children or take up with your own sex.  Though the concept has tremendous potential, Burgess seems more interested in his theories of overpopulation and cycles of government than in the plot, which merely serves as a vehicle for his ideas—as thought-provoking as they are, the book itself is a bit of a slog.  Its 1960s treatment of homosexuality is also downright insulting today, combined with a few cringeworthy thoughts on race.  Better to read A Clockwork Orange and leave this one buried.

Rating

What Would You Do With an Extra 10 Hours a Week?

Comment

Answer: A lot.

I read an amazing article once (which unfortunately I haven’t been able to find again, but here’s a similar one) about how back in the 1900s or so after the Industrial Revolution had changed the way we live, people were optimistic that technology would continue to make our lives more convenient as time went on.  People believed that all these awesome new gas-powered cars and factories would reduce the overall amount of work that needed doing, and that the newly reduced workloads would be passed down to the workers.  Because machines and automation would be doing so much of the work, people Continue reading »

A Girl on the Shore, by Inio Asano (2011)

Comment

A ninth-grade girl wanders distraught after a subpar encounter with the class playboy, then seeks solace with another guy who likes her and a shit-ton of graphic middle-school sex ensues.

I’m not kidding—this manga isn’t for the squeamish, since there’s A LOT of sex here shown in close-up, and just when you think it can’t go any farther, it does.  In terms of story, Koume and Isobe’s relationship shows a lot about first love, disenchantment, and searching for something you can’t quite describe, and their confused realizations keep you guessing until the end, with stirring results.

Rating

The Day Job Life à la Clark Kent

Comment

I think a lot about how certain stories stick around through the generations because they reveal universal truths: Romeo and Juliet says a lot about first love, Gulliver’s Travels satirizes mankind’s stupidities, and 1984 explores totalitarian societies across all time (hence the novel’s sudden spike in sales after Trump’s election).

The best superhero stories do the same thing.

I have a friend who can school me in all things Batman and comic book hero-related (Hi Dan), but today I want to talk specifically about Superman, the precursor of them all.  Or, as this entry’s title suggests, I want to talk about Clark Kent. Continue reading »

Revolutions We’d Hoped We’d Outgrown, by Jill McCabe Johnson (2017)

Comment

Johnson’s poems hit that sweet spot of being approachable yet challenging, not too simple, yet not too arcane.  The opening section was written during her walking trek through France in the days leading up to the 2015 Paris attacks and captures both the country’s historic character and the ideological ugliness behind ISIS, including its abominable treatment of women (which tends not to get as much coverage).  The collection’s other poems convey images of loss, humiliation, and conflicts with loved ones in moments that quietly ask for our reflections, along with a few plays on words to break the rhythm.

More

Jill McCabe Johnson’s website

Revolutions We’d Hoped We’d Outgrown at Finishing Line Press

What Happened When I Went to Work on 2 Hours of Sleep

Comment

Let’s get one thing straight: I love sleep.

Every day, at least once a day, I think about how great it would be to just lay down and go to sleep, or even just take a quick nap.  On the weekends I try to sleep in at least one day until 9:00 or so (usually on Saturday, since that’s my no-work day) and go to bed early one night so I can get caught up, since sleep debts can have some pretty nasty effects if you’re not careful.  My favorite time to sleep is on cold winter nights, covered in extra blankets, and I sleep a lot better Continue reading »