Author: Ian

Once Upon a River, by Bonnie Jo Campbell (2011)

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Sixteen-year-old sharpshooter Margo Crane leaves home after a family dispute and follows the river, initially seeking male companions of varying quality before deciding to live by her wits.  Though the story starts out with a literal bang, the rest feels disconnected as Margo undergoes a series of strung-together tribulations.  We see her growing up, but the change feels less satisfying since a lot of it was there all along.  The scenes vary in their effectiveness, with some feeling clunky as they follow that literary fiction voice often copied by graduate writing workshops.  In short: nothing too new here.

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Where I Got It:

Bought online in August 2013 for a graduate writing workshop (the last of several books I bought for that workshop but didn’t actually read until later).

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Author website

Aphorisms on Love and Hate, by Friedrich Nietzsche (1878)

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This pocket-sized British edition of Nietzsche reflections is pretty awesome: it’s more manageable than the full-length essays by Nietzsche I’d read previously, but more substantial than the 140 character Nietzsche Twitter feed.  The editors picked 55 pages of reflections from Human, All Too Human that tackle such truths as how we despise the people we pretend to like, how we can’t ever really promise to always love someone, why rich people just don’t understand their own cruelties, and why those who seek to understand life will always undergo struggle.  Nietzsche’s ideas are relatable and real, so check ‘em out.

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Where I Got It

Picked up from the break room free table at the university press where I used to work, sometime in the spring of 2015.

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Nietzsche quotes on Twitter

Nietzsche on Love (essay)

The Wicked + The Divine Book 2: Fandemonium, by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie (2015)

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Is fleeting greatness worth the ultimate cost?  How many of us can reach that greatness?  Furthermore, what happens when we feel that greatness lies within our grasp but just can’t seem to reach it?  These questions feel more pronounced in the Wicked + The Divine’s second collection, where mere mortal protagonist Laura tries vainly to reproduce the teensy little miracle we saw in Book 1 and questions her relationship to the Pantheon of reincarnated gods that the world continues to fawn over.  Fantasy works best when it tackles real-world values in relatable ways, and this series does it beautifully.

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Where I Got It

Gift from old college friend, Christmas 2015 (along with Book 1).

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Book trailer on Youtube

Longer review, with pictures

 

Working for Your Passion vs. Working for Your Weekends: The Pros and Cons

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As far as I can figure, there are two ways to think about the work-life balance:

In the first model, people spend most of their working time (or at least as much time as possible) doing work that’s meaningful to them.  That work can be creating something powerful or unique, doing something to better the community or the world, or simply providing a service that makes people happy.  In return, Continue reading »

Stack of Books Update

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In honor of a new year (and my finally remembering to start writing 2017 for the date) it’s time to post an update on my reading progress, since that’s part of the reason I started doing this in the first place.

Since I started keeping track last April, I’ve read 20 books, which is WAY more than I read over the same timeframe in 2015.  Two of those books had been sitting in the stack next to my bed for three years, and one (The Epic of Gilgamesh) had been there for four.  That feels pretty good. Continue reading »

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne (1767)

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The whimsical freedom of the seventeenth century led to some of the most innovative fiction ever conceived, and Tristram Shandy is no exception.  Its narrator sets out to tell his life story but goes off on so many tangents that it takes him two hundred pages to get to his birth.  The book itself is chaotically filled with blank pages, scrawled lines, musical scores, skipped chapters, and entire sections written in Latin, plus a whole load of sex jokes for careful readers.  The innovations are fun, but the archaic prose makes for a challenging 650-page slog.

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3-kafkas

Where I Got It

An old Modern Library edition picked up from the English department free table, sometime in fall 2014.

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Full text at Project Gutenberg

Quick and Easy Guide to Reading Tristram Shandy (I really wish the person who made this site had kept it up, since it promised to be both funny and down-to-earth about a really difficult novel, and also because it compared Tristram Shandy to a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book)

The Wicked + The Divine Book 1: The Faust Act, by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie (2015)

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Amaterasu, Baal, and ten other gods from world mythology get reincarnated every ninety years; this time they’re taking the form of teenage pop stars and a little bit of hell breaks loose when Lucifer goes rogue.  The premise promises lots of action, and I loved artist Jamie McKelvie’s style, particularly the splash pages, where there’s always something to look at.  The collection also comes with variant covers and apocrypha that form the graphic novel equivalent of a DVD bonus menu.  Reading more chapters feels necessary to make a more concrete judgement, but I’m definitely liking the start.

Rating:

3-kafkas

Where I Got It

Gift from old college friend, Christmas 2015 (along with Book 2).

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Kieron Gillen’s Tumblr

Jamie McKelvie’s website

Paul Hanson Clark Interview Part II: Cookies, Capitalist Voodoo, and the Work-Art Balance

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This is Part 2 of my interview with poet, artist, and part-time cookiemaker Paul Hanson Clark, so you can check out Part 1 here.

 

But I Also Have a Day Job: So to make your life work and still do your art, you have to go to your web editing job during the day and make the doughs in the afternoon. Continue reading »