book

How I devoured 20 Books in less than Five Months

/ Ajmorse / 1 Comment

Right now, I work in data entry, I’ve been there about five months and as far as boring jobs go…well, this one takes the cake. I don’t really mind it though. It’s not stressful, the people I work with are alright, and I don’t have to deal with customers, or customer service, or retail, (which I hate.)

And I can listen to music, AND audio books while I work, and this arrangement works well for a book-nerd like me.

spy8I’ve come to realize I have this obsession; I told myself that if I wasn’t in Grad school, I would absorb all the books that I could, and perhaps learn something new.

I guess I didn’t realize until now, (late twenties now and I’m just starting to realize) that I really do have a terrible attention span. I’ll watch a video for 20 secs, and I swear if it doesn’t insight some kind of meaningful reaction in that very short life span, I’ll exit and find something else to look at.

I think this is also the reason I love young adult and children literature. For that genre, you really have to start out in the middle of the action to catch its readers, it is immediate, it takes you along for the ride.

I love a great story, but sometimes I don’t have the attention span, or time to sit down and try to absorb a thousand pages of high fantasy with a trillion characters, and numerous worlds, but I CAN listen to an audio book and I’ve absorbed my fair share in the past couple of months:

The books I’ve now read (listened to):

Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling (all seven of them)

Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin (all five)

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

American Gods, by Niel Gaiman

Still Foolin’ Em…Where I’ve Been, Where I’m going and Where the Hell are My Keys? By Billy Crystal

Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, by David Sedaris

Virals, by Kathy Reichs

The Casual Vacancy, by J.K. Rowling

If I stay, by Gayle Foreman

Where She Went, by Gayle Foreman

The books are pretty much in order from how I listened to them. I started with Harry Potter first, because, let’s face it – it’s the best! I’ve already read the books about a thousand times, but I do love listening to the audio occasionally.

And because it’s a list, I thought I’d do a little bit of ranking…

My favorite:   Harry Potter, of course.

Least favorite:  Virals, by Kathy Reichs. It wasn’t as original as I thought it’d be.

Funniest: Billy Crystal’s Still Foolin’ Em

Saddest: If I Stay, Gayle Foreman

Most thought-provoking: The Book Thief and American Gods

Most Surprising: The Casual Vacancy. The book was just different from what I was expecting. I think I expected more of a mystery-type novel from the way it is described, but the book is really more of a look into the heartbreaking world of human emotions.

And Most Inspiring: Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. It inspired me to journal more, and write more non-fiction of my own.

And I guess that’s it. There really isn’t much else to this post except that I’m going to sit back and admire my own list and think about how awesome I am. 😉

I am contemplating listening to the Wheel of Time series next. What do think? Any suggestions?

What is your favorite book?

Have you read any of the books on this list?

Don’t Wake Up the Sleep-walker!

/ Ajmorse / 1 Comment
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sunset at Pine cradle lake, PA

I’ve been working on a story/writing for the better part of 2 hours, mostly because I am bored and mostly because I am procrastinating doing laundry – but the reason I decided to post was this: I just realized something.

There is a big difference between writing a story, and immersing yourself in that story. Sometimes you write on the page, but you never become involved. There’s a difference between staying in the present world that you are writing, and emerging into that world, where the sights, scents and conversation is what is around you – not the hum of the fan next to your computer screen, or the traffic outside, or the typing of your hands wandering across your keyboard.

Immerse yourself into that world fellow writers. Become one with the scents, the sounds, the people. It is jarring to come back from such a world sometimes, but if this is what needs to be done, then, hey, I’m all for it.

Now, what was I doing again?

Ah, being a writer really is a lonely thing sometimes. Only we see the world that we are writing and it is sometimes hard to explain to others why they can’t interrupt that thought process.

I compare it to waking up a sleep-walker. Don’t wake up the sleep-walker! It’s all disorienting and confusing. That’s why I always tell my boyfriend: don’t interrupt me when I’m in the middle of writing, its like waking me up from a deep sleep, yanking me away from a world prematurely. (And believe me he’s done it a couple of times, grumble, grumble).

Let the writer wake up in her own time. Ah, but anyway I digress.

Become one with the story…don’t be afraid to dive in! That’s all.

Happy Writing!  And to those that are experiencing warmer weather (finally): Big Smiles! Summer is finally here!

 

The House On Mango Street

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Every writer has a moment where it all began. That point in their lives, where they were 10, or 14, or 42, where they realized that words can be something more than dots and slashes and letters on a page…that words can take you places.

For me it was a book called, The House on Mango Street, By Sandra Cisneros, which I read in eighth grade. The middle school that I attended had a new eighth grade teacher that year; a man from New York City named Mr. Van Dright. He was a bit unorthodox for an upstate New York school strict on curriculum and following the rules. He had long dark hair and grizzle on his face, who wore a leather jacket and drove a motorcycle when he wasn’t in school, who reminded us often how thankful we were to attend a school that was safe and clean with no metal detectors.

And although this unique teacher from the city was forced to resign before the following year, what I remember most about him was that he was an artist. He had that look in his eye of a person who had stories to tell. He showed me, although he probably doesn’t know it, (a very insecure and shy fourteen year old at the time,) that books and words could be something more, you just had to dream them.

“In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.” (Cisneros,10)

This is from a passage in the book entitled, “My Name.” I remember him reading it to the class that day. What does that mean, he asked us. A name like the number nine?

Perhaps it was because I was obsessed with names. Wondering what it would be like if I had a different name – to separate myself from the ten other girls named Amanda in my school. (I really did graduate with about 5 of them.) Perhaps it’s because later on in the passage, the narrator goes on to describe her name, “as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth.” (Cisneros, 11)

Up until that point in my life, I’d never given much thought into the meaning of words, how with a simple sentence you can describe your name as muddy and we know how you felt about whatever it is you were talking about.

My own writing as of lately, has become its own kind of muddy and I thought I’d take this time to go back and remember where it all began. How words can have inspiration just by how they sound in your mouth mixed around with a word or phrase that can have nuances of meaning. How something simple can change the way you think and view the world. Muddy. Muddy. Muddy.

Nothing was as clear to me as those words on those pages. I wanted to write muddy too.

The Boy with the Bread

/ Ajmorse / 1 Comment

Been reading The Hunger Games today because I recently watched the movie last night and am struck with a particular scene in the novel: Where Peeta, the bread boy, throws a starving Katniss burned bread from his kitchen.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, I suggest you go read it now. Not only is it great reading, but great writing too! From the first page you are drawn into Katniss’s world, you feel her emotion, and the unrest in the dystopian society that she lives in. (I can’t tell you how much I don’t like that word, for some reason it just irks me.) It is a fast read, but not a read for the faint of heart, certainly.

Anyway, I guess the English Major in me is stuck on the Boy with the Bread Scene and the juicy little bits that scene may or may not represent. Oh, it certainly doesn’t have to represent anything, but I love that it can and that Suzanne Collins isn’t dumb. That deliberately or not, she has created a scene that sums up the heart of the novel, or at the very least a great portion of it and that is:

Sacrifice.

What does Peeta sacrifice when he throws Katniss the bread? Well, he certainly didn’t get hurt for nothing. He was willing to risk injury to himself, in order to be “kind” to help out Katniss, who was someone in need.
His motives? Well, love. He later claims that he’s been in love with Katniss ever since a young age. (Although it certainly takes her awhile to believe it).

And isn’t that at the very heart of the novel? Peeta’s initial sacrifice only goes to emphasize Katniss’s sacrifice; the offer of her own life in exchange for her sister’s at the reaping. It is because of her love for her sister that she sacrifices herself. And other characters experience their own sacrifices as well. It is the love and the sacrifices accompanying them that says a lot about family, about life and death throughout the novel.

Any thoughts? What do you love about the novel? About the characters? About Katniss?