More Unfinished Business
Every year I post a list of stuff I have that needs to be completed. I have a crapload of books, video games, movies, and television shows that is taking up a lot of space in my room (and computer). When I finally finish everything (and this will take a great deal of effort on my part to restrain myself from buying more stuff, not to mention a shitload of discipline to start and finish everything), I will throw a massive celebration. My calculations* suggest that in the year 2015, I should be able to finally finish everything that I have bought, this is including possible new purchases that I will be making.
Seriously.
Hopefully me in 2015
I need to set a goal of completing one thing a week (perhaps two weeks for the bigger stuff), so I can get some stuff out of the way. Right now I'm reading A Game of Thrones, which, thankfully, has consumed a big chunk of my life because it's addictive. The worst is when you're reluctantly finishing stuff because there's a certain amount of financial and emotional investment involved. I can't believe I feel a sense of obligation to these things, but, the Chinese in me just can't waste money.
*By calculations, I mean completely arbitrary number.
Books
These days I find that I start a lot of books but rarely finish them. They just don't captivate me that much anymore. I will, however, finish any Sandman graphic novel any day, at any time, in one sitting. Not just because it's a graphic novel, but because it is so friggin' good, interesting.
I've been going through my shelf to see if there are any books out there that intrigue me enough to actually get me from start-to-finish but none really come to mind. The closest one might be Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and that's only because it's a ridiculously hard read and I want to finish it just out of spite.
There's also Summerland by Michael Chabon, which is on the other end of the spectrum and should be a breeze to read, but I'm not really in the mood for that book. Ack! What to do, what to do...
A Brief Look at my Summer
Now that I got my computer back up and running, I decided to make a list of reading goals per month. They are as follows:
June: Shakespeare and Non Fiction month
- The Tempest
- Othello
- Julius Caesar
- The Beatles
- The Gangs of New York
- Public Enemies
July: Classics
- Brave New World
- Midnight's Children
- Catch-22
- Turn of the Screw
- All The King's Men
August: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
- LOTR Trilogy
- Dune: Heretics of Dune
Can't stop reading! I know I've got my computer back but I gotta get back into this routine. Every month I'm getting closer to finishing my stack of books. I'm also going to buy Punch-Out for the Wii as soon as I can, maybe today so that I can play it with my sister on Friday.
Reading
Being without a computer means I've spent the better half of my week trying to go through the backlog of books that have piled up over the years. I keep buying more books despite the fact that I have about 20 that are unread sitting on my bookshelf. I used to plow through books as a kid, at least one a week, but have since slowed down. Anyway, without a computer I've picked up the pace a little and am now on my third book in a week.
The first up was finishing Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is a retelling of the myth of Orpheus. I'm glad I saved this book for now because when I started reading it in 2nd year I didn't have a clue what they were alluding to half the time. It's got references to popular culture, music, American history, Greek mythology, and great literary novels, that I wouldn't get two years ago, but since I've taken many of those courses since, the book has become much more enjoyable. I still miss many of the allusions that it makes, but this book is so dense that I could probably spend a year annotating it and still not get anywhere close to the end. Half the fun is in unraveling what he has written and the other half is in seeing how he weaves it into the text and into the story. It's a pretty good read, but is very heavy handed in the way it handles some of its themes. If you took a shot every time the novel said the "ground beneath her feet" you'd be drunk by the second chapter. I guess that's his way of giving us a break after we've racked our brains trying to wade through the density of his novel.
After that I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which was freakin' awesome. It's on a very short list of books that have wowed me from beginning to end (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and A Clockwork Orange are the other two), and I only pray that the movie that is coming out will do it justice. Apparently it's starring Viggo Mortensen (as the main guy), Michael Williams (Omar from The Wire), Guy Pearce (!!!!!), Robert Duvall (It's Tom Hagen bitches!), and Charlize "Hubba Hubba" Theron. It's not written like a conventional narrative, where you're basically following the action every step of the way, but instead it's pretty sporadic, written episodically in short paragraph spurts. This takes away focus from the journey itself and directs it towards The Man and The Boy (the unnamed father and son in the novel), and their relationship with each other in a post-apocalyptic world. I found it interesting that they were unnamed, maybe McCarthy is suggesting that their experience in this world isn't unique, but rather reflective of what would happen if society was to break down like that. It was very interesting and to be honest, a big reason why I liked this book was that it mirrored many of my experiences in Fallout (which is the greatest game I've ever played).
The book that I'm reading now is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff by Christopher Moore. It chronicles the life of Jesus from when he was a child to when he becomes the messiah (since those years are noticeably absent in the bible), as told by his best friend at the time: Biff. My coworker recommended this book to me saying it was one of the funniest books he's ever read, and judging from what it said on the back of the book (Jesus learning Kung Fu?!), it really seemed to be headed towards complete absurdity. Surprisingly, it's a very touching novel. It's got some pretty funny moments in there, and pretty stupid ones at that, but it doesn't necessarily make it stupid. It's nicely written and so far I seem to be enjoying it so I'll keep everyone posted on that.
I should be getting my computer back tomorrow and if that's the case I'll be hooking it up to the Internet ASAP so I can download all my codecs again and go back to watching movies in the middle of the night. I really want to keep up with all my reading though, so hopefully I'll be able to make time for both the reading and the movies. Until then!
*turns around and whips cape over my face and flies off into the horizon*