In the mornings, with the dread of a long day ahead, your voice soothed me and gave me strength

[foxtongue]

For those who are new here, and there do seem to be a lot of you, here is a published book you should buy a downloadable copy of and my story in it.

I would like to say this is going to be my last six:thirty a.m. awake for awhile now that I finally have a job, but I know that would be a greedy lie. My face down unhappiness has been heaping lots of them upon me lately and I don't like that my bed no longer smells like me. The air of the apartment has been filling with Kier, our house-guest who hasn't paid his rent yet. It's unsettling, it makes me want to double-wash all my sheets and blankets. I have no desire to climb naked into a bed that someone else has been rewriting while I've been away.

Flickr just reached a quarter of a billion photos.

How to make a zine using only one paper.
Originally uploaded by ebess.

Sam's lent me a novel, Futureland by Walter Mosely, that I'm halfway through and still can't decide what to do with. I get the feeling off this book that it's not trying to be anything but a sci-fi novel. It was not written to be enduring, inspiring or to be especially moving. This isn't rocking me, not even like a baby. It was written to be put in a bookstore and bought off the wire-rack shelf, to be consumed and then lost to some second-hand table fair. It's a little.. baffling. I remember skimming past books like this in gift shops when I was younger, (and still commonly bought books), scanning the covers and dismissing them, the metallic newspaper quotes on the back covers.

"5,000 of the most important photographs of the last 150 years."

I decided then I was only going to read books I would like to write, or literature that pushed my envelope, built of a nature so different that I can barely grasp them, insisting in my head that the better quality I read, the better I will write. Input matching output, I decided I want my shelf to be full of books that are endlessly interesting, not quite classics, but of the sort that can light up repeatedly and at different times of my life. This leaves me a rabbit in the headlights, uncertain what Futureland is for. This book is entirely alien to my nature. I suspect it's meant to be entertaining, but it doesn't survive my criteria, I don't feel challenged. Is this what people commonly read?

Fujitsu develops “invisible” barcode for photographs.

Comments

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

Congrats on being gainfully employed.

Those books are used by people to pass the time. Like television.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I'm not insisting everyone read Dostoevsky, but really, isn't it better to use the time pleasurably then to simply use it because it's there?

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. Some people, however, are merely waiting to die. Me, I'll probably be like "Just one more minute!"

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

One of Ryan's favourite stories to tell about me is from when we were living together and he came home to find me asleep, curled around a book. When he went to slip it from my hands, I went into "protect the baby" mode and attacked him from my very deep sleep, my fingers infallibly, though feebly, tapping him right on the solar plexus.

[mocks.livejournal.com]

Escapism? Noted your own rather unusuallly high negative propensity for it, it's pretty common in this part of the world. Fluffy as it may or may be, Futureland is going to be a lot more solid than, say, the V.C. Andrews school of romantic thriller, and those sell, like, a squillion copies a year.

A lot of people don't always have the tools to go looking for better, to be fair, and a lot of people don't even know that there's better out the to look for. But a lot of us simply enjoy, or fall back on, quick and easy immersion in the sights and sounds of somebody else's world; not every piece of fiction need to do double-time, to be anything beyond what it is.

Not an excuse for bad writing, of course, but a book can be enjoyed without it changing your life.

(_I_ think everyone should read Dostoevsky. Reading silly books is no excuse for avoiding good ones.)

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I like fiction, to the point where I will hold it over my own genre as a superior thing. I love what Duncan does, and Hitherbe, and Dee's ficlets. I think it's glorious that people have the ability to create fantastic stories. I don't mean to say that Futureland is bad writing, per se, simply that it feels like it belongs in a wire rack in a shopping market and that's not my demographic.

[wildcherrygal.livejournal.com]

Hey I read books of substance and I would like to never EVER read Dostoevsky again. I don't think everyone should read it, or maybe just me.

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

Sweetie dear, people commonly do not read at all.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, abuse my trust in the world, go on. As if it hasn't been beaten enough lately.

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

You still have that? You should eBay it or something.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

It's not really all that expansive at the moment. All the extension packs hve been recently severed.

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

But it's rare and irony is on the way out*. You could make a killing.

*Or something.

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the job.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I got it through Lung, alois, (who I should call soon). I'm now the lowest of the low ranking contract clerks for a marketing research firm. I'm going to mail things out and recieve and process them back in. Woo. I'm going to need a portable music player, walkman, discman, anything.

[radiodog.livejournal.com]

You can use mine. It's a cd based Mp3 player which refuses to die.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Please.

Do you mean it reads mp3s off CD's?

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Use mine. I never do. 256-meg mp3-thingie. Alternatively, there's a cassette Walkman I never use.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, I totally disagree with your review. I loved Futureland. It reminded me of an understated cousin to Gibson's or Stephenson's work, and personally found it very moving... but then, I'm not as jaded as you are. What can I say? I have a lousy track record when it comes to giving you books.

Also, technically it's a collection of nine linked short stories, not a novel.

Sam

The words don't surround me.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Technically it says so on the cover. Inside the book, however, is a story in nine chunks, just one story. I finished it earlier this evening and can't say that it redeemed itself.

Part of my problem is I kow I've read a sickening number of books. I used to read one a day before I made a concentrated effort to avoid reading. Every good book, the bar goes up. Every spectacular story, my tolerance for mediocrity shifts. Futureland's the sort of thing I would have read when I was twelve, but I've oved into a different level of appreciation now. Gibson and Stephenson remain complex, but this seemed very.. understated isn't the right term. Thin feels right, to me. Thin and wan, like the ideas were simple and undernourished.

Re: The words don't surround me.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm. Well, I'd say it's character-based, humanist. I found it to be evocative and moving. Not spectacular, and far from ground-breaking in the idea department, but neither of those was exactly the point. I just feel like sticking up for Mosley here since I'm sure lots of people here would enjoy this book.

One of these days I'm going to loan you a book that you actually like... ;)

Sam

Re: The words don't surround me.

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

don't mind her. she just likes beating people over the head with her snobbery. :)

[silver-notebook.livejournal.com]

I decided then I was only going to read books I would like to write, or literature that pushed my envelope, built of a nature so different that I can barely grasp them, insisting in my head that the better quality I read, the better I will write.
My goodness; I would hardly have read anything if I'd set myself such strident criteria. Apart from the fact that any brief illusions towards writing were quickly quelled by the likes of Katherine Mansfield, who, at such a young age had already achieved greater mastery than I could ever aspire to; I was greedy for joy from books. Some short sequence of words that could evoke in me images beyond anything inferred by the written word, and the pull of my eye to the end of the line... and the next, and the next, were what made me buy. But I guess I am perhaps a lazy reader with simple tastes, having been weened to words by the likes of Enid Blyton and Jackie Collins.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

My bookshelf has been pared down to only the really really good ones. Even the children's books are exceptionally nice ones. I'll read trash at the bus-stop if I have nothing else, but I crave delicious words instead. Pages upon pages of smiling in response to the text.

[silver-notebook.livejournal.com]

You've made me hungry for some such literary delicacy. I liked the last book I read because it was intelligent and well written with characters that were both engaging and highly plausible; but I've not read anything beautifully written in an age. It's a fine line between beautifully written (Don DeLillo's 'The Body Artist comes to mind) and overblown awkward artistry, or *shudders* purple prose. I have been acquiring books in a rather random manner of late, so I guess it's not entirely surprising; but I think it's time for more deliberate focus.