Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Category: Books

  • Great Reads

    Recently I’ve read two older books that I wouldn’t normally have picked up to read: The Godfather by Mario Puzo and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

    Below this line there may be significant spoilers, if you think you want to read these books and never have before just stop reading now.

    ——

    I read Fahrenheit 451 after a friend posted on Facebook that he’d never read it, having never read it myself and having Mr. Bradbury die recently I thought I’d better see what all the fuss was about.   I hadn’t read any synopsis of the story and only went into it with the knowledge of Ray Bradbury being a sci-fi guy so I had an open mind – I’d learned long ago that just because it’s science fiction doesn’t mean it’s good. What I found was a world where firemen don’t put out fires anymore, they start them. They burn houses that have books and if there are people inside those houses that wont move then the people burn too. It’s the story of one particular fireman who starts to think… that’s it, he meets this strange girl who proposes silly questions to him that start his mind working again. When he goes home that night his wife has taken a bottle of pills and the emergency crews come and resuscitate her and tell him they deal with a few of those each night, nothing to be worried about, sure enough the next day the wife has no idea what he’s talking about and just wants to watch her series in the “room”. There is a lot more to the story, but that’s where it starts.

    The story is really quite good, very short and I recommend you pick it up if you’ve never read it. For me it was a reflection on modern times of all the brainless zombies watching TV and longing to be entertained but unwilling to think for themselves and those that do think for themselves are taken away and made to conform to the norm. It touches on all aspects of society today – young kids with no supervision, government officials and media squashing the truth, millions of brain addled glued to the TV. Go pick it up, you’ll thank me later and you know what? You might see something totally different from I did, and that’s perfectly OK. Authors love that, well I think they do anyway, I’d rather someone see what they want to see in one of my stories instead of seeing only what I want – your imagination could make mine look like a nanobyte.

    —-

    Also on Facebook I saw a link listing top movies of all time and realized I’ve never seen The Godfather so I posted that and asked if it was a necessity. Quite a few folks said I should see it, and my friend Chip said: “The movies.. especially the first are great.. The book.. is wonderful.. Read it.. you’ll thank me later..” So I purchased it on my Kindle app and entered a rich world of characters, stories, connections… it was beautiful the way it was laid out and each piece fit so well together. I went in expecting to be bored, I mean what do I care about mobsters? The storytelling was just phenomenal and I kept wondering what was going to happen to characters with each turn of the electronic page. I didn’t want to like any of the characters to start out with but I ended up really just being a part of the story. I started it on a Sunday and was finished on a Thursday – I was in the middle of a hundred different things and only had a chance to read most of it at night before drifting to sleep.

    Now, having read it I thought that I’d probably better see the movie to see what all the fuss is about. I’ve made it through half of the movie so far and I really am not very happy watching. There are so many rich details from the book that didn’t come through the parts I’ve seen. So many scenes that defined a character or a reaction that weren’t there at all before a pivotal scene. I know what you’re thinking… The book is always better than the movie. But this was really lackluster in comparison to what I’ve seen done with movies – the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for example was a beautiful transition from page to screen and I felt I could state word for word the lines I expected to be coming. The Watchmen is another story that was done really well (yes, they screwed up some of the stories for odd reasons, but) it stuck remarkably well to the book. I guess that’s what I was really hoping to see. If you’re going to name a movie one of the top 10 of all time, I would expect more than what I’ve seen so far of it… Some have said “you have to watch the second one, that fills in a lot of what your talking about” Well, that’s not really what I had hoped to do… I think the first one made the list, not the second one.

    Maybe someday I’ll try to watch the movie again when the book isn’t so fresh in my mind, but I think it’s a shame that this much goodness wasn’t better. Some might be offended, but hey it’s what I thought so bite me.

  • Wisconsin, Wedding, Withering Heat

    I flew out to Wisconsin this time for the wedding of very dear friends, Eric and Rosy. Eric and Rosy dated back in high school and like most high school romances it came to an end and they went their separate ways. A few years back they rekindled the love they felt and I was fortunate enough to be the best man for the ceremony. They got hitched in Wisconsin Dells at a little hotel called the White Rose Inn. I had never been to Wisconsin Dells before and was amazed at the traffic, tourists and teething toddlers.

    The Happy Couple

    I stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge, Eric picked it I think, a family friendly resort with it’s own water park – let me say it was more expensive than a very nice hotel in DC would have been; Eric is no longer allowed to pick hotels. I was given an accessible room (there was a wheelchair symbol on the sign outside the door) that wasn’t fully compliant, I notice these things now that I’ve worked for Jim for six years – I’ve sent them an email about the issues I noticed. Eric and Rosy managed to pick one of the hottest days of the year to get married, and I’m amazed we all survived the sweltering heat. It was very sweet and I finally got to meet all of the kids and had a great time.

    On Sunday morning I left the Dells for Galesville, I told my Ma I’d be there about noon so she wouldn’t skip church or her regular Sunday routine, I really don’t want her to go out of her way. Rhonda, Michael and Michelle were at the house when I arrived. Ma returned from lunch and Cory and Danielle came over with Charlie and Patrick and we had pizza. Mostly at Ma’s Ma and I read while Rhonda went to work and Michael worked on demos or what ever. At the suggestion of my best friend Suzanne’s dad, Chip, I started to read The Godfather and couldn’t put it down – after reading it I started to watch the movie but it really is watered down so I don’t know how much I’m going to enjoy it.

    Tuesday night I had dinner with my sister Amy, her daughter Joplin and Amy’s long term boyfriend who’s name escapes me for whatever reason. Afterwards we played Cranium for a while which was fun.

    Wednesday I headed up to the Chippewa Valley. Pat and I went off to see The Amazing Spider-Man which I really liked. Pat, Brenda and I went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then headed back to my hotel where we all partook of the swimming pool. Did I mention this was the hottest week of the year? Thursday I had lunch with Nicholas at Taco John’s, swam for a while in the hotel pool, napped and finally headed out to the Eau Claire Pacific Group where I was the main speaker – I did ok, nothing to get excited about, just ok. After the meeting I joined the guys for food at Perkin’s before heading back home to bed. Friday I had breakfast with Pat and Brenda. Friday afternoon I met my brother Ryan for dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then we went to see the movie Savages, which was ok.

    Saturday morning after dropping in to say goodbye to the Isenberger’s I drove down to Galesville and used my GPS, which was a huge mistake. The GPS on the way down to the Dells had me leave the interstate to go off on a county road for a few miles only to put me back on the interstate – it also had me drive through the Dells to my hotel which was two exits up and would have been easier to get to had I stayed there… had I remembered all that I might have not even thought of following the GPS. But I did and ended up on several back roads but finally did make it to my Ma’s. Ma and I went to Winona for dinner. Michael was brough back from canoeing and was passed out in his truck until about 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning Ma, Rhonda, Greg, Michael and I went out to breakfast and around noon I headed off to the LaCrosse airport.

    I had a long lay over in Minneapolis, three hours, and then the head flight attendant was pretty grumpy on our plane. She had us turn off our electronic devices 5 – 10 minutes before the door was closed and came on the loudspeaker a few times to insist that we turn off our electronic devices so we could depart on time, meanwhile folks were still coming on board and we were subjected to listening to children crying an obnoxious laughter. Any time she made announcements you could here the frustration in her voice, obviously she’d had a long day and been subjected to annoying passengers, but at the end of the day you still have to treat your customers right. As we were landing there was some turbulence before the initial decent and she had us turn off our electronic devices much sooner than we normally would and then when the pilot announced we were beginning our initial decent she came on to say something about us not following crew member instructions – really if she had been even a bit nicer I’m sure it would have gone better for her.

    Then I arrived home and the kitty was very happy to see me, and she’s interrupted my writing this several times for love… so I’d better go see to her.

  • Tales of Old Re-Read Anew

    In 1985, I was either a Freshman or Sophomore in Whitehall Memorial High School (who was it a Memorial to? I have no idea) and we were required to go to the school library to attend the R.I.F. event. [The library was not one of my favorite places anyway, learning the dewey decimal system was required – yeah, that’ll get me interested in books or suicide, lets risk it.] We’d been having R.I.F. events at school each year, maybe twice a year and I was never really interested in the speel they’d give before they let us pick a book or even the books that were available to us. At this particular R.I.F. event I was there with my friend Ted and after the opening remarks we started looking at the books, not too hopeful at all that there would be anything good.

    We stumbled upon a book or two that had dragons on the cover and in the title. Both were from the same series Dragonlance Chronicles and were the 2nd and 3rd in the series. Ted grabbed Dragons of Winter Night and I grabbed Dragons of Spring Dawning and agreed to read what we could and talk about them with one another. Ted and I were already talking about comic books regularly and all that was going on there so this was a natural progression I suppose. I don’t know why the first book wasn’t available nor why I didn’t seem to grasp the whole idea of a story progressing from one book to another…

     

     

    Over the next few weeks Ted and I would share what we were reading and became enthralled with the characters of the books and the story that was happening. Being on the third book I was really rather lost as to what was going on and the significance of the characters as they related to the whole story. But it was still a good story that kept me reading from one page to the next – Ted too. At some point we switched up the two books. Fortunately for Ted he was following the progression, but I was a bit confused and tried to piece it all together. Later on when we found the first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, we’d both be in the same boat. After starting at the middle and the end we both re-read the books from the beginning to the end and really appreciated them all the more. We loved the story, the characters the ideas that stretched our imagination.

     

     

    Most importantly, we kept reading other things – so R.I.F. was successful for us. It got two guys that mostly only cared about comic books to read other things. It didn’t mean either of us put our comics away or that we were only going to read about stories with dragons and wizards, but it did mean that we actually came to find the enjoyment only a book can offer.

    Recently these titles have become available for the Kindle and I just finished re-reading the first book and fell in love with the characters and story all over again. In moving and aging somehow I lost my original books to this series, I have a collected works that has all these books in one large volume, the cover and first few pages have come off and it’s aged and yellow. I really love this old story and reading it again.

    Thank you Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Margaret McNamara and the 1975 U.S. Congress for helping me find something I enjoy so much.

     

  • Year in Review – kind of I guess

    I feel like I should write something on here. Most of the year I’ve had a minimum of four posts a month, but this month so far it’s only been my birthday trip. The last couple of days I’ve thought about writing something and just couldn’t find anything that really struck out as needing to be wrote about. So after deleting another few sentences I thought I’d say, “Hey, I don’t know what to write about.”

    Phew! I feel much better now!

    It’s been similar in what I’m reading this year, haven’t really found a book that had me engrossed so much or made me want to spread that I had read it. The notable exception being the latest from George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons. I struggled with the first three chapters of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but I think I’m interested now and might finish it before the end of the year – or at least before I see the movie. So many people have raved about it I feel the need to see what the fuss is all about. I’m sure it’s a great book, part of the reason I’m not really into it is comic books. With DC’s new 52 released this summer I have a slew of new comics that I’m reading and some of them are really really good – even though they’ve changed the fundamental parts of what has long been their history. For example, did you know Wonder Woman’s history has changed so that now she was NOT formed out of clay and brought to life by the gods? Yep, now her mother had a torrid affair with Zeus (he gets around) and to hide that from the jealous Hera they made up the story about the clay… so, there I am – reading Wonder Woman. I’m also slowly rereading A New Pair of Glasses – which you should too if you’re in recovery.

    For superhero movies this year, I really loved seeing Chris Hemsworth without his shirt multiple times in the movie Thor, but thought Captain America was the best superhero movie of the year. Ironic as each and every preview was unappealing to me. The complete opposite for Green Lantern which I thought had such good previews – turns out those were the only parts of the movie I liked at all.

    I’ve personally changed a lot this year – I’ve gotten five new tattoos, a new ear piercing (8 gauge), and been working out at the gym with a personal trainer. I’ve lost a few pounds and firmed up in places that guys have been complimenting me on (chest, abs… whatevs). I’ve also changed my diet up a bit – more fruit, smaller portions, less pizza, more nuts. Seriously an apple a day. As a result of these things (well maybe not the tats or piercing) my cholesterol lowered considerably making my doctor a very happy man.

    This year I’ll have three trips to the Midwest, a few trips to San Antonio that I wish I could do over, two trips to Ft Lauderdale and Virginia Beach and a trip to Canada. That’s slowed down from last year with a one or two trips to San Antonio a month, plus Maui, SF, WI, Ft Lauderdale and VA Beach. I travel to much, but I doubt that’ll change any time soon.

    I started watching some TV shows this year that I really enjoyed: Dr. Who, Breaking Bad, Son’s of Anarchy, Homeland, Dexter, Louie and more. Seriously these are some kick ass shows and if you haven’t seen them it’s your loss. OK, I’ll admit that I enjoy Son’s of Anarchy for the sexy bikers too – but the story lines are incredible. Most of these shows have been on for a while, pick up the first seasons, you’ll get hooked.

    Like most of the rest of the world I fell back in love with Adele with the release of 21 – it was released in January, but really struck home with me after the fiance departed. I’m also enjoying the Green Album a re-imagining of the songs from The Muppet Show. 3 Doors Down new album Time of My Life, Bruno Mars, Rascal Flatts, Blake Shelton, David Nail, John Legend… well a lot of music.

    I’ve watched a few of the Republican debates this year – after I couldn’t stomach them anymore I turned to Twitter to watch other peoples funny comments about them. It would be incredibly funny if these crazy people weren’t serious. It’s been an interesting year watching the protests, the news, game playing with lives at stake. I hope we can get through this mess and move past the old guard that is only serving as an obstacle to progress.

    It was a good year, it was a bad year… it was a year. Some of the events that happened in my life were pretty hard to get through. I found myself crying more than I wanted to this year – any time I cry is more than I want to. This is another opportunity for me to grow, change and get better. I’ll learn to love again – probably! 😉

    Through every trial and tribulation and every moment of jubilation and wonderment I’ve had the best of friends there with me. Really couldn’t ask for anything more could you?

  • November Novel Idea

    I’ve decided to participate in this years NaNoWriMo and that’s just scary. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month an annual event that challenges people from all walks of life to write one 50,000 word novel from scratch during the month of November. I like to write, which will be helpful, but thinking about writing that much during a one month period of time … well, I don’t know. Some months in this very blog I only write one or two posts and those are usually pretty short.

    So I’ve been spending the last few days trying to figure out what to write about. It seems the definition of a novel by default is fiction, so it can’t be the memoir that people keep asking me to write, it’ll have to be a work from the depths of my mind. Thinking of characters that have been forming in my mind’s eye for a while now and tweaking them a bit here and there.

    It doesn’t have to be a good story, it doesn’t have to make sense, nor does it have to be a best seller. The point of the challenge is to get me to do it – to finally put pent to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and do what I say I’ve always wanted to do. I will struggle with some punctuation, some verb usage and probably some other issues but who cares. Just so long as I write one 50,000 story in a thirty-day time period.

    So what will I write about? still trying to figure that out. But I know I can’t actually start until November 1 and when I do then I’m just going to let the creative juices flow and be done with it. I hope it makes senses… but we’ll just have to see.

    So what do I win? It is a contest after all. If I get all 50,000 words done by November 30 at 11:59 p.m. then I get the satisfaction of doing that one thing that I keep putting off. That should be prize enough.

  • What I'm reading

    So, I just finished a Conspiracy of Paper which I would call historical fiction, others might not call it that but I will. I liked it, it kept me entertained and had me wondering most of the way through. There were parts of the story that I was bored with, but most books can do that to me.

    I am currently on the 2nd book in the J.D. Robb series of books, Naked … Naked in something… heck I don’t recall, Naked in Justice or something. It’s pretty good so far, it reminds me about every other page how grateful I am to be gay and not have to deal with whacko women… no offense of course.

    I have Angels and Demons up next and then I’m not sure what I’ll read. All of this is on my Amazon Kindle, which I still love. Its great to have such a wide array of reading material on such a small device, I feel like Captain Janeway reading items handed to her by Tuvok… yes, I’m a geek.

  • 42 – Towel Day – May 25th, be prepared.


    <img src="http://www.towelday.kojv.net/towelday.gif"
    alt=”Towel Day :: A tribute to Douglas Adams (1952-2001)”
    width=”468″ height=”60″ border=”1″>

    To quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

    A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
    value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

    More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

  • Update

    Hi,I’ve probably told you all more than enough, to check my site: http://mrjamezq.blogspot.com/ if you want to know what’s going on with me… well… I haven’t written anything there in a while… so you can claim you did and still don’t know what’s going on.

    I’m temping at the NAHB which is about a 20 minute walk from home. Nice job, nice folks… but only 4 days a week. There are issues there… like the one woman who put together a fax, even made the cover sheet… walked past the fax machine came to my desk and said: “This needs to be faxed to this number (pointing to the number on the cover sheet she made) ASAP.” So, I smile and don’t ask why she’s such a lazy cow.. I get up and fax her two pages. Or the fact that “short-term” means anything from 1 month to 25 years… but I digress.

    I’m also working at Olsson’s Books and Records, in DC. Very laid back. I’m pretty sure there are three people (minimum) that don’t like me… I don’t much like them either. I hate when there are author events and the authors and their fans can’t seem to understand what closing time means… perhaps if they hung out in more bars they would get the concept. Remind me, IF I ever get famous, what I hated about book events.

    Gary and I went bike riding on Monday, was a little hot but nice. I need to exercise more, but the bike seat is broken and I’m saving cash… and DC drivers are nut jobs (no offense to you nut jobs… er DC drivers).

    WHC (Washington Hospital Center) finally called back about the job I intervied for over a month ago… they want me to come in (Monday) and take some tests: Word, Excel, Power Point… no worries. The job is a union job, and I don’t know what that means yet. I would almost rather stay at NAHB if it was 5 days a week.

    I was hoping to go to WI this summer for an AA thing… but it just can’t happen in this financial situation. I’ll have to see what else I could do… but winter is fast approaching there so no promises.

    No men… as there is no time. The cats are a little grumpy due to not getting enough attention, but when I do give it they are content if only for a purr or two.

    I am going to my meeting in Georgetown, and considering getting a sponsor… there are two candidates… don’t hold you breath, I’m very picky.

    On Monday, I’ll be contacting Northern Virginia Community College about classes this fall, I need a minimum of six credits to maintain my financial aid. I hope this shouldn’t be a problem… just have to decide which classes I would like to take.

    I read: To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time, and I must say it was a really good book. Currently I am reading: Hunting in Harlem which has promise.

    OK, its way past my bedtime. I miss most of you (some of you I actually see on occasion)Jamez