What are you currently reading?
The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers and Two Stories by Henry James
Dear Millie by Marco Previero
What did you just finish reading?
The Horse Healer by Gonzalo Giner
Fairest by Marissa Meyer
Selected Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
What do you think you’ll read next?
Lying by Lauren Slater
Critical Incident by Troy Blackford
Four by Veronica Roth
What are you currently reading?
A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
What did you just finish reading?
I Grew My Boobs in China by Savannah Grace
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
First There Wasn’t, Then There Was by Troy Blackford
What do you think you’ll read next?
Breeder by KB Hoyle (This is an ARC and part of a blog tour, so the review won’t be posted until Dec. 10)
The Camelot Conspiracy by E Duke Vincent
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
I’ve touted my love of horror on this blog before: Stephen King, Joe Hill, Thomas Harris. I did not expect to find it when I picked up Ray Bradbury, but I sure did. Something Wicked This Way Comes is old school horror at it’s finest.
Set in quiet, classic little town, Bradbury’s novel is creepy from the very beginning. We have two young best friends, with birthdays at midnight on Halloween. A storm is coming quick, so says the lightning rod salesman, got to prepare!
Except that storm isn’t thunder and lightening. It’s a circus that comes in the middle of the night–which made me want to don my black and scarlet. Unfortunately, this isn’t Morgenstern’s circus, but something much more sinister.
There is a lot of philosophy in Bradbury’s book–most of it surrounding the concept of Death. The moral of this story is all about how you live your life, saving each moment in time. Death is nothing, an idealistic myth we’ve created so we don’t have to think about now.
It was interesting to read this immediately after reading Blackford’s book, because they were so closely related. I unintentionally gave myself a course in mortality philosophy. Funny how that works out sometimes, huh? And now I’m going to go play a little more George RR Martin’s game.
Remember earlier, when I said I wanted brain candy? Um. Hm. Well…I picked a short book, but instead of being sugarcoated, my mind is completely blown.
I am Twitter Mutuals with author Troy Blackford, and we got chatting about his books a week or so ago. They are available on Kindle Unlimited, so I decided to fit it in to my next rotation…and then like an idiot, promptly forgot to do so!
I’ll be honest…in the first 15% of this book, I was pretty skeptical. I almost didn’t continue. The book starts off with four corporate mega douchebags, and the writing is nothing great. I was cringing. The sentences were long and wordy, and well…douchebaggy. Ugh.
Enter homeless man. Oh…great. What are these assholes going to do to this poor guy? Nothing good, right?
Guys, I’m not kidding you, my mind is seriously blown. *PHEW* *POW* *BLAMO*
Long story short, Douchebag #1 puts a tape recorder in homeless man’s pocket, thinking he will obviously not notice, because he’s crazy…because all homeless guys are crazy. Instead, Homeless man is absolutely aware that there is a tape recorder, and tells his entire life story.
I have 5 or 6 pages of journaling from today because there’s just so much going on here. Homeless Guy, “Kermit”, is shooting off some pretty intense wisdom. I will admit, in the middle, there is some really strange stuff going on. Blackford’s genre is Sci-Fi/Horror, according to Goodreads, so it follows…mostly I think the homeless man just had a mental breakdown. But in his very lucid moments, Kermit weaves a story of life, death, and after life.
I’m not doing any of Blackford’s book justice. There’s a reason I write a blog…and not novels. Just go read it. It only took me a few hours to read, but it was really really really great.
As I Lay Reading 