Year's Resolution In Review: 2010 Edition

Ok, so it's closing in on the end of 2010 and here I would like to reflect on how my reading and writing have gone this year. I look back at what these were in my past posts Resolution 2010 and Mid Year Resolution. Well, I reckon I've read about 30 books at least this year. I guess that's pretty alright.

And I have also written a bunch of short stories and poems. Two good things happening was having my poem Shapes being published in a Drop of Ink which is not really anything because that's a web publication and they published all submissions anyways. Also, the website now seems pretty much dead. Secondly I got my short story Peculiarity published on Receipt Stories which was encouraging.

But I wasn't able to complete the book-length story I was working on. Just thinking of this year makes me wonder where reading and writing is in my list of priorities. I should probably stop watching so much mindless television and read and write more. But it is strenuous to the brain to have to think of things to write after working, and I just feel so tired most days to muster up the energy to do it. Moreover, approaching December when I had my research conference, I absolutely did not write anything at all. It must be months since I last wrote something. I must reignite my flame for it, I feel very dead inside from not expressing anything creatively for too long. Feels like my soul is rotting.

All I can say about the new year is that I will try my best to write more stories and poetry. I will only publish flash fiction on this site from now on, and keep the short stories and longer stories for actual publication. The flash fiction and poems can act as catalyst to the longer stories. I hope next year is good, because this year I do not feel I have done sufficient at all in the upkeep of this website and in my reading and writing in general. Hope everything works out in the coming year. 2011, I shall enter it with some apprehension.

Furnace

by Muriel Gray

I'll just come right out and say that this book was horrible. I bought it from the bargains section in the from the local bookstore and decided to bring this one along on my trip to Shanghai, China to kill some time in between traveling. What a bad choice of book that was and no wonder it was in the bargain bin. One might discount that as being the point, it's in the bargain bin after all. I have however found some gems from the bargain bin like Sheldon's and Katzenbach's, so I usually take a chance on some books. But again, this choice was badly warranted.

I will get into the book good and proper. The plot is simple. Josh Spiller, truck driver goes to some Utopian town in the middle of nowhere and 'accidentally' kills a baby. Actually the mother purposely pushed the baby in the pram onto the road and Josh squashed baby. After that, weird things happen to Josh. People start avoiding him, his phone calls to other people turn out to be just static, during a hot shower there is something moving in the mist behind him, etc etc, regular run-of-the-mill horror elements.

To be perfectly honest here, I only read half the book. It's about 400 pages, and I did 200 pages. And that was a very painful 200 to do. And I'll take a shot at guessing the rest of the story to be the following. Demon that requires some sort of human sacrifice every now and then somehow latched onto Josh because he killed the baby. Then in the end either he dies, consumed by the fires of hell, or he lives happily ever after. Well, one way or the other I don't really care. I hope he dies, I hope the demon murders everyone. That would at least be a refreshing twist to what is an absolutely ridiculous book. I will now dissect.

From the format of the book one can tell something is wrong. Each chapter is about 10 pages. The 200 pages I read, I was up to chapter 23. That tells me one thing in that it is amateurish, like an unfit runner that requires to stop every other minute of running. The writing structure is also horrible. At one point, Gray commits the cardinal sin of actually changing character perspectives in the middle of a section. 

One of the characters which is Korean is described to be pouring tea with movements that are 'Geisha-like'. Get your cultural references right! Geishas are Japanese, not freaking Korean, which just goes to sthe how cultural ignorance. At the very least, it is showing a lazy writer who does not do proper research.

I had the idea that reading some mediocre books would help me spot the mistakes in my own writing. Now I realize I can spot mistakes just fine if I analyze my own work critically. There is no need to subject myself to endure this gruesome experience of reading such a badly-written book.

In essence, this book is a wasted of paper. One of the worst books I have ever read. You do not know how many times I wanted to fling it against the wall, or into the Furnace as the title suggests so fittingly.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

by Stieg Larsson

This is the 2nd book in the Millennium trilogy. The second book follows on where the first book ended with Lisbeth Salander disappearing from Sweden and spending time abroad. She has broken all contact with all her contacts in Sweden including Mikael Blomkvist and Armansky. Though they both still were looking for her for she left without any notice at all, and with no provocation. Lisbeth then returns to Sweden about a year later and is caught up in an entangled mess. A researcher and a journalist investigating the sex trade in Sweden is murdered in a very gruesome manner and the prime suspect is somehow Lisbeth. And the manhunt for her heightens when the police find a third body of Nils Bjurman, her social officer because she was deemed incompetent. So Blomkvist now has to find Lisbeth to figure out what is going on, and furthermore the journalist killed was working with Millennium magazine where Blomkvist is one of the editors. So it really is the perfect storm and from start to finish the book does not halt. Even up to the last word of the story.

I watched the Swedish version of this movie with English subtitles first before reading the book. Watching this movie, I felt the movie was quite a letdown, the story was very simple, so I was hesitant to read the book. But the book really is something else altogether. As movies always do, they take some liberty and changing the plot slightly to make it more understandable but it really took out what I felt was important from the book and took out the intricate plot weaving created by Larsson. It was no longer a wonderful web of suspense and intrigue, but what was left in the movie was singular plot direction. But the book is absolutely wonderful has the same high standard as the first. I cannot wait to read the last book in the series.

Tales of Love & Loss

by Knut Hamsun (translated by Robert Ferguson)

I got this collection of short stories from the library and honestly I have never heard of Knut Hamsun before. I read several of the stories and felt the stories were really weird. It threw me to a time and place that was very unfamiliar and I did not know how to make heads or tails of the story. But after reading several more, the stories really were amazing, the characters vivid and the stories really stretch emotions.

The stories felt like the prelude to something bigger and greater, and I think the stories really were just that to his novel. I am looking forward to reading more of Hamsun's work to find out. Absolutely wonderful writing. I do not know this different style of writing is due to the time period, the place he comes from or just simply what a wonderful writer he is. Most probably all three and I am so glad I stumbled upon this book in the library, opens a whole new way of writing for me.