Wannabe Writer's Ink

Wannabe writer with hobby of art. Stay and you'll glimpse a small piece of my heart.

Recent Media Consumed

Books

  • Summerlong by Peter Beagle. A re-read. I love Peter Beagle. He has such a way of taking the mundane and every day situation and slowly weaving in strands of magic until you realize you’re in the middle of a fantasy novel and you’re not even sure how you got there. That’s what most of his work is like, but this most recent novel (as well as his early work, A Fine And Private Place) don’t give me any feeling of wonder. Reading it, I feel like I’m reading words from someone who is trying to impress the literary elites with his style. The story doesn’t seem to matter as much as dialogue between people who talk like nobody I’ve ever heard in my life would talk. I am sad to say that I do not like Summerlong for the same reasons I did not like A Fine and Private Place. I can recommend pretty much any of his other novels, they do not feel like they have anything to prove, and that is part of why I love them.
  • A Life Without Lack by Dallas Willard. I’m not actually sure what to say about this. I found it compelling to listen to, but I also feel like I need to come back and read it when I’m ready to take action on what I read, and right now I’m still “spongeing up” in my reading. In particular, I liked the way he talked about inviting Jesus into your day.
  • The Innkeeper’s Song by Peter Beagle. A re-read. I first picked it up as a library book and, though I enjoyed the story, decided I wouldn’t own it due to the extremely sexual chapters in the middle. It’s a few years down the line and at this point I don’t mind owning and re-reading a book with chapters like that, so I picked it up. It’s good fantasy, as you will most often get from Peter Beagle, and several of his short stories, scattered throughout other collections, are based out of this world that he constructs in Innkeeper’s Song.
  • Mother Of Learning by nobody103. Another webnovel I dove into, though this one is much shorter than The Wandering Inn and it is complete. It’s a Groundhog-day type fic set in a magical realm, but more than that it’s written in a style that’s coming to be recognized as Rational Fiction, where the author sets out to be as thorough with the concept and worldbuilding as possible and explores every nook and cranny of the situation. Though I was thrown by this particular writer’s style at first, I came to enjoy it as I continued reading and I had to know what happened next. Definitely a worthwhile read.
  • Gilded by Marissa Meyer. I wanted to like this Rumplestiltskin-based story, and I liked it in parts, but it failed to sink me deep inside its world and people. I never felt like I connected with the protagonist deeply enough. Even though she spoke of feeling out of control of her situation, more often than not she came across as being in control of her situation. Maybe that is in line with her being “blessed by the god of stories and lies” and bluffing her way through everything, but I never could feel too worried for her and I couldn’t buy the story as deeply as I wanted to. This is the first of a series, and I don’t think I will continue.
  • The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner. I don’t know what this trend is of reworking old, old fairytales out with Jewish characters but I   L O V E   I T. Also, this author had what I was looking for, that connection to the protagonists that sinks me into their world to the point where I can buy just about anything that happens. There was also an interesting writing convention the author used, where one sister’s chapter would be in normal narrative form and the other sister’s chapter was written in what looked like free verse poetry. It fits the personality of each and is pretty unique.
  • The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner. I did not understand this one as much as the other I read by the same author. Feels like a lot of stories in this book blend together without enough explanation. Also, the underlying grief of the story was difficult to bear. Beautiful words, but not enough there for me to hold onto.
  • M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman. According to his intro, Gaiman said (approximately) that the short stories in this book would be hit and miss for readers, and he was right. These short stories are written in very different styles from each other, are plucked from different time periods in the author’s life, and some of them are even chapters or fragments out of other books he wrote. It’s an interesting collection and a few of the stories definitely left me wanting more, especially the one about the cat that battles the devil every night to protect a family.

Video Games

  • Unpacking. I did not expect this game to have a story, but it does, and it delivers its story wordlessly as you unpack “your” possessions at various stages of life. Everything, from what your possessions are to whether you are allowed to move other items already in the room and what those are, tell you a story about what is happening to you right now. Short, sweet, simple, and relaxing. I’d definitely chalk this up as a good therapy game.
  • Skyrim. Well I’m ONLY a decade late to the party, but that’s standard for me. It took me two or three days of gameplay (and a lot of poking Sergey and asking him for help) to figure out the mechanics, but once I got most of it down I was LOVING this. By this game, it is the third time I’ve designed a sneaky archer character, and I think I have cemented my favorite type of character. Skyrim is… amazing. Not just because of the gameplay, story, and the scale of it, but the GLITCHES. The legendary glitches are, as I said, truly legendary. I have to believe that the glitches are so incredible that the game designers will never fix them because they can be so overblown that the game would lose some charm if they ever went away. This is definitely one of my all-time favorites. That being said I have to add in that, after 100+ hours of gameplay, it’s pretty clear that the worldview underlying this universe is bleak. The gods are capricious and careless at best and actively malignant more often than not. You walk away from nearly every major quest line realizing that nobody’s hands are clean and everybody has evil, dirty secrets. To finish those quests you have to dirty your hands quite a bit. It’s a world where, as Sergey put it, goodness isn’t nearly as important as greatness. It’s still an incredible story and a lot of fun to play, but take care because the bleakness and nihilism can set in after a while if you’re emotionally porous to that sort of thing.

On Deck/In Progress

  • Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
  • The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  • Super Powereds: Year One by Drew Hayes