Get Lost in Literature

No, not the operating system. Ubuntu is actually a philosophy originating in Africa, loosely translated into, "I am because we are." It's the idea that an individual's humanity comes from their relationship with society. I don't read a lot of philosophy. In fact, I think I've only read one book I would classify as philosophical and that was The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale which I read sort of on accident. Which is to say I liked the cover art. It's sort of a satirical take on what it means to be human from the perspective a chimpanzee. It's not a book for everyone as it's slow and perverse and a billion pages long. I'm not interested in talking about books that are strictly philosophical. I find them to be a little boring, but maybe that's because I haven't found the right one... More I want to talk about books that contain a specific philosophy, ubuntu, whether the author meant to include it or not. "If you w...

This post is for the book lovers who love what goes bump in the night. I feel like horror can be broken down into its subjects: ghosts, monsters, murderers, and psychological. There may be more out there, but personally I love a good supernatural horror, something that contains ghosts or monsters. And while I have an attraction to the paranormal, the human-on-human violence that takes place in murder-horror is too rich for my blood. As far as ghost stories go, I can recommend  The Summer of Night by Dan Simmons,  it is the first horror novel that truly scared me as I read it. Seriously, it contributed to a couple of sleepless nights. A group of kids go to war with an evil entity... There are a lot of people that compare it to Stephen King's It having never read It , I can't tell you whether that's an accurate comparison or not. There's also The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones , where on the anniversary of a terrible deed a group of friends fall prey to a veng...

 Short stories are stories usually designed to be read in one sitting, unlike novels which are usually read over a period of time. While some people consider the short story to be its own genre, I feel that's an oversimplification of a sometimes-overlooked style of storytelling. Short stories can be about horror, love, sci-fi, or just about anything else, so how can they be a genre on their own? I'd say it's more accurate to describe the short story as a style of writing. Although the definition of what a short story is, is subject for debate. Some think it should have a beginning, climax, and end just like a novel, while others think it was meant to start somewhere in the middle. Some argue that a short story should be plot driven while others say it should be character driven. Authors who write them tend to pick options from above based on what they prefer and as long as the story is suitably short, it still qualifies as a short story. My favorite short story author of al...

Retellings are novels that are based on old classics or fairytales, rewritten from a fresh perspective and/or set in a new or modern world.  I've read a lot of retellings over the years but I admit, that most of them were written by Gregory Maguire, including one of my favorite books and his most popular one, Wicked . For those of you who don't know, Wicked is the life story of the Wicked Witch of the West starting from her conception to her last moments. I found it to be surprisingly detailed and richly imagined as if Gregory Maguire wanted to live in Oz himself. Another retelling I want to draw attention to is What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. The story retells one of my favorite short stories, Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Kingfisher's imagery completely and accurately sets the tone for this gothic novella that follows a retired soldier unraveling the mystery of her friends' declining health. If fairytales are your thing, A Curse So Dar...

What does it take to become a writer? I wanted to be a novelist. That was the dream. I wanted to take the things that I could imagine, write them down, sell them to people who would appreciate them. I wanted to be a published author. I went to school for it and everything. I really do feel that my writing improved with my education, I’m not saying it didn’t. But the dream never came true… And now I work in manufacturing and write novels at night that will probably never see the light of day. Hindsight being everything, I should have gone to school for accounting. But there are a lot of successful authors out there who never went to college. It didn’t hurt them. The lack of education doesn’t negate raw talent. They had the vision, the skill, and the dedication it took to write down their ideas and get them to the finish line. Maybe it’s simply those three traits that qualify a writer. I can’t look at any one novelist and compare them to the next. I can’t find a common life thread that u...

Today, I'm going slightly off topic by talking about fictional podcasts. If audiobooks are the same as reading a paperback, then a good fictional podcast is like an audiobook with voice actors and sound effects. Now I struggle to concentrate on audiobooks. The voice that drones on and on... I compare it to white noise and the quality of the story, assuming it's good, is completely lost on me. I had the same problem with my first podcasts. My attention span was just too short to follow true-crime or science or politics. But then I got hooked on Aaron Mahnke's Lore . Lore is not considered a fictional podcast, detailing stories of the supernatural that may have occurred if you believe in that sort of thing. But Lore was a gateway to my love of fictional podcasts because Aaron Mahnke created one called The Bridgewater Triangle . Hearing a story about the Bridgewater Triangle (a location in Massachusetts that is said to be a nexus for the paranormal) appealed to me greatly be...