School is out!

Which means I get to read for myself again and read I shall!

I've already read one book (William Gay's Twilight) and will be posting on it soon. For now though, know I am back and ready to read-- fiction, baby, fiction.

A distraction from books and the like...

The passing of Heath Ledger last week reminded me of how much the movie Brokeback Mountain meant to me. How wonderfully acted it was! How greatly my respect grew for him when I saw him portray Ennis, the self-hating, repressed cowboy. And, how I loved him when I read interviews with him where he said he didn't understand reporters questioning about his kissing Jake Gyllenhall in the movie-- how they asked "What was it like?" or "Were you disgusted?" To which he replied, "He was a human being, I was kissing a human being." I loved that. It said so much.

It also calls to mind for me the vast difference between the movie and the story. The movie was (a rare treat) better than the story because the information about the characters had to come from dialogue, not narration. Ennis in the story is even more closed mouth than Ennis in the movie. And Ledger was so convincing with his dialogue that reading the story after, it was a disappointment.

In a world where Celebrity Rehab and Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Nicole Ritchie are prevalent, a young star of Ledger's quality will be missed. He stayed low on the radar, doing quality work and choosing his roles carefully.

He'll be missed.

General Laziness

I've discovered over the month of laziness that was my winter vacation that reading nonfiction is a good thing for me. I love fiction madly but often when deeply into the work of someone else I find it hard to care about or consider my own. Nonfiction gives me the means to continue exploring words and their usage while pondering the possibilities of my own imagination.

I read over the break, though not enough (never quite enough). I read Manhunt about the search for Lincoln's assassins. I read Grant and Sherman which details the friendship that came from the working relationship of U.S. Grant and William Sherman. Both books were very well done. I think I liked the first best because it was just so well written. There was a narrative style to the book that made it terribly compelling. Even though I knew some about the event and the manhunt, this book was excellent at detailing what happened when and why they happened as they did as well as showing the ramifications of the events unfolding as they did. Swanson isn't an historian but he's a damn good writer and I recommend the book highly.

I started a book on Lincoln which is good but has really bogged me down. I've been working on it for two weeks (my goal was a book a week) and only read about 100 pages. It's well written but I just can't seem to sit still long enough to make any headway. I have nearly finished a journal though, so at least if I can't get my ADHD to permit reading, I have gotten it to commit to some writing of some sort.

On the subject of blogs....what purpose does this serve? My grandmother used to say, "Fools names and fools faces are often seen in public spaces." I stop now and wonder, is that all this blogging is? Is that all we are doing with this? Does this act serve any good or is it merely the act of "publishing" one's self in a world that is losing readers of any sort? How many blogs are ignored? Never looked at by anyone by the author? Thoughts to ponder