Can we skip the part where I'm all sorry that I started a blog and then life happened and then I stopped writing on it abruptly, even if all my posts were just tearing apart Divergent and now I'm back? (That author is still writing - will wonders never cease?) It's the same damn story and it's such a cliche. (And I meant me, I'm the cliche, but I can see how that statement might be confusing.)
So, every year I try to do the Read Harder Challenge from Book Riot, admittedly with little success, because the road to completing New Year's Resolutions and following reading lists is paved with procrastinators and lazy people, or something like that, but I may or may not have some time on my hands in the coming months. We shall see.
Despite the early-in-the-year gusto I have for starting this list, and perhaps documenting some of it here, I won't be starting my first reads of 2018 with much of anything that would fit the criteria for the Read Harder Challenge, because of course, it won't. My first book will be an unknown little tome by the name The Shining by a bloke named Stephen King. You may have heard of this book and its author. I guess this book is famous or something because one of my coworkers walked past me in the atrium at work the other day and exclaimed in quite the incredulous tone, "You haven't read The Shining until now?!" He was a fair distance away from me at the time, so he must have had some pretty good eyesight to notice, but it pleases me when people ask me what I'm reading because it's always nice to find out someone is a fellow reader, a fate with which I have not always been so blessed. I did explain that, yes, I had read The Shining before, in high school, but it's true that what you learn in high school is really the shame of your stomach rumbling during an exam, or a broken heart, and maybe some minor triumphs like falling in love and realizing that you can write an entire pre-calc cheat sheet in fine point mechanical pencil on a calculator and your teacher will be none the wiser. (I do not condone this behavior.) (Sorry, Mr. Brown, it was the only way and did it really help my grade that much? No, I didn't think so.)
Anyway, yes, I did read The Shining in high school and I remember more about the slightly creepy Satanic guy (ain't judging - his family was really Satanic and he even wrote his homework in a demonic alphabet) who once looked me in the face and said, "You never smile." So many years later, so many questions. Was he, in his creepy way flirting with me? Was he trying to convert me? I find that hard to believe, really. Also, this comment coincided with me making a face at my oblivious crush when he wouldn't look at me in the hall, but FYI: please don't say that to girls - they probably do smile and laugh a lot. Like when they're caressing their pet tarantulas and singing the entire The Queen is Dead album at the top of their lungs or whatever wretched black-clad girls my age did back then. (Definitely the second part, but due to my tarantula phobia, no to the first part.) So I remember more of this strange person who even kind of gave big ol' goth me pause by commenting on my lack of mirth than the minutiae of a 600-page book, riveting though it certainly was then and remains now. Sure you remember the main plot and the scary parts, but all the detail gets buried under a mudslide of college and crappy jobs and messed up relationships and all that "growing up" and paying bills crap.
But it was under this set of circumstances that I read many of King's works, including The Shining. Now, I am reading The Shining with a goal in mind. One thing I have been working on lately is breaking myself out of the comfort zone and that's where the Geeky Blinders Podcast comes into play. One day, Nathan Drake broadcast on Twitter that he was looking for some people to team up with to do some film podcasts and without my own permission, my Twitter hand pulled a Horshak and I tweeted back, "Me! Me!" I haven't looked back, but I'm nervous. I'm nervous because a) I have never done a podcast in my life and b) WHY DID I PICK THE SHINING? Oh my Lord, there is too much to know. I thought I had watched the movie. I thought I employed my AP English symbolism detection techniques. I thought I understood plot device and color theory and character development and pacing and filming techniques and movie trivia. I even rewatched Rosemary's Baby because that's what Stanley Kubrick made all his actors watch (presumably minus Danny, but you can never be too sure about that Tony character), along with Erasurehead, to get them in the mood to make a freaking scary psychological horror film. Yes, but then I hadn't watched Room 237. I felt like I was pretty clever until I watched that and then I thought to myself, "Did I really watch the movie or just the Reader's Digest version?" So it was back to the drawing board with my notes. However, I am also extremely excited and really need to take some time to clean up my notes because I might have gotten a little note happy.
But that's the movie and I hope to write a little something about the book here after I've finished my notes for the movie and the book.
The second blog post will hopefully be about a book called Sarah's Key that was lent to me by someone to whom I will have to return it very soon because we are soon to no longer be coworkers. But I can always drop it off for her.
Sometime in the fall, I was reading a book a day. I have been under a great deal of stress lately for various reasons, so it's surprising I was able to concentrate that well on all of those. I think I may have mentioned some of those on my Instagram.
Anyway, I should be signing off for now. Hopefully, I will be back with results and not some lame excuse about forgetting about my blog. I need a job where I can just complain on the internet all day and watch TV and movies and have lunches delivered to my doorstep every day. In the meantime...and until next time...
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