Fiction

I picked up the His Dark Materials trilogy yesterday, with my nifty 20% off Borders coupon and a giftcard for the local mall left over from Christmas. I decided I should read something new, as I can only go through Dune so many times before I remember every line so vividly I can recall it without turning a single page.

As horrible as it is, I don’t read as many books as I’d like to. I usually get sidetracked or put it aside in favor of something more interactive (albeit usually more mindless). I’m also incredibly picky about my fiction; it has to be really original or just really amazingly good for me to want to waste hours in my day reading into it, and most contemporary fiction just… well, isn’t. Hell, some classic works aren’t, in my opinion. I tried reading The Fellowship of the Ring several years ago and I slammed it closed, set it down and never looked at it again after reaching the segment with Tom Bombadil. Honestly, all the overly flowery descriptions, droning monotony and the songs just ruin it for me and I can’t really see why Tolkien is as celebrated as he is, except maybe for the fact he took a lot of things from mythology and repackaged them as staples of modern fantasy.

On a related note, we’re going to the library on Monday. We would’ve gone today, but it closes at 3pm on Saturdays and we didn’t think to go until around 2pm. While we’re in that part of town, I’m going to swing by the Middleborough Art Gallery and check it out. Maybe bring my portfolio along and see if any of my work is displayable.

Thanks to a recent post by Dee, I’m trying out a plugin that takes advantage of Livejournal’s XML-RPC feature to crosspost my entries here to LJ without the use of LJ’s syndication feature. If all goes well, I may ditch the syndication accounts in favor of the plugin.