Books

I’m very excited. I’m going to get a massage after I’m done working in the writing center today. I’m so looking forward to it. It is going to feel amazing. My back is so tense right now that I can’t touch my nose to my knees like I usually can. I’m several inches away, in fact. Lori laughed when I told her that this morning. Yes, I do realize that not everyone can touch their nose to their knees as it is but I normally can so that fact that I can’t means that something is wrong in my body and hopefully this massage will help.

Taxes are due tomorrow and I still haven’t done mine. Probably I’m going to do them this afternoon and mail them tomorrow. Dad said they just had to be postmarked by tomorrow so that’s a good thing. I should do them today so I can mail them but I just don’t want to. It’s annoying and simple but frustrating. I hope I have the right form. Last year I had to use a different form because the church doesn’t take taxes from the checks they give me but they give me a form that’s like a W-2 but isn’t and complicates my tax life unnecessarily.

I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday. I know I shouldn’t have because even though lent is over, I shouldn’t be spending money but I got a little carried away. I knew I was going to buy two books. I ended up buying four and almost bought five. The two extra books were on the sale table so I felt justified in their purchase. Plus, they were on the best-sellers sale table and so I’m pretty sure they’re going to be good. Usually I don’t buy books I’m not familiar with but I couldn’t resist. One had a really pretty cover (The Witch of Portobello) and the other I started reading, made it through twenty pages and then had to give it back (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell). I did have to rearrange the book system, though, and I still don’t have it perfected the way I want it. I’m probably going to have to give up some books and push them back towards the end because I don’t want to separate books in a series by too much space. The good thing about my mind, I’m beginning to realize, is that I can keep most of these storylines separate. I don’t absolutely have to read one after the other and I will still be able to know what’s going on.

We have a chemistry test tomorrow evening and I’m very unprepared for it, I think. I’m not sure exactly what’s going to happen on the test but I know that if Chapter 18 (which we’ve only just covered) is on the test I’m not going to do so hot on that. I didn’t even know we were going to cover it until yesterday and so I’ve got to prepare it as much as I can before the test tomorrow.

I’m excited for school to be done. I’m tired of doing things and want the summer to be here so I can actually get some quality reading done. The book system is only as effective assuming I can read through them quickly. If I’m too slow, then I forget details which make it harder to read the next book in the series if there’s been several slow books between them.

I’m feeling a bit scatter-brained today, if you couldn’t tell. There isn’t really a flow of thought in my brain that is connecting into this entry. I’m trying to focus on something but every time I get close, the thought flits away like ice cream in the desert. Its like I can see that there’s something there, some thought worth chasing, but as soon as I go after it, its gone and my brain has decided that there’s something else I should try to think about

I’ve still been thinking about what I want to do with my life. I would love to be a professional book reviewer. I could read books and then write what I thought about them. I’d have to take more lit classes but that’s not a problem because I usually really enjoy lit classes. I love to write. I love to read. Why not turn that into something I can do for a living? Because I’m not a good enough writer and I like to read only specific things. Of course, I’m perfectly willing to branch out but I tend to dislike reality and prefer escapist literature to settings in real places with real things. Not that I wouldn’t read any of those, but that I prefer something more creative in obvious ways. Anyone can write about what happened to someone. It takes a skilled mind to create an entirely new world full of new and interesting characters. In my opinion, it takes more skill to write something unreal than to write something real. Think about it. Look at all the books in the world. The majority of them are realistic fiction. Science fiction and fantasy are in the minority because a believable science fiction or fantasy story takes much more effort than something closer to our current reality. I would love to be a purely science fiction/fantasy book reviewer but I don’t have the skill. I could practice. I know how to do it. I have to come up with “bull shit” of the literature variety and apply it to the books I read. I’d also have to be more elaborate on my descriptions of the books. I’d have to think more about them as books and find less than obvious ways to describe them and determine whether they were good or not. Something I know I can do.

Book: I finished Dragon Prince last night. I’d read it before but didn’t remember what happened. Something would happen which triggered my memory of later scenes but for the life of me I could not remember how it ended so I really enjoyed rereading it to rediscover why I enjoyed it in the first place. It takes place over a longer amount of time, so I would have to describe it as an epic and while there are two books following this one, I’m not sure I want to read them. Some books feel entirely whole when they stand by themselves. This is one of those books. It doesn’t need the support of its sequels to make it good. It exists by itself as a quality story. I’m going to put it on my favorite books list.