K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 44

Book Review: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

I was always told The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka was something scary, incomprehensible, and solemn; and I believed those estimates. Now I am baffled. What I read was solemn, yes, but scary and incomprehensible, maybe not, and solemn only to the extent of how satires are. Have I been gravely mistaken what this book is all about? Why does it seem like a ludicrous play by morphing our character into a bug to deliver criticism towards the duties of sons and breadwinners? Not to mention the mockery...

Short Story: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

I was always told The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka was something scary, incomprehensible, and solemn; and I believed those estimates. Now I am baffled. What I read was solemn, yes, but scary and incomprehensible, maybe not, and solemn only to the extent of how satires are. Have I been gravely mistaken what this book is all about? Why does it seem like a ludicrous play by morphing our character into a bug to deliver criticism towards the duties of sons and breadwinners? Not to mention the mockery...

Short Story: The Birth

Your death was my beginning. As your fingers turned rigid and the last of you was gone, I felt my body come alive. It is a shame how the cycle has to go, for me to be you have to cease, but I cannot help it. The urge is too strong. You know it as much as I do that need for survival comes first. Yet, you didn’t fight me. You let me take your body as a sacrifice, or was it for experimentation? I see the lights turned at me, and there are a strange hum and the distant sound of a similar speech as y...

Book Review: Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Books like Unseen Academicals is the reason why rereading is eye-opening. The first time around I read the book, I wasn’t impressed. I thought Pratchett had lost some of his earlier magic. The truth was that he had changed and evolved, and I could not see it. Yes, it would be easy to get caught with football part of the story, which has depth and cheeky satire towards the passion people bestow to all things, but underneath that lurks a bigger idea: mental health and selfhood.

This book is all...

Short Story: The Cubic

The cubic had appeared one midday afternoon at the sky, freaking people out. It now hovered at the exact spot as it had done ever since three months ago. She had climbed on her rooftop after work to watch it, as she had ritualistically repeated every day. At first, the world had come into a halt. Some people had locked themselves indoors, some had committed suicide, others had lost their minds, and some had turned religious, seeking refuge and explanations from the old or from the new. The newes...

Short Story: Little Red Riding Hood

The rain kept falling against her red coat. She had her hood on, hearing every single thud the drops made. On her right hand, she clutched a basket with her grandmother’s lunch in it. The forest loomed just beyond the narrow pathway. She glanced behind, then trotted on, feeling her backpack heavy.

She didn’t skip; she didn’t dance down the path. She let her wellies cause plashes on every puddle she found. Her mood was as stormy as the weather. She hated everything and everyone, starting from ...

Book Review: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Making Money, what you have done to me? I struggled to read you through, and not a year ago, I gulped you down. This was my fourth time reading Making Money, and clearly, some of the shine of Moist von Lipwig’s suit has worn out. This time I understood why, and some of you will snarl at me what I am about to write. Making Money is thin, it runs around one gimmick and one issue (a real and significant one, yes), but it is not enough to carry out the whole book when you expect Terry Pratchett-like...

Short Story: Beyond the Great Forest

The village had grown too small. She wanted to see what was beyond the incessant sea of trees. There had to be more out there. Sometimes she saw tracks on the forest floor not belonging to her people or the animals they hunt. They looked all wrong, as if they were not human made. She had asked nana what to make of them, but she had drawn a protective sign and spat over her shoulder three times, refusing to speak. The same sign she did when there was a suspicion of black magic being used.

She ...

My Top 3 Books in July

Hi everyone! You might have read my earlier post about choices we make matters. I wrote that I’m going to change my review policy, meaning I’m going to cut them down to writing only once a month about a book that spoke to me. This is to give you better reviews and free your and my time to do our projects. So, to sum up, my monthly readings, these top 3 books post will be more important, if you want to catch up on what I have read and what books I found worthy of us.

Here is July’s top 3:

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The Choices We Make Matter

Your time is precious; my time is precious, so it would seem to follow our time shouldn’t be wasted. But the thing is, I have been doing that, losing sight of what to write and post here. The endless book reviews are nice, but their quality has gone down as I force myself to write them from books I have nothing to say about. I drown the blog, my time, and your time with half-assed reviews when I could offer something with an opinion less often, so that is what I will do. I will review those book...