K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 60

Book Review: The Republic by Plato

The book is a quest for justice, to understand what is it, and if it’s a virtue, we should pursue. The whole journey to understand justice and what it means is set as a dialogue between Socrates and his students, moving through definition to education to politics/state/idealistic city and characteristic of a great leader to truth and knowing the truth with cave allegory to the afterlife. Dialogues are logical arguments which are meant to win the listener over but also to make them think throu...

Writing: Shape of Stories

Hello everyone! Some of you might have watched Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture video on YouTube about Shape of Stories (if you haven’t, here it is. If you haven’t read his books, you should. They are amazing, and I don’t only mean Slaughterhouse-Five. They all have something to say. He is one of my favorite authors.) According to Kurt Vonnegut, there is this mathematical axis you can draw for any story. The vertical axis is good luck-ill fortune. The horizontal axis is beginning and entropy (BE.) I w...

Book Review: The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

How can we measure the intelligent of another species? And if we measure their smart do we do it from our own basis, forgetting that birds, fishes, and other mammals have different needs to survive? In The Genius of Birds Jennifer Ackerman goes over birds intelligence from our and their perspective, pondering the question of what is intelligence and how did birds acquire it and how did we. This is a beautiful book to discover birds’ diversity and talents, but not only that. It teaches somethi...

Book Review: City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer

This is a beautiful book about the dimensions where world-building can go. The details about the world from the newspaper advertisement clippings to letters is astonishing. But I have to say while I enjoyed some of the short stories and appendix material, especially the story inside the story inside the book with a weird and wonderful combining power, yet, I wouldn’t say this was something I highly enjoyed. I’m not sure why? Maybe it was sometimes the overwritten tone or some of the short sto...

Self-Publishing: Failing

Hello everyone! Sorry about not posting yesterday. I tried to set up my MailChimp mailing list, but it turned out that nothing goes as I expect. They have changed their policies, and now I need to find a new mailing list provider (which doesn’t suck big time. You cannot automate your Welcome email or anything with free MailChimp as was possible in the past.) I’m not sure if I even want to have a mailing list, but all the self-publishers say that it is a must. So, here I am, trying not to suck...

Book Review: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

There are so many ways to tell a story about war and love, and I have read and watched my fair share of such, but I have read nothing like This Is How You Lose the Time War. It’s poetic, beautiful, intriguing, compelling, and heartbreaking. I enjoyed every page. The story kept me wondering what is this about, made me imagine the bizarreness of Red and Blue (main characters and sides,) not to mention their relationship.

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone brought the insanity of war out beautiful...

Book Review: Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

I have been going through an awful time lately, and rereading Feet of Clay has helped me get through it. The beauty of Discworld novels is that while they feel light and entertaining, there is something deep bubbling underneath. Like with Feet of Clay, Pratchett asked questions like Kings! What to do with them? Why do we want them? Do they magically make things better? Or is it the fact that we can push all our worries to them? And blame? That is just scratching the surface. Pratchett asks qu...

Writing: Characters or Story?

Hi! Those of you who read my book reviews know I read The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. It got me thinking about characters. Will Storr writes that characters are the most important part of any story because we are empathic creatures who want to understand how other people think, what will happen to them, and how they survive despite their flaws and the odds stacked against them. We have this underlying need to understand anything and everything. He writes that the plot comes second...

Book Review: The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker

I was recommended to read this book over and again as its philosophical fantasy. While the writer toyed with the concept, especially through Kellhus, I wasn’t quite satisfied. Where was the philosophy I was promised? Or maybe, for me, it was buried under all the world-building and high/ epic fantasy setting. Which I have learned isn’t really a fantasy genre for me. Keep that in mind, when you read forward my review.

The beginning was slow and chaotic. I hated when Kellhus was left behind as h...

Book Review: The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

Humans make a narrative out of anything. A painting drops from the wall, and we think there are hidden motives behind it. There is an extra susurrus in the darkness, and we see glowing eyes and figures despite there being none. Narration is our surviving power alone and as a group, and it’s no wonder we are drawn into stories. And it’s no wonder that there are specific kinds of stories that speak to us. Will Storr looked behind the science of storytelling through a social psychology’s perspec...