K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 62
July 10, 2019
Book Review: A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees by Dave Goulson
This is a perfect summer reading. It is personal. It is informative. It is funny. It is sad. And it is engaging. I listened to the book while I took macro photographs outside of bugs, wasps, and bumblebees, and it took the experience into a whole new level. I don’t think words do justice to this book, and the only thing I can say is to read it or listen to it. You will enjoy it.
Okay, this might not be for you if you want to have a strictly scientific book about bumblebees but hear me out fir...
July 9, 2019
Book Review: 1Q84 (1-3) by Haruki Murakami
A slow burn book, you have to take time to read. 1Q84 is fiction, and in a way, it’s fantasy with its magical realism, but I don’t think genres matter that much as long as the story speaks to you. At first, I was in love with the book. The language and the mystery what was happening drew me in, and I needed to understand what Anomae, an assassin trainer, and Tengo, a mathematics teacher and writer, have to do with each other and how they fit into this bizarre world where the normality is skew...
July 8, 2019
Book Review: Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett
Interesting Times go back to the original roots of Discworld novels to the time when the books were about satirizing fantasy, but this time it’s combined with the Orient and revolution instead of wizard and Octavo. The book is perhaps sillier in tone than those between it and Guards! Guards!, bringing back Rincewind who never seems to change. He continues being cowardice and self-serving without a clear aim in life except surviving (which is in a way jest of the character and us. When you str...
July 4, 2019
Editing: What to Do with Said? And What about Contradictions?
As you may know, I have been editing my second book, and I have reached to that point it’s time to look at those “minor” things like the writing style. To be honest, I’m more of a storyteller than a linguistic poet, and my weakest point is to get that grammar and writing style up to some standards. It might be because of my dyslexia or just because of who I am. Anyway, that is beside the point. What I have been lately pondering is what to do with the dialogue tag ‘said’? And how about contrad...
July 3, 2019
Book Review: How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
I wish I had this book as a teenager. Then maybe I would have been kinder to myself and understood a thing or two about my physic. We have too many taboos we don’t speak about, and when growing up, it seems insurmountable to ask someone what the crit is happening to my body and is this normal. It’s not only about body changes, but it is also about who you are, what you are about to come, and it is okay to be the way you are. I sometimes wonder why those questions are so difficult, making prec...
July 2, 2019
Book Review: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
The idea of combining time travel, witches, and quantum mechanics sounds amazing, and it was, but I will be frank right at the beginning, there are problems with the execution. The story itself is intriguing and is a collection of journey entries, letters, and official records, and it works, but what the book lack is character development and “action.” The plot arch is weak, which starts to bother after the strong beginning. I kept waiting for something significant to happen, but it never tru...
June 27, 2019
A Day of Procrastination
If there ever was a day of avoiding work, today was it. I think this little rebellion of mine started in the morning when Scrivener tried to screw me over. An update they say, improve your tools they say, and what happens is their verification systems don’t work, and then they say they will get back to me in a day or two due to being swamped with contacts. But did I rage or smash my keyboard, no, deep down I was glad. Maybe I could be lazy for once for a good reason? If only I would have been...
June 25, 2019
Book Review: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Trends are important, and I’m not only talking about fashion trends but also epidemics and crimes. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell goes over what causes that threshold which changes something from minor issues/incidents to a widespread epidemic or fad. He writes about the law of the few (one person can cause a change,) the stickiness factor (emotions, memorability), and the power of context (time and place matters,) clarifying that connectors (knows many people), mavens (knows everythi...
June 24, 2019
Book Review: Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
“And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don’t already have one.”
Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of short stories about a/the war. Many of them were situated to Dresden, and it is no wonder as Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war there and survived the bombing of the city. Often enough, while reading, I kept wondering was some of the storie...
June 20, 2019
Self-Publishing: Marketing and Finding a Tipping Point
I have been reading The Tipping: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. It made me wonder about book marketing. Not only because he writes about the example of how Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells started to gain popularity through book clubs despite its otherwise slow start, but also because of the understanding that the law of the few, the stickiness factor, and the power of the context can play an important role to get your book to spread wi...
