K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 64

Book Review: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

“Let your intuition guide you.” We all have heard that many times, and while such a statement can be true and helpful, sometimes intuition (our automatic system) can fail us because of our biases, framing effects, or by something else. But if you think a deliberate decision making will always guide you right and is infallible, then think again. It isn’t. We are not rational creatures. Thinking, Fast and Slow goes over our thinking processes and decision making (we humans are prediction “machi...

Writing: Character Sheet: Minta Stopford

Hello everyone! It has been too long since I introduced you to one of my characters. I thought this was a good day to do that as my head is too immersed with editing my second book, which finally has a name! Many of you understand how hard is to find one. Anyway, I have been editing slowly. My head has been in the way, too hung up with trying to get everything right by some standards I think are out there. I tossed those away two days ago and started writing/editing from my heart, and the tex...

Book Review: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

I was so excited about the book’s premise and the first pages I was in love with it. But then something odd happened, the book turned obnoxious, and into a love letter to Google. The characters didn’t develop, and there were too many convenient plot devices that everything turned to the unbelievable side. And don’t get me even started with the mystery which will reveal at the end. While there is nothing wrong with the idea/conviction, it sounded childish the way it was delivered with all the...

Book Review: Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley

I looked for something different to read and got recommended Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr. The cover (which is amazing) and the book premise instantly pulled me in, and after reading the first pages, I ordered the book. Ka isn’t your typical fantasy. It is like a campfire story about past lives and mythologies mixed with children’s animal fairy tales with moral but written for adults. It works. The language is beautiful and dream-like. The story is interesting and left me in this weird g...

Gone Hiking

Hi everyone! No blog post today. I’m off to hiking. Here is a cutout scene from my upcoming book:

They left the receptionist alone to count his money. The receptionist made the silver coins disappear inside his jacket. They were enough for him to quit working for the parasite-infested good for nothing Blackleads. He smiled a deadly smile, smelling the remaining stench of O-, AB, and B+ blood. He took a letter of resignation out of his trousers’ pocket, leaving it on the counter. He walked out...

Book Review: Lords and Ladies

Before I began to reread all the Discworld novels, I would have instantly said Lords and Ladies are my favorite. When I first read it, I read it one go, and I remember having vivid nightmares dreams about elves that night. Lords and Ladies have this surprisingly intense pressure throughout the book which is unlike to other Discworld novels. The book is amazing, but now after rereading it for the fourth time, I have to say that the messiness in the story structure is annoying. The jumping arou...

Book Review: Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm is a great thinker and writer. When I read his The Sane Society, my view about human life, the world, and society was transformed. I expected the same from Escape from Freedom, and it didn’t disappoint. How could it? The book has been in print and read over and again since 1941 when it first came out. Escape from Freedom is an amazing book meant to make us think over what we consider as freedom and ask if we are as free as we think? And if we are, then why are we so unhappy with o...

Writing: Motivation to Write

Hi everyone! I have been wondering about why I write and what motivates me to write after talking to my friend. She asked me a couple of weeks ago what is the one thing that motivates me the most (in general.) My first response was challenge. Her answer was curiosity. (Oh boy, I wanted to change my answer then and there, but then I wouldn’t be the stubborn me.) My husband also answered, and he said that you need to do something. My friend’s question is good even when I don’t think there can b...

Book Review: The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke

This book is wish-fulfillment science fiction about traveling to space and to another planet. And not just anybody’s wish, I think the writer’s himself. It was the only thing I could think when I read the book. “This is what he dreams when he shut his eyes.” To experience space travel and colonize another planet, Mars, as it will be the first planet humans can actually go to and most probably live on. Arthur C. Clarke’s dream and love for space are vivid in the detailed description of spacefl...

Book Review: The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

A tale of an abnormal, a jester, and a far in the future city, Diaspar, build out of fear. The premise and simplistic hero’s journey story sounded promising. Even more, when Arthur C. Clarke played with the idea of that dying has stopped and people live again and again for art and beauty, but in exclusion. The world beyond Diaspar is strange, unknown, and feared. Everyone in Diaspar is happy to live their predictable lives in seclusion, but now and then the city, its machines, births someone...