Forrest > Recent Status Updates

I can't tell if this story is hitting it's stride or not. Time will tell.

I wondered when the Zhodani would come up. This is a textured cultural take on a small sliver of Zhodani society showing both the diversity that is possible in a society where there are no lies and all thoughts are transparent, while simultaneously showing the impossibility of such a society understanding a culture that dissembles, deceives, and lies.

I picked up a copy of "Le Livre Des Fourmis" today, so I'm back to having a physical copy of everything in my Want to Read list. Now to keep whittling that list down!

As I was listening to the skipping of an old scratched record (Jean-luc Ponty's "Cosmic Messenger" if you must know), I realized that the wincing I get from the choppiness of a skipping record is what I often encounter in Grain's prose. Either he's trying to cram too much into each sentence or there's something about the translation that makes it irksome. Splitting one sentence into several is a possible solution.

. . . a rumbling like from a squadron of unleashed poltergeists in the entablature.

This phrase has so many problems, I can't even begin to enumerate them. Well, maybe I can, but I really don't want to. Suffice it to say that I have more questions than answers about what is happening here.

An interesting start to the longest work in the collection, "The Path of Saint Mephis". I'm hoping this holds up as well as (most of) the other long works herein.

I finished the edits on my collection and sent them to the publisher. Boy, it is sometimes tough to have to stare your mistakes in the eye and fix them. I keep asking "how the heck did I miss that?" Oh, well, kill your babies and all that rot.

"Holding Out at Castle Von Lohe" is a mixed bag. It's like watching a marathon runner who stumbles every couple of miles, even falling down once or twice. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. I'm firmly in the middle on this one.

Solnit is making me want to take a pilgrimage, whether I need to or not. I suppose my planned hike in Teutoburger Wald in May will be kind of a pilgrimage, given my mostly German, but partly Italian genetic makeup. My genes reflect the battle: Germany won. Funny that I'm studying both German (brushing up at least) and Latin at the moment. So, yeah, I'll count that hike as a pilgrimage.

Solnit's anecdotes about discussions with anthropologists regarding the very earliest walkers is, by turns, insightful, funny, irreverent, and tear through some of the most commonly held misconceptions about early hominids (some of which I held). It's an interesting start and necessary, I guess, but I question the need for it. I'll know by the end of the book, I guess. Is it just a vestigial tale?

I think I fat-fingered my progress update last time. I did not read over 300 pages of Solnit's work in a couple of days. Man, I wish I could read that fast. Actually, no, I don't. I like the walking pace of Solnit's prose quite a bit, come to think of it.

"A Scientist from the Darkness" follows the predictable thread of a techno-utopian society in the making with the un-astounding revelation that it was all a trick of a cosmicly-horrific deity who watches all with an immense eye. This time, my wife was listening to a podcast in the other room, so I had to read aloud to keep my concentration - and it was horrible. The prose is so overwrought as to be inscrutable.

Just got the edits for my upcoming short-story collection. Excuse me while I dance with the red pen of quality craftsmanship.

In what could be a sanitized, clinical exposition on the setting of the Traveller RPG, Marc Miller takes a different tack, posing questions about what one would do if one had uninhibited authority, including the ongoing questions about the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. The humanity here is never lost, with all the attendant good, evil, and indifference that this infers.

Who else remembers when you didn't have to pay to give away your book on Goodreads?

Walking as a means of modulation isolation is a highly-intriguing concept for me. When I look back, that's been a cruise, especially when I am walking in far-off places where I don't know the culture or the people yet.

Quoting Kierkegaard: "It is the accidental and insignificant things in life which are significant". These are the things we encounter while walking.

"A Walk in the Morning" is a highly effective story. As enjoyable as the last story was laughable. This collection is a bit of a roller-coaster ride. But the restraint and clever shift of perspective make this one a great short story. Bravo!

I absolutely love the framing of walking as an actor subversion against modernity, as defiance to the imposition of so-called efficiency.

My Latin reading is going to slow to a crawl for the next couple of months, as I bone up on my German for an upcoming work trip and vacation to Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium (mostly Germany).

I'm glad I'm familiar with the Traveller universe. Yes, I could read this without it and still understand what's happening, but having been steeped in the lore for over 40 years now, I have a much clearer understanding of the impact of the events being portrayed here.

"Pacific Atrocities" was, well, an atrocity. All the devolving nazi practitioners of the occult and floating kraken in the world could save this story. I hated it. Waste of reading time. If there's another this bad, I might just lem the book.

Apparently, the purpose of life, according to "Extinctor Fortis," is to serve . . . as a meal. Yes, one might say, of the entire history of humanity, "it's a cookbook"!

"3:33" is a tale of forced possession and instinctual murder of the ritualized sort. What if you are your own worst monster, unable to control the urges and actions that impel you forward to soul-less-ness?