Do I need a reason to blog? No, not at all. Congrats me, this is a completely nonsensical piece of writing. Wise men say that sometimes, great ideas spring from mindless ramblings. I have yet to witness something like that, but it can't hurt to just babble on and let it happen whenever it happens. Whatever "it" is. And I writes it the way I sees it. Capiche? No one ever told me that it is so exhausting to think. I feel less worn out after the inferno workout, after seven days of heat stroke and having eaten nothing but rice cakes - than one hour of brain sweats. To be honest with you, there is absolutely no need to ever think, deep thoughts, earth-shattering thoughts. You can go through life happy as a clam, possibly happier when you shut off the noisemaker upstairs. I know I know, I make a big fuzz over how important it is not be stupid all-the-time. Believe me, I am annoyed by it myself. And although deep thoughts can be entertaining, we don't need them for anything. We know how to drive a car, how to do the taxes and we find our way to the fridge without asking for a theory of everything. Most of the everyday life problems aren't rocket science. Granted, you may have a challenging job, and be, in fact, a rocket scientist. If so, then of course you are excused to go on thinking. Or if you absolutely want to, then, by all means, don't let me stop you. I have decided though that I have thought enough this month, and actually I will spend the rest of August on think strike. I want to hang out, play, and look vacant, in the sun.
Hello and welcome to this week's Six Sunday early bird special. I say early because it's still Saturday and special, because I snuck in seven sentences. And bird because, well, I like birds. Anyhoo, you'll get to read yet another excerpt from The Days Adrift, Part 6. It's getting quite desperate out there on that little boat. Catch up with what happened ->earlier.
Have fun, enjoy and feel free to comment; I appreciate each and every comment, suggestion and friendly little nod! Join in the fun and check out the talented Sixers here. Let's share the love!
3.
Seven days and nights of endless water. The sea rushes, occasionally it brawls and at night it laments.
Or is it me, lamenting?
The constant noise claims all my thoughts and turns them
into only one.
I can't take this any longer.
I lean out, way above the railing, and there is nothing out there, nothing, except a shadowy contour, reverberating from the water surface.
It slowly heads towards me...
We nearly touch when I feel two strong hands clasping my shoulders, yanking me back into the boat.
Hey y'all it's Sunday, and that means time to share another excerpt from The Days Adrift. -->This is what happened last time. Three girls, still out at sea, on the run from the turmoil of war and the crime they committed..and it's getting quite dark. Feel free to comment, criticize, like, not like, whatever you want! By the way, I need your help with a little apostrophe crisis. Her name is Tams. Is it Tams' face, Tams's face or Tams face - or should I just rename her? Not stupid, just German and easily confused! :)
Before you go, don't forget to take a look at the talented Sunday crowd right -->here.
As the season changes from spring to early summer, the sun breaks through skin like a thin coat of ice. There is hardly any shade on deck, and with each passing day, Tams' tattered face reminds me more of a giant cracked egg. I can't even look at her without feeling uncomfortable. Brita doesn't talk to me anymore. Delicate little Brita, furiously cowering in the corner, like a glaring red lobster. I should throw her overboard, or better yet, dump her in a pot of boiling hot water...
In the olden days a book would have been recommended to you by your friends with words such as "hey, this is a good book, you'll like it.." or "it's from the author so-and-so, known for this and that.."
Now, there are all these referential blurbs on book backs, which, especially in the fantasy genre, largely consist of stupid, can't-stop-hitting-myself endorsements. Apparently it's not enough to have it thrown in my face that I am a fan and member of a very earthy genre, one that is frowned upon by pipe smokers, and sneered at by the friends of high literature. I should also be grateful that in recent years, fantasy has risen to the ranks of "somewhat accepted, if you're into this kinda thing."
I may make a mountain out of a molehill here, but damned, I feel insulted. This time, I'm not letting it go, and all because of the little tiny thing that is printed on the back of A Feast For Crows, book four of the epic fantasy series by George R. R. Martin, a blurb contributed by the Detroit Free Press.
And I quote...
"A fantasy series for hip, smart people, even those who don't read fantasy."
I feel as though I have been slapped in the face. Twice. For one, this little quote takes an unloading dump on the genre. It implies that hip, smart people normally don't read stupid shit like fantasy. Pardon my French. Oh yes, the hip and & smart are renowned for reading smart books by authors whose names they memorized to pronounce them correctly. In case someone asks. Fine, let them feel superior: cunt and Kant - it sounds the same to me..
By the way, the smartsters and/or hipsters also take last year's winner copy of the Pulitzer with them to their beach summer vacation - where they hope to be seen reading it...pretend to read it..don't read it.
Ok, first slap about that blurb! The second one, "(...) even those who don't read fantasy."
I know what they meant: it's so good you'll actually want to read it despite the genre.
Yet I feel like I'm on a backhanded sales pitch against the genre, not for a book.
"Fantasy - why it is not as crappy as you thought, smart people!"
Excuse me, but what is so third-rate about that particular genre? Do we call it childish, because it doesn't portray the real world? Is Scifi childish? You know, it has also thingies in it that don't exist in the "real" world.
Let's say, a fairy, a magician and a winged horse make you want to vomit (or in Scifi's case: a spaceship, an alien and a cyborg), and it's just not your cup of tea to have these things in a story. You'd be inclined to move on to something else. But would you go as far as to deem it beneath you because it has some disconcerting elements? Let me tell you something, outraged snot-nosed pretense-readers: you, the ones who are most disconcerted are the ones who would get the most out of reading those stories. Because you seem so easily distracted by all those elements. A common trick of the abstracting genre is to create a distance (future or middle age settings, doesn't matter) that allows you to actually see where there are things similar rather than different. I'm not saying that every fantasy writer puts the same amount of effort into it, but the great ones do. The point is that in a book, you don't need the real world copied one-to-on to decide if a story is meaningful or relevant to you. It's the story that does that.
So, since I gave vent to my anger, let's move on to the second blurb on the book.
"A once-in-a-generation work of fiction that manages to entertain readers while elevating an entire genre to fine literature."
Thank you, I feel even worse now, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Care to share some bad blurbs from the book you read right now?
Looksie here, it's a new dawn. It's a new day. Sunday! Today I want to introduce you to some of my more recent scribblings. They are called --->Shorts! (..with an exclamation point - because they are just outrageously short short stories) and you'll find them on my blog. The point of these Shorts! is to write a story that begins as close to the end as possible - this one needed 17 sentences in total, and you can look up how it ends --->here. These are the first six sentences of The Long Run. Looking forward to reading your comments and criticisms! :)
The Long
Run
He paused and looked at her, "What else
is there to say?"
What needed to be said had been said, and
it was he who had done most of the talking. Her body and mouth remained still, except
for the one silent nod she gave him.
He didn’t need to wait for her response;
she didn’t put up a fight.
She
looked away, far across the lot of picket fences, and her gaze pierced right through
the suburban Arcadia, to that other place her mind went sometimes.
There was a
time when their life had been nimble, when smiles were just smiles, not crooked
strains, when every small occurrence seemed like a riddle for them to
understand in their later years – a time when they would be wise and
knowledgeable regarding all things life.
As a customer of pay-TV and frequent movie-flyer, I do get to watch all kinds of films, young and old, good and bad. There are always those which I have never even heard of before and The Debt (2011) is one of those unheard-of movies. Sometimes they surprise me, other times I can't help but think now I do know why I haven't heard of them before.
There is a seven yawn limit before I turn them off. The Debt got close to it, about 5 1/2, then it caught some wind. I like Helen Mirren, I like Tom Wilkinson, and I like spy thrillers. It started out really slowly, reminiscient of the 90s-cinema pacing, which always makes me feel a bit nostalgic. The last one in this genre I really enjoyed was Fair Game, and it started out slowly as well.
We zoom in. It's Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren) at a party, her daughter's book release. Rachel is asked to read an excerpt from it. The viewer is taken into the story she reads. 1965. A gagged man lies in a corner while a young woman puts pots on the floor - rain is dripping from the ceiling of the run-down apartment. We immediately get the feeling that he is a bad guy.
She goes into the kitchen. The water trickles in each of the pots with annoying reliability. Pling-plong-plung. Pling-plong-plung... Then suddenly, something happens. Pling.....plung - the plong is missing and we know that something went terribly wrong!
She goes back to the room and one of the pots is knocked over. The gagged man is not in his corner anymore. He has freed himself and tries to run down the stairs and away from the apartment, but the woman shoots him in the back before he is able to escape. He's dead.
As we zoom back to Rachel, we realize that this was her story, that she was the woman who shot the man. She apparently is a Mossad agent- uh-oh. The gagged man was Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), a camp physician who did horrible things to the prisoners of the KZ Birkenau - aah.
On a sidenote: I realize that we'll probably never ever get tired of Nazis in movies. In the land of film, Nazis are what sharks are for National Geographic Wild documentaries: the beasts that keep up the ratings.
- Cut. David is obsessing over the musical score of the film. We have to replay certain scenes over and over to find out why he hates Thomas Newman's uninspired tootling. After the umpteenth time I want to shout enough already; but I don't. Yes, that's how supportive I am. -
Anyways, after realizing the bigger picture, we dive into the past once again to witness the planning and execution of Vogel's kidnapping. Needless to say that what happened has consequences for Rachel's life as it is now, and she, the elderly and long retired agent has to go on one last mission that is tied to the events of the kidnapping. Sorry, I can't give you more info without spoiling the plot - and this movie has some rather nice and unexpected twists halfway through and at the end which I wouldn't want to give away.
This is one of those movies that I scarcely recommend - if you're interested in the genre, Helen Mirren and the directing hands of John Madden. If you don't mind a bit of time-shifting confusion in the beginning then you just might be the right candidate to enjoy it. I liked the second half of it.
P.S. The trailer actually doesn't give anything away, except the general cinematic style of this movie, and the "action" aspect of it, the one thing which actually is responsible for 3 out of those 5 1/2 yawns...
