So. . .I'm procrastinating my decision on what to do for the rest of the night, but at this point (which is prior to the point in which I'm writing this), I'm messing around on the internet, in Google Reader, reading my musical friend KiD CuDi's blog while holding my Kindle in my left hand, open to location 1172 in American Lion Jon Meacham's book about my Presidential friend Andrew Jackson, the people's President, Mr. I was Born for the Storm and a Calm Does Not Suit Me himself. I read CuDi's blog - the latest was a prayer - and it's written in all caps LIKE THIS AND IS KINDA/SORTA STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS and CuDi is my favorite new artist, but Cudder, the blog is - and you'd admit this - not on par with the historical writing of an accomplished author like Jon Meacham. I finish CuDi's blog and I flip down my laptop and go over to my Kindle, and I cannot at all read the book because in my head my brain is still acting like it's reading the internet, and I'm only sort of focusing, and only sort of paying attention, I'm reading with speed not precision, and I realize that blogs have momentarily destroyed my ability to read.
Kids, please separate the blogs from the books - but please read both.
Also www.twitter.com/onemikey for all of my fans that will exist one day.
Now that I've finished the first draft of my manuscript, I'm prepared to start reading again - fiction, primarily, but also some non-fiction. With that said, here is a list of books I need to begin and then bury:
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson; Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth; The Night of the Gun by David Carr; Snowball by Alice Schroeder; American Lion by John Meacham; The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
I'd like to believe Tree of Smoke will be first, but I'm not sure I have a lot of faith in that actually happening.
For those of you who've never read Watchmen, this is an interesting way to experience it. The link takes you to iTunes, where you can download an animated version of the graphic novel's first chapter, complete with narration and music.
"Mostly, we authors repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and so moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.
"Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald in "One Hundred False Starts" Published in Saturday Evening Post (March 4, 1933)
An interesting piece in The New Yorker, by Malcolm Gladwell - depicted here, pre-afro - that suggests scientific innovation is accomplished collectively, throughout time, while artistic creation is singular and of the moment.
Read it here
I should've done this earlier, but a big congratulations goes out to Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts, which has just been named winner of the Borders Original Voices award.
If you haven't read the book yet, I urge you to do so. I'm even in a link giving mood.
