Literary Scrutiny- Year Zero

I have been in an audibook binge recently.  Prior to this binge, the only experience I had with audiobooks were the Harry Potter series(read by Jim Dale of course!) and The Count of Monte Cristo(read by various authors on Librivox.org, they are awesome, check them out!).  Since then, I have dieted on mostly eBooks, paperbacks, and the occasional hardcover.  This changed upon discovering the Overdrive feature of my public library.  With the ability to listen to others read books to me, my book devouring was uncontrollable.  I would listen while waking up, walking the dog, at work (my productivity did not drop thankfully), and while falling asleep(I stopped after a while because I kept forgetting to press the pause button).

After many hours of listening to books, my travel eventually led me to this beauty.  Year Zero by Rob Reid.  The synopsis quickly drew me in and did not let go.  In a gist, the story is a metaphoric vehicle to show how ridiculous the copyright laws are involving music.  The main protagonist is Nick Carter (no relation to the famous Backstreet Boy) a lawyer for one of the firms who represent the interests of the music industry in copyright pursuits.  Throughout the novel, Nick is visited by aliens and informs him that Earth’s music is so popular in space that everyone has downloaded songs illegally for their viewing pleasure.  Because of Earth’s stringent copyright fine of $150,000 per song illegally copied, the rest of the universe now owes all of their material wealth to Earth (except North Korea for some reason).  As you can guess, the lack of wealth makes certain alien species hostile towards the Earth’s existence.  Some might even be glad if the Earth was destroyed somehow.

I can write pages of what happens in the book but sadly I prefer if you experience it for yourself.  The audiobook is read by John Hodgman, who is very talented and I strongly recommend people pick up the audiobook version just to hear his narrative prowess.  Hopefully, you would get as much enjoyement as I did while reading this sparkling gem.

Literary Scrutiny- The Importance of Public Libraries in our Day and Age

No, there is no actual book that possesses the long title of this post.  Though, if someone does end up using this in the future please feel free to give me a little bit of credit.

I started this post writing about one of the books I have finished devouring but somehow it keeps turning into ad advertisement for my local public library.  This is the second time I keep trying so you know what?  Fuck it, let me talk about my library and how awesome it is.

A few months ago I started becoming bored of binging on fan fictions from fanfiction.net.  How long have I been binging?  Oh, lets say around 2013.  Yeah, it was that bad.  The Harry Potter universe is like meth in the fan fiction world.

Image provided by Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/florida-orlando-universal-1248731/

Anyway, a few months ago I decided to begin reading actual books in order to clean up my home library just a little bit.  I did end up purging some books by reading them cover to cover but got stuck in my rhythm when I read Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew book, specifically the mist story.  The last time I read Stephen King, I had to stop because the story was so bad and didn’t go anywhere (I am talking about you Gerald’s Game).

Picture of Carson City Library provided by Nevada Appeal

So I took a break for Skeleton Crew and decided to see what my public library had in terms of eBooks.  My library is the Carson City Library and it is awesome.  They have a ton of selections online through Overdrive.  Books, magazines, audio books, you name it and they have it.  I even saw they had a ton of resources online such as Lynda.com, Rossetta Stone, EbscoHost(the bane of my high school career), and other subscription based services for free.  All you need is a library card, it is that simple.  And no, you do not have to come all the way to Nevada to have access to resources like these.  Ask your local public library if they offer these and similar services you can use.

Ok, hopefully now that the obligatory shout out is outta the way I can focus of book reviews.  Right?

Literary Scrutiny

Hello, my name is David and I am a bibliophile.  I first noticed my addiction during high school where instead of socially interacting with other people of my age group, I would fortify myself in the school library any free minute I had until the closing bell rung to let us know we did not have to go home but we could not stay here.

Years later, and my itch still persists to this day.

When reading, my interests no longer are confined to the tradition page cover media.  I get by with eBooks, news articles, fan fiction, and audio books.  If you catch me looking at my phone and I chuckle, I am probably reading the latest chapter of a great fan fiction like Traveler.  Headphones in my ear at work?  Probably listening to some A Game of Thrones audio book or two.  I think you get the gist.

As a result of my fascination with the literary world, I too long to join my words with the great sky being known as literary art.  Sadly, I am not skilled enough yet to publish my own works of art or express my thoughts through the paper medium.

Instead, I decided to start reviews for anything I read that I enjoy.  Just as my literary drugs are not confined to physical pages, so to will the subjects of my reviews.

The series will be called Literary Scrutiny, something I’m sure you couldn’t have guessed from the title of the blog.

A bit of forewarning, I am not a literary scholar so please do not expect me to write essays to help you with your English Lit homework  I do not have an English degree or a thesis on the various writing styles of our times.  What I do have is a lot of experience reading.  I have read many wonderful works of writing.  I have also read many piles of crap.  What I am just trying to do is separate the two for you and save you a bit of time in the process.

 

Dream.doc 03/13/17

I dreamt that I was back in high school as well as 17 years old.  I was happy and I did not know why.  While on the bus I gazed upon a friend and someone I had a one sided love for during my high school days in real life.  In the dream, she had a mischievous smile and her hand rested on her lovely cheek.  My heartbeat drummed faster whenever my eyes stayed on her figure.  We eventually boarded off the bus into an empty street.  With no eyes upon us, she slid her hand into my sweaty palm and gripped it firmly as if she whispered, ” I will never let you go.”  We did not look at each other while we headed to my home.  As we walked, she leaned her head onto my shoulder in a content bliss of a moment.  I turned my head slightly towards her scalp and placed my lips upon her hair in a gentle and chaste kiss.  Her fragrance filled my being with warmth and a love I knew my real self could not comprehend.  I love you did not pass through either of our lips; there simply was no need to declare our love with words when the act, the joining of our hands was enough for our love to remain undeclared.

I wish to tell you that this was a memory of my childhood, a picture of my youth that really did happened.  But I can’t.  I  really did declare my love for my friend, a one sided love secret I poured and confessed to her one day.  She cried, not from joy but because she did not feel the same and she knew that her answer would only bring a sad despair upon my young unblemished heart.  She would not allow me a chance to make this dream true.  I knew the term friendzoned, but I did not truly understood its meaning until that day.  To make matters worse, months later I learned that she was dating a friend who I thought was a brother to me.  They hid their love from the world, a scab or wound hidden from all but the two of them.

The dream wine is always sweeter than the bitter draught of reality that is  my life.

Dream.doc 03/07/17

I dreamt that I was back in my childhood apartment where I grew up.  I do not know if I was in child size or if I was fully grown.  I remember in real life that I had a dog when I was young but since it lived in my small balcony, it was miserable.  In the dream, I had my current dog, Vivi instead of the shar pei I had as a child.  In addition, I also had a baby horse and a baby donkey that I help raise.  

 

The baby horse, I loved more than anything in the world.  The baby donkey I did not really care for.  I would walk my baby horse with a leash around the grass area of the apartment complex, similar to what I have done for my shar pei.  When the horse was big enough to support my weight, I began getting it used to my weight, hoping it would not buck me off.  Eventually, I was able to ride the horse everywhere I wanted to.  The horse was very intelligent, it would respond to all my commands and knew all the ride signals.  I wanted to name the horse the name used for Woody’s horse in Toy Story but I could not remember what his name was.  Instead, I named by horse Roundup, after the weed killing product people use in their homes.  I do not know why I called it Roundup, it just sounded like a unique name to dream David.  Eventually, I had to give up an animal due to little room to house all of them.  I gave up the small donkey in a heartbeat.  For some reason, the donkey remained baby size while my horse grew up.  I miss Roundup, he is the best horse I never had.