From 2017 into 2018 - What a Crazy Year!

It's that time of year again – specifically the end of the year. That means it's time for me to reflect on 2017 and needlessly share all of my thoughts with you. I'll try to keep it shorter than last year, but this was a crazy year so I make no promises.

How'd Those Resolutions Go?

Apparently I made five resolutions for 2017. Let's go through them one by one and see how I did.

2017 Resolution #1: Finish drafting and seek publication on my novel

Yeah, I just didn't do that. I got away from the novel for a few months, and then realized that I had lost interest in it and was getting much more invested in my new ideas, and when I finally got back to writing Nothing But The Boots it just felt like a chore. I still liked the characters and many of the plot points, but the whole novel just felt like a jumbled mess. The primary problems were that I had conceptualized it when I only had a very basic idea for how to write a novel, so it just wasn't structured very well and I wasn't adequately prepared to write it, and as a result of that I had done so many rewrites to major characters and plot points that I had trouble remembering where exactly I was headed with the latest draft or what was "real" in the story anymore. When this year's NaNoWriMo came around, which is typically the biggest thing that kicks me back into writing, I made the decision to work on something else entirely, which has been going so well that I've started to finally think of Nothing But The Boots as a failure I can finally walk away from. While that was still a tough decision, it's made easier knowing that I've learned many valuable lessons in storytelling and novel writing as the result of that process, which I've carried with me into writing my next novel.

2017 Resolution #2: Write more and post stories online

I kind of did this one! I can't say that I "wrote more" necessarily, but in the start of the year I did continue writing stories based on writing prompts on Reddit, which I posted to my dedicated subreddit over there. However I fell out of the habit of looking for writing prompts around halfway through the year so that I could focus on writing for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! 

2017 Resolution #3: Learn to play an instrument

Okay, so I admitted in my resolution that this one was the most far-fetched and unlikely. Appropriately, I barely even started working on this one before I moved on to other projects.

2017 Resolution #4: Lose weight and get in shape

In 2016 I lost 10lbs, and in 2017 I gained 10lbs. I definitely failed this one for a plethora of excuses I won't bother you with.

2017 Resolution #5: Explore my area more

Due to the project of finishing part of our basement, which took up most weekends of the better parts of the year, my wife and I didn't get to hike or go to community events as much in 2017 as we had the year before. That was a bummer, but it's what comes with taking on a huge home project that we're ultimately incredibly happy with. The good news is that I can still consider this resolution partially complete, as we tried out many more local restaurants this year than perhaps ever before!

2017 Summarized

I wrote for a video game that has gone on to be successful. My wife and I (with huge help from her dad) finished part of our basement and turned it into a beautiful home theater room. We visited both North Carolina (again) and South Dakota. I tried a lot of new restaurants, watched a lot of movies, and read a lot of books (and I got back into reading and collecting comic books). I pickled a lot of home-grown yellow peppers. I took part in Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time and started writing a new novel I'm really excited about during regular NaNoWriMo.

A new friend of mine took her own life, and the only grandfather I've ever known lost his. Two of my friends revealed to me that their significant others were physically abusing them. One of my best friends started fostering two children. A coworker friend revealed to me that he's going to be a father. My wife dealt with repeated sinus infections, back pains, and other afflictions while continuing to be the most wonderful and inspiring partner I could ever hope to have. I swear to all the gods on Mt. Olympus that my dog gets cuter every damn day.

In short, it's been a busy year full of highs and lows.

Resolutions for 2018

Bear with me, but some of these are going to be a bit familiar:

2018 Resolution #1: Finish drafting and seek publication on my latest novel

As I said, I've started writing something new this year that I'm really excited about, so I'd love to make some more real progress on that.

2018 Resolution #2: Write more and post stories online

The 2017 resolution that was very similar to this one (okay, it was the same thing) got bogged down by other projects. In 2018, I hope to be able to focus more on short story writing and making them more accessible to the world.

2018 Resolution #3: Lose weight and get in shape

I've actually recently gotten into the habit of working out more in the last month or so, so hopefully in 2018 I actually meet this goal instead of doing the complete opposite.

2018 Resolution #4: Read most of the books I own that I haven't read

I got a lot of books for last Christmas and my birthday that I still haven't read, and on top of that, my wife went to a huge book clearance event this autumn and bought even more that I haven't read, mostly because I got distracted reading other things this past year. This year I just need to stop reading books I don't own and instead focus on reading the ones I own. Simple.

2018 Resolution #4: Hike More

My wife and I hiked quite a bit in 2016, but then that habit took a back seat this year to finishing part of our basement, which took up most of our weekend free time. It was a total bummer to have to spend so many warm days inside and underground, and no doubt that partially contributed to my weight gain. That being said, I'm excited to be able to get back outside and hike more trails in 2018!

Wish me luck, and I wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2018!

-Ryan

Revisiting My Childhood Comic Book Collection 13 Years Later

After 13 years, I've started collecting comic books again.

How I First Got Into Comic Books

Sometime around the year 2000, I played a demo of the Spider-Man video game on a Playstation Underground Jampack disc. Prior to this, I had little to no knowledge of the world of comic books or the super heroes that populated them, and I just assumed such were the things that "lame nerds" were into. Little did I realize at the time that I was a lame nerd who had been avoiding my destiny.

I immediately fell in love with the demo, and more importantly, with Spider-Man. I had no idea that a super hero could be so fun, and playing as one tickled a part of my brain that made me yearn to be something more spectacular and amazing than I ever could be – I wanted to be Spider-Man. I wanted to shoot webbing at foes, jump thirty feet in the air, sling across the city, and climb walls with ease.

I bought the game (under the pretense of it being a birthday gift for my brother - but I swear it was on his wishlist!) and played it often. Not only was the gameplay top-notch for the time, but the story and characters really resonated with me. I needed more Spider-Man, and eventually I figured out how to get it.

After presumably hearing me talk endlessly about how cool Spider-Man was, my dad helped me to locate and dust off the phone book and find if there were any comic stores in the area. As fortune would have it, there was one called Collector's Edge Comics that was within driving distance. He took me there, where I bought my first ever comic book.

I'm fairly certain that comic book was Ultimate Spider-Man volume 1 issue 12, which featured a new and badass-looking version of Electro on the cover.

Ultimate Spider-Man issue #12 (2001)

I didn't realize until later how lucky I was to have picked that issue up at random, because it's pretty much the first issue of the Ultimate Spider-Man series in which Peter gets to really be Spider-Man in all his glory. He fights bad guys, he makes jokes, and he saves the day.

Later, the first Spider-Man movie came out. I postponed my birthday party several months in order to spend it taking my friends to go see the movie on the first Saturday of its release. The movie was amazing (and shattered records and expectations at the time). My birthday cake was Spider-Man themed. I was gifted two Spider-Man tee shirts and several other Spider-Man related gifts.

By this time, I had already purchased a Spider-Man encyclopedia so I could learn everything possible about the wall-crawler, because Wikipedia was barely a thing yet.

I went on purchasing new issues at random, until I eventually found another comic book store in the area called Lost World of Wonders, which had huge bins full of older issues. (I later realized that the other, smaller comic book store had old issues as well, but they were less-invitingly kept hidden in shut boxes behind the counter.) I couldn't believe how many there were, and having learned more about the history of Spider-Man from the encyclopedia, I became obsessed with the idea of finding and collecting issues from storylines that I'd read about.

That's when I really became a collector. I was obsessed. I told my friends about the comic book stores and my latest purchases, and we'd talk about comics and our favorite heroes endlessly, eventually writing and drawing our own comic books to share with each other.

But then something changed, and I wasn't thinking about and collecting comic books as much, until I eventually stopped almost entirely. Puberty has a way of making you reprioritize your childhood obsessions.

A lot has changed since then. I've finished school, gotten married, bought a house, have a full-time job with benefits, and I stress about all that fun grown-up stuff like money and not having enough of it. Throughout everything, I hadn't really thought about comic books much. Honestly, I actively tried to distance myself from the nerds in high school because I desperately didn't want to be associated with that label. I avoided the very things that I would later realize defined who I was.

Revisiting My Childhood

Only recently, I've realized that it's stupid for me to avoid that part of my personality. I've realized that it's possible to be a huge nerd and be cool at the same time. I've realized that life is too short to deny myself the things I love.

Admittedly, it helps that nerdy things are cool now, too.

So I dug up my old collection of comic books and made a spreadsheet to document every single one, with columns for publisher, starring character(s), series, issue, year of publication, and any significant notes. Because it turns out I also love organizing things and making spreadsheets. Yup. I'm a huge nerd. No turning back now.

Here's the resulting data organized into neat little graphs:

As you can see, my three most collected characters are Spider-Man, Venom, and Spawn. If you know the basics of those three characters you'll think that's kind of funny, because Venom is basically a more badass and evil (most of the time) version of Spider-Man, and Spawn is basically Venom if he was a demon from hell. Each one is a mere stepping stone away from the last.

Although it seems like I collected a lot of comic books in 2003 and suddenly stopped, I most likely collected new issues in that year and then moved on to old issues in 2004, eventually stopping collecting altogether sometime late 2004 or early 2005.

This last one is pretty self-explanatory. I had a heavy bias toward Marvel, mostly because of my obsession with Spider-Man, including buying "What If?" issues featuring him, as well as my collection of Venom comics. Interestingly, most of my DC comics were ones I simply grabbed on various Free Comic Book Days because they were free, though I have a Superman issue that I bought simply because I was really curious how such a "perfect" character could be written interestingly at all. If I were to go back in time I'd probably tell my younger self to check out Batman in particular, but it should be noted that the movie Batman Begins didn't come out and make Batman cool again until 2005 so my younger self would probably laugh at my current self for suggesting something so absurd.

I Take Pride in My Collection

Even now, I don't feel like any of the time or money I spent on comic books could be considered a waste. I'm actually really proud of myself for some of the issues I managed to get my hands on. I especially had an affinity for grabbing first issues of some cool series, including:

• Biker Mice From Mars issue #1
• Predator issue #1
• Spawn #1
• Spider-Man (1990) issue #1
• Spider-Man 2099 issue #1
• Web of Spider-Man issue #1

And more. Though I need to draw special attention to the issue #1 I'm most proud of, because it happens to be the first issue of one of my favorite series, features my favorite character, and is the oldest comic book I own:

What If? issue #1 (1977)

That thing originally sold for 50 cents to some lucky kid, and I had to spend $15 to get it 27 years later. I remember the purchase fondly, because my dad took my friend and I to a miniature comic book convention/pop-up market in town with only $20 in my pocket to spend. I wandered off to check out some vendors on my own and came back with this beauty and almost none of my money left. My dad was confused why I had spent almost all my money on a single issue instead of trying to get a couple different ones for less, and I explained to him that this was the holy grail for me. What If? issue #1, which happened to feature Spider-Man, from 1977. Wow.

I've only ever opened and read it once.

The Start of Another Era

As you can probably expect, revisiting my childhood passion also reignited my passion for it. This is in part because comic books are just cool, but also because there are some holes in my collection that my organization-loving brain desperately needs to fill.

To celebrate my golden birthday, my parents took me out to eat at a restaurant in Bay View, which is an area of Wisconsin that I have very little familiarity with. On the walk to the restaurant, I noticed that there was a little comic book shop just down the block called, you guessed it, Collector's Edge Comics. It was one of their three locations that I hadn't been to yet because the one I grew up going to was much closer. Well, after dinner I mentioned it a few times and how cool it would be to go in and "just look around."

Folks, comic books have changed since I was 14 years old. There's just so many of them, and so many versions of each one. I walked into Collector's Edge and my head started spinning.

My wife had previously expressed an interest in comic books, so I focused on looking for something for her first, since that seemed like a more focused task than looking for any of the dozens of things I would want to find for myself. I decided to look for a strong female hero that odds were she would enjoy, so naturally I looked for Gwenpool and Spider-Gwen, because I knew for a fact she would like Gwenpool's Deadpool-like humor and that she could relate to Spider-Gwen. My wife really wanted to start at the beginning (duh) and the store didn't have a copy of Gwenpool issue #1 in stock, but they did have Spider-Gwen issue #1, so I suggested that to her, and she held onto it.

Now it was time to look for something for myself. Where oh where could I start? I desperately needed to find issue #4 of the 1995 comic Venom: Separation Anxiety, because I own issues #1-3 and it's a 4-part series. The only problem was I couldn't remember if it was that series I needed or Venom: Lethal Protector (of which I later remembered I own issue #1 but not #2-6), and I was having trouble finding those anyway. So I checked out the crate full of Spider-Man comics, and that's where I found issue #1 of the 2016 ongoing series Spider-Man/Deadpool.

Spider-Man/Deadpool issue #1 & Spider-Gwen issue #1

And so officially begins my second era of collecting comic books, as well as my wife's first.

Final Thought: Why couldn't all this nerdy stuff have been cool when I was a teenager?

From 2016 to 2017 - Keeping the Momentum Going

Do you like this new graphic? I made it myself with a photo I took of my beautiful wife.

I felt like I should do some end-of-the-year blogging to get some closure on 2016 and publicly express my goals for 2017, especially after writing a lengthy post/essay titled "Spider-Man or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Reboot" that I then decided not to publish because it was basically just me telling the entire story of my love for Spider-Man and expressing my opinions (that nobody asked for) about the upcoming reboot film.

Concerning My 2016 Resolution

I don't actually remember my primary resolution for 2016, and looking back on last year's review, I didn't really state anything specific. Therefore I'm just going to assume my resolution was to complete the second draft of my novel, which I came very close but ultimately failed to do. I do remember, however, resolving to learn to meditate in 2016, which I did a little bit of throughout the year but not as much as I wanted to.

So what did I actually do this year, then? I read a lot more books (the entire Hitchiker's Guide series, several books in the Detective Bosch series, four books in the Series of Unfortunate Events, The Martian, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and Childhood's End), watched a bunch of good movies for the first time (La La Land, Sunshine, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Good Will Hunting, The Revenant, the "Before" trilogy, Spirited Away, High Rise, Begin Again, Deadpool, Ghost in the Shell, There Will Be Blood, Victoria, Carol, Room, Sixteen Candles, Straight Outta Compton, Steve Jobs, Brick, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Memento, Sicario, A Scanner Darkly, Snowpiercer, and more), watched some good TV shows (Westworld, Stranger Things, Black Mirror, Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, Parks and Recreation, etc), discovered some new music and played the occasional video game (mostly on Android).

I also lost my job, found a better one, got a new phone that lets me play Xcom anywhere, put up a fence in my back yard for my dog, started using Instagram, redesigned the blog to actually look like a writer's blog, started writing short stories based on writing prompts (one of which has gained enough attention for two individuals to ask me if they could adapt it into a short film), made new friends, reconnected with old friends, did a lot of hiking, tried out a few different haircuts, and lost 10 lbs.

2017 Resolutions

First and foremost, I really want to get the second draft of my novel finished and start sending it out to publishers. I'm really close thanks to NaNoWriMo, and I really only need to write the ending, rewrite a secondary character's arc, and punch up the humor and charisma in some parts.

Secondly, I just want to keep writing more, especially those writing prompts, and eventually put a few up on the website for public consumption.

Thirdly, ever since experimenting with mixing music again a few weeks ago and seeing the amazing film La La Land in theaters a few days ago with my wife, it's starting to look like I might finally be learning to play an instrument or two. You see, she grew up playing the violin and guitar, but after seeing Ryan Gosling in La La Land and learning that he trained himself in only three months she's been wanting to learn piano (and her parents have a beautiful one in their home that rarely gets used), and I grew up owning a guitar but not knowing how to play it and always wanted to learn to play the keyboard so I could make some music on the computer without relying entirely on pre-recorded loops. So I'll say my tertiary big goal of 2017 is to learn to play piano and/or guitar, but this just came up recently so we'll see if it really sticks.

Fourthly, I should probably continue to lose weight and get in shape. I did some pilates this year, which proved to be quite enjoyable and challenging, tried to get into a routine of exercising (beyond taking my daily walks) at least once a week, and made an effort to eat healthier or smaller portions, so more of that would be good. Now that the wedding has long passed, my biggest motivation to be healthy and in shape is that I want to be able to keep up and play with my future kids as much as possible.

Lastly, I really just want to keep trying new things in my area. For years, I was stuck in a rut of eating at chain restaurants, shopping at chain stores, and going to the same places to do the same old things, but this year my wife and I made a solid attempt of eating and shopping more locally, as well as visiting parks we'd never been to before and just overall trying to attend more community events like concerts, movies in the park, and beer gardens. More of that is always good fun.

And I still want to do more Tactical Laser Tag. Seriously, I only went once this year.

-Ryan

Book Review: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

It's been over two years since I blogged a book review, which is odd, because I've actually been reading a lot more lately.

Do you like the new graphic? I made it myself. Yes, that is my hand, foot, and Spider-Man Tervis tumbler.

How I Stumbled Upon this Book

For most of my life, I'd never been a "genre guy" when it came to books; by which I mean that I wasn't a huge fan of mystery, adventure, or horror in particular. Instead, I was a fan of authors. After being told at 13 years old that Stephen King was the best writer of our generation, I ended up reading a lot of his books but never felt drawn to horror itself. Similarly, many of the books I've read I'd only discovered after first seeing or hearing about the movie adaptation - which led to my love of Chuck Palahniuk and Stieg Larsson, but not to the genres of satire or mystery, respectively.

As I've grown as a writer, however, genres have intrigued me, partially because of my desire to write some genre fiction myself. As such, I began reading through Michael Connelly's excellent Detective Bosch series, of which I'm currently five books into the now 21 book series.

But a strange thing happened a few months ago. I got really, really interested in science fiction.

I blame this on the hype over the video game No Man's Sky, having watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, and downloading the soundtrack to Interstellar all within a few weeks of each other. During the height of my obsession, I downloaded wallpapers of the cosmos for my phone and computer, I looked up and added several science-fiction movies to my Netflix queue, and started looking online for suggestions for the best hard science-fiction books around.

While Childhood's End wasn't one of the particular books that I was suggested, author Arthur C. Clarke was. I went to the library, found the science-fiction section (which is frustratingly combined with the fantasy section), and decided to try out Childhood's End after concluding that going straight for 2001: A Space Odyssey would be like having ice cream before dinner. I had never heard of this book, so I was going in completely blind.

My Review of Childhood's End

It should be noted that Childhood's End was not the first hard sci-fi book I read during this time, and that I actually read it immediately after first reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, and so my review will contain comparisons between the two.

Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke
Published 1953
2016 Paperback Syfy TV Tie-In Edition

Synopsis

Childhood's End begins with the United States and Soviet Union competing to launch the first space ship into orbit when several gigantic space ships quietly position themselves above every major city in the world, putting a sudden and immediate end to the space race. The ships do nothing but hover in place, until a week passes and the aliens announce in perfect English via audio transmission that they have been sent to supervise and guide the human race through its next several generations of progress. This is met with resistance at first, as many people feel threatened by these new visitors, but resistance proves totally and literally pointless, as the aliens don't even flinch at even the boldest attempts to overpower them; to such an advanced alien race, we are merely ants.

After a generation has passed, with the quality of life slowly improving, but the aliens, now known as the Overlords, not yet revealing their end goal or even their appearance, humans have gotten accustomed to the Overlords' presence as just another facet of everyday life. The last human resistors and all those who remember the world before the Overlords' arrival have died of old age, and with them, humanity's sense of freedom, religion, and drive to explore new worlds has died as well. We have become totally complacent. It is only then that the Overlords decide to reveal their appearance and allow us to glean what their true intentions may be, and it just may be too good to be true.

Review

Childhood's End is a short but brilliantly-told story of mankind's slow but willing assimilation to a bold universal truth. Whereas I found Philip K. Dick's writing to contain many big ideas sloppily supported by meandering and often awkward language, Arthur C. Clarke effortlessly tells a simple but compelling story with sharp and to-the-point language while fluidly presenting the reader with intriguing philosophical conundrums.

The story is told in three parts, each one drastically different than the others and connected by decades of time in-between, shifting perspectives from generation to generation as life on Earth changes drastically with the Overlords' help. What was especially surprising for me as a reader and writer was not only how gripping, realistic, and intelligently each part was written, but how the relatively slow pace of the book did absolutely nothing to cripple my desire to turn to each next page. The Overlords don't actually do much, and each human character serves only as a subject through whom to see the state of the slowly-changing planet, yet the simple curiosity of what the Overlords' end goal is drives the entire experience from beginning to end.

Momentum is something I struggle to understand when writing, and Arthur C. Clarke keeps it going in full force with minimal effort. Aside from the big mystery that lies on the last pages, the momentum is helped by a cast of realistic, well-rounded characters - despite them being replaced at the outset of each new part - as well as beautifully-detailed descriptions of each new location and change to the status of the planet. Clarke's description of the book's utopian golden age had me absolutely yearning for such a world to exist within my lifetime.

The Final Verdict

Childhood's End is a must-read for any fan of science-fiction and/or mystery. Despite being written and published during the Cold War, its style holds up to modern standards, its themes are just as relevant today as they were in 1953, and it is a rare story that remains creative and unique within its premise even decades after it was first published. This is one of my new favorite books.

For those who want to be further engrossed in the world of Childhood's End, there is a 2016 SyFy miniseries based on the book which I have not yet seen but I've heard is quite good. There are also a few songs based on the book by the likes of Genesis and Pink Floyd, titled "Watcher of the Skies" and "Childhood's End," respectively.

-Ryan

Book Review: Under The Dome by Stephen King

Last summer I was tricked into watching the terrible first season of the television show adaptation of Stephen King's Under The Dome. CBS was advertising it as a summer miniseries (or at least did not reveal that it was going to be a multi-season show), and I was under the impression that it would be a good opportunity to experience the brilliant work of fiction I'd wanted to read but couldn't make time for (the hardcover edition is 1,074 pages long, likely with tiny print).

The show turned out to be a laughably bad adaptation that strayed from the source material (one character who dies in her first appearance in the book is a main, living character in the show). I watched it with friends, as it was fun to mock, was mysterious enough to wonder what would happen next, and was seemingly the only new thing on TV for the summer.

I knew that in order to get the high-quality Stephen King version of the story I'd have to go right to the source. I had recently discovered that my local library has quite a selection of audio books on disc, including Under The Dome. I decided it was time to dive in and listen to the 30 disc book on my commutes to and from work.

To get the audio book-specific review out of the way, I'll say that this was my first time listening to a fictional audio book (and my third audio book overall), and it was very well done. Raúl Esparza did an amazing job telling the story and fitting a different voice to each character of the very large cast.

Like most people, I enjoy the work of Stephen King. Lisey's Story is one of my absolute favorite books (and is apparently the favorite of Stephen King's own works, he once admitted), and I've read and enjoyed several others such as Thinner, Desperation, The Shining, Christine, The Eyes Of The Dragon, and Cell.

As far as his writing style is concerned, I find myself occasionally skipping some of his extensive explanations of things, and I even grew tired of and decided not to finish The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon because I couldn't stand so much description of so little happening. I definitely zoned out a couple times while listening to Under The Dome for the same reason, but overall this is a book full of action.

The story is told by a third person omnipotent narrator from the perspective of multiple central and non-central characters. You get to know the inner thoughts of the good guys, the bad guys, and even a dog. This method of storytelling helps flesh out the world perhaps more than any other Stephen King has written. You get to know a good chunk of the many citizens of Chester's Mill, a fictional town in (where else?) Maine. This helps to create a world where, rather than a lot of action being done to or by a small group of people, it feels like every citizen of the town is involved in the crisis.

The crisis is, of course, that the town of Chester's Mill has suddenly been cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible and impenetrable dome. It's like The Simpsons Movie, except more supernatural and Stephen King apparently had the story drafted decades before that movie was written. Within only days of the town being cut off, the local used car dealer and selectman rises to power; converting the small town into a military state, the weather and color of the sky changes as pollution gathers on the outside and inside of the dome, and various citizens experience disturbing visions of future events.

Under The Dome is easily one of the best Stephen King books that I've read. It's exciting from beginning to end, and even with the visions of the future teasing me, I couldn't guess what would happen next. I'd highly suggest this to anyone with the motivation to read such a large book, as it is surely worth your time.

And yes, I'll be giving season 2 of the show another chance to win me over.
-Ryan

Book Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

A few months ago, I heard that my favorite director, David Fincher was selected to direct a movie adaptation of the bestselling novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I'd heard good things about the book before then (mostly just that it was good and a bestseller), and had already added it to my "to read" list on GoodReads, but finding out that my favorite director was about to adapt it to film made it an absolute must-read for me. David Fincher is famous for adapting many great works of literature to film, such as Fight Club (which was written by my favorite author), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (one of my favorite books). He tends to gravitate towards anything dark and thrilling, which happen to be right up my alley.

Thus, I immediately read the free sample available on my e-reader and decided I had to finish it before the movie came out. I've only just recently for the first time read a book before the movie was announced (World War Z) and I've read a book after seeing the movie plenty of times. This would be the first time that I decided to read the book purely out of anticipation for the film (as many seem to do nowadays).

Within the first few chapters, the book grabs you and holds on tight. You're treated to chapters that alternate between the perspective of the husband, Nick Dunne, as he copes with the realization that his wife has seemingly been kidnapped and possibly killed, as well as his wife, Amy (famous for being the inspiration for the main character in her parents' famous book series "Amazing Amy"), in the form of diary entries from before her disappearance. It's made clear early on that Nick Dunne has something to hide, and hinted to several times that he may have, in fact, killed his wife. Amy's story, on the other hand, is of the joyful beginnings and middles of a relationship and marriage to her perfect guy. The interlacing story-lines not only serve to show you the contrasting perceptions of their marriage (though Amy's chapters eventually show that things were not going so well for the married couple as of recent), but also serve as tools meant to keep the tension at an all time high, as new information in Nick's story is then interrupted by Amy's diary entry.

Author Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl could have simply kept this format through to the end and it would have been a good, suspenseful novel, as we would potentially find out slowly that we're following the narration of a killer, but apparently Gillian Flynn wasn't satisfied with her book simply being good. After the first of the three parts ends, a major twist occurs that affects the format of the storytelling itself. From then on the book keeps the surprises coming, until the last handful of chapters where it slows down and ends on a less thrilling but just as dark tone.

There's not much more I can really say about the story without revealing some major plot points, especially since the biggest plot twist occurs quite early on in the book. What you need to know is that Gone Girl is a mystery novel turned on its head. It was written well, the characters were interesting, and the plot was exciting. If that's your kind of book, Gone Girl is for you.

So how has this affected my excitement for the movie? I'd say I'm about equally as excited as I was before I started reading it. As luck would have it, the trailer for the film came out only one day before I finished the book:



One of the things that I'm most excited for now, however, is that Gillian Flynn herself has penned the movie's script, and has stated that she's changed some things (including the controversial ending) and that the story won't be told in the same way. Considering how the story was told was such a huge part of what made this book great, it will be interesting to see an alternate take from the writer herself.

Oh, and check out the movie's website. It's awesome.
-Ryan

Book Review: Pygmy & Drive (by Chuck Palahniuk and James Sallis, respectively)

I'm going to try something new. I'm going to review two books I recently read.

I had some time off and finished two books last weekend. The first was Drive by James Sallis. (Read my short review on GoodReads here).

Drive has gained some popularity ever since it was made into a major motion picture. I myself was a huge fan of the film, and immediately put the novel on my to-read list when I found out it existed. After doing some light research, I braced myself for the fact that the movie is a very loose adaptation of the book. In fact, many events in the movie are either very minor plot points in the book, or were made by combining the several loose plot points of the book into one cohesive narrative. To be blunt, the book is not the same as the movie.

Drive is about a young and unnamed Hollywood stunt driver who gets pulled into the criminal underworld as a getaway driver. The book is written from a third person perspective, which makes it a bit awkward whenever the narrator referrers to our unnamed hero as if his name is actually "Driver."  I've never read a noir book before, but Drive is written in a noir style that keeps things just interesting enough to pull you through to the end.
The pacing can loose you at times, especially in the beginning, but this is by no means a bad novel. That being said, the movie's story was much better, as it benefited from being more focused and streamlined. If you enjoyed the movie, you might want to pick this one up, especially since there's a sequel (called "Driven") that may get turned into a movie as well. Otherwise this isn't a must-read.

The second book I read was Pygmy, by Chuck Palahniuk. (Read my short review on GoodReads here).

I am, and probably will always be, a fan and admirer of Chuck Palahniuk. He's one of my biggest influences as a writer, and for good reason. he knows how to write a compelling, albeit weird, story.

Pygmy did not disappoint.

Pygmy is about a boy born in an unnamed totalitarian country who was indoctrinated to hate the United States, and is sent there undercover as a foreign exchange student in order to carry out a terrorist attack. The first thing you'll notice when you open up Pygmy is that it's written entirely in broken English (sometimes known as "Engrish"), from Pygmy's perspective in the form of reports presumably sent to his homeland.
From the very beginning, Pygmy had me laughing out loud at his twisted (though sometimes enlightening) perspective of US culture. The book is, essentially, a creative way of showing us how ridiculous some of the things we do are. For example, when walking through the isles of a Wal-Mart, he says “All object printed: Love me. Look me. Million speaking objects,begging. Crown American consumer with power of king, to rescue choose and give home or abandon here for expire.”
As per Palahniuk's usual modus operandi, the book is full of wit, over-the-top events, and his signature choruses. This is a must-read for any fans of humorous fiction, though you ought to be warned that the content gets a bit graphic during chapter 2, though the worst of it ends there.

TL;DR - Drive was okay. Pygmy was awesome.

Add me on GoodReads to keep up with what I'm reading and whatnot.
-Ryan

Last Proper Summer Ending

Well this is the end to my last summer vacation ever.
But it's also the beginning of my last school year ever, and since I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy, I choose to think of it that way.

Last summer I gave a brief summary of the books I had read over the summer, of which there was only one. This summer I am pleased to say that I passed my personal record of books read for pleasure in a short timespan (in this case, Summer) to four and a third ... and some other random pages.
But that doesn't really accurately portray how much more I actually read, considering the first three books were massive novels which together made up The Millennium Trilogy. Each of those novels had above 600 pages or so (depending on the cover and edition) and were an absolutely massive undertaking for me to read.

Easily three of the best books I've ever read.
(image from here)

I had always thought that I was more of a writer than a reader; that I just didn't like reading. Well it turns out instead I had just never found much that I actually loved reading until now (I raced through the second book of the trilogy very quickly).
I followed up The Millennium Trilogy with the latest book by Chuck Palahniuk: Damned, which was an excellent change of pace from the seriousness and drama of the trilogy. It's about a fat thirteen-year-old girl who has died and gone to hell. It was a quick and easy read which I started and finished in a weekend (yet another personal milestone).
Then I moved on to  reading a book that was very important to me at one time, but after getting a third of the way through it I stopped (you can read more about that in my previous post).
Finally I moved on to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it's not as interesting as it sounds and the novelty wears off quite quickly, and I've since abandoned reading that as well.
It can also be noted that I actually picked up and read the first few chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey somewhere in between all of that, but once all the "does he actually like me?" tension wore off and it turned into erotica I lost interest (though I admit it was quite good up to that point).

So where do I go from here? Four finished books and three unfinished seems like quite the ratio, but the fact of the matter is that I'm still figuring exactly what it is that I like to read, since I'm somewhat new to this. My goal is to next read the classic novel by George Orwell: 1984, which I look forward to very much as I've wanted to read it for quite some time now.

And of course on the side I continue to write. As those who follow me on Twitter saw, I achieved a milestone in my novel a few days ago (which relates to this old post), I've been fiddling with some flash fiction, and I've been making slow but steady steps towards publication of a certain something.

So my "last summer vacation" turned out to be a pretty good one, overall.
-Ryan

Knowing When To Stop Reading

Before I Begin:
I've gone back and added the label "[Megan and Danny Novel]" to (hopefully) all of the posts in which I blogged about my tentatively titled novel. Feel free to click on that tag to see all those posts, and perhaps get a better picture of what it's about overall. As usual you can select any of the other labels from the group of them displayed to the lower right of the page just above the list of followers of the blog (and you may notice a second new one if you look carefully).

Now Here We Go:
Last Monday I began reading a book that bears great significance on my origins as a writer for the first time. Unfortunately I found that I grew bored of the book very quickly, and put it down to resume later.
Awhile after resuming, I grew bored again and put it down, assuring myself that it will get much better soon enough and I only need to keep on trying.
This happened several more times, but it didn't take that long to begin questioning whether or not to continue reading the novel at all, and I found myself questioning at what point I would be able to best decide whether to continue reading or to forget it and start another.

I will not name the novel, however I assure you it was written by a very famous author and was a bestseller.

...also it had a lot of trees.

On one hand I have this burning passion to finally read the novel that accidentally inspired me to be a writer long before I'd read a single word of it.
On the other hand, it was incredibly dull and felt like a chore to get through.

A professor once told me that she decided if she was going to read a book based solely on the first sentence. If the first sentence didn't grab her complete attention and pull her in, she put the book back on the shelf and continued to browse. I was finding myself a fourth of the way through the novel and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do.
A friend of mine suggested I decide after reading a third of the book, and conveniently the first third of the book ended almost exactly at the end of the chapter I was reading. I took his advice and powered through the rest of the chapter.
Or at least that's what I intended to do. Somehow the book actually got more dull in the last six pages of the chapter and I ended up skimming through them annoyed. I then put the book down, removed the bookmark, and read the entire plot summary online.

Sometimes it can be very hard to figure out if it's worth reading a book once you've started it. In the back of your mind you may keep telling yourself that it's got to get better eventually, which may be true, but does that mean it's going to feel like any less of a chore? In this instance it was obvious to me especially after reading the plot summary that the book was definitely going to get much more interesting, but it was still obvious to me that there was more boring me about it than just the story itself.

In the end I'm glad I gave up, because now I can focus on reading something that interests me more.
-Ryan