Preserving Public and Private Libraries

I still have my first library card. Granted, it’s long expired and returning to that library would be an hour commute, but I still have the card. I’ve been going to libraries my entire life, and it baffles me when adults enter the library and ask to get a library card, “but I’ve never had one before.” (And for at least half of them, it’s not like they just moved to the area. They’ve lived here their whole lives and never had a card.) I know I can’t keep the look of surprise off my face, although I do refrain from asking, “How have you lived?”

My family already had a substantial collection of books; both of my parents are avid readers. However, a public library has more resources and more space than a private homeowner, so it’s a perfect resource if you don’t want to break the bank and fill your house floor to ceiling with books. We also never had commercial TV of any kind (never have and never will.) We went to Blockbuster a few times, but it was always so expensive. Why spend $3 to rent a movie for three days when you could go to the library and rent a copy for free for two or three weeks? Libraries allow you to check out favorite books and movies over and over, plus you can sample hundreds if not thousands of new material to see if you like it. And then, if you’re like me and you enjoy something enough, you go buy a copy for yourself.

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The Game of Thrones: A Review

Well.

I just finished watching the first season of The Game of Thrones…and, to be honest, I was not especially impressed. I know I’ll probably catch hell for saying that, but it’s the truth.

Now you’re probably wondering, “But you’re a huge fantasy buff, Kat! How could you NOT like it?” So let me be clear: I do not think that The Game of Thrones was a bad or poorly done adaptation. I did enjoy watching it. HBO did a wonderful job on locations, costuming, sets, music, cinematography…all of the technical details. The level of visual detail is superb…even stunning. And it is extremely faithful to the book, which is a mark in its favor.

That being said…the characters did not really engage my sympathies. The thing that’s often overlooked when adapting fantasy is that fantasy is about people. Take away the people and all you have left is fancy window-dressing.

Those were the generalities; now, on to the specifics.

This post may contain SPOILERS! You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk!

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Bonus Blog: The Liebster Award

Hey, it’s a bonus blog! Yes, normally I’ll be posting every other Tuesday, but I was tagged by Pearl of Tyburn, author of “Longbows and Rosary Beads,” for the Liebster Award, so here are the questions she gave that I answered. Thanks for the tag! Feel free to answer them and post them on your own blog or website.

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Modern Mythology

In case anyone missed the Twitter memo (and I’m sure some of you did), I will not longer be posting an entry here on The Cat’s Cradle every week. Life has just gotten too insane for me to keep up that kind of pace. At least, not and maintain some quality control. So, from now on, I’ll be posting every other week, roughly 2 entries per month. I hope that you’ll all stick around and continue to enjoy them!

With things in my own life fluctuating madly, I thought it rather relevant to say that we live in an increasingly uncertain world. As Don Henley says, “The more I know, the less I understand.” Nihilism and existentialism isn’t new, but I personally feel it encroaching further and further into the human psyche.

What do we have to believe in?

If you watch the news, not much. Every day there appears to be more death, destruction, and wanton waste of life. Corruption and exploitation run rampant. Ignorance and idiocy walk hand in hand as common sense becomes more precious than gold or diamonds. The honest and the honorable are pushed to the sidelines, trampled on, or ridiculed. And in an increasingly secular world, faith doesn’t seem to have a place anymore.

So, what can we believe in? Who can be role models? What can inspire us to become more than we are, better than we are? Or to at least help us make some kind of sense of this insane world of ours?

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Distractions

I recently read a book called iDisorder, which was recommended to me by my onii-san, David Greenshell. It’s about how the pervasive technology around us has encouraged the widespread development of behaviors that have the same symptoms as mental disorders, such as OCD, ADHD, addiction, narcissism, depression, and schizophrenia. I highly recommend it because so many behaviors that seem “normal” now in relation to technology maybe shouldn’t be granted an exemption from concern.

Before I go any father, let me just say that I am not a naysayer to technology. I have this blog, don’t I? I also have numerous accounts all over the web, I own a cell phone (not a SmartPhone, thank God), and I probably spend more time than I should on Facebook and Twitter. I suppose I am a little different from the majority of my generation because I do not have internet access at home, nor do I own a laptop, tablet, e-reader, or any other device that would allow me ubiquitous access to the world wide web. Sometimes this is frustrating, even inhibiting. It’s hard to look for, or even consider pursuing, an online job without a constant internet connection, and my friends can tell you just how furious I was to hear that Diablo 3 didn’t have an off-line option like its predecessors.

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Literature — Larger Than Life

I have been reading, which is always a dangerous thing.

No, really, reading is dangerous. It challenges the twin conditions of Status Quo and Ignorance. Which is probably why is has been encouraged to decline. I do not know what the current literacy rates are, but I see what people check out in libraries, what students come slouching sullenly to the desk to request, hear the verbal banalities pour, not just from the mouths of other babes, but my own, and it makes me weep.

In case you have not noticed, I’ve been reading classic literature and essays by Ray Bradbury. Both put me in a maudlin kind of mood where I hover between ecstasy and madness. Because when I read them, if I’m lucky, I get the sensation that there are great truths hidden within them, sentences and paragraphs that resonate with me, but I have no means of expressing them. The sheer abundance of creativity makes me want to simultaneously shout my joy to the heavens and slink back home and tear up the pages of my manuscripts that aren’t nearly as beautiful or insightful. (So far I rarely express the former in public and I’ve resisted the urge to perform the latter.)

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Memory of a Master: Ray Bradbury

Last Tuesday, one of the most prolific and talented writers of speculative fiction died at the age of 91. That writer was Ray Bradbury. I call him an author of speculative fiction because his work can’t be defined strictly along the lines of sci-fi or fantasy or horror or mystery. A lot of the time, his work is very like sci-fi. There are spaceships and aliens and other worlds…but there’s something different. Something almost…dreamlike, something vaguely Gaiman-esque about his tales. Even though he predates Neil Gaiman, they share similar dream-states in their writing where things aren’t always what they seem and never what you would expect.

About a year ago, I was reading a book called Dwellers in the Mirage by A. Merritt and I told a friend:

“For some reason, books from the 1940s and 50s, the ones with the cheap, thin card-like covers and aged-tan pages and that tiny font that looks like Times New Roman but somehow subtly isn’t…they always give me a feeling of dreamlike detachment, like the book is a hallucination, or a flock of cleverly disguised birds about to fly away.”

The book responsible for this impression is my dad’s 1953 copy of Fahrenheit 451. I don’t remember if this was the first Ray Bradbury book I ever read, or if it was just the first one I can remember reading. I know there was a copy of The Martian Chronicles in the house that I read around the same time, but I suppose it doesn’t matter which came first. I think I read Fahrenheit 451 when I was 9 or 10, years before I ended up reading it in middle school for English class. I’ll admit that, at the time, I didn’t understand a lot of the subtly and finesse of the book, but I got the basic idea. Fahrenheit 451 sparked my distrust of authority, public institutions, and the government. The idea that a government would outlaw books and then burn those books along with anyone possessing them terrified me. The idea of outlawing reading was unthinkable! It also sparked my sometimes uncontrollable desire to hoard books, especially old ones, because you never know when they might just “disappear” from record. I am fanatical about having hard copies of everything, thanks to Fahrenheit 451. I still have the same copy I read all those years ago, and every now and then, I’ll flip through the pages and experience the wonder and fear again, as a reminder of the importance of the tangible.

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Prolific Penmasters

It’s ironic that the three writers I look up to the most are also some of the most prolific. Mercedes Lackey has dozens upon dozens of novels. Many are collaborations, but many are not, and even collaborating takes a great deal of time and effort. Oddly enough, she started off as a writer of fanfiction and was a protegée of Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the mistresses of sci-fi and fantasy. J. Michael Straczynski writes for 10 hours a day, every day, except on his birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s. He says, “If I don’t have an assignment, I’ll write a short story, I’ll write a spec script, I’ll write a novel. I just enjoy the hell out of it.” Out of the 110 episodes comprising Babylon 5, he wrote the scripts for 92 of them, plus all of the movies. Joss Whedon has created several cult classic television shows with some of the most unique and memorable mythologies and characters. He worked on Buffy, Angel, and Firefly as writer and director during the 2002-2003 television season, and said that he only feels his best when he’s writing:

“You know, I always get cranky when I’m not writing,” Joss admits. “I’ll be mad and I don’t know why. I just feel like I’m angry with everybody and I hate everything and life is a sham. Then I’ll realize I haven’t written anything. And rewriting doesn’t count. It has to be an original script” (Havens, 158).

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Everlasting Pulp

These are the reasons I love to read and still love the older, archaic pulp fiction stories…and my primary motivations for reading at all. After watching Marvel’s The Avengers this weekend, and seeing all of the comic book characters coming to life on the silver screen recently, I thought this passage from the end of Richard A. Lupoff’s interesting book was rather apt:

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Book and Movie Review: ”Guns, Germs, & Steel”

I’ll admit that I haven’t actually read the book this time. (But I do own a copy.) I did watch National Geographic’s video version that has the author, Jared Diamond, as its host covering the same material that was in the book…so I think that counts. The book, and movie, is entitled Guns, Germs, & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and takes an in-depth look at why there are haves and have-nots in the world. Why did European societies rise to such great technological heights while African societies, for the most part, remain under-privileged? It is not because one race is inherently superior to another…every derivation of human has its share of the talented and the talent-less, the smart and the stupid, the weak and the strong…so what caused some societies to develop rapidly while others did not? As a writer, this is a fascinating and complex question to be answered and does a lot to advance one’s world-building.

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