I started a draft about my D.C./Texas trip back in the first week of November. I had images of tour groups on segways alongside all the marbled monuments and wrote briefly about how I thought segways were lazy and that no tour guide in New York would be caught dead in it (Seriously. The pedestrians would trample 'em – we stroll faster than segways on full speed.) I put quite a bit of effort into it and considered publishing the part I wrote but decided against it.
Truthfully, I've been very deflated lately. Cannonball Read 2 is over – it ended on November 1 – and I no longer have to read and write reviews on a deadline, so my blog now seems to lack purpose. The Pajiba staff highlighted the end of CBR2 and I was happy for everyone who made it to their 52nd book, and even to those who got close. Hell, I'm happy for anyone who tried (writing reviews is fucking hard.) But it made me sad that I couldn't bring myself to really care considering how excited I was about it in the beginning.
I have continued reading though. At first, I thought I would continue the Read until I reach the 52nd. But I prefer reading without pressure and reading without keeping track of what number that book is, so I threw that idea out.
Though I've mentioned that writing reviews are tough, I do enjoy them because sometimes I might not discover I have a certain thought about a book until after I've teased it out Blogger's blank space. So as much as I can (as much as I am motivated to), I think I should try and review the books I want to review, and even those that I don't necessarily want to review, but that I think might be interesting to others.
You know what I hate about writing blogs? How many times I say the word "I." It's incredibly self-indulgent and I often find myself trying to think up of synonyms for "I" without the sentence sounding awkward.
This digression aside, here are the books that have been keeping me preoccupied the past month:
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I don't remember Cat's Cradle; the only thing that saved Woodward's book from his bone-dry writing is the interesting insight we get to the White House on Afghanistan; and The Hunger Games was good and fun, but no Golden Compass. I will, however, still give the other two books in the trilogy a chance – I love Young Adult books (thanks for recommending them, Blakspring and Jen. K!)
Currently, I am reading War by Sebastian Junger. I am enjoying it immensely and I can't wait to write a review of it (this is where the reader says, "Hah, if that happens.") Junger was one of the directors of Restrepo, a documentary he directed with Tim Hetherington about a platoon of American soldiers on an outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. I have yet to see the documentary, and the book is giving me serious regret for missing it when it came out during the summer.
There's not much else I can or will say about my life. I don't write about it here a lot - really, there's not much to write about. You know why I enjoy reading? Because, in most books, there is often a sense of purpose with each character, be they fictional or non-. That's why there are whole chapters written about them, about their adventures and failures. The characters may have failed, but they failed so spectacularly because they cared so much. If they win, or if there is a favorable conclusion, then more power to them.
