So I have been amassing notes along the way for a huge monster blog and figured I might as well get them out of the way since I am getting married. This may not do them justice but it is all the light of day that they will probably ever see. I just put up the annual reading list and while I have no interest in going through an commenting on all of them I do have some thoughts on some of the more recent selections. First off:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is one of the better books I have read this year. The story of a dying small town Kansas preacher who leaves a journal for his young son to read is WAY better than some of the other supposedly awesome books I was supposed to read. It is funny, but I found more spirituality in this than in any of the stuff from the Hare Krishna festival. That may sound like a weird statement, but I suppose I am always searching for something that moves me. And not just catharsis, but serious movement. A new angle or way to look at things. The book made me pull out my bible. Which should tell you something.
Another great book i read recently was Genesis by Poul Anderson. He is one of my fave sci-fi writers and this book was pretty out there and awesome. It was admittedly a little abstract, but there were some really cool parts. Here is an excerpt that sums up in a pretty easy way the timeline of earth compressed into a year. I have seen others like this, but Anderson's writing and the simple beauty and wonder of so much time compressed into meaningful chunks made me smile.
"Lets split the difference and call the date three-point-six-five-billion B.C.E....then one day stands for ten million years. Life began when January the first did, and this is midnight December the thirty first, the stroke of the new year. So-along about April, single cels developed, nuclei, ribosomes, and the rest. The cells got together, algae broke oxygen free into the atmosphere, and by November the first trilobites were crawling over the sea floor. Life invaded the land around Thanksgiving. The dinosaurs appeared early in December. They perished on Christmas Day. The hominids parted company with the apes at noon today. Primitive Homo sapiens showed up maybe fifteen minutes ago. Recorded history had lasted less than one minute. And here they were, measuring the universe, ranging the Solar System, planning missions to the stars."
Poul Anderson, Genesis p. 16-17.
It's stuff like that that makes me like sci fi. The thought and ideas that make you go, "cool." I hve in my notes the thought that I need to expand upon this, i.e. the connection of futurist Sterling with the ubiquity of iphones or rfids, or the connection of Gibson to the interwebs, but I don't think anyone but me would be really all that interested in it. Maybe it is something I need to find a stoner friend to talk with who would be equally amused/amazed. I was gonna write a whole bunch of other stuff but it is pretty late and we need to head out. So here are the brief versions.
-We loved Avatar. It was pretty
-Audrey is the cutest baby that ever existed. Period.
-I love my synth
-My professor Parke Puterbaugh wrote a badass book about Phish. It were good.
-I am taking classes at GTCC (more later)
-I sure am excited to be marrying emily. Got my dub mix all ready to go!
-We nailed down the reception location and date
-I bought a classical guitar for $15 (thanks Goodwill!)
There's more but emily is insisting I finish packing and get in the car. So love to everyone that sees this and I hope I see you all soon.
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