and so we go...

I just read a short story at Subterranean Press a really good story - one that John Scalzi even recommends in his usual off the cuff way. There is something to be said about being able to read a story for just a little while. Take 10 minutes out of your life and enter the world of another, knowing that it'll only be that 10 minutes. This story, although not a happy one, still brought me into the lives of these people - the last man, and the last child. Very human, very real and still they belonged to a world that we are apart from (thankfully). I really enjoyed this story - not all that Subterranean Press puts out are stories I like - that has nothing to do with the quality of the work just my tastes - but this one struck a chord and made me want to be more creative. Maybe write something that has this much power.

I am reading both of my new purchases at the moment - I couldn't decide between Joe Hill and John Scalzi, and I am really enjoying both of them very much - to the point where I could have sat up all last night reading and then this morning at the breakfast bench I was still entranced in the worlds I hardly got to work on time. I might review the books when I finish them - or link to a review that I agree with - it just depends on how I feel about what I can write about them. I am not a reviewer and I lack the experience and skills to write a good review about something that I really respect, maybe my opinion wouldn't give the piece(s) the justice it deserves.

In saying that I read "American Gods" last month and that is a brilliant story - buy it! The funny thing about that is that I read "Anansi Boys" first - call me what you will but that is how I bought them... don't ask I was desperate to read something good is all I will say. So because I knew a little more about the Gods and there ways AG perhaps didn't hit me with the same power that it might have had I read it first. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy the story I loved it, it dragged me into the world so easily and it was another book that I couldn't put down and one that was almost sad when it finished. I first read Neil Gaiman when he teamed up with Terry Pratchett (one {if not the} of my favourite authors) to do "Good Omens", which really changed the way I looked at fantasy and the books that I chose to read. I suppose I grew up (in my teens) reading such fantasy-pulp as the TSR Dungeons & Dragons novels, I did read things like "The Hobbit" and a lot of Rosemary Sutcliff (Arthur and Merlin and such), but it was the pulp fantasy that I really got my teeth into. It was much later in life that started to read the better written works, from the ink of Raymond E. Feist, Tolkien (LOTR), and Douglas Adams to name but a few. I really enjoyed the way that a good author can brings his or her world into my head and let me live there for a day or an hour, or 10 minutes.

So after all that - that is really my point. I love a good read because I can slip off into another world and for a time at least let all my worries and fears subside and BE.