One Reader's Ramblings

This post is for all my loving friends and family who follow my blog despite their disinterest in the Paranormal Genre.

There is only one way to start this post and it is to quote Ramona Quimby Age 8 :   “I can’t believe I read the whole thing!”

Cormoran Strike:   Ex-military, somewhat rough around the edges, no holds barred, private detective.   New concept?   Not really.   Well written?   Absolutely.   Completely can’t-put-it-down gripping?   Ummm…  

W-O-W!   I haven’t cried this hard or long at a book since… I don’t know… maybe when Dobby died.  

I’ve said before that I want to learn something I can take away from my reading.   I want to gain some sort of insight into the world.   Lately, I’ve been wondering if there is anything I’m learning (the stuff I’ve been reading does seem pretty mindless).   Then, the other night, I was faced with a problem that I really just wanted to go away.   I didn’t want to deal with it; I just wanted it gone.   So when my dear, sweet hubby asked if there was anything he could do to help, I jokingly said I wanted him to call a wizard to poof it away.   He laughed and said he didn’t know where Oz was located.   

As you may have noticed in some of my previous posts: I have been fascinated lately with Point of View:   particularly when the POV is in direct contrast with the author’s gender and/or age.   This fascination is the reason I was originally attracted to Forever Silent .   Not because it is in contrast, but rather it is exactly the opposite of those I have been reading lately.   It was written from the POV of a High School boy, and the author was actually a 15-year-old boy himself.   How exciting!  Here I've been reading all these books about teenage boys and wondering if the author is getting it right... this is my chance to find out!

I’ve heard Andy Warhol quoted as saying “I never read, I just look at pictures.”   From what I can tell Andy Warhol was quite an… shall we say “interesting”… person, but I have to say I like this quote.   As a proclaimed avid reader, and someone who writes a blog about reading it might at first seem a little counterintuitive to think that I would not only like, but agree with this quote.   You might think something like this would offend me, after all, I do spend much of my life buried in books.   Here’s where I think maybe I interpret this a little deeper than he meant it (after all he also claimed to be a “…deeply superficial person.”)   

I know I don’t normally talk about movies on this blog but a scene from this movie got me thinking about the way I view books.   The movie is Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio.   The scene is when Cobb (DiCaprio) is teaching Ariaden (Ellen Page) about being an architect in the mind.   He shows her how to build amazing scenes and she then takes them and twists them to do all sorts of impossible, mind-bending scenarios.   

I decided to make this post a letter to the author, and hope you may enjoy listening in.   Oh, and I do like to pretend that I know J.K. Rowling personally, and I have heard that her friends call her “Jo” so here goes…

Preface:   This ONLY deals with the books!   I don’t like the Twilight movies (especially Kristin Stewart) any more than any of you. Why must Harry Potter fans always make fun of Twilight ?   I get that they teach very different stories. “ Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity…” but I would have to say that Twilight is about much more than “…how important it is to have a boyfriend.”   (quote by Andrew Futral btw- not Stephen King)