Book Rants- September 2024

Here are the books I read in September formatted as how-to books because why not. Just note the books I listed under The Good are the books I had enjoyed reading.

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THE GOOD

01 - The spindle of fate by Aimee Lim > link
How to get through hell with threads, a clueless guy and lots of luck. What you'll learn:
- how not to scream when you're in a pool of blood
- elevators are very handy when going from different levels of hell
- send text using a piece of cloth, threads and a hair pin
- hell is apparently bilingual
- people in charge of hell aren't always unkind
- no matter how at odds you are with your mother, you still love her
- never trust a talking monkey named Uncle Monk and who crackles like a six-year-old

8 Things I Learned From The Lord of the Rings

Today is the start of the Tolkien Blog Party 2024 celebrating all things Tolkien. It's hosted by Rachel at The Edge of Precipice over here. Here's my contribution to the party - 8 things I learned from reading The Lord of the Rings books.

01 - It's best to go on a long and dangerous journey with a friend – It was good that Frodo had Sam with him or else Frodo would have probably gone mad or died. This is why you should take a friend when you go on a dangerous journey and preferably someone who can fight orcs or giant spiders or is so loyal that they would lay down their lives just to save you.

02 - Friendship can bloom with the unlikeliest people – Like the friendship between Legolas (an elf) and Gimli (a dwarf), who, at one time, competed who could slay more orcs. We should all want friends who we can enjoy doing gruesome things together. Okay, maybe not slaying orcs.

03 - Some journeys can change you – After his journey, Frodo wasn't the same hobbit anymore. His mind, his very being, had been altered. After all, your mind can only endure so much harmful things.

04 - People do not check if you're really dead – If someone is lying unconscious (and maybe among other dead people after a war), they are assumed to be dead which is kind of careless and bad because the dead are burned and if someone's not dead, they would be after they are burned.

05 - Loyalty to your lord or king is absolute — If your lord wanted you to help him kill himself and his son, you will have to do it even if it's madness to do so.

06 - Being hasty isn't always good – I like the Ents who do not rush into anything. They take their time. Like when Treebeard met Merry and Pippin and he said, "I almost feel that I dislike you both, but do not let us be hasty."

07 - Women don't fight in wars, not really – Women don't go to war and if they do, they are mostly healers or cooks, not warriors. Éowyn is maybe an exception because she is close to a king and probably have the privileges to learn to fight and use a sword while other women probably would not have such chances. All the other females are either elves or some powerful beings so they probably don't fight either.

No. 09-ish

08 - Sometimes going forward is the only way to go – The Company (Frodo and the others) barely have a plan to start or even to continue but they carry on and maybe that's enough. Sometimes you only know what to do when something happens during the journey.

Have you read The Lord of the Rings? What did you learn from the books?

Fiction: The dead husbands club

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by River at her blog here. This week's prompts are: charm bracelet, fried chicken, teacup, cage, plastic, adorable.

Fiction: The dead husbands club
"Aren't you tired of burying bodies? I am but I've got to do it." Emer's voice seeped up to my bedroom upstairs as I lay in bed with the flu. Whatever the reply was, I couldn't hear a word of it. To whom she was speaking, I didn't know. Emer had not called her friend by name and I had never met her. Her steps, when she entered the house, was slow and uneven as if she was dragging one of her foot.
    I was renting a room in Emer Burmer's three-story house along with Bella Joel. Bella had lived here for three years while I had just moved in last week. I thought it was not too bad an idea to live with two women who were also widows. Like me, they were in their mid forties.
    Emer didn't charge us much rent which was good because neither Bella nor I had much money. While Bella had a minor legacy from her father's insurance, I had a small inheritance from my parents. When I asked why Emer didn't charge more, she said she was just glad for the company. As the house was right next door to a graveyard, no one wanted to live here. I certainly didn't but due to my lack of finance, it was all that I could afford. At first, it was a bit weird to look out the window at a bunch of tome stones but I got used to it.

How do you decide which book to read first?

I am now only reading ebooks borrowed from my public library. I don't plan on purchasing any ebooks from here on unless I'm so desperate to read a book that I don't want to wait on the library or it's not available at the library.
    As I can only have 5 holds at a time, I find I have to be really choosy when it comes to which book to put on hold first. The wait time varies as it depends on how long each reader keeps a book but a reader can keep a book for 21 days but can extend the time after that. Basically, the more holds on a book, the longer the wait time. Sometimes I'm #102 on a wait list and other times I'm #2 so it can be a surprise which book is available first.
    I always have a problem deciding which books to read because the books I want to read aren't always what I want to read. For some reason, I sometimes loose interest in a book so I would cancel the hold or return it. Sometimes I end up with books just to test them and see if I'll like them. Also, I'm a moody reader. Most of the time I have six or less books on loan so if I'm bored with a book, I will start on a new one. (I can only borrow 10 ebooks at a time.) In general, which book I read first half depends on the library's availability and the other half depends on my mood.

How about you? How do you decide which book to read first?

Fiction: The Sleeping Barista

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by River at her blog here. This week's prompts are: chicanery, wicker, curly, prissy, superb, uncommon.

Fiction: The Sleeping Barista
Time wouldn't be important to Emily if she doesn't have to worry about falling asleep in the middle of catching a bus or being awake for 15 hours for no reason. Around her neck on a chain, hangs a small, two and half inch pocket watch. It is a thing of great beauty if it doesn't has the ability to control the times she is awake and when she is not.
    The watch does not have dials to turn or change the hands but it has a mind of its own. The single silver hand moves clockwise and at the same speed like any watch but when it is on the blue side, it means sleep time. And if it's on the red side, it's awake time. But like any watch, it also tells time but it never needs to be rewinded as it also corrects the time all by itself. Sometimes its ability for chicanery is rather annoying. Just when Emily thinks she have time to do something, she is suddenly on the floor snoring.

Seven Things

01 - I have changed my blog's header and background colors to a warmer palette. It's not a big change but maybe it gives off a different vibe. Before, it was a cool, mostly blue palette. Am I the only one who thinks about colors and feelings when it comes to blog templates? 

02 - For some odd reason, I no longer get email notifications for some readers when they leave comments on my blog even though I had notifications before. I still get notifications for others so this makes no sense. It was like a sudden thing. I didn't change any setting or anything. Recently, pop-up comments now have reply function but I doubt that change anything with email notification functions but who knows. I still get comments marked as spam, even my own comments. There's a glitch somewhere, right? I swear google does not like blogger users at all.

03 - The 12th annual Tolkien Blog Party 2024 starts on September 22. It's hosted by Rachel at The Edge of the Precipice. I only participated once but I had enjoyed it. I admit the only books I read of Tolkien is the three Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit and I have seen the Lord of the Rings movies. More about this blog party over here.

04 - I don't like it how some videos are now HDR (High Dynamic Range) videos on youtube. They are so bright, probably 40 times brighter than any normal screen, it hurts to watch them and there's no option to turn it off anywhere, not at youtube, not on my computer. Whose brilliant idea that we needed HDR to "make images look more realistic and true-to-life?" HD (high definition) is already far too clear than normal screens so why do we need this HDR? I prefer not to watch anything that is "more realistic and true-to-life" because that takes away the charm of fictional reality. Plus do you really want to see the pores on an actor's face ten times as clearly as before?

05 - Movies I had watched recently on youtube free with ads:

- Scales: Mermaids are real - It was a pretty good movie until the end. I don't want to spoil it but SPOILER: a girl mermaid turns a man into water, basically murders him and everyone's okay with it. So yes, that's a good solution but they could have just turn one of his hands into water, just to show what they could do, scare the bastard or maybe the girl's mother should have done the killing so then a 12-year-old wouldn't be responsible for killing a human. But there seems to be no consequence for what she had done so I don't know what the writers were thinking. Plus, a boy with brittle bones who can barely walk could easy ride a bike with no issues is dumb. Other than the ending, it's a good movie about a girl becoming a mermaid with some minor jokes.

- Persuasion (1995) - I've not watched this version because I didn't like the lead actor and actress but I thought I should give it a try after I saw someone's review of this adaptation. This was okay. I had read the book, seen the other 2007 adaptation, knew what was going to happen so it's sort of like watching a repeat with different actors and a slightly different ending but still kind of the same but I think the 2007 version is better but maybe because it looked more modern somehow even though both of them are period dramas.

- Another man's poison (1951) - SPOILER: I thought they should have ended with Bette Davis' character getting away with it all but no. All the men here seemed so awful even the doctor, he's like a busybody who really should have minded his own business. It's not a movie that solves anything or offer any type of happy ending, just a movie to show how cruel fate could be.

- Taken 3 - It's was fun to watch even though you sort of know it's a bit unbelievable the things Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson) did but that's why it's fun and entertaining. Forget logic or loose ends because we want to root for Mills no matter how many men he kills in the process.
 
06 - Do book titles have to keep their promise? There's a book with a boy in the title but the boy turned out to be a girl. Do readers have a right to be mad about this? I would. I think it makes the story harder to accept or like. The author promised a boy character and then it's revealed as some twist and said he's really a girl. If they said the boy had a sex change operation and became a girl, then that's fine with me. To pretend she was a boy right from the start is just wrong. But mostly because she, being a girl, is supposed to be a surprise twist to the story which I don't think it's a surprise or a twist, more like a dumb move to make a book exciting when it's not.

07 - I've been reading epilogues that just ruined books for me. I can accept any ending as long as they makes sense but epilogues is another thing. I had read one too many endings with epilogues that basically ruined the ending that I'm now incline not to read them. Epilogues are to give a farther view of future events instead of trying to alter the thinking of the ending or the story, right? But that's not what authors are doing, at least, in the books I read. When an epilogue alters my thinking of a character or an event, I think it's not an epilogue, it's a story-changing, alternative reality kind of information or message. I'm not even sure what I'm actually trying to say but only that I think it's better not to use epilogues unless you know it won't piss off readers.

What's on your mind these days?

Insecure Writer’s Support Group - Sept. 4, 2024

I decided to join the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. I hope being two days late in posting, they won't kick me out. I meant to join but always forget so it's why I'm late.
    Am I an insecure writer? Maybe half yes and half no. I haven't decided if the title of writer belong to me yet. I've been writing fiction for years but I haven't written a piece that I finished and truly proud of but it could happen one day. Assuming I'm not too lazy to finish it because I have a problem finishing my writing (and my artwork but that's not today's discussion).
    This month's Insecure Writer’s Support Group's question is: Since it's back to school time, let's talk English class. What's a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?
    I didn't learn any writing rules because they didn't teach any, at least, not that I could remember. I attended public school and have a lot of classmates with English as their second language so there weren't any emphasizes on proper English. I wasn't even sure I had learned English the proper way, only that, I had learned it. It's only after I started writing fiction (and blogging which I started at about the same time) did I realize my grammar wasn't that great. I had used 'of cause' for years (on my blogs) before I realized the correct version is 'of course' since no one corrected me and spellcheck does not check phrases. I do wish I had learned proper grammar as a child or else I wouldn't keep doubting my words so much. [ More about the group over at the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog]

If you're a writer, have you learned any rules or methods that is helpful with your writing? Or what's a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?

Fiction: The Bridge of Luck

This month's Words for Wednesday's prompts are provided by River at her blog here. This week's prompts are: on the run, belong, street, breakfast, tent and this image:

photo credit: "Genius" and allowed by Val.

Fiction: The Bridge of Luck
It was about three in the afternoon but the dark sky made it appeared as if night will descend at any moment. We were the only car along the old Golden Chariot Bridge. It was often known as the Hawk because of the hawk cries that were heard on the bridge. Some said if you hear a hawk's cry while on the bridge, you will either get three hours of bad luck or three days of good luck.