I'm stealing the title here from the lovely Tori Amos.
The last glass of eggnog with nutmeg is down the gullet. It's been a pretty good year.
I'm thinking back on all I've read this year. I re-read Hemingway's "The End of Something" which was quite moving when I first found it thirty-one years ago. I saw something in it that I'm not sure is quite right. Nevertheless, it made me think.
I read "Six Pound Test" by Ron Carlson in the December Gray's Sporting Journal. It was a wonderful story. I re-read Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. I read The Assistant Murderer by Dashiell Hammett for the first time. I don't know how I missed it.
I re-read a couple of Scalzi's Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades. His prose is good but he doesn't do shit for combat writing. That's hardly a fault. If he did combat well you'd puke beside the bed after you read it and no one needs that late at night.
I learned a great deal this year. I hope you did as well. I stood in cold water and caught fish. I stood in the Baltic Sea and did not. I saw Matisse's The Dance and Music.
It was a good year. I two concerns in the coming year : one, that I can find a tin or two of Squadron Leader. My supply is in danger. Also, that I finish a small collection of short stories. I want to get them out before starting on a long-form work again.
That's enough of me for a bit. We've been on self-indulgent month this December. I'll talk more about writing in general and good sources of material in the coming month.
I had an incredible encounter of a mother teaching a small child to lie today as I drank a pot of tea at a local coffee house. It's hard to to believe I heard what I did. It's the sort of thing we hear all the time. However, this one struck me. I'll say something in detail about it tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment