clues at the scene

clues at the scene

Monday, December 31, 2012

Pretty Good Year

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. 

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