Get Hexed!

Turned in my résumé project yesterday and started in on Hexed, the next Iron Druid book, as soon as I got off work.  My brother came over around 7 (more about that later), so I didn't get to pick it up again until an hour ago.  

I canNOT believe HBO didn't pick up on these books when True Blood was winding down.  There's lots of nudity, dangerous/scary goddess sex, porn-star looking witches, and a funny dog!  What more could you ask for?  I'm at the part where Atticus is fighting the German witches, half of whom are pregnant with demonspawn, and he's just decapitated one, losing half an ear in the process.  I'm getting a new project tomorrow, so I need to finish this tonight and not start the next one-- I seriously cannot put these down. 

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By Special Request: More about the Iron Druid

Attila, Irish Wolfhound, propr. Mme Sylvie Saulue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rebbie, my sister, just read my last post and pointed out that (in her opinion) I didn't give enough information about the book.  After reading it again, I think she may be right, so here goes.

The book is Hounded, by Kevin Hearne, and its hero is Atticus O'Sullivan, a 2000+ year old druid.  In fact, he is the last druid, and over those years he's made some powerful enemies.  He lives in Tempe, Arizona, which is kind of a safe zone because it is difficult for his enemies to reach.  But it's not impossible, so he is repeatedly attacked by minions of his most powerful enemy, Aenghus Og, the Celtic god of love (who seems to be quite a hater for a love god).  Other Celtic gods turn up to mess with his life, but he prevails with the help of his friends, including his dog Oberon, an Irish wolfhound who wants to be like Gengis Khan and have a harem of French poodles. 

It's a lot of fun, and I think Rebbie should give it a chance.

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Talk about Mythic--Kevin Hearne Has Got it All--and a Druid!

Druid Ghost lite (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In between writing my résumé and waiting to get my critical analysis back, I've been re-reading Kevin Hearne's funny Iron Druid books.  After all the work I did on my paper, it's good to see that the myth criticism approach really does work even when you aren't trying to do it!  Of course, Hearne is using actual myths (and creating new ones), both the classical and the little-known, so it shouldn't be surprising that I can pick out all sorts of monomyth elements and characteristics of the archetypes in the stories.  

Anyway, if you haven't read them, you ought to give them a try, if only for the mind-to-mind conversations between Atticus (the hero) and Oberon (his dog).  Hilarious dialogue!

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More on Guardians of the Galaxy: I Was on the Right Track

Star-Lord (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to an item on FlickeringMyth.com today, James Gunn, the director of GotG, said "There’s a lot of stuff I’m excited about in the new movie. Listen, I’m still excited about Star-Lord’s character and where he goes. At its heart, Guardians is a story about families, and if the first film was about him and his mother, this is a story about fathers."  The post goes on to point out that this does not necessarily mean Star Lord's father, but I think that's the most likely, what with all the material I found for my paper.

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Rap: So that's What It Is!

I just read Adam Bradley's "Rap Poetry 101," which was interesting, but it made me think more about regular (or do I mean traditional?) poetry more than rap.  I had an English teacher in high school who was kind of obsessed about poetry, and I remember that she claimed that poetry started to die out as an art form when poets stopped using rhyme and repetition as primary techniques (at least, that's what I think she said).  In Bradley's essay, he shows how rap is performed poetry, and he talks about rhymes and the use of a beat (big repetition there).  This led me to think about my sister Rebbie's favorite poem, Poe's "The Raven," and I'm starting to wonder how it would sound as a rap song.

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Gotta Love those E-readers!

I am totally crazy about my Nook, even though it doesn't perform up to specs.  I could fix it, but that would involve re-registering it, which would clear out all of the books I side-loaded to the 32 gig card I added on--and it might not be possible to reload them, for reasons I don't want to get into here.  Anyway, I've had it for a few years, and I have almost a thousand books, most of which were picked up for less than five dollars (probably a hundred or so were free).  Yeah, I read a lot.

One of the things I love about it is that, thanks to the daily specials, I've been introduced to a lot of writers that I wouldn't have picked up on in print.  A while back I bought Faye Kellerman's The Ritual Bath.  It was the daily special to promote her latest book in the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series.

I don't know about you, but I like to learn stuff when I read a mystery, and this one has a lot to offer, in this case about Judaism and the daily issues that arise for the seriously religious.  With that and the relationship that  develops between the two main characters, I was able to take a mental vacation from everything that normally has my brain on the worrier's exercise wheel.  
If this sounds good to you, try it for yourself.

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I hate my textbook; I love to read

English: Six year old boy reading "Diary of a wimpy kid" License on Flickr (2011-01-07): CC-BY-2.0 Flickr tags: diary, wimpy, kid, book, read, bed, boy, hold (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This blog is supposed to be about writing and reading.  So far, so good; I like to read, and I have to write for the class, so you'd think I'd have enough material right there.  The problem is that I'm supposed to be writing (in half the posts) about the essays and articles in our textbook, How to Write about Anything, and I don't want to read most of them, much less write about them.  

So, while it may look as though I'm not reading much, I'm actually reading a lot-- but I'm reading stuff that gives me a break from my everyday thoughts, particularly the sad ones.  As just one example, the first anniversary of my mom's death is coming up (more about that later), and I've been reading mysteries.  In those books, nobody dies of cancer of the spine.  People are murdered, the murderers are caught and usually punished.  Unlike real life, there's some kind of justice.  There isn't anything that satisfying in the textbook. 

 Therefore, and with the permission of my prof, I'm going to write about what I've read lately.

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