Sunday Salon - September 14, 2008

It's been a rather interesting week. I'm still slogging through Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I have two hundred pages to go and it's finally getting interesting. Hopefully I can get them done soon so I can start thinking about the book and writing up a review.

This week, I've written up two reviews so far. A review for Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants was posted last Tuesday and the other, for American Gods will be posted later this week. Let me just say that having an editor for a husband is both a blessing and a curse. He's been really helpful in giving me some direction on improving my writing skills. (I'm sure I've mentioned I'm working on regaining skills left unused for a few years.) Of course, though, he gives me more homework as a result. It's worth it though, I'm already seeing an improvement. Hopefully I can get back to into my old form, and perhaps even surpass it!

I'm also gearing up for this year's NaNoWriMo. 'Tis the season to start the prep work for research and writing exercises so I can join others across the world in the goal to write a 50,000 novel in November. If you haven't heard about it, I suggest you check it out! I think I'm going to hit the library and check out Thud! by Terry Pratchett, it's been recommended that it has the write type of narrative tone I'm looking for this project.

Back to the grindstone, hopefully I'll be getting a review of a few other books ready in the pipeline this week before guests come to the house to visit. After that, I'll probably not have much time to do anything.

Sunday Salon - September 7, 2008

Well, it's my first Sunday Salon and I figured I should write this one up early since today is going to be busy. It's been a rough week and I've been trying all sorts of new things to shape my blog into what I had in mind.

I've written several reviews to be published in the future, but my hiatus from writing has really had an impact. I guess two years of game forum moderation really can wreak havoc on your skills. (You write what you read!...never before had I thought of that until now.) Either way, I've been brushing up and while a lot of my writing currently is still clumsy, I do know I'm improving. Hopefully I can get those reviews out soon and in better quality than my previous attempts.

One nice thing is that I've been able to read books at my old pace again! I just finished a long series of books focused on Charlie Chaplin and since I was not able to get an early reviewer book from LibraryThing this month, I am now working on my backlog of books. These are books I bought or was given over my two years of non-reading.

Currently, I'm reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I'm through the first 200 pages so far and while the beginning was a bit slow, I'm enjoying it. I definitely love the usage of footnotes! Strange thing though, I was reading some various stories written by Prosper Mérimée this week and his syntax and writing style seemed really similar. So similar, in fact that at one point I was merging his short story, The Double Mistake, with Jonathan Strange, spawning a moment of disorientation.

As for my big day, Spore comes out today! It's a organism/evolution simulation game that starts from the simplest of creatures and can evolve/mutate into societies with religion, science, war, love, and space travel! It's been well-hyped and long-awaited. Of course this means I need to get the house ready for several days of marathon playing...this means clean laundry, dishes, meal lists, etc.