My Christmas read was kind of a dud
Snow by John Banville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully written but dull book. I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the snowy landscape wasn’t particularly evocative of any specific place (and I did so want it to feel really Irish), and did nothing to heighten tension. It’s really only about two and a half stars worth of the same old story of priests abusing children.
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All of my journaling about staying in a bad situation or going to an unknown (but also guaranteed to be difficult) one led to two pro-con lists that cancelled each other out entirely. What was good about one element was negated by something pretty awful on the other side.
Here’s the not-fun news about having a book coming out: you have to get out of your lil bubbly creative comfort zone and ask people for help. The help that you’re not paying for, but people’s time and creative energy. For me, for whom these are my most greedily hoarded resources, this is hard hard hard to do. It’s not my default to ask for things. I always assume the other person will groan inwardly at a request from one more writer coming at them, palm up.
But we all know what happens when you assume, right?
The blank page is winning, y’all. I still get up early every morning; I still open the ol’ notebook, but then the page stares me down and I’m the first to avert my eyes. I don’t know what to say about anything at the moment. As it turns out, my entire existence in the military,…
I’m not sure this image is big enough!
It’s been a bit more than a month since Playing Army was released and I’ve got some things to say about how things are going. But as is typical for me, what I have to say doesn’t necessarily match up with what people mean when they ask that question. Probably they want to know if…
NB: I wrote this review originally as part of a program at my local library, comparing books to their screen adaptations (such a fun idea! Go to your local library, people!). The Margaret movie was new at the time and getting lots of praise from people whose opinion I respected, so I gave it a…