Reading …

Good resolutions at the beginning of a year aren’t my bag but this year I thought I would keep a record of what I read the whole year.

In my teens, with no TV at home, a boring school life–working well below capacity I think now–and an almost non-existent social life, I often read a book a day. A regular bookworm, I chewed through most of the high school library in the first year, and was then provided with the truly educational stuff by the high school librarian. That lady saved me.

Mrs Murray. A short, orange-haired dragon to every other student, she loaned me many interesting and exciting books from her own collection. Historical fictions, lives of explorers, a journal purporting to be by Marco Polo, good novels. It was with her support that I managed A grades in Art History, Geography and Biology, a credit in English in my finals. I never studied, I read whatever came to hand. All of it grist to the mill.

I went on to use that formula all my life. All my learning is done by reading around in a subject. Two years ago I started a course in Dream Interpretation and I’ve collected a library of about twenty books, long and short. Now, while I’m still recording my dreams and practicing their interpretation, I’m slowly falling back into my normal reading habits.

Last year I read some great fiction that I wish I remembered better. I prefer thinking it’s because I have a lot of stories always on the go, that I don’t remember everything I read as well as I used to, but of course it’ll also have something to do with ~~ageing.~~ Forbid the thought.

Or maybe it’s to do with needing to keep myself severely in hand, not over-excited, not over-do it, keep myself on an even keel etc etc to float my ME/CFS riddled carcass through the sea of life.

So, book one of the year was book four of a sequence I began round about Christmas time. Those Who Perish by Emma Viskic: A Caleb Zelic thriller published by Echo in 2022. I thoroughly enjoyed all four of these detective fiction/thriller tales. Not least because I’ve been channeling an elder of 150 years ago, the days before hearing aids.

My hearing aids are working at approx 20% and the repair place is not re-opening until Monday–two more sleeps–and can’t come soon enough. There are far more women in my world now than men, yet men’s voices I can hear, and women are like they are mouthing noiselessly and I am not a good enough lip-reader.

Caleb Zelic, though a frustratingly impulsive protagonist, is mostly deaf and his story is punctuated by mal-functioning hear aids, people who don’t move their mouths when they talk, or turn away and talk so he misses important clues, etc etc. All things I could totally relate to. He’s a well-drawn character, the events he gets involved in are realistic, while at the same time a gripping read.

Somewhere in there, also in the first week, I read another detective fiction, which was entirely forgettable as I had to scan the back cover just now to help me remember it. When She Was Good by Michael Rowbotham. Published in 2020 by Hachette. Although Robotham is one of my favorite detective fiction writers, this one left nothing behind in me except for an Albanian proverb. “Nobody values the truth more highly than a liar.” The primary protagonist is a Cyrus Haven, forensic psychologist, and he just doesn’t have the charisma of his colleague, Joseph O’Loughlin, Robotham’s first forensic psychologist. Maybe I’ll chase those up and re-read them.

While out grocery shopping I tripped over a bookshop. Fatal, as any bookworm will tell you. Normally I steer my trusty mule in a different direction but this time I had to pass it. I came away with a book I’ve had on my list for over ten years, more on that in the goodness of time, and The Gift of Not Belonging by Dr Rami Kaminski, subtitled: How Outsiders Thrive in a World of Joiners. Published in 2025 by Scribe.

Just reading the acknowledgements told me it was my kind of book … more on that next time.

This is the work of an otrovert. As such it cannot be the fruit of a team effort and presents a dearth of people to acknowledge. …

The ‘Case for Re-reading’…

Reading this article has gifted me with a fantastic reading list. I’ve read maybe four books on the list, a couple that are also on my shelves and that are also on my re-reading list.

I came across this website only recently and haven’t explored the whole of it yet. The links in the article below are giving me a lot of food for thought.

https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/case-for-rereading

When Mandy Brown mentioned the novel I had just started to re-read–The Peripheral by William Gibson–I felt I was finally in the right reading group.

Though maybe only a parallel group to the one being written about, I still feel like this writer is reading stuff I’m reading, and thinking along the similar lines I’m thinking. I feel relationship for the first time in a long while.

Reading isn’t an escape—it’s a reckoning.

Rereading is training, practice for remaking and unmaking—and, yes, razing—the world. Rereading draws your best thoughts close, keeps them at the ready, prepares you to think thoughts with them, prepares you to act with them at hand. Your favorite reads are your armor and your weapons and your shelter all in one. What have you gathered about you? What has taken root in your mind? What thoughts are you thinking with?

from the Case for Re-reading by Mandy Brown

Just Thinking 1: Why Write

In the Fields embroidered by Rita de Heer

It’s useless to be thinking about the future when you are starting out, on anything. You start your working life putting up signs, you have no clue that one day you might be working on high rises installing in glass walls with the help of a robot.

People starting out as writers are the same. I started with writing poetry. I had no idea then that one day I’d take on an sf trilogy.

Nearly everybody here in the Discord’s Writing Cartel has a world/universe that they are either writing into or using as scene setting for any number of creative projects. Yesterday I watched a short film on Youtube, there are people developing games, writing novels, short stories, you name it, it’s being written.

Every one of these worlds/galaxies/universes are huge. Many of us have spent every spare moment of our boring work lives thinking up detail. There will always be areas in any of these worlds that will stay private to their creator, and other areas that will see heavy traffic of stories.

We’re all doing it for the love of it. World building is one of the most satisfying mind games we all engage in, relaxing and psychologically uplifting. Next comes the harder thing. Convincing other people to put their own worlds aside for an hour, and engage with us in ours. So we write stories, develop adventure games, produce visuals, film about our worlds.

The Discord Writing Cartel community is all about sticking our toes in the waters of our worlds, writing though the shallows, and finally committing ourselves to writing fully fledged stories to share first with each other, then with the world.

Only then, with that last word, can you start thinking about how much money you might make.
Though, of course, these are just my own thoughts. Take them well salted.