Reflections on the puddle of life

what I've been doing, or you may not. Either is possible. Well, the truth is this: I've been doing a lot of stuff. Reading, writing, hiking, working (a lot), building my orchard, dancing, cycling and not getting killed or injured or killing or injuring anyone, cloud watching, discovering bento and spending a lot of time cooking.

And I've decided a few things too. First, I'm not going to post anymore original work on Lit-net. Aside from the recent pilfering from an Arabic site it just seems like a bit of a crazy thing to do if you're serious about writing. I mean, if you put something in the public domain then it's public and out of your control and whatever happens to it happens to it. Kind of like leaving a £5 note on the pavement and then being surprised when someone walks off with it or it gets sucked down the drain. And it does hamper your chances of being published.

And really, I'm just a bit of a control freak.

Second, I'm going to be spending a lot more time writing. I've converted my dining room into a really nice writing space and I'm working hard at my novel. So I'm not spending time at Lit-net and I'm not likely to be spending much time here in the future. It's a nice distraction here and there, but it is a distraction and I think there are many better ways to use my time.

So, why am I here? Good question. Well I thought, as we're half way through the year, it'd be a good time to take stock and see how I'm getting on with my reading, and how many of those nobel prize winners I've managed to actually read. And the answer seems to be, pretty okay! This is the list so far (nobel winners are highlighted in blue):

The Atom Station – Halldor Laxness
As I Lay Dying – William Faulkener
The Heart of a Dog – Bulgakov
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
Slow Man – J M Coetzee
In the Country of Last Things – Paul Auster
World Light – Halldor Laxness
The Man in the Dark – Paul Auster
The Cave – Jose Saramago
Naïve Super – Erland Loe
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness - Kenzaburo Oe
The Age of Reason - Sartre
The Hawkline Monster – Richard Brautigan
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
Grendel – John Gardner
Death at Intervals – Jose Saramago
The Plague – Albert Camus
Beauty and Sadness – Yasunari Kawabata
The Key – Junichiro Tanazaki
The Woman Destroyed – de Beauvoir
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
A Confederate General at Big Sur – Richard Brautigan
Dreaming of Babylon – Richard Brautigan
An Unfortunate Woman – Richard Brautigan
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Disaster Area – J. G Ballard
Anthem – Ayn Rand
The Dark Labyrinth – Lawrence Durrell
Crash – J G Ballard
Candide – Voltaire
Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje
Therese Raquin – Emile Zola
Audition – Ryu Murakami
The Raw Shark Texts – Steven Hall

Most of those books have been pretty d*mned good, which just goes to show that there's a lot of excellent writers out there.

And I'm now debating if I should spend the last of my book tokens on a really nice copy of Don Quixote and, maybe, get round to reading that one through? Hmm, maybe.

Here's hoping for another six months of excellent reading.

Did I mention bento? Another reason why I think the Japanese are just brilliant: http://www.bentobusiness.co.uk/page27.htm

Ciao kiddos.