Sunday Night / Zombies

Well, Monday morning, to be precise. But I thought I should probably try to get back into my habit of Sunday night posting. This week has been a long one, filled with confusion, weariness, and not enough sleep. But I got through it, and am ready to face the next one.

I haven't really exercised in the last week, after pushing myself a bit too much in previous weeks. Apart from the walking involved in my daily life I haven't really done anything, no riding or running. My legs feel a bit better, but I don't think it has been very good for my state of mind. If it isn't one part of my body letting me down it is another!

Anyway, aside from that I did manage to get a lot of things done this week. I'm still struggling with duller wits than usual, plus a memory that seems increasingly unreliable. So I've been using lists to try and get things done, and I've managed to knock off a few things that I've been procrastinating about for months. There are still more things to be done, always more things. But it is nice to have gotten a few things out of the way.

I also wandered down to the bookshop and poked around. I went looking for the Game of Thrones books by RR Martin, which I found, but instead I was diverted by the site of The New Dead, a zombie anthology featuring a story by Max Brooks of World War Z fame. I've just finished reading it, and while it had some good stories in it, it was definitely a mixed bag. Max Brooks' story "Closure, Limited" was actually not so great. "Lazarus" by John Connolly featuring as the first zombie didn't really work for me, and "What Maisie Knew" by David Liss, the story about sex with zombies was a bit much for me. I suppose I am a bit churlish being grossed out by a book about zombies, but still..

That said, there were some good entries. "The Wind Cries Mary" by Brian Keene was a very short but surprisingly touching lament for lost love, and "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" by Joe Hill, written entirely in tweets, worked surprisingly well. "Shooting Pool" by Joe R Lansdale was noteworthy for not having any zombies of any kind in it. Probably the best story in the book was "Family Business" by Jonathan Maberry, a story of a bratty teenager living in a post-apocalyptic town, job-hunting while resenting his older brother the zombie slayer. It is the longest story in the collection, and probably the most enjoyable.

On other zombie-related topics, the movie of Brooks' WWZ is apparently filming now, and is due to be released next year. Brad Pitt is involved, and while his movies are definitely hit and miss for me, here's hoping he'll do another bang-up job like Fight Club or Snatch. The source material is great, and it sounds like the studio is throwing lots of money at it, so here's hoping it works out.

Finally, there is a teaser trailer out for season two of AMC's The Walking Dead. It looks like the second season will be just as awesome as the first one. There is a longer, five minute trailer out too, but I haven't watched it. I don't want to spoil any of the story for myself. I'm really looking forward to that, and can't wait to see what Rick Grimes and his motley group of survivors get up to in the next season.

Well, that's about all for now. Time to turn in and get rested up ready for another week. My best wishes to all of you out there.

Library stamps

The other day I went down to the local library and wandered around looking for a book. I eventually settled on Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I’d read it once before, at least six or seven years ago, and I thought I might take another trip through Hugo’s epic tome.

As with all libraries these days, the book has a barcode and is scanned, and a slip printed with the due date. After I took the book home, I noticed that someone had left their slip in the middle of the book. They’d borrowed it two years before, at the same time as an issue of GC magazine. What kind of person was this?

During the 90s libraries changed over from the old system of having a slip of paper to stamp the return date to the barcode system, and I’ve always felt that something was lost in the reading experience. Not a big thing, of course, the book is still the same, and from the library’s point of view it is no doubt better, as they can keep better records on which books are popular, how often they are borrowed, and so on.

The books that are consistently popular were not so interesting, they just had an endless series of date stamps as one person after another borrowed them. But I was always more interested in the books more rarely borrowed.

Who borrowed this book three times in a row ten years ago? Was it the same person? Why had no one else borrowed it? What type of person were they like? Were they like me? Would we have anything in common?

With the switch to digitization, this little part of the library reading experience has gone, and apart from judging by wear and tear on the books, it is hard to tell if a book has been borrowed all the time, or never left the shelf since the library bought it.

But looking at the print-out slip left behind in the middle of Les Mis, I wondered about the person who had left it. Had they been using the slip as a bookmark, and did they give up reading Les Mis half way through? Or did they just absent-mindedly pop it in there after they finished reading? Were they a deep thinker who borrowed GC in a futile attempt to become more fashionable, or a metrosexual who borrowed Les Mis in a futile attempt to become better read? Or were they just like me, someone who picks up different reading material on a whim?

I guess I will never know. But I'm glad that I stumbled on the slip that made me wonder this. It almost tempts me to get out unusual combinations of books together, then leave the slip in one of the book for future borrowers to find.

The Call of the Wild

Since I started reading again recently I have been reading shorter books that are easier to concentrate on, given the difficulties with memory and concentration that come with depression. I was motivated to read The Call of the Wild by Jack London partly because of it’s length, and partly because I saw Sean Penn’s moving film Into the Wild, the story of Christopher McCandless’ ill-fated adventures. London was apparently one of McCandless’ favorite authors.

London, along so many others, went to the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s. He came away with empty pockets, but a rich store of memory and experience to use in his writing.

"The Call of the Wild" tells the story of Buck, a Saint Bernard-Border Collie cross who is stolen from a comfortable life in California, to be sold into servitude as a sled dog. He is strong and intelligent, and manages to become a superb sled dog, before eventually becoming totally wild, eventually joining a wolf pack. The contrast of the harsh purity of the wild with the corrupt and troubled world of men, and the call of the wild that Buck eventually follows, obviously resonated with McCandless, a man in search of liberation from what he saw as a hopelessly compromised society.

But perhaps McCandless should have noted more carefully that as well as this veneration of nature and struggle that runs through the book, London is also clear that nature is Darwinian. Not everyone is going to make it. Buck is strong in body and spirit and manages to endure, but the other characters in the book, whether man or dog, usually don’t survive the wilderness or their own weaknesses. This is not written emotionally, just stated as a fact.

The wild is beautiful and where we are most alive, because success means to live more intensely than is possible elsewhere. But failure means death. And those who journey there will be tried and tested. Some will make it, and many will not.

As someone who struggles daily wondering if I will make it or not, it is a harsh message. But it rings of the truth. We are all tried and tested, and many of us are found wanting. I am no Buck. I can’t see myself leading the pack. But I hope I have the strength within me to endure.

The Depressed Reader

Depression is not so fun. It is also not so rare. Although there are many recorded cases of depression throughout history, it does seem to be more prevalent in the modern era.

Many of us out there struggle with depression, or know those who do. There are many possible ways to struggle with it, exercise, therapy, medication, alternative medicine, prayer, reaching out to family and friends, and many others. Pulling the blanket up over one’s head and hoping it will all go away is another popular one. I’ve tried all of the above, and the struggle is ongoing.

I have always been a voracious reader, from when I was very young I was always reading a few books at the same time. But in the last few years, as I have gone in and out of depression, I found that I read less and less. It happened gradually, and I didn’t even realize.

During my most recent bout of depression, probably the worst so far, I realized that the amount I read had gradually gone down over the last few years. One of the many effects of depression is that it robs of pleasure in things we would usually enjoy. It also effects memory and concentration, and so when I somehow found myself wandering down to my local library, I was drawn to the classics section, to the shorter classic books. Some of which I had read during my childhood, some of which I had never read. I picked up “Treasure Island”, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and my love of books was rediscovered. This was a few weeks ago.

I thought it might be a good idea to focus on something positive. In this blog I plan to write some short-ish posts on the books that I read, my impressions, and what I get out of them. I hope you enjoy them. The first post will be about “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London.