There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
~Kung Fu Monkey
I guess that my dotage will be heavily invested in reading, walking, and cooking from raw materials on the cheap. If I plan things right there will also be a garden plot and a bunch of mason jars.
I don't see this as a bad thing. When you throw in some writing every day, I am thinking that you have the makings of a petty fine life.
I need to get into the habit of reading older stuff though. I have a couple of modern writers that I re-read a lot, but I think that I need to start plowing through the older stuff and using that as a springboard for my writing. Project Gutenberg makes getting the old stuff easy. I think that I will start getting things now before they change the copyright laws again.
I also need to start plowing through some philosophy. This is going to be painful. The more I work on this stuff, the more that I realize that English is a second language to these folks. I guess that if your livelihood depends on folks thinking that you are a deep thinker, you can't speak clearly and descriptively.
I think that I will need to spend some time in the next little while putting together a list of must-reads. I will always need to read trashy stuff, so I will need to set up a library account with my fucking-Jeff-Bezos-e-ink-reader (there isn't a better one out there, as soon as there is one, rest assured I will purchase it) to fix this need.
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