Manainaitai Yu'
I haven't posted anything in a couple days.
It's not because I haven't been writing anything lately, I've actually been writing plenty. Both for this blog, but also for other projects. I just haven't had time or energy to post anything. I've still kept up with my Tumblr "I Pilan Yanggen Sumahi..." and I still tweet on Twitter. I've also been swamped with preparing a grant proposal for next month and the fact that school starts next week at UOG.
One thing which is also taking my time away from this blog is the fact that I've been trying to catch up on my summer reading this past week, even though the summer is almost over. I had a pile of books that I wanted to read but didn't get to most of them because I was too busy teaching, writing, taking care of my kids and starting a new relationship. But this past week I decided to set aside a good chunk of time to just relax myself and read for a while.
One of the first books I picked up was The Girl Who Played with Fire, the sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I had picked up The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo while I was in California in May and I was looking for something to read on the flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. With nothing much to do I was able to soak up the entire book before we landed. I chuckled as I read because an old lady sitting next to me on the plane had also started the book once the plane took off and while I finished the book in flight, she still had 300 or 400 hundred pages left to go when we landed.
I immediately bought the sequel when I got back to Guam, but only read the first few pages and would constantly put it down to continue later. Weeks past and my initial excitement with the characters, the writing and the trilogy of books itself had faded. Once that fire in me to finish the books had been extinguished I could only see The Girl Who Played with Fire has a massive time-wasting tome. It would no doubt be repetitive and drag on as parts of the first book had. With a great payoff in narrative terms, but still a lot of wading through parts that come to feel unnecessary or uninteresting very quickly. After getting through 30 or 40 pages I wasn't sure that this second book would be worh the invested of time or the eyeball moisture.
With a week to go until school starts I decided to take a leap of faith that the book would be worth it and started it the other day. My mission was to finish the whole book in 24 hours. While my excitement never ever reached the level at which it was during parts of the first book, The Girl Who Played with Fire was still worth it. And (spoiler alert) since the ending is so jarring as to give you literary whiplash, I am actually getting antsy about starting the third book in the Millenium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked Over the Hornet's Nest. I thnk I might actually go to Bestseller tomorrow to pick it up.
I did finish the book in lesss that 24 hours, and since I couldn't shut down my day just to read a 700 + page book, I ended up reading it all over the island: from a tattoo parlor in Tumon, K-Mart, my apartment, my girlfriend's place, DMV, Port of Mocha at the Micronesian Mall and several other places.
Let's see how many more books I can read before school starts.
It's not because I haven't been writing anything lately, I've actually been writing plenty. Both for this blog, but also for other projects. I just haven't had time or energy to post anything. I've still kept up with my Tumblr "I Pilan Yanggen Sumahi..." and I still tweet on Twitter. I've also been swamped with preparing a grant proposal for next month and the fact that school starts next week at UOG.
One thing which is also taking my time away from this blog is the fact that I've been trying to catch up on my summer reading this past week, even though the summer is almost over. I had a pile of books that I wanted to read but didn't get to most of them because I was too busy teaching, writing, taking care of my kids and starting a new relationship. But this past week I decided to set aside a good chunk of time to just relax myself and read for a while.
One of the first books I picked up was The Girl Who Played with Fire, the sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I had picked up The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo while I was in California in May and I was looking for something to read on the flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. With nothing much to do I was able to soak up the entire book before we landed. I chuckled as I read because an old lady sitting next to me on the plane had also started the book once the plane took off and while I finished the book in flight, she still had 300 or 400 hundred pages left to go when we landed.
I immediately bought the sequel when I got back to Guam, but only read the first few pages and would constantly put it down to continue later. Weeks past and my initial excitement with the characters, the writing and the trilogy of books itself had faded. Once that fire in me to finish the books had been extinguished I could only see The Girl Who Played with Fire has a massive time-wasting tome. It would no doubt be repetitive and drag on as parts of the first book had. With a great payoff in narrative terms, but still a lot of wading through parts that come to feel unnecessary or uninteresting very quickly. After getting through 30 or 40 pages I wasn't sure that this second book would be worh the invested of time or the eyeball moisture.
With a week to go until school starts I decided to take a leap of faith that the book would be worth it and started it the other day. My mission was to finish the whole book in 24 hours. While my excitement never ever reached the level at which it was during parts of the first book, The Girl Who Played with Fire was still worth it. And (spoiler alert) since the ending is so jarring as to give you literary whiplash, I am actually getting antsy about starting the third book in the Millenium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked Over the Hornet's Nest. I thnk I might actually go to Bestseller tomorrow to pick it up.
I did finish the book in lesss that 24 hours, and since I couldn't shut down my day just to read a 700 + page book, I ended up reading it all over the island: from a tattoo parlor in Tumon, K-Mart, my apartment, my girlfriend's place, DMV, Port of Mocha at the Micronesian Mall and several other places.
Let's see how many more books I can read before school starts.
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