Tag Archives: fiction

Audio attention

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A few years ago I exclusively switched from reading books to listening to them. I was never a fast reader and always struggled with my attention when reading. I’d get lost in thought and read whole pages without absorbing any of the content. In fact, sometimes while reading I could turn back one page and not remember reading any part of it.

So for me, audio books were a blessing. I could just listen and absorb. However, I’m going through a phase now where I’m losing my attention while listening. My wondering mind becomes a wandering mind and I tune out the sound. When this happens, only one thing seems to get me out of it and that’s a good fiction book. By moving from learning content to enjoying an adventure, I start to tune back in.

So, I’ll put my current read on hold, I’ll skip my next planned read, and I’ll find myself a good fiction book to get lost in. Normally I save fiction for holiday time, but there’s no use listening to something informative now, if every few minutes I’m hitting the rewind button.

I need a good fiction audio book to remind me what it means to listen intently and pay attention.

Novel worlds

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I enjoy reading novels when summer comes along. I seek out books that take me to different worlds and different realms. I seek magic and the majestic. I don’t really enjoy historical fiction. I want dystopian tribulations, lost kingdoms, and kingdoms lost. Give me magical orbs, forbidden powers, fragile Gods, and alien encounters.

Set me free in a novel world, where I can escape on the pages, written or read, paper or digital, visual or auditory. Places I can visit in my mind; places that could never exist save for an author’s imagination.

Summer is a time to escape to places only the mind can go… thanks to a good book.

Don’t watch the movie

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It’s holiday day time and that means it’s time to pick up a novel. Well, metaphorically pick it up because I’m actually going to listen to an audio book. Every extended school break I usually choose a good fiction and enjoy having an author take me on an adventure.

A few summers ago I got deep into the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney, and now I’m on book 13, ‘The Chaos Agent’. I love escaping into a world of spies, espionage, and more action in a week than any one person would ever experience in a lifetime. The books are fun, fascinating, and exciting… but the movie is absolutely awful!

The movie combined characters and made a cookie cutter Hollywood movie, which undermined the essence of the book, and more importantly the character. Here is a movie spoiler that proves my point: The Hollywood version of the final fight starts with the Gray Man facing his rival. The Grey Man works alone the entire book, but the movie has his female team member with a gun pointed at the bad guy and the Gray Man doesn’t say ‘take the shot’, no instead he chooses to fist fight the guy.

This would never happen in the books, it would never be a choice made by this deadly assassin. It doesn’t fit, other than to have a Hollywood version final battle. Then to make the scenario worse, the army trained rival only remembers he has a knife after he starts losing the fight to the Gray Man. None of that is a spoiler for any of the books.

It’s really too bad the movie had to veer so far away from the book. It took a great story and made into a Hollywood cliche, where any of 100 action hero’s could have replaced the Gray Man and the script would have looked the same.

If you are into spy novels, enjoy reading or listening to tthis series, and stay clear of the movie. And I don’t just mean enjoy the book first, then watch the movie… This is a case where telling you to avoid the movie is keeping you from guaranteed disappointment. It’s that bad!

The supernatural cinema

I find it fascinating how much entertainment is based on the supernatural. Movies and television shows are filled with superpowers, ghosts, magical powers, and talking animals. It’s not good enough for someone just to be evil, they need to be possessed. The wardrobe leads to an alternate world, so does the rabbit hole. A radio active spider, an unusual electrical storm, or even prophecy propel an otherwise normal person into a realm of heroism and chaos that are beyond the norms of every day life.

Even when there are no extra or supernatural powers, there are feats of incredible athleticism and often pure luck that get a protagonist out of dire trouble. Secret agents or regular unsuspecting people faced with impossibly complicated scenarios, saving the country or the world from eminent destruction.

I love when a story feels new. When the formula is a little broken and it’s not just a hero’s journey story being retold with the same, usually happy ending. I hate when the Americanized storytelling ends with a group of people applauding the protagonist, as he or she finds love, or receives a medal, or defeats the alien invasion.

Do we really need a cast audience to tell the movie going audience to clap or to be happy?

I love escaping into a good movie or TV show, but my definition of good has changed a lot. Get rid of the cliche endings, or the hero who finds the perfect solution to every scenario. It’s fine to have supernatural experiences, just don’t rehash old storylines with better effects. Share something I really haven’t seen before… that’s what appeals to me now.

Suggestions for movies and shows that do this would be greatly appreciated.

Fictional assassins

I’m reading one of Mark Greaney’s Gray Man books, Sierra Six. It’s a spy novel with a rogue CIA agent fighting against evil terrorists. It brings to life how a handful of people can wreak havoc in the world.

It also makes me think about a few other things:

1. We like to support an underdog.

2. Vigilantes with a virtuous agenda make great underdogs.

3. Nefarious criminals have the upper hand in that most people don’t expect others to act in an evil way, and so bad scenarios are harder to defend against.

4. Assassins have amazing technology at their disposal, and I’m surprised more assassinations don’t happen.

On this last point, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to live a world where vigilantes and assassins take justice into their own hands, but I also don’t want criminals doing the same… and criminals doing this are far more likely than good people.

How long before we see a political figure being killed by a drone, or from a weapon more than a mile away? What kind of world would we live in where any political figure needs to constantly think about personal threats to themselves when out in public?

I know that books like this are about larger than life heroes, victims, and criminals, but the technology described in these books are usually real and/or possible. I know most people are smart enough to know that the vast majority of criminals get caught, and a life of crime doesn’t usually pay. But it only takes a few angry people to really disrupt the world we live in… and there are specific tragedies we can all think of that prove this.

Fictional assassins tend to have intelligence, physical strength, and top of the line high tech tools. Real assassins probably aren’t the full package that makes a storybook character, but they are probably getting access to similar weaponry. The threats they could pose are only getting worse. We shouldn’t need to live in fear, but we should never doubt the threat of people willing to do bad things for bad reasons. And maybe, just maybe, a vigilante do-good-er could come out of fictional imagination and into the real world to make the world a safer place.

Now back to my book!

I need a good book recommendation

What’s your favourite, “I couldn’t put it down (or stop listening) book you would recommend?

I listen to a lot of books in a year. I barely read much before switching to audio. I’d come home and try to read but I spend so much time looking at screens in a day that even if I chose to read, my eyes would get tired after 10-15 minutes. Switching to audio, I can listen during my workouts, while in the car, when eating lunch on my own, and even doing house chores. I can get hours in over a week, rather the occasional minutes reading.

But to start this year I’m listening to a book that, while I’m enjoying it, I can only listen to short bursts then I need a break. And in between listening to this, I’ve been listening to podcasts, and I’m looking for a good book to listen to.

I tend to listen to books I learn from until Christmas break, March break, and summer, when I listen to fiction, but right now I’m thirsty for a good, hard-to-put-down action/thriller. I like sci-fi, fantasy, and spy novels, and enjoy novels no matter the age or gender of the protagonist. Some recent things I’ve enjoyed listening to include:

Caliban’s War, book 2 of the Expanse series, (but not ready to go to book 3).

Many books in The Grey Man series (do NOT watch the awful movie that butchers the story and creates a final battle that screams of bad moviemaking and screenwriting). I love this series but 7-8 books in I need a break.

The Bone Witch… fabulous storytelling!

The Bobiverse entire series and everything Dennis E. Taylor has written.

And Artemis, sharp, witty, and fast paced sci-fi that begs for a sequel.

So there are some of my shares… what would you recommend?

Dialogue in fiction

I think the hardest thing to write is fictional conversation. I’m reading (listening to) a book right now that I won’t name. It’s a science fiction and it’s good but not great. The biggest issue is, this writer is a nerdy guy who thinks everyone talks like him and has the same sense of humour… The almost sarcasm that so trite that it needs to be ‘almost’ sarcasm because it just doesn’t have enough bite. It’s predictable, and bland, and every character delivers it in the same way.

It’s really hard to pull off good dialogue in text, and especially good humorous banter. There are certain TV shows that I think have done this well. ‘Suits’ is one of those shows. The two main characters go at each other and they take turns getting the better of each other. The book I’m reading now is so cliché… insert eye-roll here, insert hands on hips there, add a little finger wave, and even “Na-nuh-na-nuh-na-na” (and this last phrase was written by a previous version of the main character in a message to his future Android self). Seriously, the dialogue couldn’t get any more cliché!

That said, I recognize how tough this is. It’s hard to imagine being funny in a way that isn’t your own. I don’t think I’d be able to pull that off. Creating multiple characters that have depth would not be easy. And while it’s easy to read a book and know when characters and dialogue are written well versus poorly, I recognize how hard it is as a writer to be good at this.

I’ll finish the first book in the series, but I’m not sure I’ll make it to book two. Not because the story isn’t good enough, but because the dialogue is a bit too much for me to want to continue listening.

Tell me a story

I just listened to a short audio book, The Dispatcher, by John Scalzi,and performed by Zachary Quinto. The premise is far beyond the scope of believability, and there is no effort made to explain why this made up world works the way it does.

And it doesn’t matter.

It’s a wonderful short story and it is delivered with an engaging reading. That’s the power of good fiction and storytelling. You don’t have to believe that Hogwarts exists, or that there are mines in Middle Earth, or that there is an empire in a far, far away galaxy. What matters is that the authors take you on the journey with them, and that the journey is worthy to go on.

This year I plan listen to a lot more fiction. Recommendations are welcome!

Read Fiction

It was probably the January semester, 1989 that I took a Rural Extension course on Leadership, at the University of Guelph, when I met Professor Al Laozon. He was my first prof to have us call him by his first name. The first prof to have us sit in a circle, despite there being about 24-26 of us in the class. He listened as much as he talked. And he quickly became a friend.

Al had us read The Tao of Leadership, which to this day is still one of my favourite books, and one that I call my ‘Leadership Bible’.

And while his class was one of my more memorable courses at university, it was his office hours chats that I most enjoy and remember. They were filled with insights and wisdom, but also with the things friends talk about, like our childhoods and stories of family members.

Yesterday I wrote a post about my struggles with going through the motions of my healthy living routines with low energy and effort. It helps me to share these things ‘out loud’ and I was able to push my workout harder than I have in weeks as a result. But another benefit of sharing is getting insights from readers, and Al was kind enough to share a comment. With respect to mediation I said,

“I’ve missed more meditations in the last 6 weeks than I’ve missed for the rest of the year. When I do meditate, it’s more like I am am having a quiet moment to think about random things. I can’t seem to focus on my breath any more than I could when I started my daily meditation routine almost 3 years ago.”

And to this Al said,

“Our routines, like life in general, ebbs and flows of its own accord. Be patient. I have had a meditation practise since 1991 and some days are good and other days, well the monkeys are running amok in the “store” despite my desire for them to quiet themselves. Somedays you just go with it.“

I also said, about listening to audiobooks,

“I’m an avid audio book listener, and I usually get through almost a book a week unless I am reading something that’s really long, then it could be two weeks. But I just took three weeks to listen to a 5-hour long book, and didn’t feel I got as much out of it as I had hoped.” And later added, “I’ll start a fictional novel even though I usually wait for the holidays to choose a book that I’m not learning from.”

To which Al commented,

“As for reading fiction, there is much to be learned from fiction. As I have often said, novelists often have more insight into humans and their behaviour than do the best of social scientists. Do not deprive yourself of that which can offer insight, nor dismiss it as simple entertainment or distraction. The arts offer much in terms of insights into our collective journey. After all, there is no greater means of learning than a good story, be it true or fabrication. I recently wrote elsewhere that science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.”

All these years later, and miles apart, but Al is still my teacher, advisor, and wise friend, sharing insights I need to hear.

Usually I only ‘let myself’ read fiction on holiday breaks. But I’ve been drawn a lot more to fiction in the last couple years. It started a couple Christmas breaks ago when I received some free ebooks from Audible and I listened to a science fiction novel and got hooked into an epic series. Then I listened to a couple books that I never would have selected for myself, just because they were free… and I loved them. But reading fiction outside the holidays always came with a little self-imposed guilt.

Not anymore. Al’s words have given me permission to indulge guilt free. I will choose more fiction. Let me know if you have a favourite you’d like to share.

“Science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.” ~ Al Lauzon

Story plot

I’ve been enjoying Dune, by Frank Herbert, as an audiobook. It’s 20+ hours long and I’ve got about 3 hours left. It’s basically a messiah heroes journey and it’s very well written. This gave me an idea for a plot of a book or movie.

I’d call it ‘The Reluctant Messiah’. Basically it’s about 2 best friends, and one of them is the Chosen One. He doesn’t want to be, and the friend is jealous of him. For 2/3rds of the move the chosen one is the protagonist, we get to hear inside his head. We see things the friend doesn’t. Then something totally unexpected happens. The chosen one reluctantly goes up against a weak nemesis that he feels is below him and he is killed. The protagonist is gone and nothing is resolved.

The best friend now reluctantly picks up the reins and is forced to take over, but to this point there is not a single hint that this will happen. Now he gets his chance he has been jealous of, but totally doesn’t want it, and doesn’t feel ready for it, (he is actually the reluctant messiah).

Further, the reader is in full knowledge of things the new messiah should know, but doesn’t… because he wasn’t part of different aspects of the training involved while the reader was there, with the original messiah. So the reader has to watch this new messiah totally mess up the prophesies, and make almost fatal errors, with devastating collateral damage, on his way to saving the day in a totally different way. And thus the new messiah creates folklore that is absolutely nothing like the old folklore told at the start of the story.

The really novel thing here is going through 2/3rds of the book having absolutely no idea who the real protagonist is, and having the original protagonist die in a completely unexpected way before the climax of the story is close.

That’s the idea, I’d love to see someone pull it off.