My ghost story.

I had a dream about three months ago. It was very brief, but intense. I still remember waking up with my heart beating hard and fast. I scribbled down what I remembered and later decided to try to form a story around it. I’ve had an interesting and frustrating experience with this story, but it was time well spent. There are probably some minor glitches in the second half, but I decided to get it out there and get some feedback. I hope you enjoy it.
Click on the link.

Inheritance of a Dream

The Malden Book Club: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Two things I like to look for in a novel: something familiar and something foreign.

The familiarity is the hook, common ground. It gives you a sense of ownership over the story that is about to unfold. In the case of this novel that familiarity is in the titular character’s extreme nerdiness. Not what passes for nerdy today but mid-eighties, Fan-Fiction writing, pen and paper RPG nerdy. A fat Dominican nerd, in New Jersey. Also the narrator of the story pulls from just about every facet of the dork kingdom to draw analogies to what is transpiring in the story (Tujillo‘s Regime is likened to Mordor, hit Points are ascribed to damage caused by real world violence!).

However what is most compelling is the tremendous amount of insight in to Dominican and Dominican-American culture. A little looking glass into a world that is predominantly overlooked by “White-America”. From 20th Century history, culture, folklore to Dominican Diaspora, they are all things to which,I had been ignorant.

If your looking for a character driven story with fantastic dialogue and narrative, and looking to gain a bit of insight into a world you are unaware of, read this book.

A La Carte = some book I saw at Barnes and Noble.

So looking for a present for Casey “the Serb” Korach’s b-day, I stumbled upon this book. Apparently she finds discarded/lost grocery lists, and does a composite of the shopper, like some sort of weird Unsolved Mysteries shit ( aside: that show scared me as a child).

The best of the bunch was a discarded pack of matches with “Coors, Oreos” written on it. Nevermind that the lady is all done up in plastic prosthetics, but I just thought that was fantastic.

Anyway, I ended up buying Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” just to be safe.