Well, after essentially a year-long hiatus, I have finally started reading regularly again. I finished the book, Now the Drum of War, after having started it over a year previously, in early January. That book was an albatross that was hanging around my neck in 2019, not allowing me to read anything else, but not interesting enough for me to read for any length of time substantial enough to make progress.
I should be clear: I have a particular aversion to stopping a book without finishing it, even a non-fiction one like Now the Drum of War. Though I know that non-fiction can be, and probably should be, read in ways other than cover to cover like a novel, I have never been able to appreciate this style of reading, and thus read all books, fiction and non-fiction alike, cover to cover. I don't much care for trying to read two books at once, especially if one is particularly difficult to focus on, because it hampers my progress and makes me slide back to the easy read instead of pressing forward on the difficult work. I like to read easy books, but I look at them like dessert after having my vegetables on a more difficult book or series of books.
That being said, I finally finished the book, which I can't say I enjoyed, but which had some interesting points in it, and moved on to another book I've been meaning to read for a while, C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet. Again, a bit of background, but I absolutely love science fiction. My favorite author is probably Neal Stephenson (or, at the very least, my favorite book, Anathem, was written by him). Years ago I started reading The Screwtape Letters, which I had borrowed from a library and was asked to return before I had finished it as someone else wanted to read it and my initial two weeks was up, but otherwise I had never read anything by C.S. Lewis. I have, of course, heard of the Narnia books and seen the first two movies (maybe there's a third...I can't remember, but if there is I've probably seen it...must not have been very memorable), but other than The Screwtape Letters, I had no real notion of what kind of author Lewis was. Thus, when I saw Perelandra at a used book store in what appeared to be perfect condition on sale for only fifty cents, I couldn't pass it up based on the author's name alone, let alone the fact that it was in the science fiction genre. I didn't realize at first that it was the second in a trilogy, so I had to go and find the other two books on future journeys. I did find the third for a quarter, though in much worse condition than the copy of Perelandra I had, but I ended up having to buy Out of the Silent Planet online as I was unable to secure a copy in person.
That's the long story about how I came to want to read Out of the Silent Planet. It's a seemingly science fiction book written by an author whom I know to be well regarded and whose work has been translated in at least one instance into agreeable movies. The book itself was fairly good, though I struggle to call it science fiction. In most ways, it's exactly the opposite of science fiction, except it's set on Mars. Still, it was a nice easy read after my year long struggle with my last book, and I decided to continue the trilogy since I already own all three books. I opened Perelandra (upon doing so I knew I was the first to read this copy as I could feel the binding breaking as I was reading it...it's nice to be the one to break in a book...), and finished that fairly quickly as well. This one, though set again in outer space (this time on Venus), was even more anti-science fiction. I knew from The Screwtape Letters that Lewis was a Christian author, but he really smacks you in the face with it in Perelandra. The book, though relatively easy to read, was not terribly enjoyable. The pacing was difficult, and the plot basically could have proceeded almost exactly the way it did if the main character were not in the plot at all, save for one very questionable act that led to what I can only describe as the most boring action sequence I've ever read. The third book was staring at me from the shelf when I returned Perelandra, but I almost didn't want to read it.
After a day of waffling, I decided that not finishing a book series is fairly similar to not finishing a book, so I picked up That Hideous Strength and got on with it. I can say two things about this book: one, it is without a doubt not science fiction; two, I would have probably liked it more if it wasn't the conclusion of the first two books. Lewis is, beyond a doubt, an excellent author, and I'll likely have to read this third installment again sometime to fully understand some parts of it, as many passages went over my head. Some parts, though, were just unintelligible, and others were unnecessarily verbose. I "got the message" well before the book was over. The end of the book was...well, not really a climax to say the least. There were more than a few entirely useless characters whose sole existence in the book seems to have been there for the purpose of annoying the hell out of me. There was a random bear character with no good reason for existing in the plot. There was also an incredibly misogynist feel to most of the book, and it repulsed me every time it became explicit. I recognize that it was written in a different time and I understand the Christian values that Lewis was trying to portray, but I have six sisters and an incredibly independent wife, and hope to have an intelligent and independent daughter someday, and this book really craps all over the idea of gender equality in no uncertain terms.
At any rate, I did not start this post with the intention of reviewing these books. I had only wanted to say that I've been trying to be more myself again in 2020. I've been running regularly, and have already covered 130 miles this year. January was by far the best single month of running I've ever had, covering nearly 100 miles in that month alone. I've been reading again, finishing three books so far this year, and so averaging a book every two weeks (even though it was a week each for the first two and then four for the third). I hope to keep up with both of those trends. My ambition has returned, but, more on that in a later post. Finally, all of this reading has brought back in me a desire to write.
I'm not ready to start writing fiction yet, so I figured I could start with blogging. As any glance at my posting schedule will show, I have no ability to make regular posts, and I will not promise to do so as it will feel too much like homework and I'll avoid it even if I want to do it. However, I hope to post more regularly than I have in the past year. We'll see how that works out, but just sitting down with the intention to write allowed me to pump out this long rambling post, so hopefully I'll have some luck.
