September reads and doings

I’ve been devoting more time to reading books and attempting new hobbies in my effort to reduce the amount of content I consume from the internet.

Since the beginning of September, I have read six novels and abandoned one novel after a record 30 pages (I couldn’t take the convenient miracles any longer, they were that obvious and that poorly written). The month has a few days yet and I am working on two more books. There is always a chance I’ll make it through my seventh, but I wouldn’t count on it.

If you are curious as to what I’ve been reading, check out this “living” page that gets updated as I consume, including planned and current reads.

Six books is not huge, but it is a positive effort away from social media and news that, let’s just say, feels like a low-quality circus right about now.

As I have said in other posts, I try to give a books the first hundred pages before I judge them too harshly. Sometimes it is my mood that is the problem and I like a book just fine when my mood changes or after I get invested in the story a little bit. However, I draw the line at writing that solves every problem the character encounters with deus ex machina (“machine of God”) solutions. And, goodness, God was needing to grease his gears to keep up with the character in one location of this story alone (he needed a weekly machine maintenance plan if you include the other location revealed in the first thirty pages).

I’m sorry, for most people who crash a plane in a river, the plane is sinking and they are trying to move an unconscious man 100 lbs heavier than them to escape the freezing waters is not going to typically have the wherewithal to make sure they don’t shuck a waterlogged jacket that threatens to drown them because one of the pockets has a desperately-needed waterproof firestarter… and only mention it after they realize that they need to avoid hypothermia (paraphrased: “which is why he had struggled with the jacket dragging him down in the water, it had a firestarter he knew he would need”). But, I suppose, a bush pilot flying rich folks to their inaccessible mountain hideaway who happens to bring a long gun on the flight in case he feels like hunting (did he bring is big game non-resident license? Or did he just plan to poach? We’ll never know) after dropping off his passengers might very well have his mind on survival gear while flying for a living… Convenient! And somewhat disconcerting that he keeps survivalist and camping gear on-hand for his flights. Not exactly good for confidence-building in his abilities as a pilot…

I can’t believe that book came recommended by several algorithms. It was definitely a stinker.

Anyhoo…

I’m also playing a game with family, Borderlands 4, a low-browed shooter-looter with juvenile humor. Some of the humor gets old, but I have enjoyed playing and watching glittering things explode as enemies are eliminated. It keeps one of my daughters happy that someone will play it with her (she’s an adult, so the cartoon violence is not a concern in my opinion).

I had thought about getting into quilting, but found that I didn’t have the confidence needed to get started. So I am trying my other idea: crocheting. It is a smaller investment of time and money, and is something that I can pick up and put down on short notice. I can also see more versatility in what I can create and there are tons of free patterns out there for almost any imaginable item that can be made out of yarn (quilting seems to be primarily paid patterns beyond the basics). Last night was a bit frustrating (my first real attempt), but that’s because I think I am too tense and need to calm down — the tension I applied was probably far too much in the wrong area of the project and not enough in the other areas. Or so I suspect. We’ll see if I can actually make more than a basic stitch next time, preferably a second chain.