Boxes in the Attic

One of my favorite pastimes is to study interesting subjects online. Some topics have been found merely by hitting the random button on Wikipedia. For instance, the other day I studied blood, and found that blood types are not the only differences between people's blood. Someone could be unable to accept a donor's blood of the same type because of an Rh factor! Fascinating! So O- really isn't the universal donor.
Anyway, the point that I'm getting to is that in my quenchless search for knowledge, I am starting to find that I am...running out of room. For instance, the other week I was looking up malapropisms and related devices, and I can't remember what they are anymore. This forgetfulness has never happened to me (I of the elephantine memory). So I wonder, am I running out of room? Have all of the memories and facts of my 25 years started to crowd the hard drive in my brain? Or are my facilities simply aging and am I unable to retain things like I once could?
My favorite literary figure, Sherlock Holmes, would side with my first theory. In the first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet, Watson tells Holmes some commonly held scientific knowledge, along the lines of the Earth revolving around the Sun, to which Holmes responds that he doesn't care! His brain is only filled with things that are useful to him in solving crimes, and everything else is inconsequential. Holmes states that a brain is like an attic, it can only hold so many boxes before it becomes full and you can't find anything anymore, therefore he is a better detective by staying wholly ignorant of everything that is not useful to him.
Is this how our memory works, like Holmes' attic? Or can our minds be infinitely elastic? Most would agree it's not that simple. Memory, in its makings and retrieval, is so interesting. As interesting, I think, as forgetting. Isn't it a mystery how and why we forget things? Or are things never really forgotten, just repressed?

reading list

I've been on a bit of a fantasy bender lately. I wrapped up the Mortal Instruments trilogy, and am now in the middle of Sabriel, the 1995 winner of the Aurealis Award for Fantasy. Next, I plan on reading Anne McCaffrey's The Dragonriders of Pern and finishing The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens. Anyone have any other recommendations? I've heard good things about Stewart's The Crystal Cave.

Book hunt

I've been reading this new series of books that took forever to get a hold of. I was recommended the "The Mortal Instruments" trilogy, which begins with the volume "City of Bones". The books follow our hero Clary as she navigates a New York populated with demons, vampires, pixies, and really every other fantasy creature you can think of.

So, in my hunt for a new read I hit up the local Borders. I wondered around that dang store countless times but all I could find were volumes two and three! Of course, what do you know, owing to my impeccable taste, I'd selected an unexpectedly popular title that had flown off the shelves in the past weekend. Upon asking a friendly looking Borders employee for help, he re-rummaged through the shelf and with a glimmer in his eye said, "No we're all out, but come with me." I scampered behind his lead, twisting through bookshelves and aisles, till he stopped, arms proudly spread, presenting me with a table piled high with tween-age vampire romance novels. "This one has been particularly popular", he said, laying in my hands "Midnight Fangs", whose cover looked like a Harlequin romance cover, but with, you know, half naked models with fangs. I shuffled, bookless, out of the store, feeling a bit insulted.

Next stop, Barnes and Noble downtown. Same scenario; a teen fiction bookshelf piled, stacked, and double parked with volumes two and three! Forlorn and discouraged, I passed the B&N version of the "Vampire Romance" teaser table. On it were scattered paperbacks decorated with pictures of creepy dark rimmed eyes, seductive fanged grins, and the cover of volume one, City of Bones? Yes readers, I'd found my prize where I least expected to be rewarded. There were only two copies left! And when I returned today for volume two, the first volume was all sold out.

RIP Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton has long been one of my literary heroes. He was the second author I really got into as a child (after Keene's Nancy Drew series) and I did pride myself on delving into the scientific mysteries of his novels while my class mates struggled through a volume of "Goosebumps". I spent many sick days and rainy weekends in his dinosaur populated islands off the coast of Costa Rica, jungles deep in the heart of the Congo with murderous gorillas, a broken time machine in the Dark Ages of Europe, and the cold sinister corridors of metropolitan hospitals with dark secrets.

I soon became a thirteen year old Crichton snob, protesting the movie adaptations of his books because of their unforgivable departure from the storylines in my beloved novels. If my parents were unlucky enough to take me to one of the films, they were guaranteed an earful of whining lament from the backseat of the station wagon, as I educated them on the film's omission of a vitally important Pachycephalosaurus or a wrongfully killed minor character.

Crichton is the author of the popular novels Jurassic Park (for which he is most famous), The Lost World, Congo, Timeline (another favorite of mine) and Sphere. Crichton was a Harvard educated physician, and a screenwriter, producer, and of course, novelist. He passed on Nov 4th, 2008, after a battle with cancer.

Simile, and the whole world similes with you

I've been so busy with school lately that my beloved blog has been neglected. I'm upset by this because I adore blogging, and honestly if I could list things that, in 2008, made me happier than anything else, blogging would be near the top!!

I've been writing a lot too, and I've finally finished my first short story. I'm so proud of it that I'm going to submit it for publication in a few literary journals and magazines! This is a big deal for jholiday because getting published has always been something I've wanted to achieve. To be a published writer.... (for full effect, read published with a dreamy, far off look in your eyes).

I also plan on putting it online so that I can share it with all of you, but I'd like to copyright it first (yes, I'm paranoid). Expect my opus "Touchstone Cove" in a few days!

Book of the Week

My dad once told me that all successful people read -- and that if I wished to be so, I should read a book a week. Luckily for me, I just can't stay away from the darned things, but I often wonder if I'm not reading enough when I fail to meet the weekly mark. The last book I read, Eldest, (completed last night in anticipation of Brisingr!), took nearly two weeks for me to thumb through its pages.

Now I have my choice of materials, and I chose a collection of short ghost stories by Charles Dickens that I found at the Chico used book store. It includes the most famous ghost story, A Christmas Carol, but also holds some other really unique, clever characters in its tales of ghosts and ghoulies. More than any other author, Dickens transports me into the world he creates in his writing, and I can't wait to return again to his dusty offices, graveyards and decrepit manors in Victorian England.

Dragons, Oh My!

Lately I've been re-enjoying the delicious fantasy world of Christopher Paolini. I've plowed through his first novel, Eragon, and the second, Eldest, is a bit under halfway read (reread). This is all in anticipation of the long awaited third novel in his series, Brisingr. Brisingr will be released around Sept 2oth, so there is plenty of time to catch up.

Paolini's Inheritance cycle (thats what this series is called) is the flavor of the moment here at jholiday blog. The book follows a young man named Eragon who finds a dragon egg that hatches into an intelligent dragon. Eragon and his new dragon Saphira explore the world, grow up, and challenge the course of history The books are written in the vein of The Lord of the Rings with similar characters and plot. The writing is so charming and the characters are so endearing that I am thoroughly absorbed by the story and constantly amazed at the proficiency of Paolini's grasp of language. Did I mention he wrote the first book, Eragon, when he was 15? These books are truly the next fantasy classics of this generation, and while they stand in the shadow of Tolkien's masterpieces, they also stand alone as seminal works.

On Writing

I enrolled in a creative writing class at Cuesta. I used to shudder at the thought of a writing class because that would leave my work exposed and vulnerable to the red pen of the instructor. I know that just one person's opinion is not the end-all decision of the value of my work, but I've always been afraid that my arrangement of words and spinning of ideas is just average. For the class we'll be expected to create several short stories, poems and smaller miscellaneous writing exercises. I can feel the palpitations of anxiety welling in myself as I imagine submitting my attempts at good fiction. I attempt to write often, but I have more ideas for stories than time or drive to write them. I suppose I've always known that I should be a writer, but do I write well?