Rob's Surf Report

Am I really much of a bookworm anymore?

It’s an embarrassing question to have to ask, but I’m just like anyone else; isn’t there a favored activity from your childhood that fell by the wayside because the demands of the adult world simply demands way too much of your time? In my case, that’s reading.

Don’t get me wrong, I still read a lot. Most of what I read is online, via articles and Google Alerts, and blog posts, of course. I find people to be very interesting and too often inspiring to ignore. I happen to be sitting and writing this in my basement office, though, and I have this six-foot bookshelf next to me and it is loaded down with all kinds of books and Legos, not to mention a Detroit Tigers baseball and my collection of used Rubik’s Cubes. So I could grab any one of these books . . . here’s Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman. It’s a wonderful book, where I started reading when I decided that there was something about me that nobody liked. Let’s flip it open and find the tenth word, right?

Page 198, on the left – the tenth word is “seems”, in the context of “Martin already seems to lack the most primitive sort of empathy”. So now I do a Google image search on the word “seems”; I’m not really sparked by any of the top images on the page. Well, the tenth word on 199 (the page on the right) is “repeated”. Google Image Search – wow, a bunch of patterns. Didn’t see that coming. New book!

Here’s one of my favorites: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. Hopefully nobody feels the need to criticize me for reading these things, but note that the author is uber-famous. I actually love this edition more than the one I bought it to replace (which I lost at some point) because it’s got a foreword by Ben Bova. I love my sci-fi, folks. Random page! Thirty-six! The tenth word is . . .

“and”.

Are you serious? This prompt is killing me. Even if you count the eighth word, “drive-in” as two words – which I wouldn’t do – the tenth word is “the”. Just to make sure, I Google Image Search the word “and”.

Boobs. Tom and Jerry. That’s four things I like, right there. Okay, I’m going to do this. Here’s the image:

Thanks to Wikipedia, we have this image called Flora and Zephyr by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and according to Wikipedia he was a French academic painter who painted on mythological themes. Boobs aside, the reason I’m drawn to this particular image is that it’s so realistic. I’ve always enjoyed the work of Alphonse Mucha, whose realism in illustration made Art Nouveau pop – it’s a style that’s often imitated and I challenge someone to tell me that they haven’t seen it around somewhere. But it’s the realism that gets me –

how do they do it?

Look at this image closely. Zoom in. You can almost see these people breathing. The shadows, the skin tones. . . everything is so real. And if you look at his later works, they only get better to the point of rivaling photography. Where do these people get the knack?

This post was prompted by yesterday’s Daily Post prompt.

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16 comments

    • . . . and thank you! I would say that I have mastered the “method” of the cube; rather than being able to solve it directly from a random jumble, I use the solution booklet method to solve it, and I used to employ that method so efficiently that I could solve the cube in 3-4 minutes. The really hard cubes are the ones with graphics on them, because you have to orient the cubes more precisely, which I have no “moves” for, and the 5×5 cube, aka “The Professor”, which I have worn the colors off the edges of, but I have never solved. 🙂

      Reply

  2. […] 3) http://countryliving4beginners.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/the-tenth-word-is-doorway/ 4) https://robssurfreport.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/am-i-really-much-of-a-bookworm-anymore/ 5) http://tessross.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/all-about-me/ […]

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  3. This is great. I have bookshelves overloaded with books. I love to shop for books but don’t read as many as I take in. Recently I went through and pulled out all the duplicates I had. I know I really want to read a book when I’ve bought 3 copies of it. One of these days….

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    • Ha ha, I love those moments when you realize you bought a book that you already have, and that you haven’t gotten around to reading. That Orson Scott Card book I mentioned? I happened to re-buy that one twice on accident because I mourned the one I lost so badly.

      Reply

  6. If I zoom in all I am going to see is a close up of very well painted boobs 😉
    I get where you are coming from with the reading though, I miss it more than anything else that has fallen aside from my “pre-adult” life. Have you tried audiobooks? It’s hard for me not to feel like it is cheating but hey! a girl needs her stories!

    Reply

        • I don’t mind as long as the narration is solid. Wil Wheaton was a hard narrator to get used to, as well as the guy who narrated The Gunslinger. Also if the narration is a team thing with both a man and a woman I’ve found that both are easier to acclimate to for some reason.

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          • That’s so strange, if there are multiple narrators it just pulls me right out of the story. I tried to listen to classic plays for while, all with different characters reading different parts but for some reason I just couldn’t get into it.
            Also, I like my narrators to be male. I don’t know why but I feel that it is usually better. The Hunger Games narrator was awful, just awful – but I wanted to hear the story again while I was running. Oh well, I keep my eyes peeled for goodies whenever I can.

            Reply

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