Confession Time:

I haven’t been reading like I said I would.  I did finally read An Abundance of Katherines, which was a fantastic read.  It’s one of those books marketed as “young adult” that actually is enjoyable for everyone (although it seems a lot of those books have that ability).  But I’ve been pretty lazy in the reading department otherwise—I never finished Mindfulness (I like it, but nonfiction is always harder for me to finish for some reason).  I am about halfway through The Dharma Bums, which to be very general is a book about hippies.  This is the next book I need to finish, although I picked up a book at a used book sale a few weeks ago called The Well of Lost Plots that derailed me for a bit.

The Well of Lost Plots takes place in a world where an FBI-like agency exists to patrol fiction to prevent characters from escaping their books.  The Well of Lost Plots is where unpublished fiction goes to die—some of it is high-quality stuff that was just never read, but most of it is poorly written drivel.  The main character is hiding out in the Well and on a day-to-day basis has to deal with incomplete settings, flat characters, and world-destroying grammivores.  It’s essentially a book written for English majors or grammar nerds and some of the gags and references are downright brilliant.  It’s actually the third in a series, and I managed to find the first, The Eyre Affair, on BookMooch so I’ll start at the beginning of the series.  AFTER I finish The Dharma Bums. 

So I’m not doing so hot on the reading side.  As far as writing goes, though, I’m doing pretty well (for me).  Despite some setbacks, I’m still updating By Riverside weekly at the very least, and now that the summer’s beginning to fall into a rhythm I’m making time for some other projects I’ve been putting off.

Musically, nothing much to report.  I haven’t had a chance to hang out with John since last week, so it’s hard to say if anything will come of it.  But I am working on becoming a better guitarist and actually learning entire songs instead of introductions, and getting rid of my performance anxiety.  Also, I should pull my sax out and play it one of these days.  It’s been over a year, which is longer than I’ve gone without playing it since fourth grade.  Crazy.