Showing posts with label Authors. Show all posts

I have to say first of all that I have not been able to return to my most awesome of dreams. I think that it's still a pretty good premise for a story, and I will probably try to use my pre-existing characters from other stories to write something of this one ....

I tried desperately to find ways to return to that dang dream. I tried the cheese, I read about half of The Stand again. Watched 3 of the 4 chapters of the movie as well. Nothing worked though. That doesn't mean that I didn't have some other really weird dreams. Surprisingly I had some mixed up dreams dealing with The Stand and a few other books that I've read recently. The surprising part is that I read a lot of westerns, primarily Louis L'Amour. Let me tell you that a Western setting for the end of the world makes for waking up with a bad case of the sweats. It was just creepy.

Recently I had begun reading The Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour. One of my favorite all time books. It's set in the beginning days of Los Angeles. Louis L'Amour gives you some good history with his stories, so you can't really lose. I have also noticed that he gives some strong opinions on characters in some of his stories. Cullen Baker is a noted gunman, and L'Amour pictures him far different than history books do in a few of his stories. Baker is not in the Lonesome Gods, but he was the best example I could think of for L'Amour's opinions.

Regardless of all that, I was a good portion of the way into the book, and I started to think about other things that are my favorites. I have a bunch of favorite things, so I figured this would be a fairly good venue to share a few of them (maybe more than a few).

My favorite book is The Stand, but closely followed by The Lonesome Gods and The Comstock Lode. I like the end of the world scenario as I always wondered what I would do if I had nobody but me to rely on. I think that's what attracts me to western writing as well. The characters in most L'Amour books are on their own. They have to make their way the best they can, without the help of many people, and sometimes in spite of other people.

My favorite TV show is Sliders. If you don't know what this is, I will give you the brief intro. A genius college student discovers a way to travel between dimensions. Guess I should say that he is also the one that discovers the existence of multiple dimensions. Along with 3 others he travels to another dimension and they have a slight incident that prevents them from returning to their own dimension. They must wander until they can find a way home. Once again I think that this plays on my love of somebody having to do for themselves. These 4 have to rely on their own wits and most often common sense to keep them out of trouble while they find their way home.

My favorite movie is a bit more difficult... I think that all time my favorite is The Stand. I am a movie freak so to speak. I love watching movies and I own a ton of them. The only thing better then revisiting a movie is revisiting a book. I'll just mention a couple of others that have "done" it for me as far as movies go. Independence Day....I could not believe that critics said Bill Pullman did a bad job as president. His Independence Day speech in the movie was great. Rocky is up ther for me too.... Are you seeing a pattern here, cause I'm starting to notice it more and more. All about the fight in my opinion. I love the underdog, and I really love when the underdog wins.

Before this gets too long, I'll end it with my favorite sports. There are 2 ways of looking at this for me. My favorite to watch and favorite to play.

As a spectator there is nothing more interesting to me than a good football game. PERIOD!!!! The fact that a 300 lb man can run a 40 yard dash in 4.7 seconds is amazing....

To play it has to be baseball...That was my first love and I will be buried with a glove and cleats in my coffin ( a little morbid I know). I'm sorta old for it now, but if I get a chance again, I'll go play some softball or even old man baseball. That over 40 league is pretty rough when you are actually over 40.

Well if you managed to stay awake through all of this Thank you! After reading this myself I realized that I have some pretty definite tastes...Opinions I have plenty of and now you see a little bit of where I get them from ........

I'm sure I've mentioned this a few hundred times... I'm a huge Louis L'Amour fan. I have read everything he's written (even the short stories and poems). I read and reread his books and they never seem to get old for me.

Lately I have found that TV is becoming more and more irritating. The shows they have come up with nowadays are completely pathetic for the most part in my opinion. Even the brainless ESPN has become boring for the most part. I really don't care much about the opinions of some washed up athlete that was only mediocre as a player. Then they want to pay him some ginormous amount of money for his opinion. If he was that damn good he would be an assistant coach for a team instead of an opinionated dumb ass for the network (they tend to rile me).

With that said I have been rereading a few L'Amour books as of late. The problem I'm finding is that I can't put the dang book down. I read for 4-6 hours on the weekends at a sitting. At night before I go to sleep I make sure that I give my self a minimum of 45 minutes to read. I don't know if that's an illness, but I just can't seem to get the same excitement from a movie as I can from a good book.

So what do you think? I know some of you are avid fans of some of the TV programming on right now. Are the shows better than the books? Does the movie do justice for the book it is based on? I tend to think no for the most part, especially lately. I will have to admit that I went and saw Avatar and that is one of the few movies I've seen in recent years where the imagination of the Producer/Director/Writer is on par with mine.

So if you are a TV person instead of a writer what are the shows I should be checking out? If you are a book person instead of a TV person what are some new authors to try. I like anything well written. Westerns are just a favorite because L'Amour is so good at what he does. Clancy, Cussler, Koontz, and Griffin are a few of my other reads.