Reading, Mostly

I am reading a book about blogging. That’s factual, not an ironic statement. I still learn much of what I know about computers from printed books. The rest comes from, firstly, Miraz's mactips, which I recommend accessing via her blog, http://knowit.co.nz/ which is about technology, science and wordpress, and well worth reading. Find mactips by scrolling down the sidebar on the left. My other source of information etc is welmac, the Wellington mac user's group. Check it out at http://www.welmac.org.nz. If you use a mac and live in the Wellington area it's worth the membership fee.

I understand the business of writing a blog, but not how one can ‘distribute’ it, if that is what one wants to do. Part of my problem with learning how to do this is no doubt my lack of conviction that I want to do that. I guess my question is still ‘What’s it for?’

I recently had a birthday and, as is usual, my partner gave me a great pile of books. Yum. I read Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal first because that’s the book our book group is reading this month. Then Kamila Shamsi’s Burnt Shadows, because she is coming to Writers and Readers week in Wellington next month. What a hard, and believable, ending this book has. I recommend it. Now I’m halfway through Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry, which I am liking more than I liked The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I also read the Millenium trilogy over a week. (One of them was in the birthday pile.) They are written by Steig Larsson, the first is called The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and they are best-sellers, in bookshops everywhere. Three long books! Gripping. The Swedish setting helped hold my interest, as did the two complex main characters, and the social context of the stories. The politics gets more depth as the stories develop and by the third questions like ‘What is democracy, and how much secrecy - for example in countering terrorism - is possible without undermining the whole ethos of democrary?’ are part of a series of thrillers. I didn’t like the movie, I thought it skated across the top of all the big ideas in the books and flattened out the two main characters.

And yes, I am still editing my novel. In between other things. I am beginning to wonder whether I should have a writing/editing schedule, like writing between the hours of x and y, but have never done this and am resistant to it. Most of my writing/editing gets done in the afternoons, a reversal of what many writers do. Does this matter, I wonder?