I don't know a lot about what exactly makes writing good, or funny, or captivating, and I don't know the formula to word sequences that pull a reader's eyes across a page without them putting forth much effort, but I know that whatever it is, things like Paper Towns, and The Brothers Karamazov have it, and American Gods (no offense to the man who suggested it to me) did not.

I mean, I started American Gods with high hopes because it's frikkin Neil Gaiman and who doesn't love Neil Gaiman and Stardust was certainly awesome plus, Coraline, I didn't see it but jeez it looked interesting...but it took, like, 5 tedious days to get through the first ten pages. Luckily, an awesome friend suggested reading "No Exit" first and I'm extremely susceptible to the suggestions of those participating in the Challenge. (Yay for one act plays!)

To kill time between then and when I could go to the school library(today) and check it out. I started reading The Brothers Karamazov and ten pages of that breezed by in minutes and were accompanied by clear and present laughter at points which I found weird. Really weird.

The question is, what does an existentialist, 19^th century Russian writer with no awards and no notable movie adaptations have that a 21^st century rock star of literature with scores of awards and like ten films with his name on them doesn't?

I leave you with a non sequitur, yet very true statement.

-My favorite things are beginnings.

P.S. I like "No Exit" so far.

Next Tuesday will be time to begin The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party.

Welcome to Marlon's Mind-Exploding Greater-Than or Equal-To 24 Book Challengavaganza!

Today (Yestoday) is the day, September 1^st, 2009. That I begin my path to neural combustion and attack my challenge to do what I've always been SO good at not doing. [good guess but there's no way I'd challenge myself to cook my own meals for a year]. I'm going to read books; lots of books ones with...plots and...characters...and figurative junk. I'm even going to have to do a couple of rereads.

Thank every one of you A. for your suggestions (there's a lot of suggestions) and B. for the fact that no one seemed to have assigned books with malicious intent, even tough I think  I made it clear that you could have made ANY suggestion and I would have taken it. It seems like none of these involve Ebola Zaire, or Nanobots, or Cullens, or Communist Manifestos. Awesome! I definitely wouldn't have been so nice given the same situation.

Plus there's only one graphic novel! Not that I particularly hate them more than regular novels...but I don't like reading them too much.

I'm also surprised and a little disappointed about some things not being on the list, but I won't mention them because I'm still open for suggestions until the 7^th.

The way this worked is, I took all your suggestions while [trying at] eliminating repeats and wrote them all down, spanning four sheets of paper. Then, I cut them all up individually and mixed them in a hat of boiling water for about ten minutes, then one by one I pulled them out. As the year goes from September '09 to September '10 the only books I can read all the way through, unless I reeeally need to for a class are the ones on the list [but let's face it, The Marlon doesn't need to read a book in its entirety to know its contents] however, the numbers on the list are more guidelines than rules and I don't have to read them in order and at least 24 books must be completed.

After completing a book, I will write something about it and start another.

The list is as follows:

1 The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing; Traitor To The Nation -M. T. Anderson
2 Lord of the Rings Trilogy -J.R.R. Tolkien [eff, that's gonna be hard]
3 The Alchemist -Paulo Coelho
4 The Shining - Stephen King
5 The Epic Story Of The Underground Railroad, Americas's First Civil Rights Movement -Fergus M. Bordewich
6 Don Quixote -Miguel De Cervantes
7 America -Jon Stewart
8 Reaper Man -Terry Pratchett
9 The Hitchhikers Guide -Douglas Adams
10 Grapes of Wrath -John Steinbeck
11 Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesThe Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! -Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith
12 Any old Stephen King or Dean Koontz book [apparently the new stuff sucks]
13 Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman -Richard Feynman
14 Burned -Ellen Hopkins
15 The Road -Cormac McCarthy
16 Bless Me Ultima -Rudolfo A. Anaya
17 The God of Small Things -Arundhati Roy
18 Mere Christianity -C.S. Lewis
19 His Dark Materials Trilogy -Phillip Pullman
20 All The Pretty Horses -Cormac McCarthy [two cormac mccarthies within the first 24?]
21 No Country For Old Men -THREE??? Cormac McCarthy
22 The Illiad [crap!] -Homer
23 The Sookie Stackhouse Novels [or The Southern Vampire Mysteries ] -Charlaine Harris,
24 RX -Tracy Lynn



25 Any other series by Mercedes Lackey
26 American Gods -Neil Gaiman
27 Fahrenheit 451 -Ray Bradburry
28 Hamlet -William Shakespeare
29 Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test -Tom Wolfe
30 The Know-It All -AJ Jacobs
31 Anything by Anne McCaffrey [I've tried many times to read her stuff, could never find the time to care]
32 Guilty Pleasures -Laurell K. Hamilton
33 Blood Meridian -Cormac McCarthy
34 World War Z -Max Brooks
35 The Laughing Corpse -Laurell K. Hamilton
36 I am America (And So Can You) -Stephen Colbert
37 The Sun also Rises [in my pants] -Earnest Hemmingway
38 Cat's Cradle -Kurt Vonnegut
39 The Joy Luck Club -Amy Tan
40 Uncle Tom's Cabin -Harriet Beecher Stowe
41 The Gods of Eden - William Bramley
42 Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi -Ungolino di Monte Santa Maria
43 The Picture of Dorian Gray -Oscar Wilde
44 Animal Farm -George Orwell
45 Carrie -Stephen King
46 Something Wicked This Way Comes -Ray Bradbury
47 The Religion War -Scott Adams
48 Pride and Prejudice[sans zombie] -Jane Austen.
49 The Found Boat -Alice Munro
50 The Zombie Survival Guide -Max Brooks
51 Sputnik Sweetheart -Haruki Murakami
52 A Confederacy of Dunces -John Kennedy Toole
53 Lullaby -Chuck Palahniuk
54 The Stand -Stephen King
55 You Shall Know our Velocity! -Dave Eggers
56 The Fountain Head -Ayn Rand
57 Catch 22 -Joseph Heller
58 Scorched -Could be by Wajdi Mouawad or Rachel Butler, Juanito (Greg) didn't say
59 A Worn Path -Eudora Welty
60 Any Other Terry Pratchett Book
61  Dean Koontz's Odd Series
62 The Stranger -Albert Camus
63 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius -Dave Eggers
64 God's Debris -Scott Adams
65 Death Of A Salesman -Arthur Miller
66 The Secret Teachings of all Ages -Manly P. Hall
67 Anything else By Scott Adams
68 The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul -Douglas Adams
69 Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist -David Levithan.
70 Going Postal -Terry Pratchett
71 Catcher in the Rye -J.D. Sallinger
72 The Time Traveler's Wife -Audrey Niffenegger [ha, Niffenegger]
73 Kingdom of the Cults -Walter Martin
74 Good Omens -Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
75 Blue Like Jazz -Donald Miller
76 Fight Club -Chuck Palahniuk
77 Crime and Punishment-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
78 Bound for Canaan -Fergus Bordewich
79 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge -Ambrose Bierce
80 Watchmen -Alan Moore
81 The Littlest Hitler -Ryan Boudinot
82 The Odyssey -Homer
83 Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim -David Sedaris
84 Anything By James Joyce [after which Chris added "if you can handle it" Heck yeah I can!]
85 The Otherland Tetrology -Tad Williams
86 Crank -Ellen Hopkins
87 Anything by Kurt Vonnegut
88 Brave New World -Aldous Huxley
89 Oil! -Upton Sinclair
90 Wild At Heart -John Eldredge
91 Harry Potter -J.K Rofling [worst pun ever[
92 Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency -Douglas Adams
93 Anything by Christopher Durang
94 A Year of Living Biblically -A.J. Jacobs
95 Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell them -Al Franken
96 The Screwtape Letters -C.S. Lewis
97 Till We Have Faces -Two in a row!
98 How To Become a Writer -Lorrie Moore
99 White Oleander -Janet Fitch
100 1984 -George Orwell
101 The Perks of Being a Wallflower -Stephen Chbosky
102 It -Stephen King
103 Rose Red -Stepen King again.
104 No Exit -Jean-Paul Sartre
105 The Jungle -Upton Sinclair
106 A Primer For The Punctuation of Heart Disease -Jonathan Safran Foer
107 Invisible Monsters -Chuck Palahniuk
108 The Ragamuffin Gospel -Brennan Manning
109 Dead Man's Cellphone -Sarah Ruhl
110 Interview with the Vampire-Anne Rice
111 The Necklace -Guy de Maupassant
112  The Gryphon Trilogy -Mercedes Lackey
113 Raymond Feist's Magician Series
114 Atlas Shrugged -Ayn Rand
115 The Brothers Karamazov -Fyodor Dostoyevsky
116 Hairstyles of the Damned -Joe Meno
117 Wuthering Heights -Emily Brontë
118 The things they Carried -Tim O'Brien
119 Breakfast at Tiffany's -Truman Capote
120 The Lovely Bones -Alice Sebold [in my pants]
121 A separate Peace -John Knowles
122 To Kill a Mockingbird -Harper Lee
123 Ordinary People -John Leg-I mean Judith Guest


Bonus list:
If, and only, if I complete a book within the allotted time that is particularly long (e.g. Don Quixote) or particularly painful (e.g. The Illiad) I will be rewarded with the opportunity to read a book from the Bonus List.

1. The Artist's Way -Julia Cameron
2. Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd -Holly Black, Cecil Castellucci
3. 21 Proms -David Levithan, Daniel Ehrenhaft
4. Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Artwork -Scott Hunt
5. Suite Scarlet -Maureen Johnson
6. The Logic of Alice: Clear Thinking in Wonderland -Bernard M. Patten
7. Leaves Of Grass -Walt Whitman
8. As I Lay Dying -William Faulkner
9  E.E.Cummings: A Selection of Poems -That's obvious
10. The Tao of Pooh.-Benjamin Hoff


On he other side, There will be a Fail List used as punishment for whenever I take too long to complete or write about a book I will have to read one of these next [note: there is no bonus list reward for completing a book on the fail list]

Please submit your suggestions for the fail list as soon as possible.



I had planned on starting with number one, but since there's no copy of Octavian Nothing in my household, and I have to begin before midnight, I'll start with number 26 because a. I don't want to start with number 2(the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, b. It was the first suggestion I received, and c. Tashara had it in her room.

-God, I hope there aren't any typos.

Ok, it's not that I'm conceding that I actually need to actually read actual books instead of reading about books or listening to people talk about in order to live a full and enriched life (or assert my intellectual superiority).

I have a strict policy of not retracting statements except in the most dire circumstances. (there are a few small loopholes that will not be discussed at the moment)


It is that I would like to witness examples of various writing styles as they are applied to storytelling situations.

um, et cetera.

So what I'm going to do is apply a self-challenge of reading at least two books a month for 12 months starting next month (September 1^st).

I will call it Marlon's Mind-Exploding ≥24 Book Challengavaganza!


What I need from you, if you would be so kind, is to suggest to me any book (or as many books as) you want to be read within this time. Any book, regardless of how long it is, whether or not you think I'll like it, whether or not you think I've read it before (assume I haven't), or whether or not you think I'l quit 25% of the way through the book (I might, but I'll try not to)

Also, my plan is to somehow document this and make it interesting.

-Let's go, if you want it you can get it, let me know...

Please don't let me go to jail for killing this man.

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/07/22/tim-burtons-alice-in-wonderland-teaser-trailer-leaks-early/


-Amen

there is a shortage of killer robot survival guides on the internet.

but of course the web is monitored by robots.

In fact, I have this theory that Anonymous is a possible candidate for potential skynets.

Just a theory, although it's more likely to be Windows or some Mac Os. Who am I kidding, if Skynet was a Mac it would do nothing but graphic design and aggressively try to save the rainforest. . . . .by killing humans?




...I wonder if it's the robot's plan to get us all worked up about zombies before they attack, once we stock up on machetes and flamethrowers (which are categorically useless against our metallic enemies) and decide not to buy the first aid kits (because once a zombie bites you, you're done, no matter how much gauze and Neosporin you have).

Or maybe the robots will invent zombies in order to wipe us out!

First off: I'd like to say, don't go to the Jack in the Box next to the east Wal Mart.
Don't give them your money.


So, after dropping Hannah off, I go to walmart cause I have crap to buy, whatevs... then I decide, "hey, I'm hungry for a friggin sausage biscuit"

So I go to Jack in the Box because it's a restaurant I respect, you know, park my car, walk through the door calculate the difference between how much money I have and how much I need to spend, etc.

So I walk up to the counter and tell this frikkin lady I would like a sausage biscuit and a small drink to go. (all I really want is the sausage and the biscuit, but I don't ask her to hold the egg and cheese because it was mildly busy and I didn't want to cause too much confusion, so I kept it simple) she says "ok" then I show her my tits. She, as most Jack in the Box employees who have never seen the tits before, gets confused, asks a purple shirt sub manager lady thing about it who takes a look and also gets confused and gets the gray shirt real manager guy who takes a look, gestures to the cash register, asks "Is this your order? Sausage biscuit and small drink?" I say "yes" he adds on two free tacos and asks "For here or to go?" I say "to go" cause I'm polite and don't mind repeating myself once or twice especially to help out people whose job is to help me out and supply me with sausage biscuits and free tacos. I hand him the money, he hands me the change.

You know, regular stuff.

I wait sort of unusually long for my food.

they call my number, put some food on the counter and I say to myself "that ain't mine" because 1. It's definitely on a tray and not in a bag and I clearly said to go (twice) and 2. there's some extra hash browns on that beezy. I check my receipt, they didn't charge me for the hash browns, so I accepted it as a peace offering for the half hour it took for them to figure out my tits. I don't complain because as far as I'm concerned the whole here/to go distinction is pretty worthless anyway, plus, that's one less piece of trash I have to throw away. So I gather my stuff in one hand and skeedaddle.

I hop in my car, drive away, reach for the immaculate goodness that is sausage and biscuit, unwrap it, bring it toward my mouth and BANG! There's some gat dang bacon where my sausage should be.

Bacon biscuits, as they're called, or bacon egg and cheese biscuits, I should tell you are possibly the biggest abomination to the breakfast world, in contrast to the beautiful simplicity of the sausage biscuit. It gives you two thin, flimsy pieces of bacon, a thick, unseasoned, bland  chunk of egg, and a slice of cheese in between a powdery biscuit. None of the parts work in harmony with each other the only flavors are of grease and cholesterol...and blandness... It's like a mouthfull of shame. SHAME!

This never would have happened if I was working at Jack in the Box. If someone ordered a sausage biscuit, I'd respect the sausage biscuit because sausage biscuits are meant to be respected. If they ordered a bacon biscuit, I'd just slap them in the face, and if they showed me their tits I wouldn't hesitate to give them free tacos.

-so I turned my car around and burned the place to the ground
(No I didn't)
(but maybe I should have)



P.S. "tits" is the name given to my Jack in the Box VIP card supplied by some "Music Saves Lives" company that I got from the AP Tour that, contrary to what the (possibly illiterate) lady behind the counter thought doesn't expire until December 31, 2009(a fact the card clearly states...twice), which, contrary to what the lady behind the counter thought, comes AFTER June 2, 2009.

Every once in a while, there are times where you get the same message in different ways from different places. It's my policy to not ignore these situations.

Because I think God speaks through thoughts, situations, and the people around you.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot lately about how incredibly easy it is for me to give up...like whenever there's a significant obstacle in my way, I'm just like, "screw it" but how could I expect to get aything monumental done if I only take what comes easily, you know?

I don't know how or why I came to be surrounded by so many ridiculusly helpful people, but I might as well not let their efforts go to waste.

gotta talk less about what I want to do and more about what I'm going to do.
-------------

Things to do:

learn to juggle
learn to breakdance
learn magic tricks
start doing extra work
start doing charity work
go busking
leave the country
get a the phone
transfer the eff out of here

So, I make plans; lots of them. I dream, I aspire, I plan. This is true.

I'm probably just tooting my own overrated horn, but they're excellent, elaborate, artistic, engenius, etc. Maybe a little hyperbolic, whatever.

The problem is, I think, there are too many "if"s involved. By that I mean they rely on too many uncertanties at the base, the bass crumbles and I act all butthurt when they never get off the ground, all the energy spent planning becomes worthless, and I have to start re-planning.

I'm not going to take this time to cite an over-used, taken too seriously, wholistically irritating phrase about insanity that Albert Einstein said in a moment that was, at the time, extremely clever.

But I will say it's time to do something different.


Baby steps.



-This just in: Completely contrary to everything optopitrists previously believed, Marlon Barnes is, in fact, farsighted.

As a child, my favorite color was blue. There were only, like 12 options and blue was the most appealing one. Easy.

Growing up fascinated by art, turned blue and the  original 12 colors into categories for more specific shades like navy, indigo, cyan and perrywinkle and in a wave of self discovery I thried to find out what the specific name for the specific blue that was most pleasing to my specific eyes.

It took a ridiculous amount of time, for me to find out the answer was, simply, "blue".


I can't help but assume that's some kind of cosmic metaphor.