The Terror, The Terror (ugh, I can't believe I went there)

I went camping with the family for the Labor Day weekend, staying in the ever-expanding cabin in the woods. My dad and my uncle have been building it for several years, and it's finally at the stage where it's truly livable and a thing to behold. Oh, and apparently my brother gets it when my father dies, but that's a subject for another post.

Oh, and I took a bunch of pictures. Another post too.

Basically, I just wanted to mention (very briefly), that I don't read a lot anymore. I used to be something of a reader, I guess, and still own many books, but they just sit, gathering dust or water stains.

Now, my evil friend tyranist, now he's a reader. That dude reads--literally--a book a week*, and has a library as vast as Paris Hilton and Courtney Love's collective venereal diseases.

But me, I don't do it like I used to.

It's crazy how life has now shifted into overdrive, and mostly I just watch it spin by, like the merry-go-round Mr. Cooger rode in "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

I don't write as much as I'd like to, I don't blog as much as I'd like to, I don't read as much as I'd like to, I don't watch as much TV as I'd like to**, I don't socialise as much as I'd like to, and mostly I don't live as much as I'd like to.

But anyway, I took The Terror by Dan Simmons with me on the camping trip, and I'm really glad I did. The novel tells the story of an 1847 attempt by two British ships, The Erebus and The Terror, to reach the then-mythical Northwest Passage up near the unexplored Arctic. Both ships end up getting stuck in the ice, and after a particularly cold summer, they are frozen in for another winter, with the very-real possibility that both ships will be lost, and their crews starved, before spring comes again. Oh, and there's something out there, in the blinding snow and ice . . . something hungry.
It's got all the cool period nautical details that I've grown fond of recently, as well as the chilling (no pun intended), unknowable horror I've loved all my life, and I . . . well, really the best thing I can say about it is that while I was reading it yesterday, my mom commented that I must have really been enjoying it, due to the huge goofy grin on my face.

Maybe I should try reading more often.

Still no go on the living, though.

Rish "The Litirate One" Outfield

*And if he travels anywhere, it's easily two books.

**How many people can say that??