Father's reading list for me included Kipling, Maugham, and Chandler. He purchased anthologies of London and Hammett.  When I expressed a interest in the science fiction and fantasy genre, after having read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time series, he found a set of Jules Verne books to read.

hobbit

Father was a stickler when it came to literature.

Authors must have a good command of the English language, he said, and very few authors who write for young adults do. Authors must use proper grammar. They must make good use of an expansive vocabulary, rather than pander to the lowest common reader.They must apply strong tense structure. To him, any author that correctly applied the future perfect tense was an author of merit. 

His reading list for me included Kipling, Maugham, and Chandler. He purchased anthologies of London and Hammett.  When I expressed a interest in the science fiction and fantasy genre, after having read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time series, he found a set of Jules Verne books to read.

They bored me. All of them. I wanted Piers Anthony. Alan Dean Foster. Heinlein! In rebellion, I turned to comic books - quick, action-oriented, easy to hide behind other things. These, of course, were the antithesis of reading material to him, and being caught with a comic book meant a smack in the head and time in the corner, plus more assiduous attention to what I read in the future.

And then one Christmas I discovered - Tolkien. A cousin had decided that The Hobbit would be a great present for me, and to my surprise, my father let me keep it in my bookshelf, wizards and talking eagles and all! I read that book cover to cover until the pages fell off the spine in weary clumps. I found the Lord of the Rings books in the library and carried them into the house in plain sight, rather than stuffing them in the bottom of my backpack. Here was an author that graced both worlds of acceptable literature and interesting fantasy!

From there it was a short jump to the Narnia series, and while fantasy and sci- fi was never truly invited into the family bookshelves, it was begrudgingly given a corner of a shelf in my room.

To this day I cite Tolkien as one of my favorites, although I have many others since then. Neil Gaiman can do little wrong. I fell in love with Peter S. Beagle's Last Unicorn, and have in my collection a first edition of his Fine and Private Place. Older now, I dabble a bit with the material father gave me, and found a love for Steinbeck.  But the O.G.: Tolkien.

"Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance." Calvin Coolidge.

Feng Shui

When I graduated junior high school, my friends predicted that I would be a rock star. It was a tongue-in-cheek sort of prediction, because I was exactly the opposite sort of person that would become a rock star.

When I graduated high school, a different set of friends predicted that I would be a success, because "things come easy to me."

When I graduated college... Well, I can tell you that things do not come easy to me. There's work involved. There's thought. Planning. Analysis. You need to check all the angles. Map out the floor plan. Arrange all the furniture properly. If you don't, well, you get whatever comes at you. And that will be a jumbled mess of crap.

The Chinese used a system called feng shui to arrange their buildings according to the laws of both heaven and earth. Lay out things right, keep your world uncluttered, and qi just flows to you, surrounds you. That sort of planning is a metaphor for life. Just as you situate your belongings in a way most auspicious, so should you situate yourself in a way that best benefits you.

So no, I am not a rock star, although I daydream a little when playing Guitar Hero. But perhaps I don't have to work as hard to attain happiness in life, and that makes it seem like I'm a lucky fellow. But that's only because I made it happen that way.

Smart phones with Steve Jobs

The cell phone.

'cause then, I couldn't check and send emails, search the web, check Facebook, tweet... And take calls. I need to be constantly connected. Although -- I'm not sure why.