have to start somewhere

I don't know what the subject of this blog is. A journal (sigh), news pointers, an aggregating blog, or a record of my life in another country - it could be any of these things. Or a way to get me to write on a regular basis. It really is just the hardest thing for me to maintain any level of discipline. And I'm not sure that exposing my emotions in a public forum is the best way to start, but what the hell, I'll delete it if I can't take it.

I just finished Independent People by Halldor Laxness. It took me something on the order of 3 months to start and finish, after 3 or so false starts. I read at least 3 other novels in the interim: The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Eleven Minutes, by Paulo Coehlo, and After the Quake, by Haruki Murakami. I just got Snow by Orhan Pamuk out of the library. I love to read. It's writing that's difficult. Some people got it and some don't, and I'm inclined to think that I fall in the latter group. But being poor and following a hopeless dream are the subject of novels and poetry, so I'm going to do my best not to disappoint in that regard. I once told someone that I would be perfectly happy being a failed novelist, and from the looks of it I'm well on my way.

Independent People is truly a phenomenal novel. And it was made more vivid or real or immediate or whatever by going to Iceland after having read about 2/3rds of it. The guy was clearly a genius, if for nothing else than for creating a believable turn-of-the-century Iceland for 482 pages. Stuff like that used not to impress me in the slightest, but having tried it myself on a much smaller scale, I appreciate it all the more.