Yearly Archives: 2013

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane — A Review

ocean-lane-book

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel byNeil Gaiman

I had to find out the hard way so consider this a warning. Picking up The Ocean At The End Of The Lane and reading the first few pages will mean you will not be able to put it down until you are through. It will fill every spare moment and fill the full ones with anticipation for getting back to it. This is what happened to me yesterday and it was worth every word.

Such books are rare. Ones that are just the right length and compelling enough to read in a day. Rarer still are the ones that at once make you wish they had not ended so soon, yet are exactly as long as they should be. I wish the world were filled with books such as this.

The story is told through the memory of a seven year old protagonist. He is bookish and lonely. Naturally curious and suspicious. More at home in the worlds beyond and apart from ours than he is in his own. The story is told through these eyes. These are eyes we understand because we have all, as children, seen through them. Equally perplexed and powerless against a reality we all too often wished were fiction. Yet, all the while, what we simply long for is the comfort and familiarity and safety that we idealize as ‘home’ (whether or not our home meets this ideal). It is the only place any of us, ultimately, wish to be.

This is a book about going home.

It is lovingly written. But, perhaps even more importantly, it is beautifully edited. You can tell that great care and polish went into the editing process. I know that at least several drafts were shared among trusted and knowledgeable friends who provided feedback during it’s creation. As such, every word is where it needs to be. There is never too much or not enough. Always just enough to tell the tale and swiftly move the reader’s imagination along.

This is a book I know I will read over and over again. Perhaps I will find something new. Maybe, I’ll feel something that I did not feel the first time or see something in my mind’s eye that I overlooked. But perhaps, like the protagonist, I will keep returning to a place that felt like home to me, looking for myself between the pages.

Items Of Interest — #3

Another round of the items I found worth of short mention in the past week or so:

While personal online privacy and security (Yes, Virginia. You can and should have both.) continues to be an topic worthy of our discussion, I enjoyed this breakdown by Ben Brooks of how to best encrypt your stuff against “Starbucks Hacker Bob”. It might not protect you from the real spooks but it should help you in most public spaces.

Jack Cheng recently wrote one of the most insightful things on creativity I’ve read in a while. It is the idea that many of are motivated to create out of a desire to be loved. Yet, it is this desire that in fact keeps us from creating great art. That, great art is created out of the desire to love.

Here’s a very interesting post about Pope Francis’s daily meditation practice. It is a Jesuit twice-daily mindfulness practice called the examen, which is, as the name suggests, a quick examination of your state of mind.

While we are speaking of meditation and Catholicism, Pacem in Terris (which translates to ‘Peace on Earth’) is a Franciscan hermitage that is just a couple of hours away from me. I’m not Catholic (which is OK because they welcome all), but I would love to spend a two or three days alone here. I put it on my wish list.

Memez is a new iPhone game that looks like an interesting mashup of Tetris and puzzles.

Today, I’ll be doing all I can to attend the book signing for my friend Kelly’s latest book in the Fallen Blade series, Blade Reforged. I’ve read the first two in the series and they are fantastic. Now, I’m going to get the rest.

Have a great weekend!

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The Revolution Won’t Have To Be Televised

The old guard has not learned that yet. They still believe in a world where, if they don’t cover it, no one will find out. That the truth only exists the way they wish to tell it, when they wish to tell it, if they wish to tell the truth at all.

We on the ground know that time is long since past. That we don’t need them to televise revolutions and that there is no such thing as a local story. We know that history is best told by those who are living it and we have the tools to hear directly from the source.

We know that what seems to them like a tiny protest in another country is the spark of a full scale revolt. Even if their media does not cover it. We hear the truth the media doesn’t tell. We see the photos. We hear the news. And we watch it unfold in real time.

We know what seems to them as a lone whistle blower and a bad PowerPoint presentation to us is the hint of something deeper. The chink in the armor reveals the weakness within. And while they are focused on who and where the whistleblower is, the ‘we now informed’ are talking about who we are as a nation and what happened to the rights we are guaranteed (and what price is high enough to give them away).

What was to them was a lone state legislator’s opposition to a state bill not really worth covering, was to us a national story. While the old guard ignored the news, 100,000 people watched the live stream and millions monitored realtime coverage on social media. When they tried to change the rules or bend the truth, tens of thousands caught them in the act, called them on it, and forced them to change their tune.

There are no longer international stories, national stories, and local stories. There are only stories. Their power determines their reach and we decide their importance. The revolutions will not have to be televised because they no longer decide what they are. We do.

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