Month: June 2005

Long Time Gone

I apologize for having written so little the past several days. This past week a group from Harding University came over and I spend most of my time with them. Each morning I tagged along as they split into group and distributed flyers throughout the neighborhoods. Every evening they held a meeting which Amy and I also attended. So, from about 8 in the morning until 11 or 12 at night I was very busy, excepting maybe a few hours in the afternoon. And even this time was often spent either doing my French homework or attending class.

To have spent the last 8 months doing absolutely nothing, it was quite a shock to the system to suddenly be busy for 12 hours a day.

On Saturday we all did some visiting. We went to the only concentration camp in France. It was not a place of mass execution for the Jews but rather a work camp for German criminals and members of the French resistance. Yet still, thousands of people were malnourished, tortured, experimented upon, and murdered. It was a very harrowing experience. One I’ll not likely forget.

After the camp, we visited a castle. It was used for defensive/military purposes so was not nearly as beautiful or ornate as other castles in France, but it was still quite interesting.

In a day or two I shall post a more extensive entry about these two sites, along with some photographs. For now, I wanted to chime in, since the blog has gone to neglect over the last several days.

The African Queen by CS Forester

the african queen book

See, I told you I would still write reviews. I’m just eliminating the stress that I had built into them.

The fact that it took me over 2 months to read the mere 136 pages that make up CS Forester’s The African Queen tells a great deal about the quality of the writing. Classic film buffs will note that this is no fault of the story, for it made a brilliant motion picture starring the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. The problem, then, lies in the telling.

In Creative Writing 101 writers learn the importance of showing and not telling. Forester must have been sick that day for he spends his entire novel telling the reader exactly how the characters feel, think, and are. He never allows his character’s actions or words to give the reader an emotional response, he spends his pages telling us how to feel.

There is no chance to gain insight into a character through what they do, for Forester is much too busy telling all the pertinent details. There is no subtlety in the text. If we don’t get something the first time, rest assured, he will repeat himself two or three times.

What will keep the reader reading is the power of the story itself. For many years Rose has been assisting her missionary brother in the heart of the African Jungle. When he dies suddenly she enlists Charlie, a gin-swigging rough and tumble riverboat captain, to ship her back to civilization. Along the way they must traverse deadly rapids, disease-infected hoards of mosquitoes, German soldiers, and a river that is not meant for the sturdiest of boats, never mind the old, rickety African Queen.

Forester fills his tale with plenty of chills and spills. There is enough action to keep the pages turning, and an old-fashioned romance to keep the lovers interested. Truth be told, there is almost too much action. In nearly every paragraph, some new obstacle presents itself that must be overcome. Each obstacle is overcome, of course, and that a bit too quickly. Though the obstacles are fretted over and stressed about, Charlie and Rose seem to overcome them within a few sentences; only to find another one waiting around the corner. It would have served the novel better to have had fewer problems, and more struggle to overcome them.

Forester has a keen eye for mechanical detail. He gives good exposition over the mechanics of making an old steamer like the African Queen keep going. He paints a detailed picture of the African landscape, as seen from a riverboat. The physical details of the boat and its surroundings are all apt, and true. It is the abilities of humans that bring an air of falseness.

Rose, though having never piloted a boat before, in a very short time somehow manages to master the intricacies of sailing a difficult steamer through dangerous rapids. Likewise, she sheds her moral inhibitions like a heavy coat in the sultry African climate. We are led to believe that an innocent, sheltered missionary can suddenly give up all of her beliefs and morals to a dirty, foul-mouthed, drunk all in a matter of days.

Ultimately I would have been better off having just watched the movie again and left the novel on the bookshelf. The movie retains all of the excitement and grandeur of the story and elevates the storytelling to the level of a classic. The book seems flat in comparison.

Burning Down

I’ve been feeling a little rugged and ragged of late. The old burnout is creeping precariously close to my entrails.

I know, I know, burned out from what? You don’t do a darn thing, you lazy mother scratcher, you’re likely saying. What’s there to get ragged from, living the good life in France, amongst cheese, wine and beauty?

And I’ll agree. But the burnout is still creeping in. When I decided to start reviewing items on my blog way back when, I decided to review basically everything I read, heard, or watched. Obviously heard has been thrown completely out since I’ve not reviewed a record pert near never. But I have adamantly reviewed every book, every film that I have consumed into my brain cells. I generally run behind in these categories, being 2 or 3 reviews from being caught up at any given moment. I’ve even let this fact keep me from consuming something else.

“No, let’s not watch that movie tonight, I’ve got too many reviews to write”. One might have heard me say to my wife, were you a bug on the wall, or some crazed French pervert listening in. Or that book I’m all but 10 pages from completing sits on the shelf being unread for fear of adding another review to my growing to-do list.

What the crap!? I’ve started letting my poorly written reviews get in the way of my enjoyment of art. Suddenly it is work, and it shouldn’t be work, should it? I love movies. I thoroughly enjoy discussing their merits, deconstructing their value, and reviewing them. I’ve been putting the review first, of late. Well, forget that junk.

So, lately, I’ve been watching a lot more movies, reading a lot more books, and not doing any writing. I do want to review these things. I do want to keep up the posts. But I’m taking a bit of a break. I’ll write when I’m inspired to do so, and not fret about having a stack of reviews I haven’t gotten to.

To wit, I now have the following reviews to write, which you may or may not ever get.

Sin City
The Cold Six Thousand
The African Queen
The Wild Bunch
Young Guns
Grand Illusion
Dracula’s Daughter
Son of Frankenstein
X-Files Season One
Dr. Katz

And I’ll be watching another movie tonight! Caution to the wind I tell you.!

Exploding Blogs

Editor’s Note: As you may have guessed there was a time when I was really trying hard to get more hits, to gain more traffic to this blog.  I tried a lot of different things, including using various websites that promised to bring you traffic. I haven’t really cared about my numbers in years, and BlogExplosions no longer exists, but I’m keeping this post up anyway.

I suppose almost everyone has noticed the blinking advertisement in my sidebar these last few weeks. BlogExplosion is a site designed to bring more traffic to your blog. It is a pretty ingenious program, actually. The way it works is that you sign your blog up into the program. In order to move traffic to your site, you have to view other people’s blogs.

With the main program, you must view the other blogs for thirty seconds to earn credit for your own blog. The more blogs you view, the more credits you earn. The more credits you earn, the more people view your blog.

They’ve set it up to keep the cheating to a minimum. When you view a blog, there is a frame at the top which holds a timer counting backward from 30 seconds. When the thirty seconds is over you are told to click on a certain number. Various numbers are scattered throughout the frame. I like this system because it keeps people from clicking through the blogs super fast, without looking at them. It also creates trouble for anyone looking to create a macro to click the mouse every thirty seconds. In theory, this means everyone is actually looking at your blog for at least thirty seconds.

Of course, theory isn’t always reality. It is very simple to have the blog in the background while you are surfing other websites, checking e-mail, or playing games. I often have BlogExplosion running while I’m doing my normal computer work. Every thirty seconds or so I flip over and click the right button earning me more credits. The only time I actually look at a blog is if something quickly catches my eye at the top of the page.

This has been good training for my own blog. This is, in part, why I started adding the Amazon images and brought in the new banner. Images catch the eye a lot better than plain text. It also makes me work harder in being a better writer.

If you are looking to bring more traffic to your blog I would recommend BlogExplosion. Besides the method I have described to bring in traffic, they have several other methods. You can use some of your surfing credits to enter a monthly lottery. You can create ad banners that run alongside the timer while others are surfing. They’ve even got a battle of the blogs thing going now. The site is a lot of fun, and it definitely works. I’ve seen a big increase in traffic in the two weeks I’ve been using it. We’re still talking traffic in the hundreds, not thousands, but for one little blog with no advertising, that’s pretty good.

One other thing I have noticed since using BlogExplosion is that my traffic from search engines has increased. Many of my reviews are now on the first or second page of a Google search. I’m also hitting much higher than I ever did for a variety of searches on many of the search engines. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but I suspect the fact that I started getting more traffic alerted the engines that my site may be worth going to. Or something.

This is actually better news than just getting more traffic. As I said, much of the traffic coming from BlogExplosion isn’t really great traffic. I’m sure my blog has remained in the background of many a computer for the requisite 30 seconds and has quickly been moved away from it. But it is exciting to think someone is searching for a review of the Hitchcock classic, To Catch a Thief and reading what I have to say about it.