With that warning in mind, I’ve decided that it’s probably best that I actually start to write. So perhaps the best place to start would be with the enemy…reading. I love to read. I love books. My apartment is crammed full of them. My tastes tend to be pretty streamlined. Sci-Fi is perhaps my favorite genre. I enjoy authors with a bent toward hard sci-fi. The writing needs to be relatively difficult and dense or it doesn’t hold my interest for long. Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert (and son) are a couple of my favorites, but for me nothing compares to a Larry Niven novel. He has mastered the art of “tourist” sci-fi. Exquisite adventures exploring new worlds through the eyes of someone who is as unfamiliar with it as we are. The Mote in God’s Eye, Ringworld, The Integral Trees, The Legacy of Heorot, A World Out of Time just to name a few. The stories are riveting and I had the hardest time putting any of them down.

Outside of sci-fi, there are a couple of fantasy writers that I enjoy. Of course, no one tops Tolkien. The Silmarillion is by far my most favorite novel. I’ve read it several times and just keep going back to it. Perhaps it’s that it speaks to my interests in religion and mythology (more on that later). Over the past few years, I’ve been enjoying the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, who’s death last year caught all of us off-guard. The final book (the 12th!) in the series not yet complete, but luckily there are rumors that he left enough notes and instructions with family and his editor that the final novel will be completed. So many unanswered questions!

Now we come to philosophy, religion, and mythology, topics that are at once intimately linked and yet vastly different. I tend to approach them all as one. I’m sure much of later blogs will tend toward discussions of these topics, but for now…reading! It was one moment that started my interest in these. I randomly stumbled across an airing of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth on our local PBS channel. If you haven’t seen it, do so immediately. It’s life changing. I couldn’t take in enough of what he was saying. At this stage I see Campbell as the highest current understanding of human mythological experience. So, I’ve come to my appreciation of philosophy sort of backwards. Campbell mentioned Jung so much…that I had to check him out. I get what Jung is saying..archetypes and all that, and I get how Campbell’s view grew out of that, but I didn’t feel particularly drawn to his ideas. But wait! He writes a lot of reference to Nietzsche, so I moved to reading him. What can I say…I was blown away. I have yet to read an author of any genre who’s writing style does more for me. Thus Spoke Zarathustra has become one of the most important books in my life. I tend to see the world in a way that is very much in line with Schopenhauer…although, I’ve found that I’d like to see things more like Nietzsche. I’m sure I’ll expand on this in later posts and you’ll see what I mean.

So, now, I write. I’d bet that most of my writing will be about reading, but I have a few of my own writings to throw in as well.

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