The Christopher Hawkins Website

The problem with broadcasting to the universe that you finally have enough time to do a thing is that, sooner or later, the universe will step in to fill that time with something else. Or, in my case, a string of something elses. One else after another, after another, after another. My new son Benjamin is, hands-down the best of those elses. And the worst of those elses are, I hope, finally behind me and my family. So, what better time than now to revisit this project, which turns one year old in less than two months?

My son, Benjamin James Akira Hawkins was born on New Year's Day! 8 pounds, 3 ounces. Mom and baby are back home and Ben's big brother Tim is adjusting well. Everyone is healthy and happy, which makes it a great way to kick off the new year!

Avast, me bucko! Ye be knowin' what today is, dontcha, lads? Of course ye be knowin', cause if ye don't, it's the plank for ye, and a trip to Davy Jones' Locker! And dead men tell no tales! Today be a day of villains, black sheep, and really bad eggs. It be a day of peg legs, and eye patches and parrots on yer shoulder. A day of pillage and plunder and buryin' treasure. And if that be too much of a commitment for ye, at least ye can do yer best to talk less like a lubber and more like a true sea dog!

Melmoth is now, officially, off my list!  Now that it's all over, I can't say that I enjoyed much of it.  Sure there were some amazing passages here and there, sprinkled like bits of corn in this giant turd of a book.  Historical context aside, it's just not well written, the intertwined stories are not all that interesting, and I'm very happy to not be reading it any more.

So, back to the drawing board, AKA The List:

1) 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke
2) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

I'm a little more than halfway through Melmoth the Wanderer, the latest book to come up randomly on my reading list.  No matter how much I try, I can't seem to really get into it.  In fact, I'm finding it more than a little boring, a fact which bothered me a little.  It is, after all, a seminal work of horror literature, and being a horror guy I expected it to speak to me a whole lot more than it does.

Well, A Confederacy of Dunces is all behind me now.  Not a bad novel, but I can't really say that it blew me away.  Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood.  Maybe, coming off of reading The Road, and before that Kavalier and Clay, my expectations for Pulitzer-winning novels is just too high.  Whatever the reason, it wasn't really the book for me.  Still, I'm glad I read it.

The past year has been a little nuts for me.  Between work, family, running

LitMatch.net

, and all the good and bad that life has thrown at me, I haven't had much in the way of free time, which means I haven't had a lot of time for one of my favorite passtimes, which is reading.