The Ghost In Love by Jonathan Carroll

The Ghost In Love by Jonathan Carroll

The Ghost In Love by Jonathan Carroll is a story about love, death, and responsibility. It is not a traditional ghost story, it is more of a paranormal romance with a healthy piece of philosophy added in. The novel is about changing the natural order of things.

Ben Gould falls and hits his head while walking his dog. He is supposed to die, but chooses not to. This is a glitch in the program of the natural order of things. Something has changed inside him and made the world different for him.

The novel is wonderful and lyrical. Characters remember their most magical moments in life, a policeman remembers eating cheeseburgers with his friend after winning a shopping spree in a toystore, Danielle Voys remembers going on a date with her boyfriend at a chinese restaurant, an old lady dances for her lover.

Ben Gould's ghost named Ling, German Landis Ben Gould's girlfriend, Pilot the talking dog, Danielle Voy's are all very memorable characters. The angel of deaht is a minor character is as well. Many of the characters are in love with each other. Pilot was Ben Gould's girlfriend in a past life, Ling is in love with German Landis, and Ben Gould is having a tough time loving German Landis.

The setting is the modern era with some starkly contrasting fantastic elements. Cats and rats work together, there is a magical taste called ofi; ofi symbolizes the pure love between childhood friends.

The novel is nonlinear; it moves back and forth in time. This nonlinearity seems to state we are all composed of many different parts of our past all trying to vie for our current attention. In order for us to function well we must reach consensus inside ourselves.

This novel helped me feel a lot more positive about myself after reading it. It aims to help you realize the deeply satisfying moments in life. I think it is a bit more than just a novel; it is a statement about finding happiness in everyday things and taking responsibility for your life.

Good Afternoon, Comfortable

Johnny Gruelle Rapunzel-- Just a little touch of bedtime stories.


Good Afternoon



This morning, I read more of Prince of Stories The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman. Every time I pick this book up, I learn a little more. P. Craig Russell who is one of my favorite comic book artists drew a number of the Sandman comics. I really like Russell's opera comic adaptations, Parsifal, The Magic Flute, and Bluebeard. http://www.pcraigrussell.net/



I also found out that Jonathan Carroll who wrote Outside The Dog Museum and Sleeping In Flame is a major influence on Neil Gaiman's writing. Jonathan Carroll is one of my favorite authors. His web site is absolutely fantastic. http://www.jonathancarroll.com/index.php



This morning, I did some weeding of the finance section, spent some more time clearing out my desk, and made some minor adjustments to the displays. It was not a bad morning.

Comfortable

Sometimes I wish I could

Live like everyone else

Big car, big house, dreams

Perfect wife, perfect child, perfect

I wish the American Dream

Cloudy, sweet, false, pretentious

Working husband, working wife, working

Two incomes prosperous happy

But likes so many people

Cracks break up the dream

I am not a comfortable

American dreamer in Neverland

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll, Short Stories

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll is a collection of his short stories. All are set in a kind of magically realistic universe infused with an odd mysticism. Some of the stories in the collection I liked are Mr. Fiddlehead about an imaginary friend that grows up with its creator and changes her life. Another story is about a man who adopts an exceptional dog who causes some bizarre changes in the persons life, Friend's Best Man. The Jane Fonda Room is about a trip to hell where the person gets to watch all of Jane Fonda's movies for eternity. A Wheel In The Desert, The Moon On Some Swings is about a man trying to capture his last important images through photography as he goes blind. The writing in these short stories deals with issues like death, sorrow, mysticism, and the every day moments that seem to stretch into forever. There is a real sense of magic and wonder in the writing. Even with the magic and wonder it touches on ordinary every day life things and the present. This makes for some exceptional fantasy writing. His writing is both different than most other writers and touches close to the heart.

I don't often read short stories. Most of the time when I read short stories, it is to find new writers which I hven't read. I will pick up a recent anthology of science fiction or fantasy writers and look for short stories by people I haven't read before. After I read a few of the stories, I will look in the back of the anthology to read the brief biography of the writer that is usually included. If both the short story and the biography are interesting, I will often go look for books by the author so I can read them.

Anthologies also help when I have to find out about a style of literature which I have never read before like Brazilian Literature, or Scandinavian literature. These often give me a jumping off point to find other authors. Also because the stories are short, I can skip over the ones I don't like and be selective about which ones I am going to read.

Short stories are a very good point for looking for new authors. The general publishing pattern for many writers is to write several short stories to establish an audience before they attempt to write novels. Many publishing houses will not as readily accept manuscripts from novelists who have not written short stories first.

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After looking through Bloggers, Blogs of Note; I found three major science fiction and fantasy authors, David Brin, Robert J. Sawyer, and Neil Gaiman who used blogger as their blog platform. It is one of the little things which happens when you look through lists obsessively.

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I found another directory of blog literature sites this time with over 700 blogs listed. I am applying for membership to this list. It is really, really big.

http://metaxucafe.com/cafe/find_members/index/

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I also pinged my site today using http://www.pingoat.com/ to announce that I had updated my site. This is supposed to increase traffic to this site by letting search engines and directories know that you are keeping your site up to to date.