The last of my panels in NerdCon: Stories was “But It’s Just a Story: The Moral Responsibility of the Storyteller”. As aforementioned, I didn’t intend to attend, but I’m glad I did. It brought up a lot of issues that I hadn’t considered. Patrick Rothfuss started the panel with an anecdote about reading The Hobbit to his son. It starts quite dully with Gandalf and Bilbo having a conversation. Then the dwarves arrive, one by one, and more discussions and negotiations ensue. Nothing magical happens — except for one thing, Bilbo and Gandalf sit outside blowing smoke rings, competing with each other. And so, as impressionable young ones are want…
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I’m Going to NerdCon: Stories
This Friday, Hank Green announced NerdCon: Stories, a convention for storytellers of many mediums, would be coming to Minneapolis in October. This Saturday, I registered for it. I’ve been feeling that now is the time to go to a new convention. We all know Convergence didn’t work out, but I think that’s because it was an all-encompassing sci-fi crowd. Diverse interests with subject matter plus an established history means its something that needs to be enjoyed with friends. And young people have friends — friends who aren’t married or have kids, friends who can drop life for a weekend, friends with plenty of disposable income (and time). I’d been thinking…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2014
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews It’s kinda funny. It eschews notions of romance, and really, it’s more about the friend, who reminds me of Tony Goldmark. I couldn’t get that image out of my head — the deadpan, Internet snarker-troll, self-deprecating, black comedy hamball. And that’s what the book is really about. This guy is an amateur filmmaker and it talks about his love of weird, foreign, independent cinema and his friendship with Earl, a black urban youth. And in the background is Rachel, an acquaintance who is forced by Tony’s mother to hang out with because she’s dying of cancer. The story’s not about…
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The Books I Read: September – December 2011
Wow, it’s been a while since I did one of these, I almost forgot about them. The reason was that I hadn’t read enough books to necessitate a post. And you can blame this sucker: The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss I started this in August and didn’t finish until December. That’s unusual for me. If I buckle down, I can read a book in a week, average. But this mother fucker is 750,000 words, 1,000 pages long. More on that in a second. This book continues the adventures of Kvothe, the redheaded magic-user who can do no wrong, but somehow still seems to. Half of the book continues…
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The Books I Read: June – August 2011
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss Before George R. R. Martin released his latest doorstopper, this was the big epic taking up every fantasy geek’s time. My interest became piqued when Penny Arcade made a joke about the second book in the trilogy. As was my friend’s, who let me borrow the first book, The Name of the Wind. I loved it right away. The book is framed story about the life of a boy/man named Kvothe, a son of traveling actors. After his troupe is killed by a supposedly mythical person, he has to learn how to live and survive alone. His primary goal is to learn…
