Category Archives: Books

NaNoWriMo Win!

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I’m taking this text straight from Pressed & Bound, so sorry for the Twitter people who are seeing this twice, but it’s an exciting time! Dance Party!


This post will be short and sweet, since I just pounded out 4,000 words, but I just want to bring to the masses the news that I, Garret S. Preston, Esquire, has officially completed NaNoWriMo for the first time! And one day early to boot!

NaNoWriMo Win!

It has been a grueling month of typing and falling behind and then typing some more, but we have done it. We have claimed the golden chalice of success and are currently holding it tenaciously to our bosoms, the excitement and elation are vibrant for all to see. I have posted on the sidebar the image you receive for winning. That’s about it, really, save for a PDF certificate of badassery that I will print and hang on my wall next to my college diploma. Which is more important? It’s honestly hard to tell.

But alas I leave this post tonight on the highest of horses. It is well passed my bedtime, but I believe I will be up late into the night, partying and drinking mead until the great sun doth awaken the land. Also just so I can stop typing in novel-speak.

Dance Party!

Look at 'em go!

About A Fortnight

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It’s been roughly two weeks since I’ve last thrown anything up here. That sentence actually sounds a little gross after reading it again. There hasn’t been an incredible amount of exciting news going on around my world. Like normal, I’m pounding away at a new novel. Currently A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin. It’s a hefty tome, and I still have two more in the series after this, but it’s a great curl up and read novel. Does anyone have a fireplace that I can borrow?
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Post 400; Also: Cool Stuff

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As you may already know, this post is the 400th post to this website. Congratulations everyone! We’ve done it!

In other news, I turned 26 yesterday. It is a feat not many have accomplished. Well, probably a lot of people have now that medicine has figured out that bleeding patients and putting puss in wounds is probably a bad thing. This is what I look like on my first full day being old(er):

OLDY MCOLD OLD

Outside of that nonsense, I also want to report that Pressed & Bound has had a make over. Also, I want you guys to know about this totally awesome artist named Keith Thompson, who is doing the art for the novel Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. You can find more about that here, but suffice it to say, the art is great and the book sounds interesting, so check it out.

That is all. Let’s hope that this year I win a million dollars on the lotto.

Help Me (Not) Buy A Kindle

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Here’s the deal, folks, I have enough money to purchase the all too sexy Amazon Kindle, and I cannot decide whether or not I should lay down the funds for such a device. I need your help.

I’m pretty conflicted on the decision because on the one hand it’s a full-on, super-duper book reading machine of awesomeness. I mean, look how long that Amazon page is. You have to scroll like a mile to get to the bottom of that thing. That’s Grade-A quality right there; you can feel it. You can carry around all of your books with you, the battery lasts for a decade weeks, and you can pick up new books with a push of a button (and with monies). My bookshelf right now is overflowing. I have books just stacked up around the bookshelf like some well learned hobo. It would be great to have one thing were all the books go; a book vacuum, if you will. “I need to read this book! Well hot damn, it’s right here on the Kindle, woo!”

On the other hand, what’s greater than having a big ol’ novel in your hands? The texture, the smell, the ability to carry it around and say “Yeah, I’m reading this” in your head as people walk passed that could care less about you or your book. Those things are all great. Even if my bookshelf is falling apart with use, the thought of more books stacking tall on the ground is a good thought. I shared some similar thoughts over at P&B recently in regards to audio books. The process of reading outside of the words themselves is something that’s attractive to me, so I don’t know how it would be to take that away. Just like how people have a hard time substituting cigarettes for something else because they just need that ritual of smoking, I really like having the physical medium.

And that brings me to the point of everything: has anyone had any experience with a Kindle or other E-Book reader? Did you like it? Did it suck? Do you think I should just man up and buy one so that we can start saving the earth by not cutting down trees for books? I really would like to have one, but I don’t know if I could replace turning pages the old fashioned way.

Yay! A New Book!

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So I finally finished Anathem, which I’m sure you’ve seen to the side of the page for a good couple of months. Last night, because I’m reviewing the novel today, I knocked out 90 pages to finish up the epic tome. In doing so, I think I found a new way to read that will not only help me absorb the material but keep a steady pace.

As you all might know, I’ve been having trouble finding good reading places and have lately been struggling to read anything for any long period of time. Last night was no exception. For about an hour I couldn’t seem to lock in any great reading positions, although I did settle on sitting in my chair upright and that helped. After that hour, I became curious as to how long it was taking me to finish any one page, so I could somewhat meter out how long it would take to finish about 60 pages. Remembering that my fancy phone had a stopwatch feature, I pulled out the device and started it up. As it turns out, it takes me roughly 1.5 to 2 minutes per page, so 60 pages would be a couple of hours. After every page, I would hit the “lap” button to keep an updated record. This simple act became a very good driving force to try and keep pace, which not only made me stay within the time frame I allotted myself, but also to stay awake. Totally awesome.

Now, because I like punishment, I’m going to start reading Quicksilver, which is 960 pages. It’s also by Stephenson, so it will be awesome, just really long.

Best Reading Places?

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I need some help people. Lately I’ve been hindered by regular reading places. Normally, I would find that laying down in either my bed or on the couch would provide the most comfortable reading areas, but lately all they serve is to make me go straight to sleep. I need to find a better way to read. I think my body has associated reading with sleep and that’s not a good thing.

I’ve been thinking of trying out the radical idea of reading while sitting upright in a chair, but I assume only heretics and charlitans do so, so I haven’t tried yet. It does sound like an attractive alternative, though.

So where do you read? On the floor, through the door? In a box with a fox? Something needs to change because I need to get my efficiency with reading up a bit. I’m running out of books to review for the show.

I'm Failing At NaNoWriMo

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This is the start of the second week of NaNoWriMo, and to date I have written a total of 0 words for the event. Time to make excuses:

  1. Pressed & Bound went nuts last week. I lost the .com (be sure to check your email for expiration notices!) and had to change everything over to .net. That took a good couple of days to wrangle together. It also helped make Episode 56 not get uploaded yet, although we’ve done Episode 57 already. Maybe Episode 56 will be our “floor 13″: you know it’s supposed to be there, but it’s disappeared.
  2. There are an exorbitant amount of games that I have to/need want to play. Currently I’m waste deep into Fable II, slaughtering hundreds of hobbes and buying up real estate in Bloodstone. Also, Wrath of the Lich King comes out in less than a week, so last week I’ve been gearing up – figuratively and literally – for the game. My guy is a total badass, and I’m sorry Other WoW Nerds, but, no, I do not play Combat-Swords. I like playing Subtlety, get over it. I know I don’t do as much DPS, but I really don’t care; it’s more fun my way. Shadowstep ftw. Additionally, there’s Gears of War 2 to worry about and Left 4 Dead and Rock Band 2. Seriously, there are too many games.
  3. Anathem.
  4. Work. I think I’d be more productive if I only had to go to work for maybe 4 hours a day. And I say that because every day I don’t do 8 hours of work. If it was concentrated I’d have more reason to get stuff done in that period of time. But that’s all an aside that’s not for this time and place.

So there you have it. A few excuses for me not having written anything yet. Had I been writing the average daily wordage you need to complete 50,000 words in a month, I’d be up to about 11.5k. As it stands now, if I want to start today, I will need to knock out 2,173 words per day to finish on time. That’s not horribly out of the question, but we’ll see how it goes. I might just submit the novelette I wrote a few years ago, but that would be cheating because I definitely didn’t write that in an month.

Comics Are Awesome

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As you may or may not know, I like to read a lot of books. Until recently, I’ve only read books. I have never really touched too many of their drawn counterparts. As a kid I hated both books and comics, so I never developed that adoration for stories drawn to page. And that is an unfortunate circumstance, because as an adult, I’ve grown to really like the few that I’ve read.

Again, until about last November, I had not really been interested in comic books at all. My hatred for reading regular books came in a couple years prior, but it still took another two years to get into comics as a viable means to get a good story across. I don’t know what it was, but for some reason, I was predisposed to think that all comics follow the pattern where you buy a thin, twenty page leaflet with a short, un-ending story inside, forcing you to buy the next edition to further things along. That model never appealed to me. I really like my stories to have a beginning, middle, and end. And, of course, I’ve read books that didn’t “end,” but those usually are only divided into two or three novels to complete the story. So it was to my great surprise to find comics that fit this aesthetic. And since reading my first one, I’m somewhat hooked to this visual story medium.

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