a let down

[decemberthirty]

Well, I finished -The Vision of Emma Blau.- Unfortunately, Ursula Hegi did not manage to change my feelings about multi-generational family epics. Although the book was beautifully written, it failed significantly capture my attention and the ending did indeed seem to simply peter out rather than carrying any significance. Oh well. I think it is very difficult to do a good job of a chronologically ordered life story (or in this case the chronologically ordered stories of several lives), because it is very difficult to create sustained conflict in that type of story and sustained conflict is what makes books interesting. Or at least it's one of the things that can make a book interesting. Books can also be interesting because of the author's use of language, because of the characters, because of the narrative structure, because of the ideas and themes the author discusses, etc. However, I find that all of that stuff works better when it has a sustained conflict to serve as the scaffolding for the characters, the language and all the rest. I may enjoy a book for its beautiful language or its clever narrative structure, but the books I love are the ones with the plots that draw me in, and that requires sustained conflict.

I don't know yet what I'll read next. I've read just about everything in the house that is even remotely interesting, so I probably won't have another book to write about until after I can get to the library this weekend.

P.S. If anyone who reads this happens to know how use italics, would you please share that information with me? I'm sick of my method of denoting titles, and would prefer to do it the right way. Thanks.

Comments

[prosicated.livejournal.com]

making italics is a simple html tag - slower than your current dashes but only by a few strokes. All html commands are framed in greater/less than signs. This is the way you let your browser know you're telling it how to read something.
You start an italicized section with the greater than sign (located over the comma) type an 'i' (for italic)and close the tag with the less than sign (found over the period). This command [i] tells a browswer to interpret anything past the tag as italics.
Then when you want the italicized section to end, open with a greater than sign, type a '/' (means "end") and the 'i' again and then close with the less than sign. This command [/i] tells a browser to stop displaying text in italics.

these are italicized
the text i just wrote looks like [i] these are italicized[/i] to you with the brackets replaced by the greater/less than signs.

i hope that made sense. You can substitute the i for a b if you'd rather bold text, etc.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I am shockingly computer illiterate, so I appreciate the help.

And see, now I can do it! I may just have to go back through all of my old entries and fix the titles... Nothing like a little procrastination on a boring Thursday at work.

[prosicated.livejournal.com]

yay! i am the world's worst teacher for these things, but i know html, so i thought i'd try. =)
that sounds like a very good way to procrastinate. i was going to make my journal friends only but that's beyond my procrastinative abilities today. i'm enjoying my work. =)