Rod Raglin > Recent Status Updates

Life on the White Dog Reserve is boring. So is reading about it.

Further to my investigation of other authors who address themes similar to what I write. This book is a struggle for me. Seems to lack focus.

I write eco-fiction, which I define as fiction of any genre that has a subplot that addresses an important environmental issue. I'm trying to identify other authors who address similar themes. This is one of them.

Halfway through and getting tired the theme of victimization of First Nations people overshadowing the storyline - or maybe that is the storyline? And by the way, Indigenous people aren't the only ones who appreciate and respect nature.

I think I'm reading the Canadian version of Dances With Wolves, I'm getting ready to be disappointed.

A First Nations elder once said the media depicted his people three ways: Dancing, Drunk or Dead.

I'd suggest that literature does the same and adds to more clichéd categories - Warriors and Mystics.

It's not only dishonest, but it's also getting very tiresome.

Have transgressed to skipping large junks of info on experimental music and attempting to find sections that advance the plot. If I knew I'd have to be a scholar of Greek mythology I would have given this a pass. The fate of the protagonist however, still holds my interest.

I've read Gardner's "how to" books and wondered if his own fiction actually achieved all the things he expected of others. Great opening sentence, very slow start with no clear indication of Goal, Motivation and Conflict yet and unsympathetic characters.

So far disappointing for one of the most revered teachers of creative writing.

Still hanging in.

Within a few pages of Celine, Heller trots out the pedigree of the main characters. Suffice to say they were unbearably ostentatious. I couldn't spend the time it would take to read this mystery with characters I couldn't stand. Do all his characters seeming Hemingway-esque to you - even the women? Besides I didn't relish another spiritual dissertation on the fly fishing that is always somewhere in his books.

Okay, I'll give David Means full points for trying a new approach, but that's all because it doesn't work, at least not for me. In my opinion reading a novel shouldn't be difficult, it should be either entertaining or enlightening or both.
Considering Means is short story writer of some significance you'd think he'd present the story's goal, motivation and conflict right up front.

I'm still waiting for something significant to happen in this novel. So far an upwardly mobile, ostentatious, professional couple's entitled, only child, college-attending daughter has become pregnant. I'm a third of the way through the book and that's it. Am I wasting my time?

Remarkable. I'm enthralled with the writing and characterization -intricate, complicated, sympathetic. Still early going so lots of time to be disappointed. Just saying...

This book is changing the way I think, which has been exactly what the title stats. Certain issues to me are too important to go unresolved even if I'm right and those who don't agree with me are idiots.

What do you think? Ever done the a paradigm shift in your way of thinking about certain things? If you're not getting anywhere maybe you should?

Having suspension of disbelief issues with this plot. It all hinges on the Prime Minister of a first world country going to a brothel for sex in a slum neighbourhood. How believable is that? What a minute, what about Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Jimmy Swaggart...? Maybe it's not such a stretch.

Can someone write graciously? That's how I'd describe the writing in this book by an icon of Canadian literature - witty, self-deprecating, and yes, illuminating. I've read so many "how to write" books that are just so much self-aggrandizement this is a refreshing change.