We now pause for some Tooth-related issues

Just thought I would take a brief moment to explain why I haven't posted yet this week.

Last week I had the joy of having a tooth extraction, I lost a crown and was informed that there weren't really any other options.

My dentist (a very nice fellow, btw) sent me across to a specialist for the extraction and although it went well, I've spent the last few days in a lot of discomfort, which has finally cleared up, so expect a book review tomorrow...

also, kids, brush your teeth!

So I'm now 39...

Earlier this week I celebrated my 39th birthday with some camping and a trip to The Louisiana Purchase, a wonderful little Creole and Cajun restaurant here in Edmonton.

Also I had my second sugary treat since June 1st.  It was a chocolate truffle cake and it was DELICIOUS!

The no sugar thing goes pretty well so far.  Next up for me will be skipping September so I can enjoy both Canadian Thanksgiving and Halloween treats come October.

Anyway, I realized that I had been neglecting my blog this week so wanted to swing by and say HI!

Next up will be a review of Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospels - which I'm almost finished and am really REALLY enjoying!

We Now Return to our Regularly Scheduled Program

And as it's almost been a week since my last post, a quick run down of last week is in order.

From Wednesday to Friday I was at a Statistical Literacy Institute, which was actually a lot of fun and really interesting.

Then we hit Oscar weekend and I was focusing on getting my last few movies watched before the big event...

So here we are, Monday morning, and it's all going to go back to normal, so don't worry, I'll be chatting about my regular reading, viewing, etc. every day for the rest of the week to make it up to you.

Thanks all!
Bookmonkey

I've got October Covered!

Hi All, just a quick heads up that I've finally figured out my theme for this year's October Blog-a-thon (is that a word?) and it's kind of crazy but, I'm going to focus on on some books.

Yup - rather than hitting the movies again (although there will be some movies), and instead of checking out some comics (although I may mention some of those as well), this year I'm going to be looking at the Horror imprint from Penguin Classics.

So get ready to join me on a deep dive into six classics of horror literature… if you dare.

Actually, just join me - the reading should be fun and I'm a little hesitant to start a game of dares online.

Game Review: Dead Space 3

As a quick side note before I get into this review, I'd like to thank The Parched Page for the loan of the game - having read about my excitement over Dead Space 2, he very kindly sent me his copy of Dead Space 3, and although it didn't end up working (I have a PS3 and it was an X-Box copy), I appreciate the loan none the less - also it showed me just how cool bloggers can be.

On to the game - Like many series, I was intrigued by the first, fell in love with the second, and wanted to like the third a little more than I actually did.  Dead Space was such a creepy, terrifying story which mixed fast zombies and a very Aliens-style vibe to create a truly terrifying story.

Dead Space 2, was a strong follow up, had a lot of sequences that were pretty fantastic (and also horrible), and had some sequences that were really interesting on a more cerebral level as well.

Dead Space 3 (and to be fair, I didn't take advantage of two key aspects - the co-play feature or building my own weapons), put much of the action on a single planet, which took away from the zombies-in-space feeling i liked so much from the first two, and the addition of cultist enemies didn't feel quite right to me - I prefer the man vs. environment vibe of the earlier games, this just del like adding a new enemy class to the game.  I did like the new enemies that moved incredibly fast - they were both strange and challenging.

In the end the game was fun, but I felt a bit of a let down compared to the first two.  A good few weeks of play but I'm not sure I'd revisit it for a while.

Things I've Noticed: Theme Months can be fun!

Having just spent a month focusing entirely on one topic, Hack/Slash by Tim Seeley, I'm back to do the regular bloggity-blog stuff now!

In some ways I view my theme months as vacations - even through I spent a lot of time focussed entirely on one topic, whether a comic, a YA vampire series, or a style of movie, what I also do is build up a backlog of posts to write in November.

Last month I saw more than a few great Horror movies I hadn't seen before, read the new Stephen King novel Doctor Sleep, and finished the PS3 Game The Last of Us.

So now, even though I've still going to have to write each of these posts, I've now got a whole bunch of raw material in my reserves, and all because I've spent my last month focusing elsewhere.

Which is pretty great.

So there you go - if you haven't tried a theme-month for your blog, it has all sorts of bonuses.

Things I've Noticed: When I was 35, It was a very good year...

I’m turning thirty-six on Saturday, so as I sit here typing I’m thinking of all the stuff I’ve done in the last 367 days, and overall I’ve done pretty well.

 

I’ve kept up with my blogging; three posts a week every week (over three years now) and although some of them could have been pretty short, they have all continued to let me gush about my favourite genres, and reading and life in general.

 

I’ve completed my first third of Library School (which I bragged about here)

 

I examined the trend of re-imagining in Horror cinema

 

I got to go to the Alberta Library Conference.

 

I found my favourite Horror Comedy of the last seven years (since Shawn of the Dead)

 

I got to spend the day before their birthday with both of my kids for the first time in six years.

 

I found my favourite Horror video-game since Resident Evil 2 back in 1998

 

And most importantly I got to spend another year married to the nicest lady I’ve ever met.

 

Man, if 35 was this awesome – I can’t wait to see 36!

Things I've Noticed: The Bookmonkey FAQ part 1

One of the things I really enjoy reading on other peoples blogs are the various “Frequently Asked Questions” sections they have, and have decided to follow suit.

 

Only one real problem – I’m not frequently asked that many questions.

 

So.... I guess I’ll just ask myself some questions and then answer them, but I’ll list this as the Bookmonkey FAQ part 1 so that if I get some other questions in the next month or so I can answer them as well.

 

So here we go; questions 1 – 5

 

Where did you get the name Bookmonkey?

Totally easy – I’m a huge fan of the Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and my favourite character in the series is the librarian of Unseen University, who happens to be an organutan. The internet being what it is, Librarianmonkey, Oragutan-Librarian, Orangu-tarian, Discworldmonkey and a number of other names already existed, but Bookmonkey was up for grabs!

 

Why “The Wisdom” of Bookmonkey? 

Someday I hope to be remembered as a pretty wise guy (not a pretty wiseguy) and also I thought the title would be catchy and therefore easy to remember.

 

Whatever Happened to those “You Owe It To Yourself” posts you used to do?

Well, I got a good ten of them out there and then started worrying that they may be coming across as too lecture-y, so I took my favourite one and changed the topic to Genre Character of the Week.

 

Speaking of those different posts (You Owe it to yourself, Genre Character, Things I’ve Noticed, etc.) Whatever happened to my favourite Why I Love Horror

Honestly – I kind of lost track of that one, but should really get back into it.  Also I should figure out how the folks at Blogger will let me put links to each of those topics from my main page.

 

Finally, You spend each October looking at a popular topic in Horror (Re-imaginings, Twilight, and (mild Advertisement) the upcoming look at the Saw Franchise), so why don’t you dedicate a month to Fantasy or Science Fiction each year?

Honestly?  Those month-long sessions take a lot of my time; I need to design artwork and get my BFF Mike to create a new banner, I actually have to watch/read everything I want to talk about, and finally, my wife only has so much patience for me to spend time focusing on a topic of little interest to her (October 2010 – The Twilight Saga, was a long and lonely month for her).

 

So there you go – if any of you out there have questions you’d like to know the answer to, feel free to send them my way, either by the comments or a simple email to bookmonkey00k@yahoo.ca

 

300 Posts

Today marks the three hundredth entry I’ve made on my blog, and although I won’t be celebrating my two-year blog-aversary for another couple weeks (August 19th), I thought it would be good to use today’s post to describe my favourite parts of being a blogger in a top five list. So here we go:

Bookmonkey’s Top Five favourite things about being a blogger

5) Blogging has actually got me way out of my comfort zone – before I started blogging if you asked me to come out to some strange new activity I’d probably say no. As I am now in constant need to have new stuff to talk about here, my answer is definitely a yes (most of the time).

4) Blogging has help me respect the blogs of others – before I started blogging I took a look at a few blogs that impressed me, but wasn’t a regular reader of any blog. Since I started blogging I’ve got much better about publically following other blogs and making sure to comment where I can (comments are special little bursts of awesome every time I come across them – or they are SPAM, but what the heck – a comment is a comment)

3) Blogging has helped ensure I keep up to date on movies, TV and books, as well as reading my classics. Knowing that I have an online book review due each week has definitely helped ensure that I keep up my reading speed; otherwise I’d have quickly begun to run out of things to say. I tend to average around ten books a month and I owe a big part of that to all of you.

2) Blogging helped me become an “A Student” – growing up I was really good at gettings 90s in the classes I loved (English and Drama) and 50s in everything else. A large part of this came down to my reluctance to write. I read a lot, but my out-put wasn’t great. After writing a mini-essay three times a week for a year, I started noticing that the 2000 word essays I needed to do for University didn’t seem to bug me as much, and eventually I began to enjoy writing them. Once this happened my grades started going up and all because I started giving myself some weekly homework.

1) Blogging led me to the Blogosphere. Before I started blogging I had one blog I regularly visited, the one run by my favourite author, Neil Gaiman. Since I started blogging the number has long since run into the dozens as I am more and more impressed and awed by the quality of material I find out in the blogosphere, from blogs on Horror and Nutrition through to blogs which keep me updated on what my BFF is watching, I just can’t stop being impressed by my fellow bloggers.

Thanks everyone!

Things I've Noticed: Keeping your blog clean can be tough

On Tuesday I was speaking to my BFF Mike for our regular coffee break chat when he let me know that he could no longer access my blog from his place of work. When he tried to go to my site he was met with the message

THIS SITE HAS BEEN BLOCKED DUE TO QUESTIONABLE MATERIAL

HATE : OTHER

So of course I immediately went through my last weeks worth of tags to see what I could have done to trigger such a response from his IT department. Here's what I found

* Book Reviews, Haunted Houses, Dollhouse Murders

* Things I've Noticed, Young Adult Fiction

* Amy Carter, Ann Reed, Curse of the Cat People, The Sixth Sense, Val Lewton

* E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Favourite Kisses, The Princess Bride, Valentine's Day

* Colin Farrell, Planning, Ryan Reynolds, The Fly, Valentine's Day

So assuming that it wasn't any of these, it must be the title of my blog (maybe Wisdom, Books or Monkeys represent hate for some people?)

Anyway, now that I have this new bad-boy blogging reputation I've got to figure out what I should do next... should I make my posts really dark and whatnot (no... my mom read this), or attempt to clean up my tarnished image? Maybe I'll just try to find a new font for my blog title.

Blog Followers of the Year!

So as of today I’ve been blogging successfully for a year, in this time I’ve talked about a whole bunch of books, movies, video games and whatever else interested me. Rather than look back over the last year, I thought I would take a moment and look over the wonderful people who have agreed to publicly follow my blog – so here we go:

The Old School followers (being my friends who have been following my blog since post #1) Mike the Bold and Trish Van Doornum – These two lovely folks are actually a married couple, two of my best friends and a significant reason behind my decision to blog in the first place: Mike because he had the stones to start blogging years ago and Trish because her blog allowed me to see how she was doing while she visited London a few years back.

The Book Clubbers (being the folks who started following my blog after we joined the same book club) Kim Stoltz and The Doc – having met both of these guys through a book club started by my BFF Mike, they’ve helped me discover both my current favourite comic (The Unwritten) and comedic series (The Jeeves and Wooster series), as well has having some fun blogs of their own.

The Folks I’ve never met (Being the wonderful people who follow my blog based entirely on whatever I’m wrting about, rather than me constantly asking if they’ve seen my latest post) Amalia Voicu, Busco un agente literario en Espanol (and yes I know it’s basically a spam follower – but how many spam followers do you have?), G. Benedicto, Coffee Time Romance and More, Peter Williamson, AC Tanner, and Marsha Blackburn – Some of these folks have commented on posts, others have just given public support in being followers of the site, each one of them have helped to encourage me to keep posting. And Finally

The Blogger from around the World (being the only follower I have who commented within my first half dozen posts and happens to live in Malaysia) Kah Woei Tan, who has her own blog (which you should totally check out), and also shows me with each of her comments exactly how awesome blogging is, because I can’t think of another way I would have made such a cool person.

For those of you who don’t follow my blog, but have been reading it regularly, even commenting on it – Thanks! A special shout out goes to Fate at The Fickle Hand of Fate who has returned to her blog after a summer away and was definitely missed.

Seriously you guys, thank you, You folks rock! Also, my wife and kids definitely need a huge thanks for putting up with my blogging habit.

Transcribing a podcast

Hi everyone,

So after trying to get my podcast up over the weekend and not having a lot of luck (meaning, any), I've decided to simply transcribe it:

Bookmonkey: Hi and welcome to the 150th post on my fabulous blog, this is Bookmonkey speaking, and for today's post I figured I would try something different - a quick podcast, likely lasting less than five minutes and to help me out I've invited my lovely daughter Kaia to ask me some questions about my blog.

Kaia: Hi everyone! So Dad, why did you start blogging in the first place?

Bookmonkey: As a long-time reader of genre fiction, I guess I've just got a lot of opinions I'd like to share, in addition I have some aspirations to be a writer someday, and I figured if I had to put out a regular product (being 3 posts a week), my writing would get better.

Kaia: How long does it take you to write a blog post?

Bookmonkey: It basically occurs in three stages, the idea for a post can take anywhere from a minute to a couple of days, the writing of the post takes about 40 minutes and finding the pictures/links takes about 15 minutes.

Kaia: Why is your blog called Wisdom of Bookmonkey?

Bookmonkey: Short answer, when I tried to register my blog as bookmonkey it was already taken, so I tried Wisdom of Bookmonkey. Long answer, I like the orangutan librarian character from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, but I also like monkeys, plus I like to pretend I'm wise.

Kaia: Which has been your favourite post so far?

Bookmonkey: I guess the one about Junior High Girls freaking me out - basically I remembered that all the girls in my junior high years were reading V.C. Andrews books but I had never read one, after I tried Flowers in the attic, I got seriously creeped out, not just about the novel, but about the girls who really got into that series.

Kaia: What are your plans for Halloween?

Bookmonkey: I'm actually going to take the entire month of October to do a series of posts on the Twilight books; yep, I'm going to read, watch, listen, play, and even eat the phenomenon known as Twilight - as the father of two teenaged daughters I feel a responsibility to try it out and I feel that my loyal readers deserve to have my experience inflicted upon them.

Kaia: Weird - well bye everyone!

Bookmonkey: Thanks for checking out my first podcast - if it works out it may be the first in a series, otherwise I'll give videos a try!

Top Five books I’ve read on Blogging

It’s been just over 10 months since my first post, and since then I’ve actually done really well at my goal - three posts a week, every week on my explorations in genre fiction film and games, as well as the occasional thing I’ve noticed.

At this point I thought it would be kind of fun to look at the books that have helped me the most in my aspirations to be a good blogger. The first major blog I began following was Neil Gaiman’s, which initially was a record of the book tour for his 2000 novel, American Gods. It had everything I was looking for in a blog at the time, a project (documenting the tour), a recognizable voice (I’ve been a fan of Gaiman since Sandman - you can read about it here), and it was easy to read. Luckily, rather than going back to his oldest posts, you can simply find the book Adventures in the Dream Trade (pictured left), which collects the initial run of his blog as well as a number of other writings.

So when I first got interested in creating a blog last summer I had been a dedicated reader of one blog and that was about it. Like everything in my life I try to do as best I can at any new project, so I started by grabbing a couple books out of the library and began to figure out how not only to create a blog, but also how to maintain one. The two most helpful were No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 ideas for your blog (pictured right) by Margaret Mason, and The Rough Guide to Blogging, by Jonathan Yang. Both books gave me a lot of tips, not only on content, but on how to get my blog out there, and I have to say that a lot of the postive results I have achieved can be traced back to these books.

These days I’m actually taking a slightly more academic look into the phenomenon of blogging and have just picked up a book both intriguing and slightly creepy regarding the blogosphere. The Peep Diaries (pictured left), by Canadian author Hal Niedzviecki looks at the culture around blogging, Facebook, Reality TV, Twitter and YouTube and attempts to see what it is saying about us as a people - I like the fact that the book raises some interesting questions, but at the same time gives a lot of the positive aspect of these things as well.

My favourite part of reading about blogging is finding new authors, and my current top pick of the blogger / professional writers is definitely Jen Lancaster, blogger (www.jennsylvania.com) and author - although to be honest my wife found these books and strongly suggested I check them out. Honestly, if you only check out one of the books I’m recommending here - check out her first book, Bitter is the New Black (pictured right), as it is one of the funniest, bitchiest, heartbreaking/warming non-fiction books I’ve read this year.

It’s kind of funny, with the one-year mark in sight (only a month and a half away), I’m trying to figure out my challenge for year two - I was thinking of fooling around with podcasts - but if you have any suggestions, feel free to comment!