To See The World

I've always wanted to travel, not so much for writing but my own pleasure. I especially love places with history, feeling like then and now coexist in the same place. I visited a place like that once, Crawford Lake Conservation area. It was a school trip that we took in the winter, which added to the atmosphere methinks. One (possibly two) of the Iroquois longhouses had been fully reconstructed as if the natives still lived there. One was merely framework at the time, and with the reconstructed burial site not far from it it was delightfully haunting. Standing there truly felt like stepping back in time. I loved it. Since then I've racked up a list of places I'd like to eventually go out and see:

-Vancouver, British Columbia (okay not much in the way of history, but an old penpal was from Vancouver and sent me a booklet. Since then it's been on my list)

-Ireland

-Scotland

-Japan

-Egypt

-Morocco

-Tibet

Other places have sort of come and gone, but this is my core list. It's really cool to see what's out there in ways of festivals and celebrations especially, that's probably the best time to travel. I hope one day to update this blog with tales and photos of these places from a first person view, but until then I'll bide my time planning my future vacations :)

And what parts of the world are you itching to see?

Disillusioned

So today I got a jumpstart on one of those things on my To-Do list, namely clean up my bookshelf. It was somewhat forced, since my mom decided to move it which required the entire thing be emptied in order to do so. But that's okay, because now I can actually get to the task of sorting my books. It's been far too long since I actually did any sort of cull that I think it's now long overdue. A few I'm ready to toss, the story just doesn't grab me anymore but when I came to my Anne Rice books I was kind of on the fence. I still enjoy the stories, one I still have to read, but a big part of me isn't as enchanted with them anymore. Why? I no longer love the author.

Anyone who's familiar with Anne Rice knows she's prone to having some rather negative reactions. A couple of her well-known tizzies were about Tom Cruise being cast as Lestat (and later publically raved about him after the movie did well), and the poor reviews Blood Canticle received. She reached a point where she was obviously unable to take criticism, as it seemed after Queen of the Damned her books - at least her vamp ones - started to be less and less well-received. Memnoch the Devil was especially poorly received. Maybe this shouldn't affect how a reader views the work of an author, but it does to me. Especially when said author all but accuses her fans of being stupid. How does that endear you to my money? Fans deserve a little more respect than that I think, though I'm sure there are fans who can look past the childish stupidity and still enjoy the books for what they are and kudos to them. Really it's all personal choice, but I just find it so hard to continue enjoying someone's work when they decide to publically be such a jerk. I just don't look at them the same anymore.

Have you ever lost love for books when the author has had some rather ugly public displays?