In which I left the house!

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

… I didn’t go far, mind you. I literally went out the front door to go get the mail and then sat on the porch and read for a while because somehow all the snow that was out there the last time I looked outside was gone and it was like 62 degrees. But I literally don’t think I’d been outside for any longer than it took to snatch a package off my front porch in … well, many days. I don’t know how many days. I only barely know what day it is right now.

(That’s not true. It’s Wednesday, and I just recorded tomorrow’s instructional video and got tomorrow’s e-learning assignment ready, completing them early for the first time since we’ve been in this whole mess. I know what day it is, I just can’t relate that to anything else I’ve done on any other days.)

Also, WordPress appears to have “updated” again, which right now means that the image looks like it’s broken and is pushing up against the words up there. If that’s what’s going on once this posts it’s not my fault. The whole time I’ve been with WordPress every time they try to “improve” something it starts with breaking what they have, so here we go on a new cycle, I guess.

Anyway.

I did a thing earlier today that I really don’t like to do, which is bail on a book by an author, not only whose work I generally really like, but who has achieved a level of acclaim and accolades for his work that I can say with no fear of condemnation or argument that I will never, ever achieve.

(No, this isn’t me being down on myself. Dude has been knighted. I may have many accomplishments left in the time that is left to me, but I will never be a knight.)

Anyway, this particular example of his work wasn’t going to be something that was going to work right now for several reasons:

  1. It foregrounded several aspects of his writing that I have never been terribly fond of, while ignoring and/or leaving out the themes that I really like about his work;
  2. It turns out that the shitgibbon is not only the inspiration for a major character, but will be at least indirectly playing a more direct role in the final third of the book, and, uh, no thank you; that motherfucker does not get to show up in my fiction that I read when I’m trying to escape from the hellscape he has transformed the actual world into;
  3. I am trying very hard to clear up a huge backlog while I’m home as much as I am, and that’s going to leave me less patient than I might be otherwise for things about a book that are annoying me.

Why am I being coy about the author? Because the last time I wrote a bad review about a book by an author I liked the post got way more popular than I wanted it to– more popular than any of the good pieces I’d written about that person’s work, and, well, my Goodreads is right there, and I am not about to have a post that becomes the This Is The One Where Luther Siler, Utterly Unknown Person, Shits on Famous Author XXX XXX again.

So, yeah, if you’re super curious, click the link, and look for recent books by people who can legally call themselves Sir, and … it won’t be hard to find.