Date:

March 12th, 2005

12 Mar 2005, by

As it turns out

Right. So as it turns out, I was (and still am) sick. Yesterday I was not only cold – freezing, layers of clothes and blankets and heater did nothing to help – but came down with pounding head, achy joints and a sore throat. I almost never have headaches, so the presence of one is a good, solid sign that I’m for real sick. If this entry is somewhat rambling and nonsensical, you can blame my illness, or the medicine I took to supress some of the symptoms, or just dispense with the blaming and skip to the next post.

Moving on. So, I’m encouraged to continue my work on reviewing books, especially anthologies, by the fact that another author has contacted me, thanking me for my thumbs up on his story (“20th Century Ghost” by Joe Hill from The Mammoth Book of New Horror Volume 14, which I reviewed here. Summary : I liked it very much.) Again there was that eerie “Oh, this is a pane of glass, not a one-way mirror” feeling to getting feedback from someone who wrote a story I read and then read the rather direct and unvarnished opinions I wrote about it. I won’t begin to panic, though, unless I get comments from Shirley Jackson or John Bunyan. I don’t know why I wouldn’t expect authors to regularly ego surf and find out what people are saying about them and/or their works. After all, I do read author John Scalzi’s blog, so I should know all about hunting for reviews but it still surprises me that I get found that way.

Speaking of Bunyan, I finally finished Pilgrim’s Progress today. I needed to read it, but man that was a lot less like pleasure reading and a lot more like work reading than I wanted it to be. It held me up on some of my other reading, but maybe I’ll be able to catch up some now, because I was determined to see it through to the end without getting distracted by other, more fun, books. The good thing about being sick like this, however, is the freedom to read. I’m not good for much else at the moment, and I can drift between naps and books without recrimination or reproach. I’m halfway through Bradbury’s The Cat’s Pajamas, which I started today, and though I find myself sometimes taking a critical eye to some of the stories, he’s still so delightful to read, so skilled, and there’s so much more here that’s wonderful and fabulous than what’s tiresome or broken. And if I read the intro right, these are some of his rejects! Stuff dug up out of his basement, discarded and half-forgotten! If only my rejects were as good (not that I have any, yet, but you know what I mean).

Ok, so I was going to review some really excellent online stories I’ve read recently, and that’s where this post was going, but I’m tired and would rather be reading than writing, so I guess you’ll have to wait on that. And with that teaser, goodbye and goodnight.

Continue reading

In: in my life | Tags:
Powered by WordPress