I decided, on a whim (don’t do this) to peruse the latest pressings of other blogs out there. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that sitting and reading your own posts over and over isn’t nearly as entertaining as it should be, and probably ventures into the realm of navel contemplation.
And I started to read an interview with a lady who had published a short story a zillion years ago, and recently started publishing novels after a twenty year hiatus.
I read all that and thought, good for her! No, really, I did think that. I like to see people succeed and be excellent.
Then the second part began. Q & A. Which stands for qualitative agnostics. Or question and answer. Same thing.
And it went something like this:
Q: What are your favorite books?
A: Well, there’s fourteen or so, I’ve been so influenced by the amazing humanitarian writings of Smith, Durango, and Mr. Denver, and oh, the feminist writings of Ariel, Aurora and Rapunzel.
Q: As are we all. Especially Ariel. What influenced your recent writing?
A: [laughing modestly] There’s so many. There’s Johnson, and Smith, Williams, Brown, Jones, Davis, and Garcia, his work The Mosquito Lovers was seminal, and Taylor, Thomas, Hernandez, and Moore. I’ve reread Hernandez’s work United eTicket Itinerary at least fourteen times last week and it’s so stunning.
Q: [also laughing modestly] Me too, I read it so often, and I cry every time. Soooo amazing.
A: Yes, it is.
Q: All your books are amazing and I love you.
A: And I love you too.
Well, crud. I’m sorry I read this. I clearly have been reading all the wrong things, besides this blog. I read stuff that’s about space and pew pew lasers. Rattling good tales of the USMC in space (Ooo rah!). Space operas. And apparently I was supposed to be reading Mosquitoes in Love every day or the United eTicket Itinerary.
Oh dear. I… am… a philistine!
Yes, I’ve not read all those amazing books. I probably won’t read them. I’ve read Conrad, and a little Tolstoy–I’m still annoyed by the title character committing suicide around page 725 when there was another 500 pages to go, let’s dig up Tolstoy and kill him again for doing that, poor Count Vronsky–and I’ve listened to a bit of opera. But I’m still a philistine. Not nearly enough culture. I won’t be able to do one of them there interviews because it’d go like this:
Q: Mr. Cominius, what amazing books have you read lately?
A: It’s Coh-mean-ee-oos.
Q: Huh?
A: It’s pronounced Coh-mean-ee-oos, not like communist.
Q: I typed that. How do you know what it sounded like?
A: You don’t know Latin so you butchered it, I’m sure.
Q: Right. Well, books?
A: I read some.
Q: Which ones?
A: All the free amazon list stuff. There’s such variety. Just last week, I found a great story about this gal who’s a doctor and she’s accused of murdering her patient, and then she goes to Texas and falls in love with this guy who was one of the people who accused her of murder in New York.
Q: A famous author?
A: Not a chance. It wasn’t that great. I did cry when she got together with him at the end, despite what the bad guys tried to do to pin another murder on her. So amazing.
Q: Right. Any other things to say?
A: Yeah, Charlotte’s Web is far better in the book than it is in the movie. I, um, gots kids.
I’m not anti-intellectual, I’m just lazy.
Author Matt Bowes and the Dog's Breakfast 