Titles are not my friends

The detailed stats that Blogger gives about viewership are, perhaps not a double-edged sword, but possibly a triple- or quadruple-edged sword.  The point is that one can easily cut oneself, in addition to other things.  So it may be because I saw my readership drop off to almost nothing that I was not so quick about updating lately.  But of course I have nobody else to blame--how much readership did I expect if I let my writership lapse?

I'm back from jujitsu (again) and sore.  Lately I've been wishing I had more time--time to be tired and to go to work and to do things of consequence and of little consequence, and to write.  It's a trap, I know, to imagine that I would write like a demon if only I had lots of free time.  But sometimes I wish I could rearrange things, at least.  When I'm at work I'm having ideas; when I get home my brain starts shutting down.

I want to talk at length about several books, but it's 11:00 already so I think I will talk about them briefly instead, and at length later.

First, I realized that I never wrote about Machine of Death after I finished it, two books ago now.  I will call it the only fiction anthology which I have read in its entirety, without feeling like any story had wasted my time.  Did some stories have less to say?  Yes, but they said it that much faster.  This is the first time I've been impressed with the sequence of stories in an anthology, too.  There's an emotional arc, and an ebb and flow, which make the book a complete experience.  I'm reminded of World War Z, another highly episodic look at a world gone mad.  But MoD has the advantage of multiple authors; the variety of perspectives, voices, and tones is richer.

And now I find that a sequel is in the works.  Part of me really wants to submit something--okay, all of me wants to submit something, but only part of me thinks I can do it.  I need an idea, and I need nerve, and time, and I really need to not get distracted and finish Hengist and Undine.

Today I finished reading American Gods, and Neil Gaiman is still the cat's pajamas.  That's a book that needs longer than I have tonight.  I'm tempted to write an honest-to-goodness paper on it, which is another thing I shouldn't pretend I have time for.  I want to talk about the book and Christianity, which is nominally absent but actually present everywhere in parallels and sharp contrasts (perpendiculars?).

Finally, today I started reading The Name of the Wind, which I mentioned in my last post has been presented to me as mandatory.  Yet I'd been a little reluctant to start it.  Part of this was hype aversion.  Part of it was that what I had actually heard about it didn't sound so great--it sounded like an endless parade of Kvothe's superawesome awesome awesomeness.  And I'm not very far in yet, but I'm beginning to understand.  Everything may be true.  But it is well-written, and that counts for a lot.  It may count for everything.

With regard to the possible Mary-Sueism, I should remind myself that it's not wrong if it works.