Item One
I gave up on a book yesterday. For some reason, probably decades of indoctrination, I find that difficult to do. No money was involved: It’s a library book. I reached the traditional PearlPoint, page 50, rather than the new & improved PearlPoint, which for me is currently page 35.
The book and author aren’t important (well, the author clearly thinks that he’s extremely important and that almost everybody else is a mediocre fool). It’s nonfiction, but supposedly “literary” (whatever that might mean).
After suffering through the first 50 pages, I did a little online searching to see whether there was any reason I should finish the book–whether I’d learn something useful from it. The answer is Maybe.
But I couldn’t do it. The writing style, the sheer jackassery of the author, the “I’m the only Real Thinker in the world” approach countered the book’s best-seller status (which never means much anyway). A review of the discussion page for the author’s Wikipedia entry was very revealing; the page itself reads like a hagiography, apparently because of the continuing efforts of the author’s minions.
So I gave up. And feel very relieved. That’s 250 pages of insulting, egomaniacal writing I won’t have to endure.
Item Two
I won’t dwell on sales for The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010 or lack thereof; these are early days. I will just note that “Liblog Profiles” in the category list points to all of the liblog-profile posts I do as a result of book sales, at the rate of one post (and four liblogs) per sale. I am currently (as of December 11, 2010) up to date on doing those posts; I would prefer to be a little backlogged.
