Richard McGowan's Blog: Smashed-Rat-On-Press - Posts Tagged "glimpse"
There are X Number of Ys in My Life, Part 1
There are six kinds of writers in my life... It used to be three, until I started listing them and discovered that things are more nuanced than I thought at first. They're probably more nuanced than six, but at the moment, six seems a reasonable number to blather about.
0. Writers I don't know and whose work I don't know, so they're totally unknown quantities and I can't say much more than that. Come to think of it, in real life, this is the largest category of writers... I now have hundreds of these on my tablet because I've scooped them up as they floated freely down the Amazon. (That's a rodential joke.)
1. Writers whose work I don't care for. This includes loads of writers from those whose work I have read to some extent, but which makes me shrug or yawn or DNF, to those whose work I actively dislike so much that I would never again allow one of their works to darken my book shelves (or my doorway) with its loathsome presence. Well, enough said. There are many reasons for disliking books to varying degrees, including the feeling that a particular writer should have stopped while it was ahead, such as before producing any prose. But dislike and disinterest usually come down to matters of personal taste and nothing more. Sometimes, however, I readily admit that I like what screen-writers and film production crews have done with novels and other works that don't appeal to me as pieces of writing. Not naming names, just sayin'...
2. Writers whose work is alright: utilitarian and solid enough to keep me pleasantly occupied and content to pay for occasionally, if that's what I'm doing. Like an ordinary nondescript mass-market beer with a hum-drum label among a pack of like items. You know, when you go to a restaurant that has 17 beers on tap, none of which are in any way distinctive, except for the token non-alcoholic one. Work that I'd drink, but which wouldn't prompt an orgasm or a letter home gushing about.
3. Writers whose work I like well enough to keep reading once in a while, the way I drink Scotch. Not my everyday go-to libation, and I might even forget about my single malt for a while, but when I come back to it, I instantly remember why I liked it, may want a little more to boot, and I'm damn glad it lasts just about forever on my (wide-open not-locked) liquor shelf. And with writers, I'm glad their names are on my list, and their books are around on the shelf or tablet or store, and that I still haven't exhausted some of them, so there's always more ripe fruit on the tree when I want it.
4. Writers whose work I like so much that I've read all or most of their backlist and I semi-automatically buy everything new they publish. Usually that means they're still alive and still doing things. There are at most a couple handfuls of writers in this group. I've occasionally been known to knock on their doors and beg to beta read their next thing, so, yeah... I don't call myself a stalker...
5. Writers for whom I make little altars in my house and leave tokens in homage, and whose work I generally have a lot of; maybe even their complete works. Just aside: I rarely burn offerings to these writers, but, have sometimes been known to turn them into characters, places, or species in novels... You get the picture. Many writers in this group might be dead, but that ain't necessarily so.
Oh, by the way... I've been thinking of not posting any more on this blog because recently GR took away the only statistic that tells a blogger how many times a posting has been viewed. Oh, well. I should assume it's always zero, I guess. See here for example: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
0. Writers I don't know and whose work I don't know, so they're totally unknown quantities and I can't say much more than that. Come to think of it, in real life, this is the largest category of writers... I now have hundreds of these on my tablet because I've scooped them up as they floated freely down the Amazon. (That's a rodential joke.)
1. Writers whose work I don't care for. This includes loads of writers from those whose work I have read to some extent, but which makes me shrug or yawn or DNF, to those whose work I actively dislike so much that I would never again allow one of their works to darken my book shelves (or my doorway) with its loathsome presence. Well, enough said. There are many reasons for disliking books to varying degrees, including the feeling that a particular writer should have stopped while it was ahead, such as before producing any prose. But dislike and disinterest usually come down to matters of personal taste and nothing more. Sometimes, however, I readily admit that I like what screen-writers and film production crews have done with novels and other works that don't appeal to me as pieces of writing. Not naming names, just sayin'...
2. Writers whose work is alright: utilitarian and solid enough to keep me pleasantly occupied and content to pay for occasionally, if that's what I'm doing. Like an ordinary nondescript mass-market beer with a hum-drum label among a pack of like items. You know, when you go to a restaurant that has 17 beers on tap, none of which are in any way distinctive, except for the token non-alcoholic one. Work that I'd drink, but which wouldn't prompt an orgasm or a letter home gushing about.
3. Writers whose work I like well enough to keep reading once in a while, the way I drink Scotch. Not my everyday go-to libation, and I might even forget about my single malt for a while, but when I come back to it, I instantly remember why I liked it, may want a little more to boot, and I'm damn glad it lasts just about forever on my (wide-open not-locked) liquor shelf. And with writers, I'm glad their names are on my list, and their books are around on the shelf or tablet or store, and that I still haven't exhausted some of them, so there's always more ripe fruit on the tree when I want it.
4. Writers whose work I like so much that I've read all or most of their backlist and I semi-automatically buy everything new they publish. Usually that means they're still alive and still doing things. There are at most a couple handfuls of writers in this group. I've occasionally been known to knock on their doors and beg to beta read their next thing, so, yeah... I don't call myself a stalker...
5. Writers for whom I make little altars in my house and leave tokens in homage, and whose work I generally have a lot of; maybe even their complete works. Just aside: I rarely burn offerings to these writers, but, have sometimes been known to turn them into characters, places, or species in novels... You get the picture. Many writers in this group might be dead, but that ain't necessarily so.
Oh, by the way... I've been thinking of not posting any more on this blog because recently GR took away the only statistic that tells a blogger how many times a posting has been viewed. Oh, well. I should assume it's always zero, I guess. See here for example: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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