#NaNoReMo Ends

Today ends February, and so goes 2013's National Novel Reading Month. I've seen several people knocking off their classics in the last few days, and I've got particular pride in Tony Noland for finally conquering Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. I really ought to get to that, especially after how much I enjoyed The Crying of Lot 49.

Middlemarch's 1,000 pages too me twenty days, including the two I spent stuck in trains and depots. Having an enormous classic is a great way to pass long waits and, it turns out, to keep strangers from talking to you. It's easily one of the most ambitious novels I've read and has made me question many of the conventions of satire and social criticism. There's an essential empathy, a mandatory understanding behind any unkind action, that makes most conflict-writing feel... well, "lazy" is a nice way of putting it. You can read my full review right here.


I'll pitch that we run it in January next year, 2014, for a few reasons. January would let everyone start the year off with conquering a classic, and there's a little New Years power to such things. January also has three more days than most Februaries, and there would be no unintentional slight against Black History Month, one of the few "official months" I hold in serious reverence.

If you have a National Novel Reading Month wrap-up post, please link to it in the comments. I'll create a junction post here for fellow readers to blog hop across.


1. Cindy Vaskova's tremendous closing on Frankenstein.
2. Eric Krause finishes Princess of Mars.
3. Tony Noland finishes Gravity's Rainbow.

So, who's finished? And what are you reading next? I'm deciding between Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire and Joe Abercrombie's Red Country.

John's Versatile Answers, EST 2012

You may recall that I recently fixed the Versatile Blogger Award. In doing so I added six interview questions to the award, but would only answer them after all six of my recipients did. Well, they have, and so now I have to admit things about myself. I promise to make them uncomfortable.

1. What's the last sentence (from any of your work) that made you feel pride in writing?

--After receiving some theta manuscripts back recently, I’ve found I like more of my book than feels appropriate. I love this weird thing. The last line that made me almost ashamed of myself to enjoy having found was this relationship advice:

“You can go find her. When you do, if she’s worth it, take no excuses and abide. If she isn’t, masturbate. Words of my father.”

2. What’s the last work of fiction that left you envying the creator? In what way did you envy he/she/it/them?

--Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 hit me pretty hard. There is not one page for at least the first hundred pages whereon he didn’t write at least one notion, one sentence or paragraph unlike anyone else has ever written. Vastly culturally literate while being unafraid of silliness, intimately knowledgeable about people’s pettiness and the frequent apathy of fate, culminating in a game of Strip Trivia. I don’t necessarily want to have written The Crying of Lot 49, but I write late into many nights pursuing that enticing output.

3. In your entire life, what have you most catastrophically failed at cooking or baking?

--My culinary arts are limited, and so my failures are mostly mundane. However, I am still haunted by a calamitous case of macaroni. I returned to the kitchen after only a few minutes to find all the water boiled away, and every macaroni having gone vertical and burned to the bottom of the pot, so that I was faced with a cast coral reef of inedible dinner. Some of the macaroni-ends even wriggled and puckered in the heat, in such a sphinctorial fashion that I was off pasta entirely for months. It took an hour to scrape all that crap off.

4. What field of science most frequently inspires you?

--Physics. It unites all things miniscule and enormous. We are made up of things so small we can’t see them, and we contribute to a world so big we can’t recognize it. Physics also rings both those scales into viewable context. Like G.K. Chesterton, I feel distinct awe that everything and everyone is made of the “one stuff.” It’s a versatile stuff.

5. What task most recently frightened, grossed you out or otherwise intimidated you, such that you got someone else to do it?

My family recently bought me a cell phone so that I won’t die in a ditch somewhere without calling. Upon arrival it required some thirteen different calls to activate and set up. After about four I was ready to shatter the device against a wall, and so you could say I was intimidated to the point where I asked them to do the rest. I hate you, automated operator.

6. Who is your favorite dead author? Or, if there is no single such person, name six of your beloved dead authors (in no necessary order).

You may have guessed that I have no single favorite. But here are six beloved writers: Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Douglas Adams, Homer, J.R.R. Tolkien and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.