abandoned book #2
Jan. 17th, 2008 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
realthogI picked up Loving Soren by Caroline Coleman O'Neill on the basis that it had never occurred to me anyone might ever write a novel about Soren Kierkegaard's love life -- and, too, because Kierkegaard is one of those philosophers about whose philosophy I know embarrassingly little. By the time I got to page 103 of Loving Soren I still knew embarrassingly little about Kierkegaard's philosophy and was bored to the point where I no longer cared. Presumably the book does develop a plot at some later stage, but, by the place where I gave up, essentially all that had happened was that Regina Olsen and Soren Kierkegaard had met, exchanged a few adolescent-style smart-aleck comments, and fancied each other. Then they did it all over again in the next chapter. I did not keep a count of how often this basic template was repeated, but it was more times than I could tolerate. The lack of plot wouldn't have bothered me had the exchanges between the enamoured pair been interesting, but they weren't. I guess I'm going to have to glean info about Kierkegaard's philosophy somewhere else . . .
It's unlike me to abandon two books in such a short period of time. In fact, I discarded this one some days ago, so will soon have a newly completed book to chatter about.
In other news, I've got to put my monicker on -- oh jeez -- eleven hundred "signing sheets" over the next day or two. Aargh! A big package of them arrived today from the excellent UK press PS Publishing. These sheets, once signed, will be bound into the fronts of the relevant books. PS are releasing my own novella The City in These Pages sometime soon, so I have to sign 800 sheets for it -- 500 for the limited edition and 300 for the Really Posh limited edition. Also, however, I wrote a Foreword for Zoran Zivkovic's novel The Last Book, which PS are to publish around the same time; so I have to sign 300 sheets for the Really Posh limited edition of that, too.
Once I've finished, I may refuse to go out for a while. I'm not sure I can face all the obvious jokes there'll be about why my wrist is so tired . . .
It's unlike me to abandon two books in such a short period of time. In fact, I discarded this one some days ago, so will soon have a newly completed book to chatter about.
In other news, I've got to put my monicker on -- oh jeez -- eleven hundred "signing sheets" over the next day or two. Aargh! A big package of them arrived today from the excellent UK press PS Publishing. These sheets, once signed, will be bound into the fronts of the relevant books. PS are releasing my own novella The City in These Pages sometime soon, so I have to sign 800 sheets for it -- 500 for the limited edition and 300 for the Really Posh limited edition. Also, however, I wrote a Foreword for Zoran Zivkovic's novel The Last Book, which PS are to publish around the same time; so I have to sign 300 sheets for the Really Posh limited edition of that, too.
Once I've finished, I may refuse to go out for a while. I'm not sure I can face all the obvious jokes there'll be about why my wrist is so tired . . .
