Brief Things Briefly

1. It’s funny that Ramsey is such a Perry supporter, because this is literally how I imagined Ramsey in every gubernatorial debate–pew pew!

2. I guess I always assumed there was an 11 and a 12 that moved up into the top ten as guys were removed from the list. Are we really short two people bad enough to go on there now? Also, at first, my brain couldn’t figure out how Joe Saenz was standing, so for a brief moment, I thought he had a cat body. Which would be scary.

3. I thought Jack White’s half-made-up Hank Williams song was pretty good. It does sound like a Hank Williams song.

4. Speaking of the Williams boys, Hank Jr. now claims he was misunderstood. Honestly, he should have just said he was drunk. Because I think we all understood him just fine. Sadly, I think this means we can never hope that Bocephus will fix all the white people he’s ruined. It’s clearly now on Toby Keith to sweep up behind Junior.

5. Sure, one might argue that last month’s issue of Apex Magazine was the best one ever, but honestly, this month’s issue is so, so very good. I would like more poems about mermaids that eat people. I would also like to get in a room with all of the poets I think could write convincingly about mermaids that eat people, but I need to get some chain mail first, just in case… Also, there is a cute snail on the cover, which is awesome.

 

Chapters

I’m reading Sandman Slim because I read an excerpt from the third book in the series and thought it sounded interesting, so I’m reading this book. I’m liking it so far, though it somehow feels paced too quickly and not quickly enough. I don’t quite know how to explain it.

I think one of the pacing issues is that it doesn’t have chapters. Which, on the one hand, I think is working really well, since it’s a book that is about a man who has to make a huge leap into a new world that doesn’t stop for him, so your experience reading kind of mirror’s his experience.

But then when do you stop to go to the bathroom or stop for the evening? I tried to stop between scenes but it made me realize that there’s a way in which I just can’t quite settle into the rhythm of the book. Which works fine for this book, but I’m glad in general that books have chapters.

I also have The Sisters Brothers to read which I am excited about based solely on the cover. You can talk yourself into believing that a bad cover doesn’t hurt a book, but when you see a cover that good, it makes you wonder.

And The Night Circus which I am a tad nervous about.

Anyway, chapters. I wonder about even writing a book without chapters. How do you organize it in your own mind? That’s the part I’m really curious about. Not that the Sue Allen project quite has proper chapters yet, but it seems to be organizing itself into chapterlike chunks. On the other hand, I’ve read a lot of books lately with really short chapters. It makes me wonder just what we think a chapter is, other than the moment when it’s safe to move from the couch to the toilet.