Wringing In the New Year

Well 16 days into this 2014 and my blogging's behind if you know what I mean. I don't mean that it's behind me—though there's been blogging in my past—I just mean that any effort at scheduled/ritualized posting of content is, as is often the case, not happening. A strong example of this includes my changing 14 days to 16 in that opening line.

2014 is keeping a brisk pace, at least on the weather front, and perhaps soon on the beverage front. January's only half through, and while I never like to count days off and out, it would be nice for it to not be so nut-chillingly cold. Still, there are other locales with other climates, and there's no sense griping about the weather when I can gripe about literary frustrations. At the moment those include picking up a well-reviewed and well reviewed novel that is going down about as smoothly as insert simile of your liking to connote a degree of bumpiness. Which is to say that's it's not terrible or anything, sometimes jaded to the point of cynicism me just fails to see something new or, more to the point, wholly interesting in the concept.

But while I might fail to love the book in question thus far, I do like it for raising, to me, the ongoing issue of defining what it is we like—rather than simple harsh denigrations of what we don't like. Saying no is fine, but if it's not getting you any closer to yes, it can become a bit of an issue. So know that there are some no's as far as this book goes, but I will continue to give it a go. Why? A combination of curiosity and already having abandoned one book of late. Reading, like many things, is a personal matter. A preference for a degree of realism in lingo and dialogue made me drop the last book, and a the old writer writing about a writer scenario has given me a current itch. In the latter instance it's because I know it to be a thing I do as well, and while writing should include you, I also look for it to step outside of you in some meaningful way.

Lackluster literature for this layman aside, I'm feeling good about 2014, and I hope you are too in your corner of the world.