Spindependence

Dear diary, which this blog is not, it has been quite some time since I have written within the confines of this WYSIWYG editor. Holidays for some reason have a habit of serving as arbitrary reminders for me to post here. In the time since last posting, many a holiday has passed, including the anniversaries of both the "independence" of this country and modern France. The campishness of quotation marks aside, the idea of independence is nonsense. The number of individuals or earthly creatures that can claim true independence is actually the old null-spot. My apologies to those who feel truly free, but then I think it is worth reexamining what that means, why it feels so important, and so on. But that won't be done here.

Instead I shall return to the near seven year-old statement of purpose of this blog: to gripe. There have been a few meaningless items to inspire my ire in the past three months, but this latest literary turd has pushed me over the edge. I had taken this chunk out of my day to do a little personal writing, but when Microsoft Word decided that it would quit on me countless consecutive times to the point where it couldn't recover the recovered versions of the recovered versions of the recovered versions of my initially unsaved documents (saving them was the initial impetus for this bit of software to quite in the first place), I thought why hello dear blog, how art thou?

Things haven't changed here I've found. Some of the images and hyperlinks embedded in past text have surely broken as those files and pages have moved paths or been removed altogether, but that is neither here nor there when the text itself has been maintained.

Text that should not be maintained, however, would be that within American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I think perhaps the working title of "American Godawful" should have stayed in place save for the fact that Gaiman is not even a US citizen. Now this steaming pile that embarrassingly won every Sci-Fi/Fantasy Award in the year of its release does have some credible reviews on Amazon, one referencing its illicit content, and the likes of this truthsayer.

Why be so offended by this book? Why not just stop reading? These are EXCELLENT questions that I will not answer. Instead I will pose more questions. How could anyone actually enjoy this book? Is it possible to write 600 pages (font-dependent) that are so incredibly disjointed? That one answers itself with a yes. I will stop with the questions. Instead here is the format of this book:

• Main character that does nothing and has no depth (I have some of the book left to read. I have a feeling the character is going to do something at the end, which is out of character, as his character is to do nothing. His name is Shadow, so I guess he is a shadow of himself, just as this is the shadow of a what is necessary to write a good book).
• Supporting characters that are loosely based on mythological gods and make cliché statements. They also do nothing and have no depth.
• Multiple embarrassing sexual encounters or daydreams (I want to give Gaiman the benefit of the doubt of this being a device rather than his own personal obsession, but even as a device, emphasis on the latter syllable, it's poorly executed).
• Make you believe there is a Scientologist conspiracy if this book can be not only published, but be successful (sales) and heralded (with awards)

I'd say the best moments are when you shut the book, except then you might read the gratuitous praise and horrendous back-cover synopsis. At any rate, kudos to Gaiman for duping so many, and shame on the duped.

I've taken a strong stance here. People have opinions and those opinions differ and one of the great aspects of life is discussion. If anyone can explain to me how this book is even remotely good, I'm all ears and eyeballs.

Thank you, and God bless America?