This has been a rough fall for me.
This is true both in terms of work - one of my colleagues was out for the better part of a month, and guess who had to pick up a lot of the slack? - and in terms of these diaries. There are fewer and fewer people commenting (or, for all I know, reading the silly things at all), which makes me wonder why.
It could be many things: unpopular subjects; an increasingly jaded audience; an even more jaded author; simple exhaustion on my part. It certainly isn't a dearth of bad books - God knows they pour off the presses at an astonishing rate - but regardless of the reason, something is less than country fresh in the wilds of Badbookistan.
This is why I am coming to you tonight with an announcement and a request:
Announcement:
The Christmas season is never easy for me; my mother died on the 15th of December back in 1996, and I've had a problematic relationship with the holiday and the season in general ever since. The days are dark and long, my mood is melancholy, and there are days when I miss my family so much it hurts like a rotten tooth. I usually manage to muddle through, but for some reason this year it's hitting me extra hard, and I simply don't have much in the way of mojo to do anything more than go to work, sleep, read, and knit.
That's why there will be no new diaries between now and 2015. I will be reblogging a couple of old favorites for your dining and dancing pleasure on the 20th and 27th, but I simply don't have the mojo to write fresh diaries for the next two weeks. Instead, I'm going to rest, go to the movies, visit my friend Bella down in New York, and take it easy. It's the holidays, and if I want to spend them making like Eddie Murphy's version of Gumby, well, this is still a free country I think and I have the right to take a vacation damn it.
Request:
Just because I'm taking a couple of weeks off doesn't mean I'm not thinking ahead. Far from it! I've already chosen several potential diary subjects for the first quarter of 2015, and trust me, we're all going to have a lot of fun with them. However, I feel like I've been neglecting what you, my faithful and patient readers, want, so I'm issuing a public request:
What do you want to see in an upcoming diary?
I mean it. I can only read and research so many crappy books, especially since I have a conference coming up next May and am committed to writing a paper for it. What have you found that is so hilariously inept, overblown, jingoistic, or simply bad that you can't believe I haven't already discussed it? This is your chance to unleash the GTPOD recommend a Book So Bad It's Good to me! Any and all genres are welcome, but I'd particularly love to see some rotten romances, badly drawn graphic novels, awful campaign diaries, not so ancient astronauts, or ridiculous religious works. I can't wait to see your suggestions, so have at thee, and lay on!