| I am shelved with things that are interesting, and that's good enough for me. |
[Mar. 13th, 2012|09:13 pm]
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Okay, here is my new rule which is actually an old rule:
You do not get a free pass on being interesting by being in a genre with interesting things. Specifically, you do not get to say, "Hi, I'm a spy! Now, the weather report." "Hi, I'm a spy! Here are several pages about my shoes. Or possibly my car." Unless your shoes do things. By which I mean spy things, not shoe things. Being a particular color does not count as doing things. Disabling enemy agents from thirty paces while emitting a particularly pleasant cherry-wood fragrance? Okay. Being purple? Not okay. Not okay for more than, like, two sentences, tops. How interesting can the purple of your shoes be? Not very.
You may be asking, what if I am really brilliant? And I can make my purple shoes interesting for four or possibly five sentences? Knock yourself out. Knock yourself out with the knockout drops emitted by your fascinatingly kitten-heeled shoes. Go ahead and be just that brilliant, and I will write you a personal apology here on the internet for all to see. Ready go.
But for all the rest of you: default to doing stuff. Please? Thanks. |
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| Comments: |
OMG SO DO I.
Somebody's theatrical or musical career is a cover for their Difficult Younger Sibling's spy antics!!! And sometimes they get sulky because the performer gets all the attention even though they are saving freedom and the western world with their work. Oh, I know how this book goes. It exists holographically in my mind in its implications even though it is nowhere in this world.
Oh: that reminds me of a short (2 books? 3?) series by Janice Weber, Frost the Fiddler and Hot Ticket and possibly one more, in which Our Protag is a Top Concert Violinist and Secret Agent.
I do not give quality guarantees, however; it's a long time since I read them.
Well, the library has the first of them, so my investment in finding out quality for myself is rather low.
At least, the library claims to have the first of them. One of my roles in this county is to ask for books the library thinks it has so that it can find out that, whoops, no, it hasn't got them after all, it's just that nobody has asked for years and years.
It's good to have a sense of one's place in the world, but also occasionally in the county.
It's a rough job but someone has to do it.
(They don't have books that nobody has asked for? They don't put them in Central Storage or label them in the database as Lost?)
If they know they're lost, they're labeled as lost (at least for awhile--I don't know if the record is eventually purged). But oftentimes they don't realize something is lost until they go to fetch it and it isn't there. It's like how I watch their DVDs and tell them that the DVDs are broken: I have every hope that they purge the ones that no longer play, but there's always the time between the thing breaking and somebody trying to use it again.
I want to read this book too. | |
