I’m a sucker for a good book gimmick.  A fancy cover, sure, but if the fonts are weird or if there’s a sweet map on the inside cover – well, I’m in.  I picked up a book recently that was two books in one. The first in a sequel on one side and then you flip it over and there’s the second book.

Cool!

I read the blurb on the inside cover for each of the books and was a little wary.  The narrator is a poet working on the introduction for an anthology of poems – hence the title of the book “The Anthologist”.

But, the covers had me hooked and I dove in.

And… seriously?   It was terrible.

The guy – Paul Chowder – has writer’s block.  That’s pretty much the premise. His girlfriend moves out because he’s too pathetic and he spends most of his time not writing the introduction and instead tells us his arrogant version of the history of poetry.

I managed to drag myself to page 101 where I found this gem:

“Let’s try again.  The history of poetry began, quite possibly, in the year 1883.  Let me write that date for you with my Sharpie, so you can have it for your convenience. 1883.  That’s when it all began. Or maybe not. Could be any year. The year doesn’t matter. Forget the year!  The important thing is that there’s something called the nineteenth century…”

It’s like some kind of stream of consciousness by an idiot.  I got to that drivel and hit the brakes and went back to the front cover.  Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award? “Startlingly perceptive and ardent…Chowder is possibly the most appealing narrator Baker has invented.” The New York Times Book Review.

I kept at it for as long as I did for two reason:

  1. I’ve been inflicting my own poetry on other people recently with my Haiku tweets and felt it was a kind of penance.
  2. I hoped, somehow, that it would get better.  Maybe he’d write a poem that could raise the dead.  Or his dog is a communist. Or his ex-girlfriend invented the chicken sandwich.

But, I couldn’t see myself getting another hundred pages into this and still having him not accomplish anything. At all.  

So, I bailed.  And the book is going into my Half-Priced Books pile in the hope that someone else – perhaps with lower standards or expectations – will enjoy it.

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Youtube has figured out that I’m a crafty sort and has lately started to suggest some resin projects.  I found some two-part resin on the cheap and decided to give it a whirl. I had two things I wanted to try – using a mold and something called “secret wood”.  

I had a silicone mold from a Sculpey project that I hoped would work for the project and the secret wood just needed a broken piece of narrow wood.

I followed the instructions carefully for the two-part resin and added some dye to give it a little color.  I poured – and waited.

And mostly failed.

I had used packing tape to make a framework for the secret wood and it didn’t seal well – about half leaked out onto my protected work surface.  The molds did a little better, but I hadn’t been able to get all the clay out and some got stuck in the resin. And the resin itself turned out to be a shade of green that matched mouthwash.

But, I learned a lot.  I’ve got new ideas for preparing the wood and building a better frame around it.  And the molds are now clean so the next attempt will be clean as well. And I know that the colors work and can do a better job of getting the shade right.

Time to trim more wood and mix up more resin.  I don’t recall the last time I was this excited about things going wrong – it was a good learning experience.