lkh_lashouts | A small rant and vague self-justification. (Reply)

According to amazon.com, A Stroke of Midnight is due out in paperback March 28th, 2006. Micah will be out sometime in February, and of course Incubus Dreams is scheduled for paperback release September 27th--two months from now.

I know I shouldn't be looking forward to these. I know they're terrible wastes of paper and intellectually devoid offenses to the English language. I know they won't improve or even change, and the author is a deliberately wanky cow. I know that I shouldn't reward her for writing them by buying them a day or two after they're released and thus increasing her rank on selling charts. With the exception of Micah, I don't even have the excuse of never having read them before.

But...it's like I almost can't help it. They're just so goddamn entertaining. Not necessarily in a good way ("rainmaker" much?), more in a train-wrecky sense. Morbid curiosity, that's the word. The books are TERRIBLE, and I think the main reason people recommend them to others is that they don't want to suffer alone. I no longer have any kind of emotional or intellectual investment in the books or the characters, so bitching about the books and the author is more enjoyable than actually READING the books themselves.

Plus I'm a completist. There are few things more satisfying in life than looking at a bookshelf and knowing you have every single book in a series (or darned close), especially when said series hits the double digits. Gives a vague (if slightly pathetic) feeling of accomplishment. LKH is currently the only ongoing series I read and collect faithfully (well, not counting Harry Potter, and that has only one book to go), so it's a small luxury I allow myself. At the current rate of eight dollars each, one or two books a year will not break my budget.

So, when the above dates arrive, I will indeed be lined up at the register of my nearest Barnes and Noble, supernatural porn in hand, forking over hard-earned wages just so I can continue ranting bitterly about LKH's downfall as a writer. Traitorous? Perhaps. But without the books, this community would not exist. And I, for one, plan to do my part in ensuring we're here for a very long time.