I am really very angry.

[sekari]

I can't believe it, but I am actually getting quite angry about this. It's really a very silly thing to be upset about, but it has been so long since I've really been angry about anything that I'm finding the inclination to pour myself into a seething ball of rage so strong that it's fury will fling all existence and all concepts and perceptions encompassed in what is commonly referred to as reality into a void so that all that remains is a faint aftertaste scented lightly with what was once my undying hate somewhat hard to avoid.

Well, that might be exaggerating a bit, but I am kind of pissed off.

Unfortunately, I can't really seem to pin down exactly where I should direct all of this anger. I can't seem to get closer than this list:

1. Three British fantasy authors, although only two of them are really to blame. The third is only tangentially involved as they only affect the treatment of the actual matter at hand.
2. Many of my friends, a few acquaintances, and several people who I've never really spoken to at all.
3. My own compulsion towards nonconformity, which at one time was just a very healthy feeling of rebellion but is now really just an unconscious inclination of spite that often does much more harm than it does bring me satisfaction or enjoyment.

As much as it pains me, I will relinquish what will probably be the only joy that will come from this matter, and that is to have my ire flung out into the world with no explanation or perceptible reason behind it. I shall explain.

I am currently reading Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's masterful collaboration: Good Omens. 
I am nearly 29 years old have been reading books like this one for the past 21. This is the first time I have read this book. I am just into the last quarter of it. (Crowley has just retrieved The Book from the burning remains of Aziraphale's bookshop). So far I am finding the experience of reading this book to be ranging from mildly annoying to maddeningly terrible. Which is to say that the book itself is fantastic, but I'm beginning to wish that I'd never read it.

I first started reading it on last Friday during work and on that day no less than 4 people that I've never once spoken a word paused on the way past my desk to comment on it or ask me what I thought of it. I didn't keep an exact count after that, but I think the total number of inquires has gotten as high as 9. At first I found this phenomena merely interesting and coincidental. In a few cases it was almost exhilarating to be suddenly spoken to, and I felt that if were ever able to actually talk to these people it was nice that I had some to possibly discuss with them. But then it started to become somewhat unnerving. I began to feel like I was constantly being watched. That each time I turned a page it was being observed, as if I was the main attraction in some kind of circus. This feeling extended beyond my immediate surroundings as I recalled all of my friends who boggled at the news that I had never read this book and insisted that I read it soon. In an attempt to quantify this intangible group, in the hopes that doing so would lessen its intensity, I came up with the number 17. It did not grant the comfort I had hoped for.

Aside from the general uneasiness that came from this, I found that my enjoyment of the book itself was beginning to lag. The jokes just didn’t seem as funny. Many of the characters were suddenly uninteresting. I even found myself kind of annoyed when new ones were introduced, and I couldn’t resist the urge to just skip over their sections altogether until the plot I enjoyed resumed.

I’ve always thought that I loved British humor, but there’s just something about Pratchett’s style that doesn’t mesh with me. Thinking about it a little more, I would put Pratchett at the head of a kind of absurdist movement in British science fiction, I would put his Discworld series right alongside Red Dwarf and The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy. I have dabbled my attentions in all three of them and I just can’t seem to find enjoyment anywhere close to the extent that is shared by practically everyone I know.

I’m not a fan of the footnotes and the funny names. What I really like is plot and pacing, and for me the footnotes break all that into pieces. I’m much more partial to the imperceptible segue best seen in books by Mil Millington and the monologues of Henry Rollins. I’ve always thought that silly names were an author’s way of punishing the reader. But this is probably because I read Tolkein much too early in life.  Because of that I’ve always just come up with a shorthand version of names without ever really reading them. Then of course I get into trouble when someone asks me about the books and they say the name that I’ve never bothered to work out how to accurately pronounce and I look like an idiot for not understanding the strange moon language they are babbling at me.

I could continue on about things in the book that displease me. Probably for a good long time. I don’t feel good about it though. I’ve always had a great deal of respect and admiration for Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Why all of a sudden do I have to find reasons to dislike it? Well, I'll get back to that.

Anyone that knows me knows that I spend every waking moment of my life in a lone crusade against the Harry Potter books. I have made jokes about my speculation that there is some kind of mind control involved. That there has to be something wrong with the fact that the books are so universally enjoyed. That the balance of people who like it to people who don’t is so skewed that it would make a statistician quit. Those are the things that I tell people when they ask me, or rather geode me into starting my spiel. I realized much too late that I had made myself so much a spectacle on the matter that people will tease me just to get me going. I have said that I will read the books in 15 years or so, when the hype has died down, or perhaps with my children if I have any. Many of my friends have said that they would like to hear my opinion of them, especially because of my strong feelings against them. Some of them have even said that when I read them I’m going to love them just as much as everyone else.

This reminds me of something that happened about 12 years ago. I don’t quite recall what started the conversation, but it was when my grandmother was visiting for the holidays and she said to my sister and I that it was OK if we thought we were atheists now, and it was even OK that when we came back to the church and it wasn’t the Roman Catholic church that she followed. It was OK for us to indulge in these things now, because she still loved us and knew that someday we would do the right thing and come back to god. I didn’t really respond to this, and I probably would have dismissed it altogether having filtered it with the mental disclaimer: “a Christian is talking to you, it’s time to nod your head and think fondly about ice cream or that bit of road kill you saw near the supermarket” and I would have just forgotten the whole incident, if not for the way my sister reacted. To this day I think it is the only time my sister has ever screamed at my grandmother. I’ve heard her tell people about it as one of the most appalling things anyone has ever said to her.

By drawing this comparison I do not wish to imply that my friends have anything resembling that level of ignorance or zealotry. Well, who am I kidding? Some of them are worse zealots than that about Harry Potter. But I don’t think they really mean for it to have that kind of effect. But it kind of does. I don’t want to read those books because I do not want to have to put up with all the people who want me to read them. I can’t bear the thought of all the whispers and knowing looks that would fly back and forth. It’s not just that I’m avoiding it just in case they’re right and I’ll end up loving it. Would I be loving it because I did or because they told me that I would? I’m sure that a lot of them just assume that I will love it and if I read it and deny it, then I would just be saying that out of stubbornness to maintain my current curmudgeonly point of view. This is why I don’t wish to read them. There is just so much expectation and pressure that I just want to have no part of it. I’m beginning to think I should amend my schedule for reading them from 15 years to absolutely fucking never, just to keep people from saying that they can’t wait for me to read them, because I know some of them would until 2022 and call me to ask about it.

But stepping back from all that, let me clarify why I wasn’t interested in it before all of this bullshit came up. I’ve seen the first three movies, mostly out of weakness and placation. I’ve seen enough of the world to think that it really doesn’t make any sense and I see no logical way that it could have evolved the way it did. I don't like that the use of magic is basically shouting out nonsense words. (I've been told that it's Latin, but that almost makes it worse. That makes me wonder if I could purchase a Latin phrasebook and thereby rule the fucking world. What about back in the time when Latin was actually a spoken language. Were people just popping out spells as they asked for breakfast? That would be the equivalent of me saying Pancake and expecting something mystical to happen). I also think it’s a blatant rip off of Books Of Magic, a comic series written in 1990 by none other than Neil Gaiman. I’m not going to get into that controversy here. It's just my opinion that Books Of Magic (the initial limited series by Gaiman and the continuing series by John Ney-Reiber and Peter Gross) did it so much better in terms of character depth and plot and all of the things that are important to me. 
Those are basically my more tangible reasons for not reading it. Whenever I mention them though people just say that how can I know if I haven’t read them, huh? I should just read them…etc. Then I have to talk about the mind control thing to confuse them long enough for me to run like hell.

But, despite wanting to avoid exactly this kind of thing, I find myself right in the middle of it, just on a slightly smaller scale. I can’t believe I never noticed it before, but Good Omens has almost exactly the same universal appeal as the Harry Potter books. I can’t actually think of anyone ever saying anything remotely mundane about it. It's never anything short of wonderful and fantastic. People love how "it's Gaiman's plot and Pratchett’s Characters...". That's actually not the case. I've read interviews from both of them on the subject and they really don't know how they managed the collaboration. Pratchett is quoted as saying that they alternated every third word, or that he wrote the whole thing and Neil numbered the pages. Gaiman has said that he was in charge of all the nouns and Terry had the verbs. When Gaiman wrote his novel American Gods lots of people looked it and thought that the deep mystical plot in Good Omens must have come from him because his new book lacked the same humorous flair. So he just made his next book, Anansi Boys, more humorous just to prove them wrong. (well, he probably had other reasons, but I've read that it was on his mind at the time)

But however you want to quantify it, the Good Omens is just as well liked as the Harry Potter series, just on a smaller scale without the enormous mass market fan base. It's more like a niche version. I can't really put my finger on why this is, it would almost be appropriate to use the term 'ineffable'. 
Aside from feeling all the pressure of everyone's expectations to like the book, I'm finding another problem. One that I'm absolutely positive would occur if I were to read the Harry Potter series. The more I become aware of this pressure, the more I find reasons to dislike the book. That, essentially, is what I'm angry about. That I've wanted to read this book forever and now I find myself trying to find ways to dislike it because I feel threatened by all of the people who adore it.

Yes, I know how stupid that sounds when it's blurted out like that. But I sometimes feel like if I disliked this book some people would think less of me. This is something that has actually happened with the Harry Potter books. I mentioned that I hadn’t read them and didn’t really want to, and the person I was talking to got an “oh.” look on their face and the conversation quickly dissolved. It’s the feeling that my credibility as a person hinges on liking the same thing that they do. That’s where the spite reaction kicks in. I know if I were to read the Harry Potter books this feeling would be ten times as strong, and I know it would keep me from enjoying them no matter how much I tried.
I have no right to actually be angry with these people. The book is something that they love and when they see me read it they can't help but show their approval and sometimes share their opinions. It's something I do myself all the time with books and movies and TV shows and everything that I like and want to share with my friends. As much as I want to be annoyed by that, but I can't.
I talk of all the pressure and expectations but I know that nothing like that is intended (at least not about Good Omens). I just never wanted to have this kind of experience with a book that I actually wanted to read. I didn’t want to read it ‘just to get all these people off of my back’ I wanted to read it because it’s always looked like something I would enjoy. But I’m afraid that’s what the experience has turned into. Of all the people at work who came up and talked to me about it, only one of them appeared to have a similar approach to it. He said that he started reading it a while ago and then got too distracted by other things to finish it. I told him that I could understand that, since the plot keeps jumping all over and new characters keep getting introduced in the middle. He said that he should pick it up again and finish it before they get a movie out. He quickly followed this by saying not to get him wrong, it really was good. But it almost felt like he said this just to reassure me and anyone else listening that he really did like it. As if there was some consequence to disliking it.

I know that this is really my problem and that I’m going to have to get over it somehow.

I can’t blame the people who wrote the book or the people that love it.

This is a lot like how I used to think about drinking. I used to look down it and think less and make fun of people who drank. But one night I went along to the bar with some coworkers, and they all drank. These were friends of mine, people who I respected. I had to change my outlook a bit there. I’m not so intolerant about it, but it’s still something that I can’t share. I can’t embrace it but I can accept it that it exists without disapproving of it.

I suppose I’ll have to come to some kind of similar peace with this. I don’t know if it’s going to be easier or harder. It’s very likely in the meantime that I’ll just stick to only taking a book out in public if it’s very obscure or obviously terrible.