I was about to post a link to a one-star review in honor of John Scalzi’s latest post on the subject, but I see I already have, way back in November. Ah, hell.

So instead, I’ll post this: The book I’m reading is The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. It’s an interesting book–excellent in a lot of ways, and mildly disappointing in others. I get the impression it’s made for readers with buttons in different places than I have.

But that’ll have to wait until after I finish reading it. What I wanted to mention was a scene about two-thirds in where Protagonist’s Best Friend is talking to Screwed-Up Protagonist about his screwed-upness. SUP has a Mysterious Terrible Event in his past that has him acting like a contemptuous jerk throughout the book, and PBF takes the brunt of it. Eventually, PBF says this:

I read these books on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they described you pretty smack-on.

And I was immediately thrown out of the story. My brain went straight to “Author did research. Research in book” and suddenly it was like I was smelling plastic flowers.

Which isn’t fair to the author, because the scene is completely earned and totally in character, but who ever said reading is fair? It was a clunker moment, and it hurt. I’ll want to write more about this book later.

Let me wrap up with this: After I wrote my “Review-down” post on Saturday night, I started feeling pretty rotten. Wisely, I announced this to my family and went to bed at 10. By 4 am, I was up again, thanks to muscle aches and a sore throat. I gargled with Listerine, took some Tylenol and played Meebling until the drugs kicked in (no link to Meebling, because your life is made of time, and both are so very precious). Then it was back to bed until–no kidding–ten am when my wife dragged me out of bed. Sleep! How good to see you again!

I still feel sorta awful, and I’m going to see if my good buddy Bed Rest can do anything about that.