Gossip for Readers

I got lost on Twitter yesterday reading the feed of Marian Keyes, who I have long admired. She had a new book out (The Grownups–it’s so good! About four men who are brothers and their wives and kids and step kids and everybody has a juicy story. Things are perfect until one of them hits her head and starts revealing some home truths at a family dinner.) and I’d finished it and just wanted to see if other people had the same reactions to it…I started with Goodreads but nobody was mentioning what I wanted to talk about. So I Googled the names of the two characters who meant the most to me through the novel and the author’s Twitter feed came up. She has a good one and people were talking about the exact characters I wanted to discuss.

I don’t know. Goodreads…at one time it was the place to go to discuss books. Now everyone’s reviews are a plot summary and one thing they liked or disliked and a thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free read. I think that’s a clue. Free. Books don’t mean the same thing when you’re doing a review gig. That’s why I stopped and now pay a fortune to support my reading habit. Yes, the re-reading my library project goes on, but my eyes love the Kindle.

So while I was on Twitter, I checked on Sweet Tooth Pam, who is not a real person on Twitter, not even Duchess Goldblatt real. I found that out when I searched for her and found only other people searching for her and everyone going “Oh that Charlie!” Meaning Charlie Kaufman, film director, who wrote the best screenplay ever for writers (Adaptation.) I’d read Charlie myself that morning, as he was featured in the NYT Book Review, and he had mentioned Sweet Tooth Pam. Twice. He even said she had recommended a book to him.

Naturally those of us with a specific blend of Twitter/reader/writer/NYT Book Review in our personalities soon were looking to follow Sweet Tooth Pam. I was glad I was not alone, just as earlier I had been glad to find a cadre of other Twitter readers who wanted the same characters (Ferdia and Nell) in a sequel I did for Ms. Keyes new novel.

With those items off my “read” list, I turned to Duchess Goldblatt, author of Becoming Duchess Goldblatt. She has a fictional persona and an “anonymous” as her name on Twitter. Currently read how she put this persona together so Lyle Lovett invites her to his show and they meet in person! It’s a fun book. Lots of her tweets are reproduced and sprinkled like rose petals throughout.

And I thought…was Charlie being funny because the Duchess recently wrote her autobiography? So he decided to concoct Sweet Tooth Pam for those of us who gobble writerly gossip like candy? I’ll never know, but it was fun get the joke.

The other thing about the Duchess, as I’m reading her first chapter, is she created a persona and then started writing tweets. And people loved her. Famous people, even, tweeted back and they’ve got a whole thing going. That’s probably how she scored her book deal. I’m happy for her! I bought her book!

But of course there is a tinge of envy because I am not good at tweeting. That’s why I blog and post my link every week. Because I feel funny tweeting, and I have ever since I first joined Twitter and felt as if I were tweeting in a forest at nobody. I do have friends on Twitter now who I talk to and those are my tweets. Or I remark to other people’s tweets.

Sort of a strange post for me today. The eye doctor dilated my eyes this morning. It’s been nine years since cataract surgery gave me 20/20 vision, and it’s still perfect, albeit blurry right now. Although he had to hold up the flabby skin on my upper lids with his baby finger while he peered into the inside of my eyes. That was new, but I have deep set eyes so I have always been aware the day would come.

I have galleys to proof but can’t because of the blur. But I got my blog done, blur and all. I was almost ready to write it on my phone in the doctor’s office while waiting for eyes to dilate. See how faithful I am. If it’s Monday, there’s a blog post.