See below:

So... hey. It's been a while, but I'm actually going to blather at you now.

Shall I give you a moment to recover from the shock?






Ok then. What with all the being sick and the being cranky and the being... well, just generally me lately, I haven't been doing much of anything (outside of work time, that is. I've been doing lots of anything at work, which is probably why I don't feel like doing a whole bunch of anything at work right now) but reading. No new books at all; I've just been picking up random things off of my shelves that looked like they might stand a chance of getting me past the sick or the cranky or the just generally me.

Success? Here and there.

Oh, and if anyone happens to care about what I've got on the go just now, click on the Shelfari widget on the sidebar, go to my shelf, and then hit the Reading link. And if you decide to browse the rest of my shelf and have figured out that I'm pretty much completely insane, bear in mind that I've only entered about a third (nah, it's gotta be less that that) of the books currently taking up space in my apartment and on my work desk. If I ever get them ALL entered, then you'll know for sure that I'm pretty much completely insane. Or at least a bit on the eclectic side as far as my tastes go.

And... if you yourself have a Shelfari shelf (hey! A rhyme!), let me know or friend me or something. I'm still fairly new to the thing so I haven't done a lot of looking around at other people's books yet. I'd love to know how high your tastes rank you on the pretty-much-completely-insane-ometer.







I've so completely lost the track of whatever it was I was going to blather about.

Bet you hadn't guessed.

Scrolling back up a bit...




All right. Got it. So, as I said, I've been reading because I haven't had the energy/enthusiasm for much of anything else, and I was reminded of something that kind of bugs me. Footnotes. Footnotes, chapternotes, endnotes, whatevernotes they happen to be in each particular editor's mind. How do you feel about whatevernotes?

Personally, I like notes. I often find myself reading some unusual things, and my brain's enough of a trivia collector that it's happy when it finds itself in a book that has extra information in the form of notes. Yay superscripts. Superscripts mean that we are going to be having an info PARTY, boys and girls.

Yeah, I like notes. What I don't like, though, is having to flip through an entire book over and over again to find them.

Footnotes? Footnotes are great. I know that there are people out there who find them distracting, but to me footnotes are exactly what notes should be. Have a superscript? See below. That's all there is to it. Don't want to see below? Then ignore the superscript and continue reading.

Endnotes, however, bug the snot out of me. They're bad enough when they're all collected together at the back of the book, but when they're printed at the end of each chapter? Geez. Or maybe even wtf. What are you supposed to do with that sort of organisational annoyance? Continually flip back and forth? Hold a finger in the book to mark the chapter's end? Hunt around for yet another bookmark so that you don't have to wreck the pages by holding a finger in the book?

I've done all of the above (and moreso. Don't even ask about the day of the mandarin orange papers), and it's ALL ANNOYING.

Come on, people. I like books. A lot. Where do you get off trying to make books annoying to me? That's not cricket.

Well of course that's not cricket. It's books. Look: this is a book, and this is a cricket. Or this is a cricket, if you prefer (yes, I did know where the phrase comes from. I was just seeing if you were paying attention). They're not the same thing at all, really.

Aaaaand things just got silly. Time to stop typing and go and get some groceries then, I guess. What with all the being sick and the you know the rest by now, the cupboard's looking more than a little bare today.

Later, then.