Incurious

Well, there's this series of books I don't really like that much. I guess the first one was okay, but as I think back, it was just sort of a novelty, maybe. And the second one I didn't enjoy at all. This hit me recently when I saw a new hardcover in Square Books the other day, a third book in the series, hot off the presses... and friends, I bought it! Why? It may have something to do with a problem in my brain. Oh boy, I've thought of a few more points to touch upon before we get to the gist, if there is one, which there almost certainly is not. Yes there is. But no one will like it. I recommended the first book in the series to Dr. Theresa recently when she was looking for something to read in bed. It was only some days later, when I saw the third in the series at Square Books, that I truly considered whether or not I had actually "enjoyed" the first... which I had, up to a point. But enough to recommend it to Dr. Theresa - a person to whom I have made sacred vows - to read in bed? Well, it was too late! It was already happening! Something else you may not be wondering... Jack, you may not be wondering, isn't it very seldom that you "post" something negative... admitting that you don't like a book, for example? Aren't you afraid of hurting the author's feelings? Well, I'll tell you. No. Because I know you! And you don't exist! And even if you do exist, which you don't, you never "click" on my "hyperlinks," so you will never, ever know what books I am talking about. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, okay, this third book - which you bought for full price in hardcover - in a series you don't care for: does it have an owl in it? You bet your ass it does! It's a stuffed owl with "incurious glass eyes." I am sure you will recall the "cheap glass eye" an owl has in a John D. MacDonald novel. Or if you want to get fancy, you can think of a stuffed owl whose glass eyes are "knowing topazes" in a fancy Italian novel... or James Joyce, whose stuffed owl has a "clear melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze." One day we'll have to write a monograph on approaches to owl eyes in literature. Apparently, there are two. Oh, and the owl in my current book is just one of a series of unfortunate stuffed creatures with "incurious glass eyes"... to quote: "Crows, foxes, rabbits, owls, just about every form of wildlife." Oh, really? Was there a walrus? A walrus with incurious glass eyes? Come on!