bummed ~

i sat down to write an entry about enid blyton and the meaning of it all, when i read the news of steve irwin's death.

and possibly even more depressing, i'm linking to wikipedia as a reference source.

: o p

~ * ~

gonna go finish watching the X-files and then i have a lot of writing to do.

utter_scoundrel sent me season nine for my birthday and it is an interesting mix of weirdness. i think the fact that shioban and manners were in control helped save a lot of it, but monica reyes is definitely a weak link (i've even grown to like doggett, but reyes is just lame ~ sorry annabeth). i find it endlessly amusing that they actually titled an episode "Jump the Shark" (and boy did it ever). and i'm going to pretend the whole death of the lone gunmen/giving up william episodes didn't even happen.



rest in peace, beyers, langly, and frohickie.
i think they done you all wrong.
i was also sorry to see follmer's character written off without even a final note about where he went (presumably to jail). i didn't really like the character, but the sloppiness of the writing here was sad to see ~ especially in an episode which was otherwise one of the the best of the lot (solving the murder of doggett's son).

oh well. two more episodes. let's see what mulder has to say for himself in the end.

: D

enid and honoré ~

so ~ enid blyton.

enid blyton is the highest selling author of all time. she has more than 300 books still in print in 90 languages and has sold over 600 million books worldwide. unfortunately she's dead, so she's not exactly reaping ther benefits of all this, but that's not the point.

aside from the 300 still currently in print, enid wrote roughly another 500 books (for a total of about 800) in the span of 40 years. that's 20 books a year (1.67 a month) for those of you who want the math.

it's true that many of these books are children's books and books for young audiences, but most of her adventures series were standard sized young adult novels between 150 and 250 pages. short books, perhaps, but impressive nonetheless.

i've never read anything by enid blyton. in fact i'd never heard of her until yesterday. apparently she never gained the kind of popularity in the united states that she enjoys in england, australia, and several other countries.

now previously i was impressed by honoré de balzac's output of 95 novels and i don't think you can compare the two given their literary styles, intents, etc. but my golly gee goobers, what insanity! here i was thinking balzac was some kind of prolific model to look up to and along comes enid and just blows him out of the water. even if enid's books are one quarter the length of balzac's, you're still talking about 200 to 95. of course enid's career spanned 40 years and balzac's was only 20. so maybe it's fair to say they were equally prolific perhaps. one source says that at one point in her career enid was producing 10k words a day.



and on a manual typerwiter too! ack!
and there's really not point to any of this except to say: gee, i guess i should quit making excuses and get to writing.

: o p