Bertram's Blog

So far most of my New Year’s resolutions are on track, both the intentional ones and the unintentional ones. My plan of taking a walk every day was pretty much buried in the snow a few days ago. Although the snow is melting, there is too much slush to for me to want to be out there; also I’m fighting some sort of allergy or early cold symptom, which gives me even more of an excuse to remain inside. I am doing well staying away from the news, though occasionally the news comes calling with an email or an inadvertent glimpse when I let my attention wander. I’m also staying with the no sugar/no wheat thing, though I am looking forward to some sort of treat when the month is over. (This resolution was only for a month, though the intention of sticking with real food is an ongoing one.)

My unintentional resolution of blogging every day is still on track. Fifteen days and counting! I never really planned to blog every day . . . I just started, and now here I am. It feels good to be back blogging. An additional benefit is that it’s getting me away from playing games on the computer, which is just as well. The hidden object game I play is getting tiresome, though I still log in and play a bit every day just to keep my hand in, but any sense of wanting to work toward game goals has dissipated.

One unvoiced intention this year was to reread The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and try to pick out clues to the real ending, not the ending we ended up with, which I am trying to do. Jordan, the one who created his world out of a mosaic of our history, culture, myths, and legends, died before he could finish, and the author chosen to finish the series did an execrable job. Not only was he at best a serviceable writer, he dumped characters that played a role through Jordan’s writings, ignored many characters’ development and regressed them to the beginning, traded established subplots for new subplots of his own that added nothing to the story, destroyed his own timeline so that things happened in no order (even seemingly having one character in two places at a time and two characters meeting where their timelines couldn’t have intersected).

[What astonishes me about those ersatz books is how protective everyone is of that substitute author. There are no one- and two-star ratings of his offerings, though there are plenty of low ratings when it comes to Jordan’s books. (Admittedly, some of those are deserved. Although much of Jordan’s story is brilliant and shows the ten years he spent researching, and his writing seems epic at times, it could do with a serious editing, including slashing huge sections of a couple of books.) I did find one review that was an honest critique of the last three books, yet the overwhelming response to the thoughtful piece was that the review was “overwrought drivel” written by an angry fan. (Even though the reviewer admitted he wasn’t a fan.)]

I read this series multiple times because after volume 6, I could no long remember what had happened in volume one. Most of the brilliance in the series comes from foreshadowing, and it’s hard to tell when a foreshadowed event occurs when you can’t remember the foreshadowing. So now I am able to remember the story going both ways — what I’ve read and what I’m going to read. Unfortunately, now I can’t forget those last three mishmash books by the substitute author in order to come up with my own ending as foreshadowed by Jordan’s writings.

I am not a fan of these books so much as a student, which is why I want to puzzle out the real ending. (Something to occupy my mind, if nothing else.) Perhaps as I find more of the clues to the ending Jordan intended, I’ll be able to override in my mind the bad ending with one of my own concoction.

Meantime, the year progresses. Already halfway through January! And my intentions (and unintentions) are still holding strong.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.