“Cacophony,” we decided at work the other day, was an onomatopoetic word, though whether “onomatopoetic” is a word was never conclusively determined.

“Of course it is,” I said, with a wee bit of derision in my voice. “Everybody knows that.” (I had to sound confident, since I was the one who’d used it. The trick to making up words and to pronouncing unfamiliar names is to sound self-assured. This has saved me more than once when playing Scrabble.)

Coincidentally, a few days later I opened the latest Kevin Smith graphic novel, titled Batman: Cacophony. Now I love Kevin Smith’s films, and I loved his Green Arrow books, but the Batman attempt disappointed. The story was kind of weak, and there was very little humor. The whole point of Kevin Smith’s existence is to be funny, so I don’t know what he was thinking, attempting a Batman book. Batman spends his time being serious and glum. It’d do him a world of good to slip on a banana peel, but the closest thing to a gag in the book came when Batman put on a fake mustache—and without a giant rubber nose and glasses to go with it, I just don’t see the point.

I’m looking forward to a new Neil Gaiman Batman book, though, which I might read this afternoon. (I’m home sick nursing a head cold.) I can tell you one book I will not be reading today, however. That book is Women’s Nonfiction: A Guide to Reading Interests, by Jessica Zellers, i.e., me.

I will not be reading it because my author copies have not arrived. My editor got her copy over a week ago. My mother got her copy, purchased from Amazon, yesterday. My copies, however, are apparently being deliver by mule-- slow, arthritic, mentally challenged mule.

“I’ll get you a copy for Christmas if you still need one,” my mother offered. Who needs Kevin Smith for humor when you’ve got relatives like that?

Mom read through the intro last night and then called me back. “I like how it reads,” she said. “It’s not stilted.”

There. My first review. My book is “not stilted.” This does not quite qualify as “glowing praise,” especially coming from my mother, who should be lavishing it with hyperbole (“as important to Western Civilization as Plato’s Republic” would do) but it’s a start.

By the way, I apologize for slacking off on the blog lately. Writer’s block, doncha know. Most likely I will be inspired to write again when the mule-express shambles its way here. For now I'm going to tkae a nap to try to throw off this cold.