Re “the math never has to work, as long as you're too caught up to think about it, so maybe the problem was that I wasn't”—yeah. That ties in with Ben R’s sources-of-reader-pleasure theory—that when we criticize aspects of a work, it’s often because of exactly that kind of not-being-distracted-enough-by-the-aspects-you-liked.

(Thanks for the reviews! I got a new-to-me feedreader in order to do a better job of keeping up with friends’ non-FB posts, sparked specifically by our email exchange about your posts that I haven’t been seeing. So I’m pleased to be finally seeing your posts. :) Remains to be seen whether I’ll keep going with this new feedreader, but it’s looking promising so far.)