Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "enjoying-books"
Slipping into an Author's Skin
I started a Margaret Atwood book yesterday, and now I am Margaret Atwood. Her storytelling is my storytelling. I feel that I know--or should know--what's coming next, maybe because it's happening to me, or maybe because I'm telling the story or because it just fits so well. In the last month, using talented authors' skins, I've been a tough private eye and a disillusioned lawyer. I've been a black maid working for a white family in the '60s south. I've been a naive rich girl working her first ever job as a secretary. And I've been a woman with MS.
I was not able to be some characters. Lots of books that are perfectly readable are not wearable for me. I can't be that ditzy cozy heroine who muddles her way through improbable adventures. She doesn't fit, and I keep falling out of her story. Neither can I be that non-feeling protagonist who anesthetizes the stink of life with booze. In most cases I can read those books, but I don't wear them. I sit on the margin, looking in.
But when an author's skin fits, it is a golden time. There is no greater thrill for a reader than finding that author who lets you slip into his skin for a few hundred pages, who lets you read yourself a story using his words as if they were your own.
I was not able to be some characters. Lots of books that are perfectly readable are not wearable for me. I can't be that ditzy cozy heroine who muddles her way through improbable adventures. She doesn't fit, and I keep falling out of her story. Neither can I be that non-feeling protagonist who anesthetizes the stink of life with booze. In most cases I can read those books, but I don't wear them. I sit on the margin, looking in.
But when an author's skin fits, it is a golden time. There is no greater thrill for a reader than finding that author who lets you slip into his skin for a few hundred pages, who lets you read yourself a story using his words as if they were your own.
