What I'm reading
I've decided my reading has become extremely narrow in recent years. I like reading M/M romance, mystery and literature. I like reading the occasional auto/biography. That's what I've been reading. I'm a librarian so I really can't allow that narrowness of awareness remain that way so I've been finding other ways to read.
There are a whole heap of classics I've never finished. I've read all of Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They're my favourite classic writers and I never tire of them. It's the same with authors such as Victor Kelleher, Isaac Asimov, George Orwell. The rest? I can't get past the first few pages. The writing bores me. Or the topic does. Or the pace is so slow I fall asleep.
I've become so used to fast-moving stories, I simply can't tolerate ones that aren't, regardless of how well they've been written or how good the story is by the end.
I've come up with a solution: audiobooks. I've downloaded Overdrive, dusted off my library card and I've started listening to books as I drive. I work really close to home (five minutes drive) so there's no point in listening to or from work, but I go out on weekends so I listen then.
In the last couple of weeks I've managed to finish a couple of classics I've never been able to finish before: Wuthering Heights and Lady Chatterley's Lover, and I'm now listening to A Tale of Two Cities. I first read this book when I was ten and, while I thought I'd forgotten everything about it, it's feeling like an old friend I haven't seen in a long time.
This isn't the first time I've turned to audiobooks to listen to stories I wouldn't read in paper or on my ereader. I stopped because it annoyed me having to change the cassette tape and then the disk, at the lights, or pull over to the side of the road to do it.
I always listen when I'm driving because I don't have to use earphones and I usually drive by myself so I don't have to have a conversation with anyone else. I don't like using earphones because they remove me from the world around me and I don't like the sense of living in a bubble with no awareness of what's happening outside that. That's particularly the case when I'm at home alone or out walking in the evening. Without the earphones, I can still hear if something happens around me - eg a siren coming down the street.
I've made a list of authors I want to read/re-read. They aren't all classics.
John Steinbeck
Neville Shute
Louisa May Alcott
Charles Dickens
Xavier Herbert
Amy Tan
Cassandra Clare
Matthew Reilly
Scott Westerfield
PD James
That's just the first page of my notes on my phone. The list goes on in no particular order. Every time I think of another book I either haven't read but always wanted to or haven't read in a long time, I write it down. I'll be listening to books for years.
There are a whole heap of classics I've never finished. I've read all of Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They're my favourite classic writers and I never tire of them. It's the same with authors such as Victor Kelleher, Isaac Asimov, George Orwell. The rest? I can't get past the first few pages. The writing bores me. Or the topic does. Or the pace is so slow I fall asleep.
I've become so used to fast-moving stories, I simply can't tolerate ones that aren't, regardless of how well they've been written or how good the story is by the end.
I've come up with a solution: audiobooks. I've downloaded Overdrive, dusted off my library card and I've started listening to books as I drive. I work really close to home (five minutes drive) so there's no point in listening to or from work, but I go out on weekends so I listen then. In the last couple of weeks I've managed to finish a couple of classics I've never been able to finish before: Wuthering Heights and Lady Chatterley's Lover, and I'm now listening to A Tale of Two Cities. I first read this book when I was ten and, while I thought I'd forgotten everything about it, it's feeling like an old friend I haven't seen in a long time.
This isn't the first time I've turned to audiobooks to listen to stories I wouldn't read in paper or on my ereader. I stopped because it annoyed me having to change the cassette tape and then the disk, at the lights, or pull over to the side of the road to do it.
I always listen when I'm driving because I don't have to use earphones and I usually drive by myself so I don't have to have a conversation with anyone else. I don't like using earphones because they remove me from the world around me and I don't like the sense of living in a bubble with no awareness of what's happening outside that. That's particularly the case when I'm at home alone or out walking in the evening. Without the earphones, I can still hear if something happens around me - eg a siren coming down the street.
I've made a list of authors I want to read/re-read. They aren't all classics.
John Steinbeck
Neville Shute
Louisa May Alcott
Charles Dickens
Xavier Herbert
Amy Tan
Cassandra Clare
Matthew Reilly
Scott Westerfield
PD James
That's just the first page of my notes on my phone. The list goes on in no particular order. Every time I think of another book I either haven't read but always wanted to or haven't read in a long time, I write it down. I'll be listening to books for years.
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