A Confession

Wanted someplace to post this on Goodreads and as it in a way ties back to my writing, thought this author blog would be as good a place as I could find.

LONG POST ABOUT BOOKS AND READING

I have a confession. Simply this: I have hardly been reading since probably last September and then it took me all the way from January 'til tonight to finish Lord of the Rings, which granted is three books' work but at another time I could have gotten through in a couple of weeks. THIS IS SO UNLIKE ME.

I've paused in my reading before, usually because I was writing, or editing, but this was different. In the later summer 2012 I was editing stories for the Wraeththu anthology, which is where that reading energy and time went, and I was also writing.

After that I went off reading and just did not get back on. Instead of reading on MARTA or at lunch as I've always done, I did crosswords and my Deco blog and games on my phone, or Facebook, or listened to music.

All through Fall I had this aversion to reading anything. I have piles of books, of various sorts, old, newish, ancient reference books, historical fiction, novels, short stories, all these things, and I when I'd look at them I'd sort of flinch. No no no! Not for reading at home or on the bus or anywhere. Just: No.

I think I know what brought this on. Beside getting sidetracked with the writing/editing and then entranced by the lure of my phone, I have had just -horrible- luck with books over the past couple of years. Yes, there have been the usual standouts, like the latest Nightrunner book Casket of Souls, a couple of Tanith Lee novels, Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, but ugh, sprinkled in between a whole series of books I just could NOT get through. And NOT getting through a book -- quitting -- is just not in my nature.

I would get to a point in these books and get sick of them and want to stop, but keep inching forward, like running through sludge to my thighs, and finally put them down. Then I would say (as has always been true), "Well, I can't read another until I finish that one!" But rather than that, I would just NOT READ. I am STUBBORN. And illogical. And have an all-or-nothing attitude about always eating up the whole book before the next one. Grrr.

So anyway, books I have given up (?) are Iron Council (terribly off-putting opening chapters, China Mieville), The Sex Doll: A History (OMGF academic twaddle), Overcoming Evil (intense, academic and didactic), and Bring Me to the Banqueting House (bizarre tale of Jewish orphanage in Colorado in the 40s that meanders way, way too much).

Finally when I was in Sturbridge at Christmas I started to feel up to reading something again. At at rate I felt awfully guilty for abandoning my old friends. So I scooped up several books from the house and at Betty's, including Middlesex (still haven't cracked it open) and Lord of the Rings. Which as I just said, took me six months to read.

Not that LotR was slow-going at all -- in fact it was leagues and leagues more exciting and less dull than I had imagined -- but that ugh, that book is really REALLY heavy as an omnibus. And I am stubborn enough about ebooks that yes, I carried it around with me and if I was too tired to hold it, I'd do things on my phone or stare out the window. But I think it was last month I decided that I would get on with it and finish it through and turn the page (ha) on this saga of not reading.

So with that over, I have the stack of books to read. Here is some of what I have. A couple of them (*'d) are rather long and I think I want to avoid anything huge, and I'm skipping the books I am "hung" on, so what of these?

--Fiction--

Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides) *
Rumo & Die Wunder im Dunkeln (Walter Moers) *
Best Erotic Fantasy & Science Fiction (anthology; won at Gaylaxicon)
Funeral Games (Mary Renault)
Perfect Trust (M.R. Sellars... got this free at Gaylaxicon)

--Non-Fiction--

A History of Private Life (Paul Veyne... actually I read 1st 200 pages already) *
Art Deco Architecture (Patricia Bayer)
Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It (Gary Taubes)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Jared Diamond)

And yes I will say more about LotR later now that I have finally read it, after years of saying I never would.

P.S. And ha, turned around and Harry is now using a stack of some book, which I pulled out to give the titles, as a pillow. He likes fat books for pillows.