Barbara’s review of Wellness > Likes and Comments
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I'm reading a debut novel that's all flashback telling. The story and characters are holding my interest, and for a thriller, I want to see what happens. I can see editors recognizing its marketability, and I appreciate that writing summary is so much easier than writing description, but so often, I'm wondering where the editor was too.
Same experience. Just like TOM LAKE. Why do I always pick the weaker books of widely respected authors?
Yes!
And then I get bored, so I start reading the news feed instead, maybe grab a snack, then back to the book, a few more pages, get annoyed, want to drop it, but feel guilty, because these hugely successful authors are more talented than I am, so maybe I should just suck it up and learn something, right? But, y'know, a few more pages, and I'm bored again, so, fuck it. Two weeks later, pick it up again, and ye gods, I'm only on page 45?! Until eventually I'm just, like, uh, no, I'm done here. It's not you, Nathan Hill and Anne Patchett, it's me.
It's interesting why some readers absolutely love a book and that same book leaves other readers cold. We all bring our lives to what we read, I guess. We all want something different. There are books I couldn't get into and years later read and love, and likewise, books I've read and loved at the time and then return to and struggled to get through. Heart of Darkness is the most recent book I once loved but when I read it again a few months ago, it was a slog. Do you have books like that?
I'll go with Updike. Huge fan in my twenties, with his work a harbinger of what settled adulthood must be like. And his writing so dazzling, particularly to a young dramatist who never dreamed he'd one day switch to prose. As his final novels increasingly disappointed me though, he pretty much fell out of my pantheon.
Decades later, some of my more prominent Goodreads women friends were really impressed by his MAPLES STORIES. I tried it as well, and found I no longer related to Updike, his outlook, or his writing style. He's now more like the direct opposite of who I am, the kinds of stories I want to tell, and the way I want to tell them... to the point that I'm now afraid to open my spine-cracked copies of my old faves RABBIT IS RICH and AT REST because I'm afraid I'll totally hate them.
I too loved HEART OF DARKNESS, and a lot of Conrad, in my student days. I should give it another whirl and see what I think.
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I'm reading a debut novel that's all flashback telling. The story and characters are holding my interest, and for a thriller, I want to see what happens. I can see editors recognizing its marketability, and I appreciate that writing summary is so much easier than writing description, but so often, I'm wondering where the editor was too.
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Same experience. Just like TOM LAKE. Why do I always pick the weaker books of widely respected authors?
Yes! And then I get bored, so I start reading the news feed instead, maybe grab a snack, then back to the book, a few more pages, get annoyed, want to drop it, but feel guilty, because these hugely successful authors are more talented than I am, so maybe I should just suck it up and learn something, right? But, y'know, a few more pages, and I'm bored again, so, fuck it. Two weeks later, pick it up again, and ye gods, I'm only on page 45?! Until eventually I'm just, like, uh, no, I'm done here. It's not you, Nathan Hill and Anne Patchett, it's me.
It's interesting why some readers absolutely love a book and that same book leaves other readers cold. We all bring our lives to what we read, I guess. We all want something different. There are books I couldn't get into and years later read and love, and likewise, books I've read and loved at the time and then return to and struggled to get through. Heart of Darkness is the most recent book I once loved but when I read it again a few months ago, it was a slog. Do you have books like that?
I'll go with Updike. Huge fan in my twenties, with his work a harbinger of what settled adulthood must be like. And his writing so dazzling, particularly to a young dramatist who never dreamed he'd one day switch to prose. As his final novels increasingly disappointed me though, he pretty much fell out of my pantheon. Decades later, some of my more prominent Goodreads women friends were really impressed by his MAPLES STORIES. I tried it as well, and found I no longer related to Updike, his outlook, or his writing style. He's now more like the direct opposite of who I am, the kinds of stories I want to tell, and the way I want to tell them... to the point that I'm now afraid to open my spine-cracked copies of my old faves RABBIT IS RICH and AT REST because I'm afraid I'll totally hate them.
I too loved HEART OF DARKNESS, and a lot of Conrad, in my student days. I should give it another whirl and see what I think.
