Despite everything I said yesterday about being able to read books quickly, unless I have a series to read, I'm pretty much a mess trying to decide what book is next. It seems to take me at least a day or two or three to figure out what to read, especially now with Kindle. I can get a sample of everything before I start reading so I know if I want to read it or not. Usually I have to try a bunch a samples until I find just that right fit for the mood that I am in. Even when I'm convinced I want to read a certain book, if I put it off and then come back to it sometimes it ends up in the "I don't want to read" pile. I'm not quite sure why I struggle so much with picking a book. I think I go back and forth between what I really want to read (fantasy, romance, easy reading) and what I think I should be reading (classics, literary, denser reading). A blog all about books (and writing), Pub(lishing) Crawl, had a post,"My Love Letter to Fantasy", which summed up basically everything that I've felt towards the genre (sub-genre, what have you). In fact, the post kicked me out of a must-only-read-classics-phase and made me feel a little less guilty about reading fantasy. Which led me to Patricia Brigg's Cry Wolf and has since then become one of my favorite series.
For a long time, I felt as if I needed to read only classics, no matter how long it took me to read them, because they would help me with my writing. Of course, that is true, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if that is the only way to go about improving your writing. My theory was if I understood how the classical authors wrote (and I understood the classic novel structure) then it would translate in my writing. This theory may not be incorrect, but I don't have to only stick to the classics. I can read contemporary novels as well. On a side note, by classics I mean Jane Austen, Shakespeare, The Brothers Grimm, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others. As you can tell by my list, I don't necessarily mean the real classics, but the authors who have stood the test of time and are still popular enough today. I would even include Dashell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, C.S. Lewis as authors. Singular books might make it onto the list even if their authors are not on there as a whole.
As I am still in between books right now, I'm just trying to figure out what I will be able to read through. I wish I had enough patience and endurance to read through more of the classic books when I'm not having to talk about it in class (or have quizzes on it). Fantasy books just make me desire to read them and not even be able to put them down, literary books make me want to read them for the knowledge I might could gain from them but when I put them down I end up feeling discouraged because I haven't gotten through as much as I thought I had.
Title: "Long Time Coming" By One Night Only
Labels: Books, Music, Musings
