WordSisters

Tag: love to read

  • I Never Used To Be A Quitter

    But in the last two months I’ve fired three of the books I was reading: The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, and The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison.

    I LOVE to read and I consume several books every month—mostly novels, memoirs, and essay collections. It stands to reason that occasionally I’ll pick up a dud. But three in a row? What’s going on?

    Why I Set Aside Those Books

    IMG_0385Each book was favorably reviewed and the subject matter sounded interesting. I expected to like the books and looked forward to reading them.

    At first, I read with enthusiasm, but I stopped enjoying myself about 80 percent of the way through The Signature of All Things. I made it through only 60 percent of The Invention of Wings and about 20 percent of The Empathy Exams.

    Reading historical fiction and learning about unfamiliar cultures usually appeals to me. For a while, I enjoyed those aspects in all three books. Soon, however, the level of detail each author incorporated stopped being fascinating and turned tedious. I just don’t want to know that much about moss (Gilbert), the infighting among abolitionists (Monk Kidd), or peculiar subcultures (Jamison).

    I enjoy character-driven stories. Each of the book’s main character (and the narrator in the memoir-based essays in The Empathy Exams) is unusual and had the potential to be interesting. While I was curious about the main characters, each had a quality that was fundamentally off-putting. I stopped wanting to spend time with those people.

    Is It Me? Is It Them? Does It Matter?

    1. Life is too short. I’m not going to waste time on books I don’t enjoy. There are too many good, satisfying books I could be reading instead.

    2. I no longer care why a book doesn’t meet my expectations—it’s still fired. I used to assume that if a book was disappointing, that the failing was probably mine instead of the author’s—perhaps I wasn’t intellectual or sophisticated enough.

    However, in the last decade I’ve read too many mediocre books, so I no longer blame myself. Too often I’ve thought, “Wow! How did that get published?” The publishing industry has been changing rapidly in the last decade, and publishers are risk-averse. If one book is successful they try to clone it (e.g., vampire novels). Other times publishers invest in concept books in which the premise is interesting but the writing isn’t strong (e.g., The Hunger Games). Plenty of good books are still being published, but finding them has gotten harder, especially when only a handful are featured in reviews and blogs.

    3. I need to rely on reviewers less. Or I need to find reviewers whose taste is more similar to mine. I read reviews of the three books mentioned earlier, and yet, I was disappointed.

    I’ve learned to dig into Amazon and Goodreads’ reviews, but I disregard their suggested reading lists. Just because I read XYZ, doesn’t mean I want to read another book with the exact same subject matter.

    I take the reviews in the New York Times Review of Books and Washington Post with a grain of salt (or a whole box?) Their critics are often captivated by the literary experiments some authors engage in. The book may be a clever exercise but if it fails at telling a good story, I’m disappointed.

    Reading is too important to give up, but I do wish I had a better way to choose books. How do you discover the gems? Do you ever fire the books you’re reading books? Why?

  • Love Your Public Library

    Growing up, my Dad, my sister, and I visited the Sanger library in west Toledo every week. In all my memories, the library is sunny and bright, and I was eager to discover what wonderful stories might be waiting for me. When the pickings were slim, I was actively disappointed, but checked out whatever books I could find. Being without books to read was worse than reading so-so books. To this day, I have stacks of books by my bed and downloaded onto my iPad. If I’m traveling, I need at least three books available to feed my reading addiction and keep my no-book anxieties at bay.

    The three of us loved to read and each of us checked out four books (the maximum allowed). In second and third grade, I read through a shelf of orange-bound biographies and met Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington Carver, Florence Nightingale, Lucretia Mott, and others. I also LOVED Nancy Drew mysteries and tore through them. Later, I learned that Toledoan  Mildred Benson (whose pen name was Carolyn Keene), wrote many of the stories in that series.

    By the time I was in fourth grade, I had read all of the children’s chapter books, so Dad arranged with the librarian to let me read whatever I wanted in the adult section. Today, when book banning is rampant in schools, this seems like a surprising decision, but Dad wasn’t worried about what I might find. He once told me that he attempted to read all of the library’s books (he got from the A’s through the G’s), so he understood my need to read. In fourth grade, Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca was one of my favorites, and I went on to read all of the DuMaurier books at the library.

    At home, our bookshelves may have seemed oddly empty. Although Dad loved reading, he didn’t need to own the books, and so my sister and I learned we didn’t either. As a practical matter, we couldn’t possibly find space for all the books we read. Dad’s philosophy is still ingrained in me. Over the years, I’ve borrowed most of what I wanted to read from the public library, and I’ve bought books as a special treat or if the library didn’t carry what I wanted. I still feel that way, but now I buy books I love in order to support living authors. However, typically I buy them after I’ve read the library’s copy. Weird, I know, but I can’t own everything I’ve read or plan to read.

    Today, my relationship with the library is different. I don’t visit in person as often as I used to. Instead, I download ebooks from the library, because I love reading on my iPad (so many books in one lightweight place!). But I am as firmly committed to public libraries as ever. For me, they represent a world of stories and knowledge: garden books about shade plants, novels about China during the Mao’s Cultural Revolution, financial reports of companies I want to invest in, travel guides about small Irish towns. For other people, they’re a source for free computer and Internet access for research papers, Facebook, and job searches.

    Today, the Dakota County Library in Minnesota is my home library. While their funding is secure for this year, the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library is facing a 50 percent budget cut if the local levy doesn’t pass this fall. I hope my Toledo friends and family will vote for the levy renewal, so this wonderful resource doesn’t become a memory!