Life's Too Short to Read Bad Fiction

Lately, it's more like, my life is too short to read fiction. Period. Which is odd, because I used to be quite the book fiend.

Wolfey alerted me to this phenomenon a couple of years ago. An avid reader, she went through a spell that was still in effect that last time we spoke many months ago. She just didn't want to read fiction, had lost her taste for it.

As it seems I have.

I'm lately occupied with cramming as much knowledge as I can into my head. And while wisdom may be found in fiction, knowledge cannot be. Unless you can actually read the technical specifications of fighter jets and nuclear submarines that Tom Clancy insists on including in every book he writes.

As a former fiction writer, I am developing a keen mistrust of other fiction writers. I know their tricks, their wiles, and their games. I'm wise to them.

Mostly, I'm tired of being sucked into a book, only to find that it's bad.

It's a big process for me to get ready to read a book. I have to make sure the kitchen is in a state of total non-grunginess and have at least a couple of loads of laundry going. The cats have to be asleep. And there's this subconscious mental process going on, too. Giving myself permission to take the time to read, I guess.

The disappointment in reading what turns out to be bad fiction is just too much. It takes a lot of effort to admit to myself that a book is just plain bad, since I used to make myself finish every book I started. (I don't do that anymore.) I've invested the time, the preparation, the effort to get fifty pages into the thing, only to find out the writing is really bad, the plot is outlandish, and the characters are people you would loathe in real life.

So there I am, with a three hundred page disappointment in my hand.

I distrust book reviewers. I especially distrust the New York Times book review section. And I have learned through hard experience to give wide berth to any book that has ever won any award. Especially The Booker Prize in the UK and the National Book Award in the US. (Surprisingly, on doing a little poking around, I find the Book Sense Book of the Year Awards to be to my taste.)

The only remedy for this that I can see is to read novels that were published before 1900. Unfortunately, this still includes Edith Wharton. And excludes Graham Greene.

I will have to tread carefully as I go about picking and choosing what I will and will not read. It grieves me to have to do it, but the state of modern fiction is such that I can't bear another incident like The Holding.

Who knew that love could be such a minefield?