My Kindle, a coveted and delightful birthday present from my parents, has only reconfirmed my extreme selective and miserly nature when it comes to books.
I've had the device for about a month now, have "sampled" many novels, including The Lonely Polygamist, The Poisonwood Bible, The Walk: A Novel, and several others by respected authors. I have sometimes enjoyed the first ten to twenty pages offered to me, but then I think...$9.99. Hmmm. For a book that could very well lose me half way through. For a book that will most likely lose when competing against my own desire to write. A whole ten bucks? Nah. There's a library three blocks from my house.
It's been about a year since I read several books that deeply impressed me -- Exit Ghost by Philip Roth, Little Children by Tom Perrotta, and half of TC Boyle's The Inner Circle (which lost me when I could see and was depressed by the inevitable ending). Since then, I've picked up and discarded many, as I do without apology in my old age.
But then I've always been a particular reader. My sister used to devour series, reading all the books about Anne of Green Gables -- where I adored the first, skimmed the second, and shrugged at the rest. I am not someone who reads all the books by one author, but has their favorite and is often disappointed by others. I'm similar with music -- liking songs more than a band.
I often come up against the unspoken rules that literary writers are supposed to follow that I simply cannot. I do and do NOT like many classic writers and texts. I do not read endlessly, especially if I'm writing. I read romance novels more than anything else because I like to read about sex, love, and happy endings. I like to read celebrity gossip and visit TMZ.com more than anyone needs to know.
I say screw the rules. I will write and read what I like.
And the first book that I managed to buy for my Kindle (a present from my husband) was Oprah's biography by Kitty Kelly, which I don't recommend because it gave me bad dreams. I was upset by the empty sadness that fueled her success, and I stopped about fifty pages in.
My mother in West Virginia, a great reader, always said, "If someone took the time to write it, I can take the time to read it." This has led me to finish some very bad books in my time, at least until I decided she was wrong. Now I'm a book reviewer and once again I must read every book to the very end. Full circle. Aren't there a lot of free books you can download and quit at any time without guilt?
ReplyDeleteAmazon offers at least one token free book each week. I snatched up a Sidney Sheldon novel that kept my attention for about thirty pages. There's a Dan Brown available right now -- but if you've read one of his books (which I have) then you've read them all. Of course, there are many, many freebies if you like reading books published before 1923, but I have a strong loyalty to living authors. Mostly, I buy chapter books for my seven year old who seems to regard the Kindle as comparable to the Nintendo DS player that my husband and I continue to resist. As a result, the amount he reads has increased dramatically since I started downloading him books. I'm happy. And I'll keep merrily sampling until I find that rare golden read.
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