My first book was The Secret Garden. My second was Beowulf. I am midway through The Pillars of the Earth and midway through Curiosity: A Love Story. It is hard slogging but it isn't the books fault.
I'm reading them on my Sony Reader and I have to tell you, books and reading them are a completely different thing when you read them on a piece of technology like a ereader.
As a kid, I was a voracious reader. As an adult I read more. There was nothing that I did and no where I went that books did not come into play. I read everything I could get my hands on. I have slowed in recent years and I have become a much pickier reader.
With NaJuReMoNoMo, I have tried to find books that are newer. I don't have a really high opinion of modern literature. Everything is so dark. Why the heck can't modern literature be happy? Why the heck does the focus of it have to be so blessedly grim all the time? Or perhaps my feeling everything newer is dark, is one of those things that mark me as old people. Sigh.
That has been the first challenge as I tried to find things for my ereader. Finding books that don't draw me into darkness, that are novels, has been hard.
The second challenge has been the ereader itself. There will never be a time where the story played out on a reader screen will draw me in the way they do as they play out on the page. Ereaders might work to keep ordinary people reading, but it isn't going to work for those of us who are readers. There is a physical connection to the story and the book that does not translate on the black crisp edge of an ereader. Perhaps if you never read a real book, but did all your reading all your life on a piece of technology you would feel different but it just is not ever going to be the same experience as when I read a paper book.
What I am trying to say is that though I am reading Pillar of the Earth and Curiosity: A Love Story, I don't have the same connection to them that I do when I read a real book. I can take them or leave them. I'm not driven to complete them.
In all honesty, I'd rather be reading Charles Darwin. I downloaded several of his books from Project Gutenberg and I can't wait to read them. I suspect these will fit the ereader experience better. And I just recently downloaded Walter Isaacsons biography of Einstein as an audio book. I'm looking forward to that.
I'm going to try to complete another novel this month but it isn't going to be easy. I doubt that it is going to be the more than 800 pages of Pillars. More likely it will be the shorter Curiosity. And then who knows.
I probably just need a good dose of something familiar and comfortable to knock me out of my novel funk. Maybe a little Miss Marple is in order.
Miss Marple and Hercule Poroit (sp?) always hit a good spot don't they? I haven't read one of those in a long time. GD
ReplyDeleteI call myself a binge reader. Some months tons, then next month none. Pillars O The earth is supposed to be a good book. I just read Dan Brown's Lost Symbol. The first DB book I've ever read. Fast paced and a movie waiting to happen. Not wonderful literature, but a good read.
ReplyDeleteI've had the same experience reading novels on screens. Suddenly the usual ten books a month dropped to one, and not read with much enthusiasm either.
ReplyDeleteAlthough - if you aren't getting along with more modern works, what about getting some old adventure stories - John Buchan or something like that? Ordinary adventures that aren't trying to make a point won't be dark. And they aren't intended to be engaging as a romance is.
Just a thought..