I’ve been devoting more time to reading books and attempting new hobbies in my effort to reduce the amount of content I consume from the internet.
Since the beginning of September, I have read six novels and abandoned one novel after a record 30 pages (I couldn’t take the convenient miracles any longer, they were that obvious and that poorly written). The month has a few days yet and I am working on two more books. There is always a chance I’ll make it through my seventh, but I wouldn’t count on it.
If you are curious as to what I’ve been reading, check out this “living” page that gets updated as I consume, including planned and current reads.
Six books is not huge, but it is a positive effort away from social media and news that, let’s just say, feels like a low-quality circus right about now.
Below is a partial translation of the Irish War Goddess Badb’s delivered prophecy after the defeat at Mag Tuired of the Fomorians by the Tuatha Dé Danann. She augers the eventual end of the world, “foretelling every evil that would be therein, and every disease and every vengeance.”
Have you ever started reading a book and find the descriptions of the backdrop to be too rich in the details? While in which the characters seem far too paper-thin and inauthentic?
I started reading Jhereg by Steven Brust last night as part of my recent determination to create some air between my brain and various digital and social medias (streaming services including YouTube, mass-social media, news sites, video games, & etc.). I am annoyed with myself now that it has taken so long to read his writing aside from Freedom and Necessity.
I hope that no one is offended when I say Jhereg is just the kind of pulp fiction I was looking for. It is not high literature, nor does it pretend to be. The novel is a fantasy tale of an assassin and mobster, Vlad Taltos, who happens to be a second-class citizen (because he is human) in a fantasy city full of thievery, deception and double-crossings. Plus, he has magic and a reptilian familiar.
And, so far, it works — as a bit of a hard-boiled noir and fantasy crossover. A movie with similar DNA (except set in a futuristic Earth instead of a medieval fantasy world) might be Blade Runner.
Like The Witcher books I’ve been re-reading, it has an easy flow to the storytelling that I think might be missing from a lot of the more recent writing out there. Even some of books I’ve enjoyed that have been written in the past 25 years seem to be trying real hard to be “good literature” when they are, at their base, pulp novels. Or, maybe, I’m just more tuned into penny dreadfuls, pulp fiction, and weird tales and would prefer to read that birdcage liner stuff.
Sometimes I wonder if we put too much emphasis on structure, formulae and erudition, and not enough on merely telling a “ripping yarn”. I certainly don’t know. But I’m sure there are tons of opinions about the matter.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from my recent nationwide chain bookstore experience, I found plenty of things to throw my money at last night at the used bookstore last night. It absolutely made up for the disappointment I experienced on Sunday.
For the same cost as buying a single hardcover, I managed to snag five used mass market books and one QP paperback. That’s six books, my friends, for just over $30. And all in good to fantastic shape. And I held back, because there were a few other titles I considered adding to the pile.
Now I’m set for a couple of weeks of reading material, including those books I already have in my possession that I plan to read.
