"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means." --Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
I love to read. When I go to the library and check out books, the librarians give me a speculative look and say, "You know these are all due in three weeks, right?" If all I had to worry about was reading through all those pages within three weeks, there would be no problem. The problem is that it's hard to find books that interest me. It's even harder to find books that interest me and make me like them.
I'm not one for intellectual snobbery. I don't read books to broaden my mind or educate myself. I like mystery novels, with suspense and intrigue and a romance thrown in somewhere. I love reading P.G. Wodehouse's books, with their jolly British wit and silly situations. I like reading Robert Asprin's fantasy "Myth" series. I throw the occasional chick flick book into my library bag.
I've tried including "smart" books in my hoard. My latest attempt was F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. I couldn't bring myself to even read the first page, since I could tell from reading the blurb on the back that it wasn't going to end well. Some of my favorite short stories are by Fitzgerald, but I have to flip through my copy of Jazz Age Stories to find them, passing over the profound but sad ones. I don't handle unhappy endings well. If boy meets girl and they fall in love, boy and girl better darn end up together once the dust settles.
In a high school English class, I always bummed a book off my teacher for our 15 minutes of silent reading. He was really into a series by some famous fantasy author, so I started reading the first installment. I think the author actually died a few years ago before finishing the final book, but his thousands of fans were overjoyed that he left instructions with his son to finish it. I really don't care whether there is a last book or not, because the first book was the last of his that I'll read. It was the most depressing story I've ever read. There's a bad guy and bunch of good guys, and the bad guy just keeps killing them off or enslaving them and stealing their powers, which makes him more powerful so he enslaves more good guys. I kept going to the end, thinking, "Man, whatever the good guys come up with to finally beat him has got to be awesome, because I don't see how they'll do it!" And you know what? They don't. The bad guy wins. Now, I realize that there are about 346 more books in the series, but just that first book was probably 500 pages long. Why on earth would I want to waste my time reading more of that kind of thing?
Obviously, not everything in life turns out ok. Sometimes, the guy and the girl don't end up together, or they do but don't stay together. Sometimes disaster is not averted, and the bad guys don't get punished. Sometimes the narrator dies in the middle of his or her story. But that's why Miss Prism and I are hanging out in the fiction section--we're holding out for the happy ever after.
I love to read. When I go to the library and check out books, the librarians give me a speculative look and say, "You know these are all due in three weeks, right?" If all I had to worry about was reading through all those pages within three weeks, there would be no problem. The problem is that it's hard to find books that interest me. It's even harder to find books that interest me and make me like them.
I'm not one for intellectual snobbery. I don't read books to broaden my mind or educate myself. I like mystery novels, with suspense and intrigue and a romance thrown in somewhere. I love reading P.G. Wodehouse's books, with their jolly British wit and silly situations. I like reading Robert Asprin's fantasy "Myth" series. I throw the occasional chick flick book into my library bag.
I've tried including "smart" books in my hoard. My latest attempt was F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. I couldn't bring myself to even read the first page, since I could tell from reading the blurb on the back that it wasn't going to end well. Some of my favorite short stories are by Fitzgerald, but I have to flip through my copy of Jazz Age Stories to find them, passing over the profound but sad ones. I don't handle unhappy endings well. If boy meets girl and they fall in love, boy and girl better darn end up together once the dust settles.
In a high school English class, I always bummed a book off my teacher for our 15 minutes of silent reading. He was really into a series by some famous fantasy author, so I started reading the first installment. I think the author actually died a few years ago before finishing the final book, but his thousands of fans were overjoyed that he left instructions with his son to finish it. I really don't care whether there is a last book or not, because the first book was the last of his that I'll read. It was the most depressing story I've ever read. There's a bad guy and bunch of good guys, and the bad guy just keeps killing them off or enslaving them and stealing their powers, which makes him more powerful so he enslaves more good guys. I kept going to the end, thinking, "Man, whatever the good guys come up with to finally beat him has got to be awesome, because I don't see how they'll do it!" And you know what? They don't. The bad guy wins. Now, I realize that there are about 346 more books in the series, but just that first book was probably 500 pages long. Why on earth would I want to waste my time reading more of that kind of thing?
Obviously, not everything in life turns out ok. Sometimes, the guy and the girl don't end up together, or they do but don't stay together. Sometimes disaster is not averted, and the bad guys don't get punished. Sometimes the narrator dies in the middle of his or her story. But that's why Miss Prism and I are hanging out in the fiction section--we're holding out for the happy ever after.
1 comment:
I'm guessing you're talking about the Wheel of Time books (Robert Jordan)? The last book is actually being finished by a Mormon fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson.
I like some profound-but-sad, but for the most part I like me a good spy novel where the good guy comes out on top.
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