By Kasie Whitener
Last week I quit a novel. Not one I’m writing, one I was
reading. Ranking right up there with when I stopped calling myself a “girl,” learning
I could quit a novel was a Grown-Up Moment.
I’m not sure at what age (40?) I first started quitting
novels, probably right about the time I started getting thrown out of book
clubs. At some point I just realized my time was too valuable to waste on the
wrong-fit book.
I’m picky. I want to love the book I’m reading.
The books I love have me ignoring my family. If I’m going to
create a rating system, I’ll make the highest rating “Ignore my family.”
While discussing the books I was reading with a friend, I
told her how ashamed I am that my literary selections don’t keep me as
engrossed as my commercial picks. For example, last year I read The
Leavers which is an incredibly crafted, heartbreaking novel. But I wasn’t
reading it at intersections.
When we wandered through Barnes & Noble last Saturday,
I’d read almost all of the facing-front novels in the Literary Fiction shelves.
But none of them had me staying up past my bedtime. I read Circling
the Sun and Into
the Water, The
Aviator’s Wife and The
Nightingale.
But I once hid in a conference room pretending to have
meetings so I could read The
Bronze Horseman. Last fall I packed my laptop in my checked luggage so I
could read some T.M.
Frazier books while traveling.
I read The
Supreme Macaroni Company and Euphoria
last year and they were excellent books, really. But I didn’t tell my husband
to queue up “The Grand Tour” on Amazon Prime while I huddled in the corner of
the couch to read them. I did that for all of Sarah Maas’s Throne
of Glass books.
When it comes down to it, the books that keep me engrossed
are the ones I recommend. They aren’t usually deeply layered, literary works of
genius. I confess I’ve never finished a David Foster Wallace anything. When I
told my friend, a creative writing professor, that I was glad my Kindle hides
the titles of the books that take me out of family time, driving, and TV
watching, she laughed.
The ratings are: Ignore My Family, Read at Intersections,
Stay Up Past Bedtime, Hide From Work, and Forget TV Exists.
“They should all be like that, shouldn’t they?” my friend asked.
Yes, all published books should be so amazingly good we
can’t put them down. And they all are. For someone.
There is a reader out there who can’t get enough of the
characters I’m writing and the story I’m telling. I just have to find that
reader. And hope she’s also a literary agent. Or a publisher.
In the meantime, I’ll be taking notes on those things that
keep me glued to the page and try to model my own work after the ones I love.
2 comments:
Who has finished a David Foster Wallace book? His work turns up on lists of "most difficult" novels. Many acclaimed novels get hype from critics and publishers who reward innovation for innovation's sake. Whether or not such novels appeal to readers, they give English professors something to study, research, and write about. I've quit reading Ulysses by James Joyce three times. It's taken me years to figure out that that doesn't make me ignorant or uncultured.
All of Margaret Atwood's works, especially Cat's Eye, Oryx & Crake trilogy, and Blind Assassin; Tom Perrotta's novels, especially the Leftovers, anything by Tessa Hadley, Walter Mosley, Richard Ford, and Alice Walker.
I've never heard of the books you've mentioned. What genre are they?
You're funny. I choose novels in order to ignore my family. The more I can block them out, the better.
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