Saturday, August 26, 2017

Road less travelled









I am not one to often criticize peoples' reading habits on an individual basis, but sometimes I wheel a cart of fiction upstairs to shelve, and I can't help but criticize on a collective level. I mean, look at these books! I'm not saying some of these books aren't okay, in their way, or mildly entertaining, but these merely adequate books, rarely within screaming distance of the best we are capable of, are the same damn books I shelve over and over and over.

Here, on my cart once again, are your authors America: David Baldacci, Lee Child, Vince Flynn, John Grisham, Kristin Hannah, Elin Hilderbrand, Lisa Scottoline, and Nicholas Sparks. I could go downstairs and grab another cart full of all the same authors, or I could get some dozen equally recognizable authors along the same exact lines. But it won't vary much from there.

I'm not asking everyone to read Proust, for gods sake, but can't they, instead of taking four Lee Child books, take three and grab something strange and offbeat to try for a fourth? Can't they just mix it up a little, take a chance, dig just one more shovelful deeper? Look what the country, stultified in its tastes, is coming to.

But oy, look who I'm complaining to. One can't dig deeper in one's reading, or draw more outside of the lines than you! A person could hardly read more off the beaten path. I mean look at you, oh my god, you're reading this

One step further off the path than this and no one will ever see you again.







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