Has your reading material/interest changed over time? Book groups have changed mine too.
Here's the first entry from January 4, 1987
We Were Dreamers, James Lehrer
The story of the attempts of the Lehrer family to run a small bus company in Kansas in 1946-47. PW wrote: "The material is slim and repetitious, and Lehrer lacks the tragicomic touch to give it added dimension." Lehrer was a news anchor at the time. I wonder why I chose this to read?
I had a rule for myself: One mystery, one literary writer, one collection of stories, one non-fiction. I doubt I much kept to it though from the books in here.
10 comments:
Oh, I know my reading has changed over time, Patti. I wonder if that's inevitable as time goes on and life changes?
I LOVED that book. In fact, it led me to read ALL of Lehrer's other books, fiction and non-fiction. I found the details he remembered to be fascinating, down to the routes of the buses, where they stopped, how everything looked, etc. It really came alive for me. He did a brilliant job. In fact, I would read it again.
Of course, I have a complete set of notebooks starting in May 1975 so could find EVERY book I've read since then, plus I have a few abortive lists from earlier. I used to have a database (well, two) on the computer, but I was unable to transfer it from one computer to another. With that I could have looked up any author and seen every book I'd read and when, without having to go back to the yearly notebooks or the other listings.
In the late '70s I was reading 80% mysteries, but I definitely changed over the years, and when I decided to read at least one short story a day in the summer of 1995, it changed my reading pattern a lot.
So many people never read short stories and I think they are missing a lot. The typical comment is they like to sink into a story. But a good short story tells you what you need to know. There are many novels I didn't like enough to finish but that rarely happens with a short story.
It's funny, because Jackie never reads them. She wants a "real" story, not one that ends in a few pages. Occasionally, she will read a novella if it is connected to a series she reads, but never a short story.
A number of years ago I was culling my books and ended up with about eight boxes of paperbacks to get rid of. Rather than going through the bother of trying to sell the nooks, I donated them to my friend Kate Mattes of Kate's Mystery Books, figuring she could find a place for them among her stock. Two of the boxes contained old mystery digests (EQMM, AHMM, and the like). Kate said she didn't think she could sell those because the vast majority of her customers read only novels and not short stories. I told her not to sell them. Rather, if a customer purchased more than one book, just slip one of the magazines into the bag as a freebie, and explain if they happened to find a story in it that they liked and were not familiar with the author, they could seek out longer works by that author. It was just an easy way of introducing new authors to her customers. Kate really liked that idea. I don't know how many extra books she eventually sold by giving way the old magazines but I bet it was a substantial number. Mystery readers are always looking for authors new to them.
Great advice, Jerry! My late friend Bob Adey in England used to have me subscribe to EQMM and AHMM for him and send them to England every few months. He didn't mind if I read the stories first and I definitely got ideas from them. Also, at Bouchercon they put the magazines in the book bags (or used to) and that's another way to get readers.
I am sure many readers read both ss and novels (as we do). But perhaps the novel reader and the short story reader are often quite different. A lot of poets don't read haiku and in fact, regard them as poetry for children.
I like the guideline of one mystery, one literary writer, one collection of stories, one non-fiction. Although I might change that to one mystery, one book from another genre, one collection of stories, one non-fiction. Either would be hard to stick to for me, but just aiming at that might help.
Right now the non-fictions are sitting untouched. I have a Bobby Short memoir, a Stanley Tucci cooking book, and several books on writing haiku.
I'm definitely reading a bit less in book or magazine pages, while getting over my head online. And listening to radio and online audio. And watching various sorts of video. I've been moving back into listening to more music again, since I mostly listened to spoken-word in my Borders Office Manager and TV GUIDE jobs, and most of the shorter-term jobs between, as they tended to be "left-brain" jobs, and music definitely engaged All Lobes...while interviews, audio drama, comedy and lit readings tend to be "right brain" for me.
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