Reading Addict

Less discriminating readers--by which I mean reader’s who don’t suffer from prolonged bouts of finicky tendencies—readers who can enjoy a novel based on character development, plot arcs, things that happen or happen to characters…you know, the actual THINGS that make a book a novel…I envy these readers.  I have a bad habit of fixating on setting:  time and place.  I’m loathe to admit that when a friend recommends a book and I ask for the setting and I get a personally disagreeable answer, that book never had a ch

“I’m not afraid to die… I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen

In “Macbeth,” after one of the bloodiest scenes of murder, mayhem, and madness ever enacted on the page or stage, William Shakespeare immediately gives us its polar opposite: a drunken porter telling jokes as he pretends to answer the door to Hell.

I love the idea of pairing nonfiction and fiction titles about a particular subject and reading them successively.  For example, I know of a book club that read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain together with Hemingway’s A Moveable

There’s a darkly funny song by Ben Folds called “You Don’t Know Me At All.”  In it, a couple has the realization that they have absolutely nothing to say to each other and it’s not because they know each other so deeply that words aren’t necessary.  It’s because they have no idea what the other is thinking, nor do they really care much anymore.

I’ve been contributing to the Reading Addict long enough now that it’s inevitable I’ll repeat myself from time to time.  I’ll retread over well worn territory as I know I’ve done, but hopefully I can offer a bit of luminescence in between the warmed leftovers.    I’ve championed indie literature in the past, as I hope I’ll continue to do in the future, for many reasons.  For one, it’s honest.  For every James Patterson, there’s a poor recent graduate, who before he earned a fiction fellowship banged away on the k