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A few things about books and reading
I read. I read a lot, as much as I can. Sometimes I read real books, but that's getting more and more rare. But I also read on my Kindle and I listen to audiobooks, which I most certainly count as reading.
Some books are good. Some are less good. Some are dreadful.
And every once and a while, you hit a gem.
Sometimes, it's in a genre you love, and yay for that. Sometimes it's in a genre you don't usually read and a book you don't remember putting on your list or how you heard about it.
That's the book I'm listening to right now. _The House of Doors_ by Tan Twan Eng. I haven't looked up the author and I won't until I'm done, but right now, at about 80% done, I think this book, which is nothing like the books I usually read, will end up my fave book of 2023. It's heartbreakingly beautiful, the writing is extraordinary, and the readers are fabulous, bringing the book to life in a way that makes me glad I chose voices rather than words on the screen. I've been listening on my morning walks through the woods, and instead of being in Redmond WA in a wooded park on trails covered with damp yellow and brown big leaf maple leaves, I swear I get transported to Penang in the early part of the 20th century. The descriptions are done so lightly that you don't notice as they create a place and time so vivid you look around in surprise when you notice that you aren't in face in Malaysia in 1910 or 1921.
It's been such a pleasure, reading this book. I'll probably finish it tomorrow and I hope the ending lives up to the first 80%!
As everyone knows, I want to publish a romance. So periodically, I try to read a few to see if I can figure out where my own little book best slots. And some have been fun, some have been good, some have been dreadful. I just finished a pretty awful one (_Maggie Moves On_ by Lucy Score). I usually don't give a star rating to romances because I feel that, absent something Very Wrong with the book, it's not a genre I spend a lot of time with, so rating them would be a bit disingenuous. I gave this one two stars, because well... It's probably just me, but I'm very rapidly realizing that I despise any sort of romance with an 'alpha' main male lead. They grate on my nerves. The thing is... you cannot prop up the main female character enough, give her enough accomplishments or wit or intelligence to make up for the gravelly voiced large male who possesses her lips and next her body or whatever, carries her off, doesn't matter. It's not that they don't try to give the 'alpha' sweet and intelligent traits or even some vulnerabilities that they reveal to only her. It's that at a fundamental level, they cannot meet as equals. No woman is going to out-alpha the alpha male and ew, why would she want to? But it creates, immediately a playing field in which she might be able to "tame" the alpha, but he's still the alpha male. I'm not sure I'm explaining this well, but that whole premise in romance doesn't do it for me, and indeed annoys me to no end. Ah well.
Some books are good. Some are less good. Some are dreadful.
And every once and a while, you hit a gem.
Sometimes, it's in a genre you love, and yay for that. Sometimes it's in a genre you don't usually read and a book you don't remember putting on your list or how you heard about it.
That's the book I'm listening to right now. _The House of Doors_ by Tan Twan Eng. I haven't looked up the author and I won't until I'm done, but right now, at about 80% done, I think this book, which is nothing like the books I usually read, will end up my fave book of 2023. It's heartbreakingly beautiful, the writing is extraordinary, and the readers are fabulous, bringing the book to life in a way that makes me glad I chose voices rather than words on the screen. I've been listening on my morning walks through the woods, and instead of being in Redmond WA in a wooded park on trails covered with damp yellow and brown big leaf maple leaves, I swear I get transported to Penang in the early part of the 20th century. The descriptions are done so lightly that you don't notice as they create a place and time so vivid you look around in surprise when you notice that you aren't in face in Malaysia in 1910 or 1921.
It's been such a pleasure, reading this book. I'll probably finish it tomorrow and I hope the ending lives up to the first 80%!
As everyone knows, I want to publish a romance. So periodically, I try to read a few to see if I can figure out where my own little book best slots. And some have been fun, some have been good, some have been dreadful. I just finished a pretty awful one (_Maggie Moves On_ by Lucy Score). I usually don't give a star rating to romances because I feel that, absent something Very Wrong with the book, it's not a genre I spend a lot of time with, so rating them would be a bit disingenuous. I gave this one two stars, because well... It's probably just me, but I'm very rapidly realizing that I despise any sort of romance with an 'alpha' main male lead. They grate on my nerves. The thing is... you cannot prop up the main female character enough, give her enough accomplishments or wit or intelligence to make up for the gravelly voiced large male who possesses her lips and next her body or whatever, carries her off, doesn't matter. It's not that they don't try to give the 'alpha' sweet and intelligent traits or even some vulnerabilities that they reveal to only her. It's that at a fundamental level, they cannot meet as equals. No woman is going to out-alpha the alpha male and ew, why would she want to? But it creates, immediately a playing field in which she might be able to "tame" the alpha, but he's still the alpha male. I'm not sure I'm explaining this well, but that whole premise in romance doesn't do it for me, and indeed annoys me to no end. Ah well.