Just finished reading Julian May's "Boreal Moon" trilogy and it has been a bit of an effort. OK, so the three books total over 1500 pages and I have kept to the fiction/non-fiction rotation for my main reading (thus not counting "breakfast books", audio and other general page turning) but they seemd to take an age to get through. I've always enjoyed a good fantasy epic, and a whole new world from an author I have enjoyed for many eyars should have been a treat that would normally be raced through.
And yet, I found myself struggling to stay interested at times and even considered dropping written fiction for a while. The "world" felt right, had some novel twists on use of magic and didn't rely on a novice or suchlike to guide the reader through the system, simply got on with things without too much explanation. Normally that would have me racing through to find out what happened next, but more times than I care to admit I left the book alone and read something else instead for a day or two.
This has been the case with a few other works of fiction of late, but not all. Maybe I'm finally growing up and getting more discerning (I hope not!) but I haven't found myself bored when listening to stuff of much the same ilk. I certainly don't want to give up stories just yet - I do still love a good tale, however it is told (case in point, I thought the new version of Sherlock on the BBC last night was excellent, and am thinking I need to read the originals one of these days as while I have dipped in from time to time, and experienced assorted adaptations I haven't really spent proper time with the source material).
Perhaps I just need to throw some shorter books into the mix for the summer, then go back to the epics when I can curl up by the fire and not feel guilty about time I could be out and about/in the garden/washing the car etc.
Oh, and yes, the picture is a section of our collectionm, not one found just to illustrate the post!
4 comments:
I wish I could recommend a good fiction read for you, but I've also succumbed to the epidemic - I keep putting 'em down and going back to factual stuff.
If this happens to me with music, too, I'm stuffed.
Don't even joke about music fatigue, that's too scary to contemplate!
It's all just so odd that we feel this way at the same time.
What's the balance like between fiction and non-fiction on those packed shelves there? And have you read them all yet?!
My list in Excel says 708 fiction, 565 non... And no, there are still a good number waiting for me to open them up for the first time (but also many that have been read on numerous occasions).
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