I May Have a Reading Problem

Enemy Storm is available for preorder from Amazon. We should see more preorder links come available shortly. We all know the 'zon likes to beat everyone else to the punch. This is book three of the Chronicles of the Empire SFR series. Unlike Enemy Within (book one) and Enemy Games (book two) this one hasn't been published before now. Official release date is June 10. 

Reading

I love to read. Always have. I hope I always will. I love it enough that when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I made a pact with my best friend. We signed up for a speed reading course. We then spent several days in a cramped, dark room with a bunch of airmen learning to not subvocalize while we read. However, I have a pretty serious problem with reading, too. Once I start a book that's good, I don't stop. You know all those memes that go around about what kind of person you are based on how you mark you place in a book? I laugh. Cause I rarely need to mark my place in a book. I read. And read. And read. To the detriment of sleep. And chores. I will grudgingly get up to feed the cats and scoop their boxes. But other than that, the rest of the world can just take care of itself for the few hours it's going to take me to get through whatever I'm reading. 

So I try to save reading for rewards. I finish writing a novel, I get to binge read a book or three. I'm like most other people are with Netflix series. Don't get me wrong. A book has to hit my reader buttons in order to merit that kind of attention. A book either makes me turn pages like a freak, or I DNF. There is some gray area in there, but it's not much. Life is too short to finish meh books. The biggest fun I get to have is beta reading other writer's books. Second to that, is finding an author whose writing lights me up. I really don't care what the genre is. Right now, I'm still reading my way through all of the new-to-me, under-represented authors who were promoted in the midst of the last RWA crisis. Some have been really good, and some have not been my cup. But that's the way with everything, I feel. At least I'm still reading. When I'm not on deadline.

What book have you read that surprised you into liking it? (My example - I thought I would hate To Kill a Mockingbird because we *had* to read it for school. Ended up loving it. What's yours?)

The Classic that Wasn't

Catcher in the Rye.

I read it. Even finished it. Not because I wanted to. Not because I liked anything I read. I finished that book solely because I had innocent, blind faith that it HAD to get better. Somewhere. Somehow.

It didn't. Ever. How the ever living hell do you write 300 plus pages of some dude whining? I swear to all the gods, Salinger was paid by the word for that piece of kindling. I was (and still am to this day) vastly disappointed that Holden Caufield never DIED in that book.

I get there are people who love this story and this character. Maybe teenage angst wasn't my thing even when I was a teenager.

The other one I loathed and still do is A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Again. Had to finish it. It was on the final. But ye gods and little fishes. Did you know that all of these so called 'classics' by angst-ridden (and now dead) white guys could have been hundreds of pages shorter with just a little Prozac?? Why are despicable characters without any kind of hope of redemption worth any amount of my life energy?

All I can say is these two books totally justified the speed reading course I'd taken in 8th grade. I could not quit those books fast enough and still comprehend enough to write the papers on them that were required. Bleh. Even after all this time, I want to go scrub my hands clean after recalling those stories.

I far and away preferred The Color Purple. And To Kill a Mockingbird. And The Plague. And Wuthering Heights - though how Heathcliff came to be a romantic icon is beyond me. Wrote him up as an illustration of the concept of evil in literature for my English AP exam. All while singing Kate Bush in my head. How did you cope with reading books you disliked for required courses? And do you still force yourself to finish books you don't like?