Same Old, Same Old

There are a lot of things I occasionally read but don’t comment on. Certainly not for lack of interest, and this particular topic is one of them. Do you ever find yourself getting bored with crime fiction?

In most typical annoying fashion, it was a question that lingered with me long after I read it. The reality for me is, I’m an exceptionally slow reader. I don’t know why that is, exactly. I love to read and always have but I certainly don’t move through books at the speed of some other people I know, and I envy them that.

Being a slow reader and the need to write reviews compounds my problem. I don’t have that much free time anymore to just read whatever I want to read. As a result, there isn’t even room for the question in my mind of what to do if I get bored with crime fiction.

Do I get bored with it? Yes, sometimes I do. I get bored when the stories feel one-dimensional. Now, I’m in a bit of a different boat, in a way. I had been working on children’s fiction, and had initial positive feedback on my project. I’d queried it to HarperCollins, and received a personal letter from an editor there, expressing enthusiasm despite the fact that the age didn’t quite fit what they were looking for, and recommending three other publishers who might be interested.

But I’m one of those people who always has to be doing something fresh, and I’d had the foolish idea to try writing crime fiction, because it was what I liked to read. The thing is, I hadn’t read widely in the genre.

At the point at which I finished my first two books (in first draft form) I’d never read Val McDermid, Laura Lippman, Mark Billingham, Simon Kernick… I still haven’t read Ruth Rendell. I know, I know. And you call yourself a crime fiction author? It’s weird to say that in my own writing I like the luxury of variety so that I never get bored, but in reading I tend to be monogamous. One author, all the way through, then depression as I look for another one.

I’m much better at moving around from author to author now, and trying new authors. In a way, that’s the good side of reviewing. It brings a lot of authors to my attention I otherwise might not have heard about, and some of them I really like.

But all of this means I don’t ever feel the luxury of stepping away and reading something different. I don’t feel that widely read within the genre to begin with. Oh, my bookshelves are overflowing, and the last names that you can see on spines include Rickards, Swierczynski, Guthrie, Burke, Harvey, Wilson, Taylor, Bruen, Reah, Sharp, McFetridge (John has a new website!), Torres, Cooper, Mofina, Connelly, Frasier, Mina and many, many more.

I just still feel like there’s so much ground I haven’t covered.

Now, despite the fact that I don’t feel the luxury of reading much outside crime, it doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally find books to be lacking. There are definitely ones that just seem to go through the motions.

Sometimes, it might be on me as a reader. It may well be that I am bored with reading the same old, same old, so everything feels stale. It may also be that I’m so anxious to write something fresh myself that I’m distracted. Let’s face it – there are times in our lives when a book has to be better to hold our interest because we’ve got a lot going on. Well, for me, anyway. When I have a lot on my mind I find it hard to read because I’m always thinking about what’s weighing on me.

Which circles right back around to the other thing I was thinking about yesterday. The fact that I was happier than I had felt in a long time.

Oh, that doesn’t mean life is perfect. Not by a long shot. But I restructured some things in my life. I actually could write for prolonged chunks of time. And I couldn’t remember the last time that had really happened, not like that. I hadn’t realized how much some things were stressing me out until I put them in a box. I had actually expected to feel more stressed. Instead, I felt relieved.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t like group work. I never have, because even as a kid others wanted to partner with me because they knew I’d pick up their slack. I always felt a bit like why bother even giving them part of the job when they won’t do it? I may as well do it myself and save myself the time.

That mentality hasn’t served me well. In fact, it’s contributed to me being a bit of a control freak. And it’s contributed to a lot of burn out, as I continued to try to carry more and more on my plate than I could manage.

In a way, working with kids was the best lesson, because you can’t do their craft for them. That’s the whole point. You guide, you demonstrate and then you let go.

I still have a really hard time learning to let go.

Which leads me back to the initial question. Am I doing more harm than good to always read in the genre, despite my time constraints? Would it rejuvenate my level of anticipation for books by occasionally varying what I read?

I was going to say that I couldn’t remember the last time I read something that wasn’t crime fiction, but I can. Ian Rankin’s The Flood. Given the subject matter I’m not sure it’s appropriate to say I really enjoyed it, but it was a great read for me.

I guess the trouble is, as always, down to my own prejudices. I deliberately went to the mystery section five years ago to find something to read (and ended up picking up my first Rankin) because I hadn’t been satisfied with what I had been reading. A few misses in the mystery genre had put me over in the fiction section, and I tried a number of books I didn’t like or finish. I created my own system for selecting new authors within mystery, one that really worked for me, and was walking away with a high level of satisfaction.

Hence my not feeling the need to look elsewhere when I went back to the 'mystery' section. A philosophy which must change somewhat anyway, because Cornelia is over in general fiction as well.

I just wish that had occurred to me five months ago when I was scouring stores for a Rick Mofina book and couldn’t find it. Fuck, that was annoying. I literally went to two cities and I think in the end something like seven stores and didn’t find the book.

Because he isn’t shelved in mystery.

Yep. A wee bit slow on the uptake there, Sandra. And that’s what you get when you go to stores where the staff don’t read.

So I’ve made a decision. I’m going to pick up Anita Shreve’s Light on Snow, just for something completely different.

I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so I must thank Norby for THIS. It is, as Norby said, “sort of wrong, but funny.”

Too true, Norby. Too true.