I seldom get past the first chapter of new books anymore. Too many authors eschew the traditional past tense, third-person limited point of view and write in the clunky present tense first person point of view. (Or a mixed bag, which is even worse) Too many try to write in a roundabout style rather than beginning at the beginning and continuing until the end. Then there is a weird undercurrent of . . . nastiness, perhaps, or maybe just uneasiness to most books nowadays. I don’t know if it has to do with the difference in young authors today (and “young” to me includes those who are in their middle years), with the difference in mores, with too much artificial intelligence help, with the difference in the new generation of acquisition editors. Or if it’s just me with my now outdated values. But whatever the reason, I haven’t enjoyed any book written after 2022. And not a lot before then, either.
Because of this, I no longer feel like looking for books at the library. I figure I’d perused those same shelves over 700 times since I’ve been here, and I just couldn’t search them anymore. Too many shelves are full of whole series of books I have no intention of reading —- the entire Patterson oeuvre, all of Stuart Woods’ books, all the popular romance authors, and dozens of others. Too many other shelves are full of books I’ve read or reread.
So I stopped going to the library. I never made the decision not to go, I simply didn’t go, which is weird.
Visiting the library had been a major part of my outside activities ever since I got here to this town. It was such a treat because there hadn’t been a library near where I lived in California, so I went years without reading much. (That doesn’t seem right. Maybe I bought books. I know I bought word puzzles magazines, wrote books, and went through the video tapes Jeff had collected, but it seems odd to think of not be as caught up in reading as I’d always been.)
I’ll finish this current reread of The Wheel of Time, reread the other few books I’ve collected, read the alchemy books inherited from my older brother, maybe read the books I wrote, and then . . . I don’t know. I’ll figure out something to do. I’ll have to — I’ve stopped going online except to blog or play a game for a little while because I simply don’t want to know what is going on anymore. Which leaves me a lot of free time!
It’s funny how different this year is. I used to agonize over any decision, and yet suddenly, here I am — blogging without ever having decided to blog daily, not going to the library without ever having decided to stop, staying away from news without ever having decided to do so. (Staying away from news was my New Year’s resolution, which lasted all of two weeks, and yet now, two months later, I’ve started honoring the resolution again.) Come to think of it, I never decided to do this current reread of The Wheel of Time either. I just did it.
This is a good time to make changes — with spring coming, I’ll be spending more time outside, and with nothing calling me back inside, maybe I’ll enjoy the work this year. (I didn’t last year. It just seemed to be too much trouble.)
Makes me wonder what other things I will start (or stop) doing without ever making a conscious decision. Should be interesting to see what life deals out.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
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