The Book Draught

I realized something as I was driving home last night: it’s been ages since I finished my last fiction book. In fact, I can’t even remember what it was. I’ve read some non-fiction in the meantime, for example The Elfish Gene, which I finished in December. But good novels? Not really. The last 5 months have been filled with books that I just couldn’t get into. Just look at this list of books I stopped reading:

Anathem
Boy did I have high hopes for this book. It was supposed to be my first Neal Stephenson experience since Snow Crash – 8oo glorious pages of it. And then… this. I don’t know what happened in the last two decades, but everything that made Snow Crash great is missing from Anathem. It’s slow. It’s cryptic. It’s boring. After 110 pages, I started skipping ahead. Still not finding anything that resembled drama, I put the book away. I guess between Snow Crash and Anathem, Neal Stephenson’s taste took a 90 degree turn from my own.

World War Z
Yeah, it’s neat. Well written, too. It’s still sitting on my night stand, and I’m sloooowly nibbling away at it. But reading World War Z made one thing very clear to me: I’m sick and tired of zombies. Really tired. The scenario is so old and used up that even a clever book like WWZ has little to add to the genre.

Shadowmarch
I love me some Tad Williams. I’ve enjoyed his sweeping storylines and characterizations in Otherland and The War of the Flowers. But I’d never read any of Tad’s pure fantasy novels before (War of the Flowers doesn’t count), and maybe that’s why I couldn’t drum up enough excitement for the book. In fact, I didn’t even make it past the 3rd chapter. It’s Tad Williams, though; hopefully I’ll go back to the Shadowmarch series sometime in the future.

The Phoenix Endangered
Okay, the first book in the series wasn’t even that good. It wasn’t well written, the characterizations were lacking, and the plot was lightweight and fluffy. But at least I was entertained enough to finish that book. So I bought the second part of the series for some easy beach reading on Maui, hoping that it would add some much needed drama and closure to number #1. Yeah… no. Boring characters, boring races, no drama – no investment from my side. Didn’t make it past the first 3rd.

So here I am, with no novel to look forward to reading in the evening. While Victoria cuddles up with her book, I  stay up to work on the computer or play a videogame instead

So what do I do? Should I start reading George R. R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones”, the first book of the “A Song of Fire and Ice” saga? I’ve heard many people raving about this author, and I loved his short stories in Cyberfilms. Maybe a quick read Clive Barker’s “Mr B. Gone”, which I snagged at Wolfi and Patrick’s going away sale a couple of weeks ago? I was impressed by his Cyberfilms story (The Forbidden), as well. Or maybe I shouldn’t worry about fiction and turn to Joe Torre’s book on the Yankees instead.

For some reason, this decision feels important. It’s easy to abandon a movie or TV show halfway through. That’s easily digestible, quick entertainment. But for some reason I’ve always felt like a loser when I stopped reading a book. Like there’s an entire world that I chose to ignore. Gotta make sure that the next one hooks me…