Dirty, Little Secret, part 2

Only 3 days left to buy Star of Justice ebook for the bargain price of $2.99. Tell your friends.
 
Let's see. When last we left our heroine, I was a broke college grad with friends. Obviously, things could have been worse. Years later, when I started picking up books again, I discovered something important had changed.

I'd grown critical.

Hard to imagine, I know, that unassuming little me would be critical, but there it is. I blame college. I should blame Mr. Freidline, my seventh grade teacher, who laid the groundwork for critical thinking by requiring book reviews instead of book reports, but college built on that foundation. I learned to give my opinion on other people's work and, boy, howdy, did I.

Where once upon a time I would read an awful book all the way to the end because the writer took the time to write it, I learned I can put a book down. I can even throw a book away. Why would I give tripe to the library to contaminate some other innocent?

Spend enough money on enough tripe and my solution was to stop buying books unless I was absolutely, positively certain I would like them. That rarely happened and the reading mostly stopped.

What about books I loved so much they made me want to stop writing because the author did all the possible cool stuff already and I couldn't compete? Had that opinion of Robert Jordan for a while. Praise the Lord he came out with some of those boring Seanchan and Children of Light books somewhere around Seven or Eight or I would never have started Star of Justice.

The worst is when I like the person and not the writing. Has that happened to you yet? Maybe it doesn't happen to non-writers. I've had the unfortunate experience of liking the author a great deal yet finding no interest whatsoever in the writing produced.

(No, I'm not talking about any of you. OK, maybe one. *snort-chuckle*)

That's the moment to put on my big-girl shell and act like a grown-up, whatever that means.

The final nail in my coffin is the work aspect of reading. It's harder to turn on a light and settle my brain into turning script into images than it is to turn on the TV and let images flow into it, especially if I'm not convinced the effort is worth the reward.

So there's my list of excuses, erm, reasons I stopped reading. Anyway, I've got about 5 pages of Kindle books To Be Read and I'm making some steady progress. Lowering expectations and turning off the TV have helped considerably. Robert Jordan being dead hasn't hurt but I'd rather he were still alive.

Last plug: Star of Justice, Amazon Kindle version, $2.99 until Nov 1.