I think before the internet I must have read a couple of hundred books a year. Now maybe a couple of dozen. Reading books is just so slow.
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But numbers back up since I resumed reading genre fiction a few years ago. I think 1997-2015 or so I read nonfiction almost exclusively.
I can’t read literary fiction anymore. Way too much work. I think I don’t care enough about people to enjoy literary fiction now.
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Books are like assembly language. If you’re above 40 your brain is mainly programmed in assembly.
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Limiting factor now is eye strain. And also I can’t read on paper anymore. Too lazily addicted to reading on light kindle in the dark in bed. Paper is horrible technology.
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Genre fiction is great! Learn the tropes and conventions and you can zip through. It’s like runtime library linking. Within a single universe is even better. Reusable world and characters.
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Literary fiction has to REALLY deliver a lot. Single use works and characters. And some have such poor payoff it pisses you off.
Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy was the first big fat book I remember being actively mad at. Huge waste of time I trudged through.
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Hmm. Literary fiction is waterfall. Genre fiction is agile. Release early, release often.
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The imagery from A Suitable Boy was pretty vivid - one of the few books whose imagery I still remember.
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This. Need to free myself from the bondage of this stuff. Ocean Vuong's debut and now this last Ben Lerner one. Sure there are fleeting moments of brilliance, but the payoff is piss poor.


