Readers In A Dangerous Time

Helloooo!

Hope you’re well! Its been a weird couple of months. Probably a few weeks ago if you told me prior to currently reality hitting that thanks to this situation I would never have to go on a train; meet people and just stay at home I’d probably have bitten your hand off. A chance for me to finally destroy my entire TBR pile, review pile and watch all of Netflix? Geek Heaven! But actually no – it’s not been that much fun to be honest. I feel a but like Burgess Meredith’s character in the classic Twilight Zone episode Time Enough At Last. He plays a bank clerk who loves to read never have the time and then a nuclear bomb hits the world and he’s the only person left alive – he finds all the books is ready to read and then breaks his glasses. He will never be able to read the things he loves. Happily, not that serious but I do sorta relate because my reading has been very up and down. I’ve found some ways back in thanks to the joy of a comfort read. I’m chilling and still laughing but productivity hasn’t been easy reading wise

I probably should have seen this coming. Some people read to relax – books can take you away from it all; one of the many things I love about them. But I fall in a slightly different category. I need to be relaxed to read. I’m usually very busy with various things so I need to be able to concentrate otherwise I can’t focus for long at all. I started well I had a good idea for a TBR read – which went well but then BLAM reality hit. I can’t go out; I can’t see my family at the weekend and life got confined to a supermarket, park and for novelty walk through quite a peaceful graveyard. I even got a nice letter from the NHS saying as a diabetic we need you to be especially careful - yay. Also I’m sorta lucky that my work required quite a lot of urgent projects at short notice (employment is good) so while the first two weeks were a little holding pattern allowing some time to work things out I ended up getting into some fascinating long hour stuff to help the place keep its key work going. This was a good distraction, but I was pretty tired for a few weeks as we were in crisis mode. The readlaongs suffered, review schedules changed a lot; and everyone was feeling discombobulated (such a cool word as it sounds how you feel). I never thought I’d miss my 2-3 hour commute but a lot of that was on a train and there wasn’t much else to do then but read (and of course tweet) and now I’ve not got that way of forcing reading.

As much as I love reading it’s hard to do that when all this other stuff is going on. And you know what that’s perfectly ok – life is important; mental health is important and sometimes you have to focus on that before what is hobby, I love gets some attention. I focused on more important stuff and that’s good.

But over April it got a bit better I found some comfort reads which actually isn’t something I do a lot these days. When I was a teenager or my twenties, I would often re-read books – Discworld and Stephen King novels were particular faves. But s time ticked on my reading tastes have changed not actually in terms of those authors, but I don’t really re-read often. There are some many good books out there I feel reluctant to go back and I don’t like reading the same thing much these days. I like to have a different reading experience – the readalongs have actually helped me finally touch Pratchett again and cross all of them I’m enjoying reading these books with new eyes as I’m a different person as the years have gone by.

Comfort reading - I don’t think need to be books we’ve read before – they can be your favourite author/series. They don’t have to be ‘simple’ stories but perhaps not something too dark. Catching up on twitter a lot of people gave me some suggestions

Books

- Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

- Non-fiction

- Discworld (very popular)

- Horrible Histories

- Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez

- The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

- The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

- Chase the Morning by Michael Scott Rohan

- Wasp by Eric Frank Russell

- Damar series by Robin McKinley

- A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle

- Deverry series by Katherine Kerr

- Redwall by Brian Jacques

- The Saga of Exiles by Stephen Donaldson

- Pure Magic series

- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

- Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carragher

- Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold

- Fafhrd and Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber

- Belgariad by David Eddings

- The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

- Sorcery and Cecelia by Pat Wrede and Caroline Steverner

- The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

- Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynn Jones

- Jayne Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Emperor

- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

- Sector General/Hospital station by James White

- Dying Earth by Jack Vance

- Slaughterhouse by Kurt Vonnegut

- Agatha Raisin series by MC Beaton

- Legend by David Gemmel

- Honor Harrington by David Weber

- Cirque De Freak by Darren Shan

- Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin

Authors

- Patricia Brigg

- Georgette Hayer

- Michelle West

- Ngaio Marsh

- Agatha Christie

- Roger Zelazny

- Barbara Hambly

- Jane Austen

- Charlotte Bronte

- Mary Robinette Kowal

- Connie Willis

- Kage baker

- Joan Aitken

- Kelly Armstrong

- Kim Harrison

- Jim Butcher

- Michael Moorcock

- Dianna Wynn Jones (very popular)

- Isaac Asimov

- Karin Slaughter

- Stephen King

Some thoughts even if some comfort reads are books of the childhood they are all are from great storytellers. A lot of the books mentioned are chewy reads tackling big subjects or have an author with a distinct comfortable but impressive voice. In times of trouble we look for people we trust, and a great storyteller can take us away from it all.

And me? What got me back into things were some fun reads first

- Graphic novels – Locke & Keye

- Short story collections - reviewed

- Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

- Mils Vorkosigan by Lois McMaster Bujold

- Deverry series by Katherine Kerr

By the end of this my reading mojo feels to be working again and I feel able to get back into things. I am unlikely to be back in the office for a few months so for me its Subjective Chaos, my TBR Challenge and my review schedule for the next couple of months. I wish you good luck with your reading and a reminder that sometimes we need stories to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight (the title of this wombling is deliberate!)