(no subject)

[erastes]

Words yesterday: 1320.

Pleased with this - meant I could goof off last night with a clear conscience, instead of the OMG I so suck feeling which I get when I've written nothing.

I was listening to the radio the other day and someone was saying on a book programme that we all should, from time to time read books "2 zones out of our comfort zone" As intriguing as this is, I can't imagine what it means - particularly for my own Catholic tastes, as I read everything from children's fiction to gay porn and everything in between. Perhaps it means something that I really wouldn't read, like philosophy text books or Clinton's autobiography. However that wouldn't be pleasurable for me, and for all that I rant and rave and cry over books, I do want the experience to be pleasurable. I spent enough time when I left school, not reading AT ALL because my experience of English Lit was so painful. (I've read The Inheritors since then and enjoyed it, but OMG the agony of deconstructing it at school). So I don't want to start doing the trendy thing and reading stuff that will make the experience less fun, to be frank.

What about you lot? Do you deliberately read stuff to challenge you from time to time? If so - anything you recommend?

Comments

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'm a sort of read-all, devour-all, but if there's something that challenges me to the point of projectile vomiting, it'd be born-again christian pamphlets, I suppose. That, and self-help books.

A good challenge though, for me, is poetry - because I abhor most poetry (or what passes as such nowadays), and if I want to improve my attention span and my ability to read between the lines, I pick up early Renaissance poetry. That may sound like an intellectual conceit, but I find their reaching-for-the-skies mix of love, lust, death, mysticism, and formality infinitely intriguing.

Another challenge are the quartely issues of Lettre, because the depth of thought and scholarly skill some people invest in marginalia (well, not exclusively) will never cease to amaze me. :D

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

I read primarily for (1) escape/comfort and (2) research. So Most of the time I don't get out much, literarily speaking. When I do branch out, it's usually because I'm bored or because a friend recommended it. I'm rarely disappointed with the latter ones.

I don't know if you read mysteries at all. If you don't, but want to, I highly recommend Victoria Thompson's mysteries set in 19th Century New York.

[liebesdammerung.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't think I do, usually. I usually stick with what I know I'll like or what a good friend recommends. Otherwise, I have my limits.

[rwday.livejournal.com]

When I worked at the public service library, I'd read what the customers were reading so I could better suggest books to them. That meant reading a lot of things outside my 'comfort zone,' particularly Christian romance, which were so sickly sweet it's a wonder I didn't end up diabetic.

No more. I'll read almost anything if someone I trust recommends it, or if it's by an author I enjoy or in a genre I like, but imo, life is too short and there are too many really good books I already know I'm never going to have time to read. So, not a risk taker when it comes to reading.

[paintedponyxox.livejournal.com]

I would just take that to mean reading something unlike the stuff you usually read and are so familiar with. I read this great essay once that talked about how good literature should always be both a window and mirror, something you can relate to and see yourself in but which also shows you things you didn't know and explands your horizons. But it said if you just keep reading the same kind of things all the time, eventually the window will just turn into a mirror and you won't be learning anything anymore. I've always kept this in mind and often make myself try reading something I would usually just look at and say "Ehhhh I don't know..." Often taking the risk is quite rewarding. The last time I did was with The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy, when I never read crime novels. It's now one of my five favorite books.

[latetocomics.livejournal.com]

no. My reading time is 100% devoted to reading for pleasure only. Unless it's a cookbook, as I could always get help in the kitchen...but I don't count that.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I used to feel obliged to finish any book I started. Could be that writing's getting worse or I'm getting impatient, but I don't feel that way anymore.

So, deliberately looking outside my comfort zone for books? Not usually. (I have read part of Clinton's autobio, actually, because I enjoy looking at what makes people tick--and bios are always useful for building characters. Clinton's such a classic case of the fatal flaw that his life reads like fiction.) And, like you, I read a wide range of books.

But the stuff outside my comfort zone--no, I won't read stuff by people I despise, or things that bore me silly. It isn't so much comfort as interest. I love O'Brian's historicals because they're well-done and I learned a lot from reading them; I had never found much interest in sea stories before that. "Comfort" can mean new information presented in an interesting way, too; it's definitely not "formula." I seldom read conventional romance because I can tell by page 6 just about everything that's going to happen. Predictability is very uncomfortable. (Same with mysteries...I don't look at the back to see if it's going to be disappointing, I look to save myself reading 80 pages of tripe.) I don't read Stirring Sports Romances or glitz-glam stories or bandslash, because the celebrity lifestyle strikes me as terribly dreary despite (maybe because of) all the rah-rah.

I'm picky about fiction. When I grab a recreational book, it'll probably be a mystery by an author I know won't irritate me with bad English or stupid plots. (Yes, I try new authors, but the read-through vs return to the library rate is about 4 stinkers to one good book.

Nonfiction...I get all the new info I can digest doing research and there's never enough time to do that as thoroughly as I'd like. So the reading I do outside my comfort zone is usually the news. And that's so far from comforting that my fiction is, as always, a vacation.

As someone said above, with only 24 hours/day and some of those sleep-only, I have to make choices. If one only reads one sort of book--Harlequins, sports, get-rich-quick books, true-crime, whatever--a stretch might be a very good idea. But telling anyone what to do before the expert knows what people are already doing...? They're more likely to wind up sounding pompous and silly.

Recommendations? Depending on what you usually read, O'Brian for sure (historical), Elizabeth Peters (mystery), Lois McMaster Bujold (sci-fi) Every Man Will Do His Duty (nonfiction, first-person accounts from Age of Sail) Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi, Charlotte MacLeod (slightly cockeyed fun mysteries) A Distant Mirror (Tuchman, mideval history) Richard Armor, erudite humor (Twisted Tales from Shakespeare is my favorite) ... hope there's something new & interesting for you.

I always thought being well-rounded was overrated.

[djebrin.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's an American intellectual model that you should be able to do/know pretty much everything (including play sport, gak! what a concept!) I prefer the English intellectual model that knowledge only comes with obsessive and geekish concentration on one subject.

My favourite way of reading is The Hunt. You start off with something - maybe a movie or a reference in a newspaper article, and that's it, The Hunt is on! You are in full cry after everything ever written by/about a particular author (or a particular subject/historical period). You will stop at nothing to get your claws on the most esoteric material! (well ok, maybe you won't spend you Saturdays in the Bodleian waiting for them to fetch something out of a Welsh coal mine; there are limits). But you certainly waste shoals of money amassing your own personal collection of Everything Ever Published In English On Subject A.

I suppose, put like that, it's slightly insane - but so satisfying! And you end up with a mass of knowledge with which to bore your friends and relations. Everyone needs a passion - even better, several!

Re: I always thought being well-rounded was overrated.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. If I find a writer I like I immediately do just that! At the moment I'm attempting to become "An Authoritah" for that - read ANORAK - on Regency gayness and am obsessively collecting text book after text book...

It's fun, and yes, insane but when i'm rich they won't say i'm mad, i'll be ECCENTRIC.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

hey - you are talking to the founder of hp_literotica, a comm that was happily pretentious in its frilly shirtedness!

I'll have to check these ideas out. I know very little about any sorts of poetry, i have to admit.

Thanks!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It was a bit of a daft question really, as I'm a grasshopper when it comes to reading, I'll read anything - and time is always of the essence. I MUST read every day, at the very least before sleep and sometimes it has to be something I know i'll like.

VT has been recced twice, so I might give her a go, thanks!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

and time is a constriant too, I find. If I only have a limited amount of time, I need to spend it productively.

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

Do you deliberately read stuff to challenge you from time to time?

Nope. LIfe's too short. I did all the hard reading in my degree and after, now I just want to read and write what makes me feel good. I keep up with the news, I'm not ignorant, but I *am* powerless to change a lot of what is going on, so immersing myself in it, doesn't really help.

Read Clinton's biog? I'd rather have a hysterectomy with a rusty fork, thanks.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

the thing is I don't know what 2 zones outside is supposed to MEAN - to me it can only mean stuff like inspirational fiction or Kill The Blacks neither of which I'm ever going to touch. I suppose the talk wasn't really aimed at me...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

True, i spent literally four years reading very little other than Discworld books, Potter books and Sci-fi i already knew and didn't know what a rut i was in, then i read one fan fic and my world exploded!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Now cookbooks would be completely out my comfort zone!! Talk about how to make me feel completely insecure!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I used to be like that, had to finish - and generally I still do, but not always these days.

I do read writers that I dislike - or think I probably will dislike. I've read a few Archer, 3 Dan Brown and a couple of Grisham. I don't feel I have the right to say "they suck" (and boy, they do) unless I've read them. It's the same when people say to me "I hate Dickens" and I say "which have you read" and they say "Oh I started Bleak House" and I have to gently explain that no-one should be so mad as to START with Bleak House...

I never thought about using bios as character growth. good one.

I've read a few O'Brian, love them, although don't like Aubrey terribly much. But will seek the others out.

Story is currently called "hard and fast" how does that sound?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that study does spoil a certain part of reading - it certainly did for me!

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

study does spoil a certain part of reading

That's not what I meant, actually. I meant that I feel I paid my 'hard read' dues (and i'm not sorry I read stuff that I only read because it was being assessed, because it was definitely good for me) and now I don't think I need to read any more out of necessity or for challenge. I believe it's necessary to do it at some point - I'm just past that point.

Besides, now I'm unbearably picky about writing - bookstores are torture for me. I know I'll pick up something that might have been enjoyable once, and which I won't be able to stand now because the writing is so malformed. Consequence of being an editor-writer.

[lyras.livejournal.com]

no-one should be so mad as to START with Bleak House

I did! To be fair, it was during A-levels, but Bleak House would still be my desert island book if I had to choose one.

As far as reading outside my comfort zone goes, I do try to read books that will make me think (currently that means Richard Dawkins, various books on Aboriginal issues and a couple of literary/current affairs publications), but I can't quite bring myself to read, say, right-wing Christian or political books. Which is what I'd interpret as several zones outside my comfort zone.

Congrats on the word-count!

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I tried Grisham--decent writer, but I don't much care for courtroom stuff and I just don't see the appeal. Didn't finish Dan Brown. Tried twice, could not stand a third attempt. He wouldn't even serve as an insomnia cure because an irritant isn't soporific.

I started Dickens with Christmas Carol (almost everyone does, because it's suitable for kids and has been filmed so often) and had to read David Copperfield and Great Expectations in high school. I know he is a Great Writer, but I found the clever character names that people always chortle over annoying even as a kid. None of his characters were people I wanted to spend a whole book with, either--Pip mooning over Estelle was particularly drippy. I keep hoping that one day I will suddenly have an appreciation for Dickens and Austen, and I keep trying, but so far no good. What book would you suggest? I'm willing to give ol' Chuckie D another try. (Please, don't anyone assume I'm denigrating these writers. I know they're world-class, I'm just tone-deaf to their instruments.)

I didn't care for Jack Aubrey much in the first book--though he redeemed himself rescuing Stephen in HMS Surprise--and he does actually grow and change during the series. (Not the weakness for bad puns, alas.) And you have to love him when he gets stuck on a court-martial for a sodomy case and (coached by Stephen) stubbornly maintains the "no penetration, no sodomy" defense.

Taken as a whole, that series is right up with Tolkien and Bujold's Vorkosigan series as my desert-island library. But I had to get "A Sea of Words" to plow through it. That book's in arm's reach at all times!

Great title for your regency... makes me think that Army officer must be Cavalry. ;-D

[geishawhite.livejournal.com]

Hey UL - probably don't recognise this account, as it's fairly new, BUT. I was a writer in Literotica, and stuff, and I comment on your posts and stuff!

Anyway. I have a really, really cool project that I'm working on with Bloomsbury publishing - know them? (and if you could screen this, I'd be massively grateful) And I'm asking a bunch of prominent readers/writers on LJ their opinions, and I would love to get some feedback from you. Do you have an email I can hit up? I don't have IM at work, but I'm online pretty permanently - it's seemingly part of my job description, currently! Could you let me know please?

[rwday.livejournal.com]

Hi!

Erastes is at work where they restrict her ability to log in for comments, so asked me to post for her.She's been trying to email your LJ address and it's been bouncing, so here's her email: erastesdotcom@googlemail.com.

Thanks!

[blake-fraina.livejournal.com]

Hope this isn't too late.

I'm the sort of person who forces myself to finish reading anything that I've started - no matter how "challenging." An unusual, perhaps not particularly popular, novel I can recommend that's pretty difficult but ultimately pays off is ULVERTON by Adam Thorpe. I think it's out of print.

It's a bunch of short stories/novellas about life in a small rural town in the UK. It starts during the Revolutionary War and ends in modern times. Although the vignettes are largely unrelated, Thorpe deonstrates how everything is connected [by virtue of the common locality] by taking incidents that may be central to one or another story and weaving them into the background of later stories. For example, the skeleton of a man murdered in the very first story is dug up by developers in one of the last stories. It took me about four months to get through it (the vernacular in one particular piece was almost unintelligible) but at the end I felt it was well worth reading.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That sounds great! Thank you - I'll certainly seek it out -and no, never too late!

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

What about you lot? Do you deliberately read stuff to challenge you from time to time?

I do. Not as often as I feel I 'should', but I do sometimes.

I incline towards 'easy reading' books (this is very eclectic, mind: school stories, murder mysteries, chick lit, historical novels, football biographies) and actually, sometimes it does me good to force myself to start reading something a little more complicated.

This is made more difficult by the brain-fog issues of having CFIDS; and the time issues of having a 21 month old around the house.

I also find that some of the books I like most, I needed to read a couple of times to get into them. My favourite Dickens, for example, is Great Expectations. I probably wouldn't have read it more than once if I hadn't been studying it at school (I realise I'm weird, but studying and deconstructing books makes me enjoy them MORE) but as I have read it several times, I actually like it. Other Dickens I tend to find too 'wordy'.

Have you read The Poisonwood Bible? I wouldn't say it was challenging (apart from the fact I ended up severely depressed!) but it was a great read and worth reading if you haven't seen it.