I read a lot...fantasy mostly. I feel, more often than not, that life is irritating, frustrating, maddening, and/or depressing enough without adding someone else's misery to it. That said, I have read non-fiction...just not much.
Ever find a book that sounds good but vaguely familiar and you are sure you haven't read it so, off you go with it, to bed or the bath tub, or toilet or tree or where ever you position yourself to read. After settling down, you get about 30 pages in, only to find that while you can honestly say you are enjoying it, you are POSITIVE that the author has read all the same books you have and liked all the same parts. Better yet, that they have then taken all those parts from all those books and put them into one story, written in the same manner that you talk to yourself in (in your head or otherwise) and made a book that you could have written and sold for whatever the hell they are making from it, but wouldn't because it would bug you to know that you aren't really creative or an author but a pathetic plagiarist. It pisses me off...but at least I got a good book out of the deal. :)
It's kind of like when you come to the sad realization that you wouldn't really want to live in a fantasy novel. That kills a little part of you inside, when you realize that, because, while they have magic and fantastic creatures and heroes and terrible evil, and everyone is beautiful and Irish, you know that your life would be just spectacularly worse than it already is? If you aren't sure what the hell I am talking about, I will give you a little clue.
Think of your most recent fantasy novel...I'll go through some to show you that life would not be all Disney and happiness if you were a character in:
- a George R. R. Martin novel - you would be surrounded by great mysetery and exciting adventures, but you will most certainly end up dead in a horrid way. Either murdered by your enemy out of spite, or killed in some grotesque fashion by some ancient beast that no one has ever heard of but, not before crossing half the earth, starving and in pain to save someone that ends up dead long before you get there. And, lets not forget, that you know that 3/4 of all the people you love will die in some equally horrible way for really no point other than to make you realize how hopeless and pointless everything is....
- a Patricia Briggs novel - you would have moments of serenity and happiness but it would all come to a grinding hault in a single terrible event that shatters your entire soul and is so gut wrenching that most people would never recover from it and you end up a horrid, pathetic broken shell. You carry on, and find you are a completely different person, doing things you would never have done before. And, you have some amazing talent/gift/power that no one has ever had, but is needed to save the world and you only discovered it beause of the afore mentioned horribleness...meaning that you have to now go through your existence running like a fugitive, scrambling from one exausting fight to the next, getting betrayed by friends and being torn between lovers to save a world that is ultimately doomed, and picking up enemies along the way...
- a Piers Anthony novel - what is wrong with this you may ask? Well...you would be a simple average Joe that is indeed something truly special and intrinsic in maintaining the balance of the world, and would embark on a great quest to discover it, but could never tell anyone and so are treated like a joke. You would meet fantastical women/men whom you would inevitably fall madly in love with but are doomed to Sesame Street life, where people are in love and they are beautiful and somehow they procreate, but they never touch or have sex or show any sincere feelings towards each other or have any impure thought other than the occasional glimpse of heaving bosom's and are constantly surrounded by word puzzles and puns. Best of all, you only ever star in that single novel, after which you become a random piece of history from which to build the next character, or get the occasional cameo performance in the next great story.
See what I mean? It's humorous really, and mildly depressing.
Though I would imagine you are beginning to see why I needed a place, to empty my brain. Can't say I didn't warn you. ;)
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