Reading Stupid Books
Okay so this is a big soapbox of mine (another???), but basically, I am a big believer in reading literally whatever you want. I had this kind of revelation in my early twenties where I was like, I’m so willing to watch the stupidest TV in the whole world, but for some reason I only feel like I’m allowed to read fancy books. And like, I love fancy books. I have read them for school and read them for pleasure, and I have had an amazing time. But I also love to read commercial sci-fi and fantasy and romance and horror and really anything that sounds fun. I read SO much when I was a kid, and part of that was, you know, free time, but part of it was that I was reading solely for entertainment. And that’s certainly not all books are, or all they should be, and I want to be clear that there are absolutely remarkable, well-crafted books within all kinds of genre fiction. But the entertainment part matters too, especially when you need comfort for whatever reason. And like, I have occasionally been afraid that reading the stupidest romantasy book ever written will infect/somehow degrade my own writing, but I honestly find that (corny alert) everything can serve my writing in some way. I once wrote a horror flash fiction about a cursed romance novel that my mentor told me was like an “adult goosebump.” Why not? You have to know the formulas to mess with them. Most of my favorite writers experiment with genre, and I think my best writing happens when I relax into it and stop trying so hard to impress everyone (George Saunders talks a bit about this). Anyway, whenever someone tells me they’re struggling to read or focus, I’m just like, hey, what if you read something purely for fun? Okay consider me gracefully (?!) hopping down from my soapbox now.
4 months ago
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I also think too many of us had been traumatized in our childhoods by being judged by our peers so now that we're adults, fuck yeah, read whatever the fuck you want that brings you joy.
Have you read Dramione fanfic 👀
Yes! Based on your recs, I think you would love it. This is my favorite Dramione: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34500952
Pure joy awaits you!!
Oh my goodness @Maryn I was just about to rec that, it’s my favorite one too!!!!! I was literally just thinking about rereading it last night
I haven't (and it looks like it has been taken down?)! I was staying up too late reading Dramione that I had to take a break for a while 🙃 I loved Remain Nameless though!
Ooooh many thanks!!!
Speaking as a (former) writer of literary fiction who has also read a shit-ton of horror/sci-fi/fantasy (especially when I was a kid), I think reading widely in both also helps you appreciate and understand what makes for good writing in both realms. I loved reading and stories of all kinds as a kid (and was an absolute fiend for literally everything Stephen King put out), and it wasn't until I moved into literary fiction at the tail end of high school and into college that I could start to see where and why genre fiction was different, what distinguished it from literary fiction, and how different books had different strengths and aims—what made for interesting characterization, thematic complexity, and well-honed, densely considered sentence-by-sentence writing in good literary work, but also what made for a ripper of a plot and the scene-by-scene momentum of a good old-fashioned page-turner.
Heh, good feelings or bad? I read it >30 years ago and remember liking it, but I liked all of his books at the time, even The Tommyknockers, which IIRC had what is in retrospect an absolutely hilarious climactic moment involving a flying AA battery-powered vending machine (and at ages 12-14 or whatever I wasn't really capable of critically evaluating any of this, although I was definitely feeding all of it into my own internal word-making machinery).
That sounds about right TBH—he's not exactly famed for his subtle explorations of theme and character, but he'll grab hold of you for sure. He famously said of the movie something along the lines of "it's like a big shiny beautiful car with no engine," but it's not surprising he didn't like it, because Kubrick took King's story of (if I'm remembering right) a basically decent guy who becomes a monster due to haunted hotel as stand-in for King's own alcoholism/drug use (although of course when I read it I only registered "haunted hotel") and made Jack Nicholson more a guy who seems like he's kind of already on the edge of murdering his family all on his own right from the start.
I haven't revisited most of his books since I originally read them lo these many years ago, but when I think back on them, the ones that seem most likely to hold up for me now are the first and third Dark Tower books (the first one is I think the most singularly distinctive thing he ever wrote, by far, with just amazing world-building and a compelling central character, and the third one is the best of the series) and The Stand (epic). Possibly also It (which I remember being the most genuinely scary and has an incredibly weird climactic scene of its own) along with the Bachman books The Long Walk and The Running Man (both of which I remember as not having a whole lot going on character-wise but real powerhouse narrative momentum).
I also think reading just about everything is useful for writers, because regardless of whether it's "good" or even whether you like it, you can always think about how you're responding to it (or not), what it's doing that's interesting, what it's doing that's maybe not working so well or is a weakness compared with other things you've read, and *why*. And that's interesting to me even for books I end up not liking all that much!
They're fun but inconsistent. I listened to the audio, and I really enjoyed them.
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