I love to read and have always struggled with the challenge. Being dyslexic, I’m a slow reader, and need to focus with comprehension and other big words!
Still, I persist. I am proud to say I’ve read close to a book a week for a long time now.
Yet, last night I was discouraged and tossed the book I was struggling with on the floor. I started to feel about as stupid as they come… again.
First off, I know I’m not stupid. And this has happened to me before, so I should have caught on sooner.
Tiger Tiger by Johanna Skibsrud, begins with a sci-fi theme, and while not my favourite genre, I know, anything can happen with the imagination, so I went on the ride.
I like how Johanna turns a phrase, but before I knew it, she lost the tiger, and took me to a seniors home and a fake wedding — and I thought, well…. maybe they are looking back and it’s from a senile old lady’s point of view, then everything really went wonky … uhm… is that her son, his lover, what happen to the tiger? What the heck. I kept going…
Finally, I admitted to Ken, that after 142 pages, I had no fucking idea what the book I was reading was about… I just couldn’t follow.
Then I remembered having this exact same feeling a few years ago.
I don’t judge books by their cover, but I do like to choose them at the library that way. A cool cover design gets my library card every time. Yet, after feeling so stupid and confused last night, I now realize… I need to add to this criteria and start reading the jacket covers; at least I need to read the blurb about what I’m getting myself into…
Or, better yet, let me take away from self responsibility for my actions… and suggest the library — put the stupid collections of “Short Stories” on their own stupid shelf!
Then maybe, I won’t feel so stupid, when I figure out, that I’m once again, I’m not reading a stupid novel.
There’s the common thread!
The great thing about buying a book, and then going WTF, is years later you can sit down and read it and think, wow, what a great book which is what happened to me with Ursula LeGuin’s Always Coming Home (I think that was the title) and The Outlander. Both sat on my book shelf for a very long time before I was ready to read them.