Ed Lynskey's Blog: Cracked Rearview Mirror - Posts Tagged "reading"

Several fellow readers have shared their very positive experiences with their Kindle gizmos. They do sound cool as beans. Imagine carrying a mini-library in the palm of your hand. Amazing stuff of Star Trek. From an author's standpoint, I know I don't care how my books might be read, just grateful they are. Still, I can't view myself completely giving up the paper sort of books. Maybe next year Santa will leave one under the tree.

There's been some discussion on how fast a reader can plow through a novel (nonfiction is a different animal). Some readers are slower than others. Wasn't there someone named Evelyn Wood who advertised to give speed reading classes? I saw her ads on TV at some time. Anyway, my sense is you read as quickly and efficiently as you can while still enjoying the written tale. If a writer's prose style clicks with you, you can pick up the pace a little more. For instance, I read a lot of private eye/noir books, so I know the genre's quirks, slang, and "voice". Not always, but I don't get hung up on the prose, and I can get on with, and enjoy, the story at hand. Of course, good, old skimming and skipping also works if you reach a boring stretch.

Everybody has a preferred place to hang out when they're reading. This assumes you've got the leisure to read between all shopping, work, and just keeping together body and soul. As a kid, I liked to read books in a shady copse of pin oaks. Reading on a bus or auto that's in motion leaves me sick. On the other hand, reading in bed at night seems to claim a lot of my book time. I don't have an e-book reader (yet), so I can't comment if owning one makes it easier to read during the various slow times throughout the day. I see readers in the bistros and coffeehouses, but the outside noise distracts me.

I read/wrote/published them for years. Now I'm more heavily slanted toward the novels. Some readers don't prefer stories because it's difficult to tell a tale in so few words, and I can see their point. Big publishers don't put out anthologies much now. My wife is reading Alice Munro, and I might try her out. I've read the stories of Cheever, Welty, and O'Hara though not of late. You'd think short stories are tailor-made for e-book readers and for fitting into our crazy, frenetic lifestyles.

Some people do better late at night while others prefer to work in the morning. When I worked a 4 p.m to 12-midnight shift, I liked the hours just fine. That was then, some years ago. Now I'm more of a morning person, liking to hit the keyboard before the sun comes up. If I can get 500 new words before dawn cracks, I call it a good day. For me, reading is better suited to do at night. It looks like next year will see many pre-dawns with the new projects in the pipeline. Night owl or riding the dawn patrol, which is better for you? Different strokes.

Mercy. Somehow I got the days this week mixed up, and the library has shorter hours, and I didn't pick up my fix, er, I mean my books being held on reserve. So there you go. If I had made it to the library in time, I'd be reading IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT this holiday weekend. As it is, I'll substitute a book title I've already read. Tomorrow we may go see TRUE GRIT, so at least I read that Western this summer.

Anyway, here's wishing the best reads for all in '12.

I started out to reorganize my Good Reads list of books, and I realized how my fiction reading tastes have almost run full cycle. When I was a kid, I liked mysteries and Westerns with a dash of horror. Sometime early on in college, my choices ran to the more literary genre (probably driven by the required reading lists from the profs' classes). Now I'm back to reading crime fiction though I can see Westerns, literary, and some speculative fiction titles. I guess that shoots down my full cycle theory. I probably read whatever title strikes my whim at the time. "Ecelectic" might be a more accurate way of describing it.

I don't know if they are any Jessica Fletcher fans still out there. We tuned in and watched her every Sunday night (or I think it was on Sunday night). Lots of dead bodies turned up in Cabot Cove.

Anyway, my small town cozy mystery looks as if it will appear in e-book/paper early this year. The title is QUIET ANCHORAGE. My small town is in Virginia, not in Maine. I hope my two amateur sleuths and their murder mystery are appealing to mystery fans.

I'll be sure to post more details as they become available.

On New Year's Day, we decided to splurge and eat lunch out at our favorite Indian restaurant's buffet. I saw a young girl, maybe she was ten or eleven, seated at a table and she was reading an honest-to-goodness book in her lap. I couldn't see its cover and have no idea what it was or who wrote it. Harry Potter or some such YA, maybe. It came as a bit of a surprise. I just haven't seen anybody, much less a young person, reading a book in public for a while. Maybe she was being grounded and had her cell phone confiscated. But she appeared to be absorbed and entertained by the storyline. Just a passing observation, it's stuck with me.

This week I finished reading Craig Johnson's newest (and terrific) Sheriff Walt Longmire title, JUNKYARD DOGS, and the author includes Walt's pet dog named, simply, Dog. That got me to thinking about how pets are used in fiction. The thinking goes that including a pet makes our hero more humane, sensitive, or well-rounded. I'd tend to agree. A couple of years ago, we had to put down our cat after 21 years with us. It was a heart-breaking event. Stinky was one of the family. Why? I don't know. She just was. So, I think pets do play an important emotional role in our lives (if not our sanity). By the way, I'm happy to report we got a black-and-white cat, and Frannie has made herself right at home.