Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Book Drought

I'm having the worse time finding books lately. Partly it is because my library has, lately, been buying nothing but the sappy cishet romances I don't care for, along with a lot of genealogy books and kids books. (I am all for buying kids books, but this means less SFF for me.) Partly, I think, it is that my standards have upgraded. Books that would have been perfectly acceptable to me, say, five years ago annoy and bore me now. Possibly I have just read too many excellent books. I cannot put up with dreadful one.

Also it is that my favorite authors are writing books too slowly. Please, I need more books. Quit your day jobs!

This week I took six books out of the library two days ago and I have DNF'd all of them. Well, I am still trying to read The Professor and the Madman, because I am desperate, but it is slow going.

I still have War and Peace, which I never got around to reading last summer. Maybe I will read that. That will keep me in reading material for at least a few days.


5 comments:

nicoleandmaggie said...

There's still more Anthony Trollope on Gutenberg... Or did you dislike him?

Time for rereads? My KJ Charles collection has been getting its pixels pretty well worn since after I DNF a bunch of stuff sometimes I need her as a palate cleanser to remember that some books are actually very good.

delagar said...

No, I liked him! More Trollope, that's a fine idea!

I've been doing a lot of rereading, but I'd like something new as well.

nicoleandmaggie said...

When I first got my kindle many years and one child ago, I spent some time going through the gutenberg library sorted by ratings. I actually did find some gems among the cruft and racism.


Also, your tastes and mine don't have a ton of overlap except with books that are objectively excellent, but I wonder if you might enjoy the better books by Raphael Sabatini and Samuel Shellabarger. I don't know if the suck fairy has visited them since my last read, but Captain Blood is/was delightful. Scaramouche was fun. Captain from Castile surprised me with ... being ahead of its time.

delagar said...

I do like KJ Charles, and I haven't read all of those yet. I've kind of avoided the Gutenberg library. Something about their formatting annoys me, I don't know why.

nicoleandmaggie said...

I suspect you would really enjoy the Sins of the Cities series by KJ Charles if you haven't read them yet. They're a bit dark for me so haven't gotten a reread, though I did enjoy the lighter next generation (Lilywhite boys) immensely.

Every public library I've been to has a hard copy of Captain Blood. Looks like yours may also have Scaramouche and Sea-Hawk.