Very frustrating, perhaps I'm getting old . . .

[Dennis E. Taylor]

I really wanted seven reasons. You know a "biblically" perfect number. But six seems to be the end of honest answers. Am I ignoring that 6 is the devel's number?

For seven, you could include the TSTL (too stupid to live) cliche. You know, the thing the MC does that is so abysmally moronic that you want to throw the book against the wall, then burn it. I've stopped reading many a book because the MC went TSTL.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Parson, would've thought six ideal as in the water into wine miracle there are six jars, representing the imperfection of man (being one short of God's perfect seven).

 

[Vladd67]

If you find you are having problems getting into novels why not buy collections of short stories? That way if you don’t like one you can just move onto the next

 

[Pyan]

...but I'm very particular about what I buy for my Kindle.

Buy, yes, but one of the best investments in reading that I've ever made is Kindle Unlimited. For £8 a month ($10 in the US, I believe), I can download up to a total of 10 books for free at one time (no limit on the total per month). There's a huge number of classics on the free list, plus (and best) I can download a likely looking book, read a bit of it, decide it's dross, and return it. No more guilt on the lines of 'Oh, I don't like this, but as I paid out good money for it, I'll have to finish it or it's a waste...'
There's a 30-day free trial as well...

I really wanted seven reasons. You know a "biblically" perfect number

Oddly enough, this is my 8,777 post...

 

[Toby Frost]

I'm about 40, and I find this too. I simply can't summon up the enthusiasm for a lot of books that I'm meant to. I think Parson's list is very good, but I'd stress the following:

Overhyping and media saturation. One of my biggest problems with the SFF trade is the hyping of pretty decent books (and not bad ones by a long way) as absolute brilliance. Three bestselling fantasy novels have struck me like this. I've found that both my enthusiasm wanes as I read them and my interest in buying more books diminishes.
Tropes. As Parson says, I often see things that I've seen many times before. Even mocking or subverting tropes, as per The First Law, feels as if it's been "done" now. I think this is especially true when you've got a book that's "X in space", or "1984, but with Y". It might be age that makes you recognise it: recently I saw a review of David Gunn's Death's Head books, where the reviewer struggled to describe them, where "Sven Hassel in space" would have done it fine.
Just not my thing. I'm much more honest about this these days. I find that there are large areas of writing that I'm content to say don't interest me: the problems of teenagers, capital-R Romance, etc. They can be interesting, but they have to be really well done to work for me, and knowing they're there will put me off.
Time. I don't read as quickly as I did, and since I don't get as much time to do it, I really want it to be time well spent.

Anyway, I don't feel that anyone should feel bad about not reading enough SFF. So much of what we hear is either marketing by paid people or writing by much younger people, who are coming to this fresh and with huge amounts of time. I don't think that there's anything wrong with being choosy.

 

[Hugh]

If you find you are having problems getting into novels why not buy collections of short stories? That way if you don’t like one you can just move onto the next

This was how I started reading SF seriously again several years ago after a long gap. I didn't know where to start as for years I'd just read certain trusted authors. I didn't want to spend time on lengthy tomes which would lead me to wish not only that I hadn't started them, but also that I'd lost several days of my life that I could not get back. I realised if I read short story anthologies I'd get a good idea of who I enjoyed. I read around 140 anthologies (all pre-1976), mainly best of year of one kind or another, before starting anything longer. Even allowing for some duplication, that must have been well over 1500 stories. In this way I found authors I really liked, and was also able to discard some surprising prejudices, while re-discovering old favourites.

 

[Parson]

For seven, you could include the TSTL (too stupid to live) cliche. You know, the thing the MC does that is so abysmally moronic that you want to throw the book against the wall, then burn it. I've stopped reading many a book because the MC went TSTL.

Bingo! And when that line is crossed in speculative fiction YOU KNOW the author has gone a few bridges too far. That's one of the reasons I find so many Romances unreadable.

 

[Danny McG]

That's one of the reasons I find so many Romances unreadable

I've tended to shy away from Romance books. A lot of years ago I was off work with a severe leg injury and was almost bed bound (thank you coal mining)

I was melting with daytime television and my (first back then) wife had shelves full of Romances, modern and classical, all artfully arranged.

Unluckily, a couple days before my accident, I'd been nagged into a massive SF clear out. Most books were gone and the good ones I'd kept were crammed into my locker at work.

With a heavy heart I spent 3 weeks in bodice ripping territory, I still shudder even now!

 

[Vince W]

I've tended to shy away from Romance books. A lot of years ago I was off work with a severe leg injury and was almost bed bound (thank you coal mining)

I was melting with daytime television and my (first back then) wife had shelves full of Romances, modern and classical, all artfully arranged.

Unluckily, a couple days before my accident, I'd been nagged into a massive SF clear out. Most books were gone and the good ones I'd kept were crammed into my locker at work.

With a heavy heart I spent 3 weeks in bodice ripping territory, I still shudder even now!

My first wife (and still current) loves romance books. She's tried to get me to read them but I'm not having any of it. I don't think I could cope with the bulging and heaving and parting going on.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

For seven, you could include the TSTL (too stupid to live) cliche. You know, the thing the MC does that is so abysmally moronic that you want to throw the book against the wall, then burn it. I've stopped reading many a book because the MC went TSTL.

I should have stopped at seven...

But for eight, you have a novel that's supposed to be about X (which you really like), but very little of the book is actually about X. Mostly the book will be about the protagonist getting chased around, or chasing someone else around, or trying to escape from something, or his/her adventures with the consequences of X, but not really dealing with X.

For instance, right now I'm reading a book that's supposed to be about A.I., but mostly the protagonist and crew are getting chased around by an assassin of some kind. It could be a spy adventure or some Preston & Child thriller without substantially changing anything. I suspect in the end the A.I. will have something to do with the chase, but that's not really enough to keep me interested. I'm like one squeak short of dropping it.

 

[Toby Frost]

That’s an interesting one, Dennis, as much “spec” fiction is really other genres (or plot structures) transposed into an SFF setting. A Romance or a Crime novel has to have a plot centering around romance or crime, whereas a science fiction novel can be any shape but must have a science fiction setting/background of some kind to qualify as SF. I suppose the answer, as your post suggests, is that the “spec” aspect must in some way affect the standard Romance, Thriller etc plot, and must in some way be integral to the story. Maybe this is why so much military science fiction feels tired to me, as it’s just the Army/Nazis/Spartans or someone else “in space” without much consideration of what “space” would actually mean in terms of fighting.

Slightly off-topic, but I’ve met a few Romance writers at events and always been impressed by them, not least because they write a genre that’s looked down on by virtually everyone who doesn’t read it. I wouldn’t read Romance because it leaves me cold, but hats off to anyone who can do a decent job of it. One thing that interests me about Romance (as a genre, not as romantic subplots in a “standard” novel) is the need to put in things to make the reader emotionally satisfied, the way that an action story has to include fight scenes and car chases, and still come out with a distinctive novel. Sometimes I think that all Romances are just the same story over and over again, and then I remember how so many crime novels have blue covers with a pale hand on them, or my own shelf of Asimov novels with Chris Foss covers.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

That’s an interesting one, Dennis, as much “spec” fiction is really other genres (or plot structures) transposed into an SFF setting. A Romance or a Crime novel has to have a plot centering around romance or crime, whereas a science fiction novel can be any shape but must have a science fiction setting/background of some kind to qualify as SF. I suppose the answer, as your post suggests, is that the “spec” aspect must in some way affect the standard Romance, Thriller etc plot, and must in some way be integral to the story. Maybe this is why so much military science fiction feels tired to me, as it’s just the Army/Nazis/Spartans or someone else “in space” without much consideration of what “space” would actually mean in terms of fighting.

I agree with you about military fiction, but that's not really what I was aiming at. It's more like if you pick up a book that purports to be military SF, but about a third of the way through the book, the MC gets stuck on Earth trying to get his brother in law out of trouble due to his gambling debt, and only in the last chapter does he get back to his combat unit. You sit back and say "Where the F was the military SF?"

 

[Karn's Return]

Well, I'm still young-or so I keep being told-and I'm much of the same way. But I've always been pretty picky about my entertainment choices-you should hear some of the things my brother has said about my opinions of certain types of music. XD


It has to do with personal taste, and despite the fact that time is the one resource I have in abundance still, I still don't like to pass it through negative emotion or opinion. I get enough of such in real life, so if I'm not enjoying something I'm watching or reading, I'll set it aside no problem. Point in set, I was gone for the first half of last week, and me being a dummy, I forgot to bring any of my own books along, so I took another look at Desperation by Stephen King. I once tried to read it years ago, but to no avail. It didn't hook me as a child, and it didn't hook me in last week. I find no point in trying to go through something that isn't a positive experience, if you are able to avoid it, and nobody is putting a gun to one's head telling one to read something that would make you want to dig your eyes out. (At least usually; the fact that I had to read "critically acclaimed" trash like Catcher in the Rye and the Great Gatsby in school were exceptions; I have to say, though, that Great Gatsby is perhaps the best cure for insomnia I've ever come across.)

It doesn't all have to do with age, but as others here have said, it's experience and even learning more about yourself.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree with you about military fiction, but that's not really what I was aiming at.

Ah, I see what you mean and I agree. I wonder if this is a problem with long-running series or narrow subgenres, where the writer need to introduce a new element to the story, but that new element turns the book into a fundamentally different sort of novel? When I was very young, I used to read a series of books about a schoolboy. One book involved him having adventures in the holidays, and I felt really cheated because the school and his friends weren't in it (actually, I felt a bit like that about Titus Alone, but that probably wasn't Mervyn Peake's fault).

 

[biodroid]

I have been giving up on books I don't like for years and I'm only 40. I do have my trusted authors to always fall back on but they are already in their 70s. I get disillusioned when publishers promote authors as the new Brandon Sanderson or Robert Jordan. I fell for that as I started reading James Islington and the book dragged, the characters were dull and I couldn't figure out the plot and that was about 150 to 200 pages in I think. I thought Peter V. Brett was the next big name until I came across unnecessary rape scenes just to make characters feel they have gone through trauma to justifying future actions. I want to read stand out books that take me to another world so I can forget about the humdrum of life for a bit, just don't take 300 pages to get going.

 

[Karn's Return]

I want to read stand out books that take me to another world so I can forget about the humdrum of life for a bit, just don't take 300 pages to get going.

Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. What everyone seems to want these days are grimdark sh*t like ASoIaF and urban fantasy crap like Harry Potter. I'm just wondering what happened to the more lighthearted, magic-filled fantasy, or at least a break from reality and with some light of hope throughout. But it seems to me that those days are long gone, never to return.

 

[Anthoney]

What everyone seems to want these days are grimdark sh*t like ASoIaF and urban fantasy crap like Harry Potter.

Right there with you on both counts. I used to like the grim and gritty when it popped up from time to time surprising me. Now I've more than had my fill. My current dislike for the "grimdark" is nicely balance with my near hatred of goofy Harry Potter type crap.

 

[Toby Frost]

Personally, I quite enjoy reading goofy sh*t, just to spite people.

 

[Karn's Return]

Well, each are entitled to their own opinions, but when an author says something like heroes don't survive war, that's the cue for me to avoid their work. People all seem to want realism these days; if I wanted reality, I'd go outside. I read and write and watch things to cope with depression and darkness, not to run headlong into it.


I'm just wondering, what happened to more lighthearted or at least hopeful stories like the early Xanth books, or Landover, things like that? Something that could actually put a smile on a readers face and-GASP-even be silly time to time?

 

[Vince W]

Right there with you on both counts. I used to like the grim and gritty when it popped up from time to time surprising me. Now I've more than had my fill. My current dislike for the "grimdark" is nicely balance with my near hatred of goofy Harry Potter type crap.

Glad to see I'm not the only one down on grimdark and Harry Potter.