Reading light escapist stuff
cheers me up but not enough;
happy ending, Cinderella-style
comedy or ripping yarn adventure,
whodunit mysteries beguile,
high-flown literary work
enlightens me but sometimes bores me
so a happy medium I seek:
something with a cracking story.
Miz Quickly wants us to write about my favourite occupation: reading
Vivinfrance's Blog 
Nothing to beat a really good story. I can take only limited doses of these agonies of introspection, or four hundred pages which boil down to the narrator having tea with his grandmother.
When something I write reaches the stage where it takes me effortlessly back into that world on rereading, and I am conscious of enjoying the trip, then I know it is the best I can give.
I enjoy having characters who distinguish themselves, and I allow them to wallow in their successes a bit rather than brush them aside as is mostly the fashion.
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You have – as usual – hit the nail on the head.
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*grin* I do bash my thumb from time to time …
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“whodunit mysteries beguile” — These certainly do. My favourite genre. Just finished a re-issue by a particularly favourite author. An excellent mystery can be read multiple times, whether you remember the ending or not.
“Your list of reading habits,” she smiled, “is cracking too.”
What are you reading now?
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A light-hearted romance with humour and a thread of feminism: Catherine Alliott, Rosie Meadows regrets…
Next in the pile is Samuel Pepys.
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I love the eclecticness of your reading list.
Many years ago, I bought a used copy of Samuel Pepys as a gift for my father. I started reading it, and he didn’t get it until a day after his birthday.
I’m still in mystery. Tony Hillerman who wrote about native policemen in the Southwest died a few years ago. His daughter has taken over writing the series — the first from a partially completed manuscript her dad left, and now this new one, all on her own. The first one was excellent, with a touch of her voice altering the narration which was very intriguing after years and books with her father as “narrator.”
Enjoy Samuel.
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That’s like Dick Francis -they collaborated on a couple before son Felix took over seamlessly.
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Dick Francis was one of the few prolific writers who didn’t drop off steadily as the novels progressed. Alistair MacLean’s books, in my opinion, did that.
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So many flavors to partake!! Love this, Viv. 🙂
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I don’t mind ‘light, escapist stuff’ from time to time as long as it’s well written – otherwise it annoys me and I can’t concentrate on the story. Sometimes, a bit of literature ‘lite’ is just what I need. I found myself struggling recently with Hilary Mantel’s ‘A Place of Greater Safety’ – I just couldn’t get my head around all the different people and, because I have it on Kindle, it’s not so easy to flick back through the pages to look at the ‘cast list’. I will go back to it as I have loved her other books but maybe when I’ve got more time to have a good run at it rather than in ten minute chunks before I fall asleep at night.
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I am in entire accord with all of that. Grammatical errors in particular make me put a book down in disgust. What were the editors thinking? As regards proper writing, like Mantel, I have to have a real paper book, and preferably uninterrupted reading time.
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Excellent!! >
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oh yes, this is a great description of my reading passion also
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I love a good story too that takes me away from the mundane. Loved the poem.
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