In a recent Believer review Nick Hornby bemoaned the apparent lack of good new fiction. "I try to find works of fiction, I promise, But it's like pushing a wonky shopping trolley round a supermarket, I constantly veer off toward literary biographies, books about the Replacements and so on... I suspect it's to do with age and risk." A poorly written piece of non-fiction, his theory goes, will at least tell you something you didn't already know, whereas: "Reading a bad novel when you are approaching pensionable age, is like taking the time left available to you and setting it on fire..."
I can relate, and agree somewhat. But I also think when daily events outdo even the most creative imagination all a body can do is throw their hands in the air and go for a long lie down. This summer I'm limiting my recreational fiction reading to the darkly romantic (see the noir thread) and the comically absurd (mostly Wodehouse), none of it written after 1970. How are you preserving time and saving sanity in a time of shitgibbons?
I can relate, and agree somewhat. But I also think when daily events outdo even the most creative imagination all a body can do is throw their hands in the air and go for a long lie down. This summer I'm limiting my recreational fiction reading to the darkly romantic (see the noir thread) and the comically absurd (mostly Wodehouse), none of it written after 1970. How are you preserving time and saving sanity in a time of shitgibbons?
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