"Reeling and Writhing" Escaping the Mundane.
There's no wrong place for a good read!
“Reeling and Writhing” and Writer’s Block.
Isn't a fiction novel a wonderful thing? You pick it up and, immediately, other lives start up; protagonists awaken, like the animals in that museum movie. You stop reading and they pause, all the events in their lives, or that portion of it covered by the book, suspended, to stay like that in eternity if the reader never returns. Their tale is told, of course, but not for you until your avid eyes begin to devour the words and lines again, skipping the slow parts and following the thread you don't want to miss.
Why does it all become so real? You know you are reading something that never happened, in the main; that it was all just a figment of some author's prolific imagination, yet it becomes as real for the moment as if you were gazing out of the window and watching the fictional events unfold.
Perhaps this is why I so enjoy novels containing "action heroes," I believe they are called: Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Robert Crais' Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel, to name just a few of the panoply of the hairy-chested hard men who can out fight - and outfuck - all of the opposition.
Do I become the invincible hero of the narrative? No. But perhaps I do associate myself with the excitement and 'derring-do at a level I would never have the physical and fighting capacity to possess. Neither would nearly all of us.
This is why novels live on and always will...perhaps action movies as well. Television can never quite replace those larger-than-life figures up there on the movie screen performing acts so athletic, outrageous and brave - even the baddies - allowing us to join them and escape our otherwise (and certainly, in comparison) mundane lives.
So what we read will tell the world what sort of person we are? I personally dislike intensely war books, fact or fiction (all my action heroes are in the detective, legal, crime genre), same goes for romantic slush, historical fact or fiction, nearly all books by female authors, (sorry girls, but you generally can't write for men, that's why so many women writers use confusing names that could be male or female...yes you do!... that way, they get grabbed in airports and the like when the reader is in too much of a hurry to assess gender).
My next favourite genre after the above is travel. I have done a lot of that and now economic conditions, the sheer misery of air travel and my pets keep me anchored nearer home, travel books still allow me to dream about the places I would be going to, if...if things were different, (and I might win the lottery, who can say nay!). If I won big, I could get my own plane with pet quarters, or at least an ocean-going motor-sailor, (a Morgan Out-Island would do), no? well, then a bloody big luxurious motor-home and s---w you! This is why I watch all these items on eBay: boats, motor-homes, Porsche 911 Carreras...well, someone might make a mistake and let me win a silly auction and be decent enough to allow me to buy a Lamborghini Murcieligo for 99p. and $2.50 postage.
eBay. I have been selling on my site, "jumpincholla" for some years and buying lots of mainly books. Books can be found cheaply in the UK in several places: boot sales (flea markets), charity shops, used book shops and on eBay. Trouble is, postage. This is where the real parsimonious sellers can satisfy their greed. A paperback book actually can be sent for about .75 pence (cents) 3rd class postage. But you see the outright crims asking £10 or more and even regular commercial level sellers asking £1.50 to £3.00 postage. It's so easy to hit the Paypal button for a book I would be chary about paying £5 for in any other venue, but you don't feel the pain on eBay!
So I have ended up this year with several hundred paper-back books, as well as my regular library of research and special books which I never part with. I was lugging them back to the charity shops up to 2 years ago, but I have become cheesed-off with the way they operate; the staggering salaries the directors earn and the way they sell most of the stuff by the kilo to the Third World. But, heck, if your a buyer they won't give you a cent off anything they got for free and, indeed, ask top dollar for: I wouldn’t mind if I knew the money got to where it was supposed to, but in many cases it just doesn’t and it’s a real sham.
Shame. Things like books have little value except their intrinsic value to the reader. There is little market for them outside of eBay and I can't be assed listing them and packing them.
Well, if you’ve read this far, you must have detected writer’s block, and you’re probably snoring...g’night
