from the bookview cafe blog

Throwing Books Against the Wall

Phyllis Irene Radford

Do we have to finish a book that bores us? I don’t think so.

Do we have to plow through the tangled language of the classics? Not unless you truly want to. Dickens may be a magnificent storyteller but I get lost between subject and predicate. How can I find the story if the words go in one eye and out the other ear? I don’t even want to talk about either of the Bronte sisters.

Do we have to read depressing books because they are socially important? Make your own definition of socially important. You can find most of that on the evening news, you don’t have to wallow in it unless you’re doing research.

Reading should be a pleasure, not a chore. So abandon guilt and delve into a genre novel, a short story, or whatever interests you.

BRAVA!!!

As someone who usually has 2-4 books going at once and who has literally hundreds of books that I own and have never read, I can but cheer Ms. Radford's admission and permission to not waste time with boring books.

One woman's pearls of wisdom are gobbets of slime to another...and I flipping HATE to read something because someone thinks I "ought to" do so (made being an English major rough, let me tell you.)

The Book View Cafe is a treasure indeed...both because it gives access to fiction from some of the top women writers out there today and because it lets us see what is behind the curtain.