I’m in the middle of a good-book drought.
For those lucky individuals who have never experienced such a thing, a good-book drought consists of a reasonably prolonged period of time in which one is seemingly unable to produce warm, accepting and genuinely affectionate feelings towards any book one attempts to read.
Whilst mired in a good-book drought one may engage in such anti-bookish behaviours as repeatedly abandoning books without finishing them, reacting with excessive nit-picking or criticism to writing styles, plot devices and dialogue sequences that previously caused only mild discomfort, and nervous hand-wringing brought on by a gradual diminishing of hope that one will ever again be blessed with a fantastic and instantly loved read.
I suspect that the good-book drought is a temporary form of mild karmic imbalance brought on by past book-related misdeeds, such as dog-earing library books, using paperbacks as coasters and allowing food crumbs to be smushed between pages while reading. Whatever the cause, it is a spectacularly frustrating experience.
Rather than continue to spend my time half-heartedly thumbing through, and then discarding, any more potentially great but currently not-cutting-it books, I have decided to create a frustration-based haiku in the hope that my reading karma will take a more positive turn.
Bookish kara-te
Oh! To feel the sweet caress
of new-loved pages
So, fellow travellers in the blogosphere, I hope that your book-droughts grow ever shorter or are at least broken by regular monsoonal activity that produces refreshing reading.
Until next time,
Bruce
I’m sorry to hear that you are in the doldrums. I like that word. I hope that it is short lived.
LikeLike
Me too! I’m resorting to sure-fire re-reads at the moment, but my stocks will soon be depleted. Soon we will move to emergency rationing – three sentences a day at most. Pray for the shelf dwellers.
LikeLike
Pingback: The Rithmatist: Read it if…. | thebookshelfgargoyle