Hello! Help Requested for a Jaded Reader - by Rosalie Warren

First of all, just to say how pleased I am to be back on the Authors Electric team. I was a regular contributor for about a year when Authors Electric first began, but chose to leave when life became demanding and my writing hit a slump. I’m pleased to say that things are back on track, pretty much (though see below) – and it’s great to be here again.

My first post is from Ros-the-Reader rather than Ros-the-Writer – and a somewhat jaded reader at that. For what may be the first time in my life (and that amounts to about fifty-seven years of mostly high-density reading), I can’t find anything I really want to read – anything that grabs me in the gut and won’t let go. Sure enough, I’m finding books that are okay… both new ones and ones I’ve read before. My usual tastes are literary fiction, comic fiction, crime and science fiction, plus literary biographies and popular science (cosmology, psychology, genetics, neuroscience, etc). There’s plenty of all this stuff about, but nothing that excites me to the core and, most importantly, makes me want to start scribbling something of my own.

Because when my reading runs into a rut, I’ve discovered, my writing quickly follows. It’s not that I want to be inspired in a ‘I could do that’, copy-catting kind of way. Much more often, I’ll read a fascinating treatise on the nature of consciousness or a book about mental health and find myself writing sci-fi (that’s pretty much how Lena’s Nest was born, though my former research interests also came into play). Or I’ll read a brilliant YA novel and find an unrelated (apparently) new character in her seventies appearing in my head, ready to star in a new tale for adults. It’s very mysterious and I’ve never really thought about it before… it just happens. Until it doesn’t!

The problem could be that I’ve been doing a lot (even for me) of reading recently and I’ve simply run out of good stuff. I remember my mother – an avid reader of detective novels throughout her adult life – who got through two books a day at her peak. The local library couldn’t keep up with her. This was well before the days of online bookselling and there was no bookshop in the town – not that she could have afforded to feed her habit by book buying. (Incidentally, Mum would have been horrified by the recent closure of so many libraries. I’m glad to say that the one she used in Pontefract was still open the last time I checked, though who knows for how long?)

Anyway, just lately I’ve been getting through books at almost at the rate Mum used to. I’ve had several weeks of health concerns and medical tests that have stopped me being as active as usual (thankfully all seems to be well). So perhaps I’ve just drained the well of the kind of books I like and will have to wait for the writers to catch up.

Maybe. Or am I missing something – possibly quite a lot? Please, fellow readers and writers, broaden my horizons, my remit, anything except my waistline – no cookery books involving chocolate! – and let me know what books are currently exciting you. They can be books you’ve written yourself – no undue modesty needed here. They don’t have to be the genres I’ve mentioned or for any particular age. I seem to read like a set of nested wooden dolls… each layer of me enjoys books suited to its own size/age, right down to babies’ picture books.

I’ve read a lot, so newish is good, though I have no objection to being reminded of works I’ve already read or somehow missed.

Thanks in advance! I’m looking forward to having my reading – and possibly even my writing – revitalised.

Best wishes,
Ros

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