Yeah, it's good. I'm all set with reaching my levels. Trying to drop a few, actually. Beer and Netflix sounds good.
If you click on this thread you must post on it...
- Thread starter Louanne Learning
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But don't our levels need constant nourishment?
Well, I suppose equal nourishment for all levels helps us avoid becoming bottom heavy.
2% seems so low as all I ever seem to see in the news or awards and what's getting published is...literary fiction. I'm not really interested in what typically falls under that label as it's usually contemporary, about trauma, other downer kinda stuff, too focused on language and symbolism.
I mostly read for fun and escapism. Real life is depressing enough for me. Squeeze in some philosophy for me to ponder in spec-fic/sci-fi? Sounds great. Pop in a bit of politics into the fantasy I'm reading? Let's go.
Give me interesting characters, but focus on plot, give me some action. Make me turn pages instead of re-reading lines and trying to figure out wtf the author was trying to say there. I'm a simple farmer who likes to consume pop/genre literature, mostly for entertainment.
I mostly read for fun and escapism. Real life is depressing enough for me. Squeeze in some philosophy for me to ponder in spec-fic/sci-fi? Sounds great. Pop in a bit of politics into the fantasy I'm reading? Let's go.
Give me interesting characters, but focus on plot, give me some action. Make me turn pages instead of re-reading lines and trying to figure out wtf the author was trying to say there. I'm a simple farmer who likes to consume pop/genre literature, mostly for entertainment.
To keep readers from losing their minds and their interest, darkness needs to be balanced with humor and at least an occasional glimmer of light. Decades ago, I read a memoir that featured one downer after another. When yet another potentially happy moment turned to utter disaster, I lost patience and quit reading. Surely something good happened at some point in the writer's life, but if so, she wasn't admitting it. A two hundred page dirge is not my idea of enlightenment or entertainment. Neither is a two hundred page Valentine to some famous person. Of course, that does not mean other folks don't find those things absolutely enthralling.
That sounds like what I write. But I don't really consider what I write to be literary.
About two years ago, I read the most depressing novel there is. It was so depressing that I couldn't make it past the first quarter of the book. I had enough of it at some point and just threw it in the trash. I've only ever done that to another book.
I'm no stranger to reading novels about the struggles of life. But this book was artificially dark. It was as if the author enjoyed weaving all that darkness together. They didn't make much of an attempt to weave in or foreshadow something happier. It was just horrible thing after horrible thing...
It did get published with a fancy book cover and everything though, so I guess people enjoyed it. I trashed it and have no regrets.
Yeah. I'm here. Anything that comes to mind might be entirely inappropriate, so I'll say nothing.
There is no place for humour in literary fiction.
There is no place for humour in literary fiction.
