We All Hate Your Books!

 Men Don’t Hate Reading. They Hate Your Book

I hate their books too.

Wealthy liberal women in NYC took over publishing and it shows. To find anything decent to read at the library nowadays, I've had to go to all old and classic books. That was the reason for my reading list.  It was borne out desperation and disappointment with the "new" stuff.

All the fiction seemed to be about professional wealthier women, there never was anything representing my life. You don't see poor people in fiction very often unless it's a specialized niche. The fiction is all marketed to the "middle class" plus bourgeoise. Well, they are the ones buying the books but the quality has sunk like a rock. One odd thing I have noticed is the emotional tone of old books is different. The characters cook-cutter in comparison.  Abstract Truth is right about the formula.

"There are all sorts of creative variations on the story. She opens a bookshop, a dress shop, a bakery, or an inn on a Greek island or Nantucket. Maybe a distant aunt dies—Great-Aunt Millicent Pendergast—and leaves a fortune to the heroine because she once saw a spark in her as a little girl. The narrative is flowery and nauseating and full of feeling and description. Or perhaps she returns to the town she swore she would never return to and meets a rugged carpenter who is tortured but secretly wealthy and has chosen to work with his hands because money never brought him happiness.

By page 287, she discovers that she has been living for everyone but herself and has finally liberated herself from the horrible oppression of patriarchal submission."

Everyone in these books is rich, and their family is loving too. For years, at a Lutheran book club, I got the Christian variations of these secular books. In those the rugged carpenter always married the female character at the end of the book, and he got saved or she did. There usually was a Grandma character and a "sassy" friend who always set her straight too. Even non-evangelical churches were reading these books. Oddly most of the settings were in the 1800s-the 1940s before society got too degenerate or something.

It's interesting he talks about how Steinbeck appealed to people of all politics. Yes, that's stands out. Authors could bring in many different types of people as fans. People wanted to see how others thought not just get preached to. It's weird like a majority of the fiction books are only written for middle class or above "ladies who lunch". The men are being left out. What's a man supposed to read old Western novels? I find myself looking for fewer in number books that are written for a male audiences, because I know they'll be better. 

 Who really can relate to any of these boring characters. How come there's never a book written about a fat woman? I know of ONE, "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb and I like Wally Lamb but still feel pissed the character lost weight at the end and became a thin person. Check the link to see what I said about it in 2011.

You never see books on poor people either. Sometimes, once in a while there will be a book about suffering people overseas or ethnic fiction that explores poverty, but you rarely ever see any poor Americans. Lionel Shriver wrote about future poor Americans in The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 but that book would be an exception.  Disabled characters are rarer than Dodo birds. There are a few books about old people like the "A Man Called Ove", but they are uncommon. I find myself reading more African American authors, who faced the world of hard knocks more often. There was this really good fiction book about a black school teacher I read months ago, where he left a prep school to teach in the inner city some months ago. The title is evading me right now but once I remember it, I'll post it. So, I still find some good fiction but it's getting harder.  I relate to books like these far more then Sherie writing about her European vacations and endless long lines of lovers while she solves mysteries about missing antiques. 

One thing about me is if I see something that is self published, I grab it off the shelf and try to go to independent presses for decent reading material when I can afford it. There in that world you will find a few things different from the norm. My reading adventures have been vastly enhanced too, going to the world of older and classic books.