The Eternal Debate —
The Eternal Debate —
Keep Reading . . . or Bail?
This week at the playground, a friend mentioned he was reading a new book and he wasn’t sure about something—the author used brand names for everything; as far as he could tell, this wasn’t strictly necessary to the plot—and he was curious about my take on the matter.
From a craft perspective, we as writers are mostly told to be as specific as possible, but I’ve noticed that this advice often stops short at brands. With the exception of car makes/models and maybe the occassional denim, we are not encouraged to be Brand Specific in our writing, unless it is somehow pertinent to the scene at hand. (I remember vividly a poetry workshop that insisted I change Salvation Army to thrift store. And I don’t think it had anything to do with syllables.)
That said, we live in a world where tissue is Kleenx, tampons are Tampax, searching for information on the internet is Googling, etc. By which I mean, the contemporary American world is a branded one. (As I write this, I think of another use of the word “brand”—that is, the rancher’s particular symbol burned into an animal’s hide to mark ownership; this connection is probably an essay in its own right.) When I searched the book title on Goodreads, one of the quotes featured there mentioned a bottle of Heinz ketchup. Reader, I admit, I groan-laughed.
But back to the book in question: it’s a 900-pager and my friend was only 50 pages in. Would he stick with it?
I think so, he said. For a little while at least. Would you?
No, I said. Not if it was annoying me. I’d bail.
Really?
Really.
Reader, it’s true, I bail on books all the time. (In fact, I just bailed on one this week.) Life’s too short and there are too many good books out there that I’ll probably never even get to read. I’d love to know where you fall in this debate: Keep reading…. or let it go?
RIP Alice Munro, whose collections continue to teach me most things I need to know about short stories. (I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read “Corrie” and “Friends of My Youth.”)
This essay by Margaret Atwood was how I discovered the news, a most beautiful celebration of a long friendship, and a life well lived.
Thanks for the link to M. A. Here's a link to Nancy Pearl's RULE OF FIFTY: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/nancy-pearls-rule-of-50-for-dropping-a-bad-book/article565170/
The gist: read fifty pages then evaluate. If you're over fifty, subtract your age from 100; thus, I'm 76 so I have to read only 24 pp. [And as she points out at the end, if you're 100,, you get to judge a book by its cover.]
Anyway, keep up the good work, S.R.
I bail sometimes too - more and more as I get older. I think some of this has to do with being overextended, and some of it has to do with what I worry is a declining quality of many new books - not edited as well as they used to be in some cases, and conglomerates flogging publishers to produce quarterly profits, which leads to lots of books published by people who aren't actual writers. They're doing a side project/vanity project/having a book written for them. A good friend is a ghost writer and she's excellent, but a lot of ghostwritten books are doubtless not as good as the ones she's written.