Except I haven’t been.
I’m really annoyed with myself.
I have my excuses, which I will describe here, but really, I know I’m just being lazy. Which is odd, since I love to read, and when I have made time for it in the last few months, I’ve really enjoyed it.
Excuse #1: I am too broke to buy new books.
While this is a bit true, it’s also a bit of a cop-out. I have a ton of old books I could re-read, I just don’t feel like re-reading anything right now. Usually I love to re-read. I don’t know what my problem is.
There’s also the library. I get sort of mad about that sometimes, though, since A. I live in a small town and there is no library, and driving to town for the library gets inconvenient, especially making returns in a timely fashion. B. If I really love a book, I want to own it so I can re-read it several times. C. The local library is small, and their fiction selection is deeply disappointing. I know I can do inter-library loans, but I have to know what I want to borrow, which I don’t.
I know a lot of indie authors offer their first books for free, or have steeply discounted sales, but . . . I’m so picky. It’s hard to find an author I like, and disappointing books make me really upset. I’m still mad about the first chapter I read in a book — at the book store — that I didn’t even buy — six years ago. I’m ridiculous. I’ve tried looking through free and cheap books online, but I get overwhelmed really easily, and the few that I’ve picked up haven’t been very good. It makes me reluctant to try again.
Excuse #2: Finding new books is really tough.
I love when people make recommendations to me, but I hate when I get too many recommendations for the same books or series. As soon as something starts getting really popular, I’m out. I never read Harry Potter, because like 20 people told me I needed to read the series in a week. That’s too popular. And indeed, from what I know of the series, I wouldn’t like it.
I’m telling you guys, I am FUSSY.
Even if someone does recommend a book to me, I won’t read it unless I know the person making the recommendation and I know we have similar taste in books. Even then, one of my book buddies told me to read Harry Potter, and by then I’d gotten 19 other recommendations, so I ignored her even though she’d told me about other books that I really liked. My sisters are usually pretty solid sources for good book suggestions, but neither one has much to offer lately. They usually read a lot, I’m not sure why they haven’t been helpful lately.
I hate looking online at books. Type in “urban fantasy” in Amazon and you’ll get hundreds of pages of results. That’s too many. I just want maybe fifty or so books to check out. And I’m not opposed to a little epic or high fantasy, but I’ll never type it into a search bar because I mostly don’t like it. If I spot a book on a shelf that looks good, I’ll check it out, but I don’t seek that genre out. Amazon used to send out suggestions to my Kindle, “20 books under $2.99.” I bought a few books from that, I liked that a lot. They quit doing that, and now I’ll have an ad for a horror movie that I don’t want to see for days on my Kindle screen. Ugh.
I signed up for a few e-mail lists that send out about 20 or so books every day that are free/cheap/on sale, but A. a few of the lists aren’t genre specific, so there’s only one sci-fi fantasy book in the bunch each day and it’s not usually one that looks like my speed. B. A couple of the lists just don’t have very strict requirements — so I’ll see book descriptions that have a ton of typos, or are just worded really awkwardly, Or Have The First Letter Of Each Word Capitalized. I will not be purchasing those books, even for free. C. A couple of the lists are just lists — the books aren’t discounted in any way at all. As I said before, I’m pretty broke. D. Several lists of books every day is just too many! Once a week would be too many! I unsubscribed from several of the lists because seeing them pop into my inbox every single stinking day was too much! I mostly just delete the emails because every day is too much!
Huff.
So, those are my hurdles. I’m annoyed by them, and not sure how to proceed. I’m open to suggestions if you have any.
I truly do love books and reading, it’s why I got into writing in the first place. I’m not sure what’s holding me back right now. The excuses above are really just sort of that — excuses. They make things harder than I like, which is annoying, but they shouldn’t be stopping me. At any rate, I want to get back into reading again, and I’ll take any help I can get.
