Do you read less fiction nowadays, or less overall, or what?
Well, I can't read very well due to the CFS - it exhausts me and gives me headaches quite quickly and it's hard to take stuff in or care about it much. It is, this last year or so, finally getting a bit easier. So, yes, I have not been reading as much of anything for the past 7 or 8 years. And before that I was a children's librarian and I was heavily involved with things like the Youth Libraries Group as well, so I had to read an awful lot of YA, and my adult stuff was mainly re-reads and new books by familiar authors as a break!
As to fantasy, I gave up somewhere about 2000 after one series of brick epics about guys with swords too many, being resigned to things never being as good and as varied as the children's fantasy authors I'd grown up with. I'm now enviously realising that this is NO LONGER SO and I still can't read them as I need to wait for brain so I don't throw them across the room. (If you notice me not reading fic, or published fiction, it's a lot to do with this. If it doesn't matter, I can give it a go. If it matters, I don't want to wind up resenting it just for the effort it took to read it, which I do sometimes. It's a fine balance. Various authors have been thrown across the room and I don't think all of them were to blame for anything.)
Which is a long answer, but it bothers me a lot! I am very pleased that I do at last seem to have turned a corner and the effort/result balance seems to be a lot better in general, but nothing's guaranteed.
no subject
Well, I can't read very well due to the CFS - it exhausts me and gives me headaches quite quickly and it's hard to take stuff in or care about it much. It is, this last year or so, finally getting a bit easier. So, yes, I have not been reading as much of anything for the past 7 or 8 years. And before that I was a children's librarian and I was heavily involved with things like the Youth Libraries Group as well, so I had to read an awful lot of YA, and my adult stuff was mainly re-reads and new books by familiar authors as a break!
As to fantasy, I gave up somewhere about 2000 after one series of brick epics about guys with swords too many, being resigned to things never being as good and as varied as the children's fantasy authors I'd grown up with. I'm now enviously realising that this is NO LONGER SO and I still can't read them as I need to wait for brain so I don't throw them across the room. (If you notice me not reading fic, or published fiction, it's a lot to do with this. If it doesn't matter, I can give it a go. If it matters, I don't want to wind up resenting it just for the effort it took to read it, which I do sometimes. It's a fine balance. Various authors have been thrown across the room and I don't think all of them were to blame for anything.)
Which is a long answer, but it bothers me a lot! I am very pleased that I do at last seem to have turned a corner and the effort/result balance seems to be a lot better in general, but nothing's guaranteed.