Have you broken all your resolutions yet? Mine are usually in pieces by mid-afternoon New Years Day. However, if you're still soldiering on with your good intentions -- or if you want to start new batch of resolutions after destroying the first group -- Laura Miller at Salon.com has a suggestion for you: broaden your reading horizons. Her blog entry is provocatively titled, "Read a book you think you'll hate in 2010," but, as she explains, that's not really what she means. "We all have our little biases," she contends, "and far be it from me to suggest that people force themselves to read books they don't like, but sometimes that's all these preferences are -- prejudices." If you automatically reject fiction, or nonfiction, or short stories, or books by men writers, or women writers, or whatever, well, you may want to reconsider.
If, like me, you're a pretty slow reader then obviously you wouldn't want to waste your time plodding through a book you simply don't like. But who knows -- that book of short stories about 12th-century Mongolia written by a transgender Brazilian now living in Kentucky may turn out to be your favorite book of the year.
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Well, something like this happened for me - I was reading a book, got in about 4 or 5 pages and just put it down - usually I'll give it at least 50 or 75 before putting it down - well, I picked it back up a couple weeks later and lo and behold I am so glad! It's a wonderful book!
But, I am like you -I simply won't plow through a book I don't like. I will give it up to 75 pages if I think there is a chance I'll get into the rhthym of the writer (as does happen sometimes) but if it's something I am sure I won't like, down it goes! just too many books out there (and too little time *smiling*)
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