Earth Abides; Reading Doesn't

Yesterday I was in a small-town library, perusing the shelves. I stumbled across the book "Earth Abides", and the title caught my attention. I'd never heard of it, but the plot summary reminded me of my favorite Jimi Hendrix song.

I was onto something; apparently the book had inspired Hendrix to write "Third Stone From The Sun." (My favorite of his songs is "1983... A Merman I Should Turn To Be", which I kind of forgot was about living underwater. My next close favorite is "House Burning Down.")

1983... A Merman I Should Turn To Be

Since my Dark Times, I've had little desire to read or write. In the depths of those times, I read all of The Dragon Tattoo series, a few old terrible Star Wars books, Brothers Karamazov, and the most recent Murakami book that was so Murakami that I remember nothing of the title.

After that, I started to feel that reading was a productivity obsession of mine. Reading is seen as a virtuous activity for reasons that I now think are mostly silly.

I also decided I no longer wanted to write much. I used to really enjoy writing fiction, but now I much prefer dungeon-mastering. It scratches the same itch with 10% of the work, and is way more enjoyable because I get to immediately share the experience. Writing fiction was more of a way to boost my ego than to actually contribute something, and it takes a terrible amount of effort for very little benefit.

Back to this small-town library, though. It is the kind of place that invites me to read. It has this huge reading room that can seat at least 30 people, in a town of 8000. So I sat there for two hours and read the first half of Earth Abides.

Earth Abides (Wikipedia)

It is an easy-reading book. As the dust-cover suggests, the story has a lot of weight without much "melodrama." The characters feel like real people.

It was this last part that really sticks with me. Most fiction to me these days reads like one of two things:

Non-fiction using the medium of fiction to make its point

Fiction that feels like a Netflix or videogame plot, where the characters feel like actors rather than real people

I could expand on this feeling of mine, but I don't want to. I'm not well-read enough to be certain on this take, but I feel like it's why I'd rather watch a show or play a videogame instead of reading a book; the stories are about as thoughtful, and I get something else out of the experience too, like enjoying the A/V or the game mechanics. Even some of my favorite new-ish books of the last ten years (like the Broken Earth trilogy by Jemesin) felt more to me like extremely well-crafted videogame storylines than "book plots."

"The Fifth Season", Book 1 of the Broken Earth Trilogy

I also feel like I'm in better tune with how much mental energy I can offer myself. If I'm working a "normal" corporate job and taking care of myself and my family + community as well as I can, I don't have the energy or desire to read. But when I get more time to myself, the habit naturally comes back. (And I don't have kids!)

Back to Earth Abides, for the last time. I can guess where the story is going in broad strokes, but it's the details I'm interested in. I've reserved a copy from my local library, and I'll finish it when I get my hands on it. But that's probably it for my reading until the next time a vacation comes along.

As for writing; I've sort of naturally gotten back into the habit of writing letters to the editor in response to newspaper climate-change articles. It's something I can do to contribute, even if I'm not good at it yet. More on that another time.