Saturday, May 12, 2007

Fat Books

These days, with my health and concentration impaired, fat books tend to scare me. There's just so much of them and it's intimidating.

So why is it that a large proportion of my TBR shelf is fat books?

I was thinking about this while lying on Marcus' bed trying to get him back to sleep. It's amazing what deep thoughts (or thoughts that seem to be deep) one can have at 4am.

It's because the fat books are (generally) the ones with the most satisfying story. There is time in a fat book to develop characters, develop setting and develop plot to build a world and a story that draws the reader in and takes them on a wonderful adventure.

But they are still long, they still take a lot of time and I still find them kind of scary.

I have my TBR shelf filled with the fantasy books at one end, romance at the other and a few odd-bods in the middle. The fantasy "end" takes up at least 2/3, if not 3/4, of the shelf and it consists primarily of longer books. Those are the ones I want to read. But I keep going to the other end because the books are skinnier and likely to demand less effort.

I guess I just need to take a deep breath and embrace my fat books. After all, fat books need lots of love too.

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