The therapeutic value of reading

Late last week my partner went to the library. He is an avid reader, where I am not. So, as you do when you go to the library, he returned home with a pile of books. Along with the books he bought home a bunch of audio books so my neighbour could listen to them.

Me, not wanting to be left out, decided that audio books are good, so popped the first CD from one of them into the player and let it play. I have played this same CD 3 times now, and if you were to ask me what it was about I would not be able to tell you. It really isn’t the same to listen to a book and read one.

Anyway, that over with, I decided to grab one of the books my partner had bought, thinking, “How hard can this reading kick be, anyway?”

It was the fourth chapter of ‘The Fresco’ penned by Sheri S. Tepper that showed me how hard this reading thing is.

This woman is a brilliant writer. I liked how she put the reader into the story pretty much from the opening sentence. Also, I loved how she didn’t draw the chapters out by over identifying the scenery and excessively tell how the heroine made it this far. There was a quick story of how she came to be there and her whole life, without the trivial bits.

When it comes to reading, I am very much like I am in real life. If it takes more than five minutes I dont want to know about it. So I loved how this author portrays her stories.

THEN came chapter four. This chapter is basically a letter to the heroine from an alien. He is trying to explain to her how life is on his planet. From what I could gather it was very Logan’s Run’ish but they are not sacrificed at a certain age to make way for newlings.

If you are versed in more than one language, you will understand how hard it is to translate some things to make them make sense. In this chapter the author has done a fantastic job of doing exactly this. However, this is also where I decided to give up on the book.

I may later pick up the book again, because i was finding the story completely enthralling. Though, if you’re like me and not an avid reader, then this story is not one that you want to be starting off on. For me it is a very ‘hard’ read to this point.

I really did have a point to this post, but whilst writing, I seem to have lost it. The point, that is. If at all possible I might find it again when/if I decide to try to finish the book.

If you’re a reader, then the odds are you have already read this book, and you know exactly what I am talking about, even though I do not. Or you may not have read this book, but read something by Sheri S. Tepper that you would like to comment on. So comments are more than welcome.

I shall away now, to try to find that point that I was trying to make at the beginning of this post. Have fun.