#The reader book series#

But next time you put down a book, remember this: It's not you. With so much life waiting in my reading list, I'm ready to leave my other ghosts behind. And this reunion-with Babylon's Ashes, the sixth book in the Expanse saga of sci-fi novels-was even sweeter. So, instead of beginning one of the many new titles I'd amassed, I returned to the scene of the crime again. It was story and sacrament in one, a healing that I never expected. I found myself appreciating not just the rest of the book, but everything that had happened since the time I'd first closed it. Something happened when I went back to that fallen book, though. If story is the carbohydrate of fiction, King makes a mean baguette. Reading Amazon comments while considering an impulse buy of The Outsider, I saw someone mention that it was a cousin to King’s so-called Bill Hodges trilogy of detective novels. In 2018, the hit came courtesy of-who else?-Stephen King. Donald Stark's Parker novels? God, yes, that’s the good stuff. I can't remember what introduced me to Jack Reacher, but I read the first eight of Lee Child's books about the ex-soldier-turned-do-gooder in rapid succession, never caring that by the fourth one I could see their templated structures like so many 1s and 0s in the Matrix.

#The reader book series#

Patricia Cornwell's innumerable books about forensics expert Kay Scarpetta Andrew Vachss' series starring Burke, the child abuse survivor who took down creeps with extreme prejudice. Parker's Spenser books when I was a kid, and I've been a junkie ever since. My father sparked the habit by feeding me Robert B. Sometimes you-OK, sometimes I-don’t need challenging prose or epic scope or shifting perspectives and unreliable narrators sometimes you need a fucking yarn. Gaining traction again was a matter of steering into the skid. Sometimes you-OK, sometimes I-don’t need challenging prose or epic scope or shifting perspectives and unreliable narrators sometimes you need a yarn. Novels should have been a DMZ for my insecurities, not an incubator.) (What made this sadder still is I was working on a nonfiction book. These weren't rational concerns so much as they were whispers of pettiness and self-doubt, the same ones that haunt us all in tiny ways still, their small voices massed in a choir that out-sang any note a book could strike. I was consumed with the idea that I’d be intimidated by someone else's gift, that I’d subconsciously mimic another's voice. Seeing a published book, I’d remember that I wasn’t finished-and that I’d never be finished. The reason was never dislike, but rather a host of other culprits. I’d get 100 pages in, or 60, or 20, and put it to the side. I’d start a novel, and my focus would atrophy almost immediately.

Not so much, as it turns out! Instead, books became daunting. You'd think that once I settled into some sort of writing routine, that groove would accommodate pleasure reading. Knowing the task I faced and my keen desire to avoid it, you'd think I would be able to find a balance.