Interesting to wake up and hear that most of the country is in the grip of a tremendous storm, and here it’s a little cold, but not even foggy. I’m in exile.
But while I’m in exile, I’m reading a good book. I’m reading Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, and I’m copying a comment I just left at Necromancy Never Pays.
It’s such a good book that every thing I think about — this poem, my conversation at lunch yesterday — resonates with what it’s making me think about. It’s such a good book that when I’m doing something else — washing the dishes or getting dressed or talking to someone — I remember that I’d heard something interesting lately, and then I remember that it’s the book I’m reading.
For a while, recently, I really have not been interested in fiction at all. I thought I was done with fiction — I’d sort of lost the point of it. It seemed better to be reading stuff that dealt with the real world, which, after all, is an interesting place.
But now I remember — fiction deals with the real world, too. Reading about Patty and Walter growing up, and making mistake after terrible mistake (but how could they not?) is a real as a book about different types of trees. Bad fiction is about characters you really don’t care about at all. Good fiction makes you think about life.
Or that’s how it seems to me today.
Now the wind is whistling around the windows. Ahhh — some weather.
UPDATE::
M. has no power! And she says it is blizzarding! N says classes are on, but she does not know how the professors will make it to campus.
Reader's Guide to . . . 
I think fiction deals with the real world, too!
And yeah, the weather outside is frightful. The fire kept us from freezing to death without a working furnace during the ice-storm-caused power outage. I haven’t even tried going outside to walk on the ice. I hope to stay inside until it melts. Even if that’s until March.
But bad fiction, which I’m defining as “fiction that does not engage me” is just bad and not worth reading.
I think you should get a masonry heater, like the moomins have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater Or better, a Russian stove! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oven
Mmmm, heaters. I used to love the wall-mounted electric heaters that were my Arkansas grandmother’s only source of heat for her house.
We talked about buying a generator big enough to run the furnace blowers, but never did it. We spend our money on traveling when we get any!
Entirely reasonable.
I only learnt relatively recently to abandon books that aren’t engaging me. Life’s too short.
You absolutely have to. Life IS too short.
When we lose power we also lose our water because the well pump is run by electricity. Everything’s run by electricity out here. So, we have no water, no plumbing, no heat, no nothing. Those three days without power last year during the snow storms just about did me in. Never again. Never.
I love fiction. Reading it and writing it. But, yeah, bad writing is bad writing and not worth your time.