See other posts on my reading addiction. It’s been out of control for more than 50 years. Recently, I’ve been able to put some books down before finishing them with a hearty, “&@## no! Not worth my time!”
I’ve just recently (OK, 5 minutes ago) created another, “Nope. Not wasting my time” category under fiction reads. Picked up a real goat-gagger (something I usually enjoy: lots and lots and lots of pages of small text on very thin, high-quality–at least for this day and age–paper). It promised fair to hold my attention for a good evening’s read. . . until I got to the four pages of background timeline covering a couple hundred years of back story and another four pages of dramatis personae.
Oh, &@## no! It’s supposed to be a story! If I NEED a set of references to keep the story straight, the guy obviously can’t just tell the story and get out of the way. I’ve done that sort of thing–read books where authors just canNOT just tell the story and paint the worldscape/background into the narrative skillfully, and it’s just a PITA. If an author can’t just do his job well enough to do paint the worldscape/background into the narrative skillfully, I’m not going to waste my time on his work. He’s banned from my reading list. Period.
Moving on. . .