why to read

I think I understand now why some authors say to read all of the time. They say to because reading teaches you things.

Take, for example, the two books I’ve been reading this past weekend. I’ve been trying to read Flatland, because it was on my itouch, and i’ve read Fahrenheit 451 and I have comments on them both.

Flatland begins with a long, in detailed explanation of all about the people of flatland, how they recognize each other, what the women are like, ect. If I wrote this today, I would be told that I did an info dump and you probably want to change it around. But he can get away with it. (I, however, am not impressed with this story up until now, because of this dump of information and lack of possible story that comes from it.)

On the other hand, I have Fahrenheit 451. That book starts out very well, with such a wonderful little character and interest mannerisms and ideas. The description, if I didn’t read it so fast, would probably be incredible.  But he, too, repeats himself often. He writes things that I would instruct other people to possible consider deleting because you don’t need it. He needs it though and it works.

One example:

One two three four five six seven days.

he thing takes that and goes on with something like, Three day, “Have you noticed how dark that house is?” Four day, “Did you ever meet Charisse?”

Also, with Fahrenheit 451, I found the ending confusing. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it should be a case of endings of classic books are confusing for some reason. Because I also found Brave New World confusing and sad and I just did not like it. It’s like they end and I still have hundreds of questions. How does this work? Why did that happen? Ect, Ect.

How do we know the difference between style and proper writing? While sitting here, I keep thinking of the person who sent one of the classics to publishers and all of the publishers sent him rejection letters saying it was not good.  I don’t think anyone really knows what works until they try it. And if it fails, well, either it didn’t work or it’s not the time for it.