fiction – Page 2

Why don’t adults read? Exploring reasons (screen time isn’t one of them), & a confession

Posted on November 26, 2024November 27, 2024 by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

I love books! I love everything about them. I like inventorying them when I bring one home. I like looking at the ones on my shelves. I like my library room full of books. I like thinking about the ones I have read and the ones I want to read. I like the covers (I DO judge a book by its cover). I like the thrill of maybe finding a first edition (I have a 1st ed C.S. Lewis and a 1st Book Club edition of Dune). I like book bindings. I like antiquated books. I like the thrill of the hunt for books.

Like this find delivered to the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe someday I’ll find a book like that!

I also like reading. I’ve always been a reader. I was weaned on 1960s Dick and Jane. I grew into Nancy Drew in 2nd grade, enjoyed Harriet the Spy as a 5th grader, got wrapped up in King Arthur as a High Schooler (The Once and Future King, The Crystal Cave, Le Morte d’Arthur), and the Classics. I loved the classics, like Huck Finn and Following the Equator from Mark Twain, The Great Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I did go on a tear in my early 20s on South American literature’s Magic Realism from Marquez, Esquival, Allende, Neruda etc.

In my thirties I was living on the sailboat and also traveling a lot and the internet hadn’t come to the little people yet so I always had a book in hand. I liked at that time the traveling/adventure narratives such as A Year in Provence, Into Thin Air, Tim Cahill books, seafaring books and explorer books like The Lost City of Z.

In my 40s I was establishing my business of a local newspaper and read journalism books and books about civic society. In this era the book Bowling Alone stood out.

Reading is my identity as a person. It’s also my professional identity. My two education degrees revolve around literacy, so my professional days are to urge people to become better readers, to enjoy stories, to find the value of reading.

In my 50s I still read but not as much. I went back to work in education, this time not a teacher but as a teacher’s aide. It is a demanding job and with my aging I found I was tired when I got home. But the frequent breaks from school still provided ample time to read, and I revisited the classics and some modern literature. I had also been saved by the grace of Jesus and I started reading theological books such as the Puritan Paperbacks and other religious topics.

Then I turned 60. I was still working, and the job had deepened into being a teacher’s aide PLUS doing interventions with struggling readers and keeping up with the data. Educators make as many decisions all day as an air traffic controller. Decision fatigue is real. The irony of aging is that as one gains seniority or more experience, she is given more responsibility. This is natural. However more responsibility comes at a time when the person is tiring mentally and physically. This is natural too.

I realized that I just don’t actually read much any more. My brain is tired when I get home from work. On weekends my eyes are weary, dry, and sometimes aching or throbbing. It’s tempting to just watch a screen when there are so many options for entertainment.

I berated myself for a long time for being weak-willed, for being lazy, for starting to become aliterate (unwilling to read, although able to do so).

But I DO want to read! It’s a habit I cherish. I’ve read so many good books. I’ve used books as escapism, I’ve learned so much, expanded my vocabulary, and sparked my imagination. Many of my travels had a goal to visit bookish places, such as the great bookstores of the world, or the homes of famous authors, or locations where famous book events happened.

Why, WHY don’t I read (as much) anymore?

I set about to find out and to solve my problem.

I came across a video where the host proposed Why Adults Don’t read…And How to Start Again from The Book Guy. I don’t know anything about the Book Guy but his video was articulate and well researched.

Here are his reasons. But don’t just read them and go ‘Oh yah’, there’s more to them than first appears.

For example, in No. 1, he gives information about 4 levels of literacy. As an educator, I found level 1 and 2 to be interesting when thinking of my students and the lack of literacy at home. It helped me be more informed and more sensitive.

No. 3, not having enough energy is definitely a major reason. Between old eyes, decision fatigue, mental weariness, it had become much easier to watch TV mindlessly than read a book engagingly. And reading is a habit, letting it go even for a while like I have, dulls the skill. It’s harder to pick up later.

No. 4 is more complex than one would think from the statement. It’s not just a bad experience, which does tend to turn some people off. It’s the pressure from others or pressure put on one’s self to read certain books.

After I was saved in my early 40s I happily read lots of theology. As my 40s were left behind and then the 50s as well, I then realized I had put pressure on myself to read what I thought I SHOULD read rather than what I wanted to read. I had incrementally viewed fiction as ‘dessert’, only to be enjoyed after dutifully absorbing ‘better’ books or more worthy books. Now, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE the Puritan Paperbacks, Commentaries, Christian living books I’ve read. Many have impacted me deeply and added greatly to my life.

[From Death to Life: How Salvation Works, Blood Work: How the Blood of Christ Accomplishes Our Salvation, Valley of Vision, Pilgrim’s Progress are just a few!).

I felt also that if I had time and inclination I should be reading the Bible. Was I letting Jesus down by not spending MORE time in the word if I had the chance?

But reading fiction is instructive in its own way. It’s not dessert. I’m amazed that as a younger adult all I read was fiction and now all I read is non-fiction. Did I become a snob? Perhaps.

Fiction IS instructive. It teaches us languages skills and communication; fiction teaches us empathy, as explained more thoroughly in Neil Gaiman’s transcripted talk Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming.

I decided to get a fiction book from the Library that had been recommended to me. I pushed my computer away and got up to snuggle in my chair under a quilt, and read it. It was so relaxing. I sort of gave myself permission to indulge, and I even had a sink full of dishes, too.

There are a few lessons for me here. First is just because I’ve been a reader all my life, I took the SKILL of reading for granted. As I transition to a slower season of life, I can’t take anything for granted- not energy, not skills, not time.

Second, read what you want. I will continue to read solidly theological books, but I will intentionally fold in fiction to the pile, and not feel guilty.

Third, just do it, as the saying goes. If I want to read, and I do, then just do it. Resist the temptation to first do the dishes, fold the laundry, and dust before, only to be too tired after. If it is important to me, then make the time.

So that’s my confession, my search for answers, and my resolve. Now if you will excuse me, I have a book to finish.

prophecy, theology

Why Read Dystopian Fiction?

Posted on October 28, 2024 by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Tim Challies is a reader and a book reviewer. He is the author and promoter of the Annual Christian Reading Challenge, in which I have participated in the past.

I was glad to see this article by by Jon Dykstra linked from Tim Challies’ site. I’d add the eerily prescient 1914 novella from EM Forster, “The Machine Stops“, which predicted, well, pretty much where we are now regarding media, internet, imagination, ideas, social contact and more. Pretty amazing for a hundred-year-old novella.

Here is Dykstra’s essay- Why Is Dystopian Fiction Worth Reading?

Dystopian is a word from Greek meaning ‘bad place’ according to the article. It’s the opposite of Utopian, meaning ‘perfect place’.

Dystopian fiction is a genre that describes people surviving or trying to, after a holocaust of some kind, or a societal collapse, or a nuclear war, and the like. The article speaks of this kind of fiction being worthwhile because it helps us in predictive prophecy of the secular kind, in connecting the dots to see a current credible future threat. The author Dykstra’s point was that this kind of fiction spins a credible threat into scenarios that help us understand where these threats may lead us.

This is a genre well worth exploring, though with care and caution. It’s a big blank canvas that insightful writers can use to paint pictures of grim futures, all in the hopes that they, and we, will ensure such futures never come to be.

Of course, the mightiest and truest prediction of all is what God has said will come, via His word in scripture. Nothing outsmarts, outpaces, outdoes God’s prophecies.

I enjoy this fiction but had felt mildly guilty about it, as though I needed to be doing something more productive. I’d wonder, ‘Am I a ghoul?’ ‘Why do I find this absorbing?’

Mr Dykstra helped me see my interest in it was to go where my own imagination lacked facility, to ‘see’ a future that is all too real in some cases, and to develop opinions and thoughts to guard against it. EM Forster’s The Machine Stops is a future that is practically already here, as is Stephen King’s The Running Man. Chilling.

The most famous work of dystopian fiction is George Orwell’s 1984, which the article mentions. That work was published in 1949. Another famous work of dystopian fiction is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Other classic dystopian books are PD James’s Children of Men, which discusses the childlessness of all the nations and certain doom as the already born die off with no new births coming up to replace them. In fact, birth rates are ranging from declining to collapsing all over the world right now.

Of course there’s the famous Canadian book The Handmaid’s Tale. Dystopian fiction is good where it helps us see ahead and cope with credible current or near current threats and that book’s twisted version of Christianity isn’t a credible threat.

I mentioned I’ve participated in the Challies’ Christian Reading Challenge, at the “Avid Level” (26 books to read in a year.) I added several others of my own choosing to Challies’ list, making myself a separate genre nook of dystopian books I wanted to read. They included The Running Man, The Machine Stops, and It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis about the rise of fascism in the US.

FYI, in Stephen King’s The Running Man (1982)- The end is absolutely chilling, because the final action the main character takes has already come to pass. Remember, in Dykstra’s essay, dystopian fiction that presents credible threats help us formulate our own reactions and imaginations, and that ne came true, for sure.

William Forschen’s book One Second After (2009) depicted the effect upon America from an EMP, (electro-magnetic pulse), and the nation’s societal collapse and resulting high death rate. The author consulted with psychologists, economists, and sociologists to base his fiction on real scenarios those experts stated would most likely happen if we suffered an EMP. It was well written and horrible to think of it occurring, as the Bible hints in some form, it will.

Pat Frank’s book Alas, Babylon (1959)-

-was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and has remained popular more than half century after it was first published, consistently ranking in Amazon.com’s Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories list. The novel deals with the effects of a nuclear war on the fictional small town of Fort Repose, Florida, which is based upon the actual city of Mount Dora, Florida. The novel’s title is derived from the Book of Revelation: “Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.”

Nuclear winter wasn’t a very known or understood event back then, so the survival rate of the population in Alas, Babylon, this initial entry into the American dystopian nuclear fiction isn’t realistic, but most of the rest of the book is.

As predictive or as absorbing as dystopian fiction might be for some people, the only true prediction is what the prophetic books of the Bible tell us will happen in the future, in God’s timing.

With the US election mere days away, many on both sides are saying ‘if the other side wins it will be the end of us’… Maybe, maybe not. It might tell us a bit about God’s judgment, though, or it might just tell us that we go on living long after the thrill of living is gone, as John Cougar Mellencamp sang.

People, the Tribulation is unthinkable. But we must think on it, the Lord’s wrath already hangs over the unsaved. Thoughts of the dystopian future and reading it now in His word should should spur us to witness with eagerness and fervor.

I don’t think a steady diet of this kind of material should be on our plates, but books like this can be a legitimate addition to our bookshelves or movie queue, for the reasons stated above. Happy reading…or in this case, unhappy reading.

book review, Uncategorized

Book review: Randy Alcorn’s Deadline

Posted on July 27, 2017 by elizabethprata

My summer began at Memorial Day and for most people the summer still has 5 weeks to go until Labor Day, the traditional ending of the travel and stay-cation season. My summer break from school ends on Monday, when I return to work on July 31. I’ve been making the most of the time off, after spiritual duties and pleasures, to engage in some of my favorite past-times: reading and movie watching. Here is a review of one of the books I’ve read this summer.

Randy Alcorn’s Deadline

First published in 1994 and re-released in 2009, I’d bought this book on sale for my Kindle.

Alcorn has written The Treasure Principle, a small book of his that I have and We Shall See God: Charles Spurgeon’s Classic Devotional Thoughts on Heaven which I have read. Alcorn is most well-known for his book Heaven, which explores in detail descriptions of heaven gleaned from all over the Bible, along with quotes and commentary from famous preachers and authors. Coming in at 560 print pages, Heaven is a hefty book, one which I’ve also read. Deadline was the first piece of Alcorn’s fiction I’ve read.

Deadline starts well with a fast-paced scenes setting the foundation of three men’s life-long friendship, all of whom figure prominently in the book, though reporter Jake Woods is the central character. The other two characters are Doc (Gregory) and Finney. As we learn of each man’s background, Alcorn also does well describing the scenes where Woods served in Viet Nam, getting inside the head of a soldier and a man. All three characters have been friends since grade school, and now all of them are near 50, established in their careers, married (or in Jake’s case, divorced) and have children. Along the way Finney has become a born-again Christian, while Doc (Gregory) has evolved into an atheist. Jake is on the fence. Alcorn does well showing the difficulty in maintaining friendships with people who do not share Christ as a unifying thread.

Early in the book, there is an car accident with the three men in the car. The rest of the book is consumed with unraveling the mystery surrounding the car accident, which Jake learns was no accident.

Finney and Doc eventually die. The rest of the book shows scenes in heaven where Finney is, and one short scene where Doc is shown in his place of torment. Meanwhile on earth, Jake and his police friend Ollie Chandler work to solve the car accident mystery that killed his two friends.

Review:

On a Kindle you don’t know how many pages you’ve read, only percents. I’d noticed that the first 1/8 of the book moved fast, the opening scenes among the men, jungle in Viet Nam, and the accident itself were very interesting and gripping. And then it bogged down. I read and slogged and read and noticed that I was only 17% through. I looked up the page length online and the print version is 448 pages.

Using Jake’s interview and columnist skills as a pulpit, Alcorn exposits and expounds and preaches endlessly. As Jake the reporter gathers information for his column and interviews Planned Parenthood abortionists or NOW women, his interviews go on for pages and pages, exposition that exists only to preach at the choir and do not push the story forward, are laden throughout the book. These lengthy scenes explore journalistic bias against conservatives, abortion, AIDS (it was 1994), homosexuality, and teen sex.

The book could have been cut by 200 pages and been fine. I noticed that Publisher’s Weekly gave the book a good review in its original version but mentioned that Alcorn “is long-winded”. I agreed with Amazon readers’ few one and two-star reviews all mentioning the same thing- long winded preachy narrative bogs the book down.

“The book is more about “preaching” than it is about a story. I wholeheartedly agree with his stances, but way too much of it for my literary taste.”

“Can you say…Get to the point…”

“I found this book to be boring and “preachy”. The author goes on and on about abortion, teen sex, and the consequences of each. I am a Christian and I don’t need a 300+ page book to tell me of all the arguments against abortion and pre-marital sex. This is like preaching to the choir, if I wanted to read on the subject I would buy a NONFICTION book on those subjects.”

Since this was his first fiction book I thought maybe a good editor would help Alcorn with his next book in the trilogy, Dominion. Nope, Dominion is longer, coming in at 626 pages. The third book in his series, Deception, is 490. Really, no one needs to write a fiction book at 600 pages except maybe Stephen King.

I really enjoy a good Christian yarn but haven’t read a good one since (and don’t flog me for this) Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness. Alcorn can write well, as mentioned, the scenes in Nam and of the accident were great. The scenes at the end where the killers are hunting Jake are excellent, and several the scenes in heaven were breathtaking. But man, Alcorn needs a really good editor.

Not recommended.