Reading Life
Apr. 17th, 2012 12:00 amI love being so enrapt in a novel that it pains me to put it down. “Strange Flesh” is just escapist fun, but it clicks with me. This does not happen nearly enough for me when it comes to such fiction. It must be like getting hooked on a drug. Once the addiction kicks in, you got to keep hitting it until you are left strung out and sucked dry.
It is one thing to enjoy Shakespeare or high literature, but a page-turner of a novel must be like a wild weekend affair of sheer carnal debauchery with a ten dreamgirl, a prostitute, of course, who happens to need the money badly, and even agrees to rough sex. It just feels nasty and wicked and sooo good.
I wish I could regularly get this charge from pop novels, but I figure that I am lucky if this happens to me two or three times a year. Although shallow and most transitory, they really are the most intense thrills of my reading life, perhaps the very best of times, even if they do not leave a single mark on my soul.
It is one thing to enjoy Shakespeare or high literature, but a page-turner of a novel must be like a wild weekend affair of sheer carnal debauchery with a ten dreamgirl, a prostitute, of course, who happens to need the money badly, and even agrees to rough sex. It just feels nasty and wicked and sooo good.
I wish I could regularly get this charge from pop novels, but I figure that I am lucky if this happens to me two or three times a year. Although shallow and most transitory, they really are the most intense thrills of my reading life, perhaps the very best of times, even if they do not leave a single mark on my soul.