- Joined
- Apr 11, 2008
- Messages
- 329
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- 13
You know, he thought, as he threw the book on the table with disgust, this wasn’t what he had bargained for. He used to love reading, but lately seldom bought books any more, as with this job, he just didn’t had the time for it.
This particular one he had picked in a small bookstore at the airport. The title sounded promising enough, the reviews, on its back cover, were dynamite and he recalled seeing the author on some late night TV show, advertising his works.
But now, after about ten pages, he had no interest whatsoever to go on.
It was too ‘heavy’, too damn sophisticated and too profound, for what it was supposed to be, a relaxing historical novel. He wondered who’ll have the patience to read such stuff.
He considered himself a fairly educated person, but in those pages he had found countless words, which he just didn’t know exactly what they meant, at least not in the context they were used in.
He remembered reading an article in the paper, just the other day, about the slump that the publishing industry was in, ‘People just didn’t buy books any longer’, was its title.
He thought he knew the answer, partially at least. At the beginning of the 21st century, life was moving at a much faster pace than ever before and the continuous challenges, demands, and curved balls it threw at them, mad the twenty-four hours in a day insufficient. Well, they’ll need to ad a few more, he decided and smiled.
He also knew of other reasons why people had given up on buying fiction books; the movies, hundreds of TV stations, with vast variety of programs, computers and the internet, electronic and CD books, were but a few. And then, there was an ever increasing range of none-fiction materials; memoirs, ‘how to’, gourmet cooking, getting in shape and any other subject you could think of. Walking now-days into a mega bookstore you just got dizzy from the amalgam of thousands of topics and titles. Gone were the good old days, he decided, when you just entered the small, family owned, bookshop and the owner suggested something, which most likely he had read himself. Now, in those days, granted, they were fewer choices, but they were great books, something you sat and read till the wee hours of the morning.
For a moment he just run trough his mind the mega writers of the past, the so called classics. The ancient; Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Swift, Dickens and Cervantes. The old; Twain, London, Verne, Defoe, Dumas and Tolstoy. The newer; Milton, Wide, Frost, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. And he knew that he had omitted a bunch. Now, those were writers, people with a story to tell and the uncanny talent to say it in plain, so easy to understand, language. Their work had soul.
By comparison, the contemporary authors, were, with some noted exceptions, cyber writers, of disputable quality and depth, which pounded the keyboards to generate an endless stream of words of dubious meaning and no substance. Disregarding the basic principles of writing, they didn’t create, they plagiarized and embellished ideas, and indiscriminately using thesaurus, changed the very meaning of the written word.
For, most of these new ones didn’t write for the people. Instead, they wrote for the agents, editors and publishers, and the more ‘sophisticated’ they sounded the better chance they stood to see their works in print.
The today’s publishing industry obviously needed some major overhaul. Some of the older voices have grown boring and most of emerging ones lacked strong expression and innovative points of view. The trends of success seemed to favor and promote social insignificance, stereotype formulas and self-indulgence crap.
Men and women, young and old, people with a taste for experiencing and exploring realistic fictional dimensions, those who looked outward their own back yards and would had liked to travel the world, through the pages of books, had few places to turn to.
He bent over and picked the book from the table. He gave it a one last look and dumped it in the trash can. Now, he decided, he could get back to his work.
This particular one he had picked in a small bookstore at the airport. The title sounded promising enough, the reviews, on its back cover, were dynamite and he recalled seeing the author on some late night TV show, advertising his works.
But now, after about ten pages, he had no interest whatsoever to go on.
It was too ‘heavy’, too damn sophisticated and too profound, for what it was supposed to be, a relaxing historical novel. He wondered who’ll have the patience to read such stuff.
He considered himself a fairly educated person, but in those pages he had found countless words, which he just didn’t know exactly what they meant, at least not in the context they were used in.
He remembered reading an article in the paper, just the other day, about the slump that the publishing industry was in, ‘People just didn’t buy books any longer’, was its title.
He thought he knew the answer, partially at least. At the beginning of the 21st century, life was moving at a much faster pace than ever before and the continuous challenges, demands, and curved balls it threw at them, mad the twenty-four hours in a day insufficient. Well, they’ll need to ad a few more, he decided and smiled.
He also knew of other reasons why people had given up on buying fiction books; the movies, hundreds of TV stations, with vast variety of programs, computers and the internet, electronic and CD books, were but a few. And then, there was an ever increasing range of none-fiction materials; memoirs, ‘how to’, gourmet cooking, getting in shape and any other subject you could think of. Walking now-days into a mega bookstore you just got dizzy from the amalgam of thousands of topics and titles. Gone were the good old days, he decided, when you just entered the small, family owned, bookshop and the owner suggested something, which most likely he had read himself. Now, in those days, granted, they were fewer choices, but they were great books, something you sat and read till the wee hours of the morning.
For a moment he just run trough his mind the mega writers of the past, the so called classics. The ancient; Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Swift, Dickens and Cervantes. The old; Twain, London, Verne, Defoe, Dumas and Tolstoy. The newer; Milton, Wide, Frost, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. And he knew that he had omitted a bunch. Now, those were writers, people with a story to tell and the uncanny talent to say it in plain, so easy to understand, language. Their work had soul.
By comparison, the contemporary authors, were, with some noted exceptions, cyber writers, of disputable quality and depth, which pounded the keyboards to generate an endless stream of words of dubious meaning and no substance. Disregarding the basic principles of writing, they didn’t create, they plagiarized and embellished ideas, and indiscriminately using thesaurus, changed the very meaning of the written word.
For, most of these new ones didn’t write for the people. Instead, they wrote for the agents, editors and publishers, and the more ‘sophisticated’ they sounded the better chance they stood to see their works in print.
The today’s publishing industry obviously needed some major overhaul. Some of the older voices have grown boring and most of emerging ones lacked strong expression and innovative points of view. The trends of success seemed to favor and promote social insignificance, stereotype formulas and self-indulgence crap.
Men and women, young and old, people with a taste for experiencing and exploring realistic fictional dimensions, those who looked outward their own back yards and would had liked to travel the world, through the pages of books, had few places to turn to.
He bent over and picked the book from the table. He gave it a one last look and dumped it in the trash can. Now, he decided, he could get back to his work.