Terry Pratchett | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Musings: Breaking Out of Your Reading Slump

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October is the big month for the horror genre, and in hopes of getting up a review every day, I do a lot of reading in hopes that I can do exactly that. The pandemic has killed my ability to focus, though, and especially if I’m reading something long, it seems to take longer to read about it, think about it, and write about it. That’s especially true if I’m reading similar kinds of books– after awhile I just have to stop.

This has been especially aggravated by my library closing down and my kids’ schools going virtual so that I don’t get time in those libraries either. Libraries are my haven and not physically getting to be in that space is so difficult for me! I know I’m not the only person who is dealing with this right now. A dear friend of mine who typically gobbles up anything horror-related has stacks and stacks of books that he just keeps buying but is unable to focus enough to finish anything. So what can you do?

First, it’s okay to put a book down if you just can’t handle it. I like ebooks for really long books because holding those in my hands gets me thinking on how much there is to read, which sometimes can be intimidating. Is your fiction too close to your current reality? This month was not the month I needed to start watching The Man in the High Castle. I also read Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, not realizing how intense it was going to be. Reading Goodreads reviews after the fact, I found that readers were providing content warnings to potential future readers. If a book is stressing you out instead of entertaining you, you don’t need to keep going.

Second, mix it up! Short stories are great, and I love them, but if you’re reading several anthologies in a row from cover to cover, it’s no longer a vacation. I just finished the excellent SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire, edited by Nicole Givens Kurtz, so I’ll be switching to something different before I start another one. There are plenty of authors who don’t get the kind of attention they should, classic authors you might not have read, and new books coming out all the time. Reading T. Kingfisher’s new book The Hollow Places led me to track down The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. In addition to the HWA’s newly published series of genre classics, if you are short on funds, many classics are available free as ebooks through Project Gutenberg.

There’s some really good horror-related nonfiction out there, such as Lisa Morton’s recently released Calling The Spirits. Although these can seem long, nonfiction is great because you can read a chapter and put it down for awhile until you’re ready to come back to it. Kit Powers’ My Life in Horror, Volume 1 is a series of standalone personal essays on growing up as a horror fan, easy to pick up and put down until you’re ready for more. You might also consider checking out some poetry. Even if you’re convinced it’s not your thing, Alessandro Manzetti’s Whitechapel Rhapsody might change your mind, although it’s not for the faint of stomach.

This is also a great time to check out some of the titles that tie into current television and movies. The HBO series Lovecraft County is based on a book of the same name by Matt Ruff, a great book of interconnected stories. Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor riffs on the ghost stories of Henry James, notably The Turn of the Screw.

You don’t have to seek out anything new, though. I’ve reread some old favorites when I needed a break. Looking for something lighter? Maskerade by Terry Pratchett isn’t horror, but it is an entertaining riff on a story that definitely is, The Phantom of the Opera. Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, starting with Discount Armageddon, takes a lighter approach to slayers, monsters, and ghosts than is typical for horror, but it is a lot of fun. Sometimes a thriller is what you need, as long as it’s not too close to life for you. Alyssa Cole, mostly known for her excellent romance novels, has an #OwnVoices thriller out right now on gentrification spiraling out of control titled When No One Is Watching, and David Simms has a supernatural thriller, Fear the Reaper, that reveals the dark history of American eugenics.

Despite protestations that they aren’t “real reading”, graphic novels definitely are, and if too many words on the page is a struggle right now, you might try them. Marjorie Liu’s Monstress has even won awards, Or try a novella. A recent entry into the novella category that I raced through was Stephen Graham Jones’ Night of the Mannequins. There are a lot of great titles in the middle grade and YA fiction categories as well. No, you are not too old for good middle-grade fiction. If you haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book in either its novel or graphic novel formats it is well past time.

If you are a doer or a maker, I don’t personally have the patience for audiobooks or most podcasts, but if you spend a lot of time driving or run long distance, that’s another opportunity. And it’s the perfect time of year to explore Halloween cookbooks and crafts! My son collected and loved these even before he could read them, and a lot of gruesome-looking foods are pretty easy to make. We’ve worn out Ghoulish Goodies! There is even an unofficial Walking Dead cookbook called The Snacking Dead.

Third, go outside. It’s a little cool where I am to go outside and sit and read right now, but I went for a long walk yesterday that really cleared my head and got me focused again. All the sitting inside, social media, news, attempting to get along with your family you’ve been stuck inside with for seven months leaves you feeling tired and your brain cloudy. Reading is supposed to be relaxing, but apparently you need to really relax before you can enjoy it.

Clear out your brain, clear space for yourself inside and out, turn off your television, and give yourself permission. It’s the Halloween time of year, so, whatever makes you feel the season, give yourself a treat.

Booklist: The Magicians by Lev Grossman and Doors To Other Worlds

I recently discovered The Magicians while surfing Netflix. Yes, I know I’m late to the party. It’s based on a book of the same name by Lev Grossman, and I’m going to say that in this case the show is much better than the book. The Magicians tells the story of Quentin, a nerdy, WASPY, and very unhappy teenager obsessed with a series of fantasy novels about four children who escape the real world through portals to a magical world called Fillory where they go on quests and eventually become kings and queens. Quentin turns out to have magical powers and receives an invitation to attend a school of magic. Brakebills, which he travels to through a portal. Despite being located in upstate New York, it is always summer there. Unfortunately, eventually the students graduate, their idyll ends, and they have to function in the real world. Quentin and his friends find the means to visit Fillory through a portal, but they haven’t been invited or given a quest and they’re just as lost there as they are anywhere else. It’s like forcing your way into Narnia, a child’s world, after already getting jaded and aging out.

Reading The Magicians is kind of like reading Harry Potter if the characters were always drunk, the teachers weren’t involved in students’ lives, and there was no plot or character development except that Quentin isn’t unhappy all the time when he’s at Brakebills. The characters are mostly unlikable and the story is mostly uninteresting. The characters that are most interesting to me in the television series are ciphers in the book. The action and character development that keep me going back to the show were probably the only reason I managed to get to the end of the book– I kept waiting for something to HAPPEN.

But what the book did do was make me think about the stories I know that do have portals and doors to other worlds (and the Neitherlands in The Magicians very much reminded me of the Wood between the Worlds in The Magician’s Nephew). Some of them may make you roll your eyes (I know there are radically differing opinions on the Chronicles of Narnia) but they are an essential part of many stories. You might not even realize how many portals there are.

Rudine Sims-Bishop writes

“Books are sometimes windows, offering visions of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”

If you are a reader, you know what she’s talking about in a figurative sense. Here is a short list of books (that do not include The Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter) that have literal windows, portals, and doors.

Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak.

In this strange and beautiful picture book, Ida’s baby sister is kidnapped by the goblins, and Ida climbs out the window backwards (accidentally) to search for her. This book inspired the movie Labyrinth, and you can spot it in the main character’s bedroom if you search for it.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire.

Portals and doors show up in a lot of Seanan McGuire’s books, but this spare, poetic novella is heartbreaking. What happens to the children who go through a doorway to another world when that world no longer wants them, or they can’t find their way back? It’s not a pretty thing. McGuire has written two other related titles, Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky, but while I also enjoyed them, Every Heart a Doorway is, in my opinion, the standout.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

There’s nothing officially magical about finding the key and opening the door to the Secret Garden except for the changes it makes in two prickly, miserable, spoiled, lonely children. There is plenty to find fault with in The Secret Garden: there are racist comments about Indians, and negative stereotypes about disability. But there is so much to love, as well, in the ugliness, anger, fear, grief, and finally, after the door is unlocked, the joy we see in Mary and Colin. That’s especially true if you have read the gratingly irritating Little Lord Fauntleroy(I have), in which Burnett spends most of her time describing the titular character’s physical and moral perfection and engaging personality as the cure for his grandfather’s awful behavior and treatment of others.

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

Vellitt Boe is a middle-aged professor of mathematics at Ulthar Women’s College in the Dreamlands who is sent to retrieve a gifted student who has run away with a man from the waking world. This novella is a response to a Lovecraft story called The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which I have not read (and didn’t need to in order to enjoy it) but is apparently a polar opposite, with a male adventurer from the waking world adventuring through the Dreamlands. This is an inversion of the portal story, in that there is someone from the portal world who travels into ours as an adventurer, rather than the other way around.

Eric by Terry Pratchett

This loose take on the Faust story is not Terry Pratchett’s strongest book by far, but it does have entertaining moments. It also has multiple portals and, yes, a literal door. Rincewind is the Discworld’s worst and unluckiest wizard, who by pure chance hasn’t yet met a fatal end (he is also one of my least favorite characters, but works out perfectly for this story). He is accompanied by the exceedingly loyal and carnivorous Luggage wherever he goes. While passing though the Dungeon Dimensions, somehow he has been summoned by Eric, a thirteen year old demonologist, who insists that Rincewind grant him three very grandiose wishes, which Rincewind fulfills in his typical unlucky and nearly-fatal manner. In the meantime, a struggle for power is going on in the city of the demons between those who like doing things the old-fashioned way and the current king, who is trying to modernize. For Rincewind and Eric, the only way back home is through the door to Hell, but they’ll have to work their way through the mutinous members of a newly-established bureaucracy and a number of people who are unhappy with them for things they said and did on their journey, but relieved to see them go.

Reader’s note: The quote from Rudine Sims Bishop originally appeared in “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” in Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, volume 6, no.3.