A white loaf and the definition of good and plentiful reading - how much is enough?
I was recently told that I should read more, a lot more than what I do, if I want to be considered an author. This comment took me by surprise, and indeed offended me. See, I consider myself to be quite a prolific reader, if not let's see, ever since the start of the year I've read twenty-eight books. Sure, I know of people who are already on the 100 mark, and when I was a teen, I'd already would have read about that number myself. When I was at university, too, and in those first years of my working life. I had a lot of time, then, and little else to do but work and read. That is not the case nowadays. Wanting to be an author, my days are packed and free time is something I don't have much of. Because there's a home and a family to attend to, lots of time lost in school runs - I can't read inside moving vehicles, it makes me vomit - my own books to write, proofread, edit, revise, format, publish, market, advertise, campaigns and promos to run, social media to handle, graphs to design, posts to make. Honestly, the fact I've managed to read 28 books so far is a bit of an achievement for me. I always take half an hour each day for my reading - I read while exercising on my stepper machine - and try to take another half hour after the final school run. Somedays I manage one and a half hours reading, others there's just those thirty minutes. But I do consider myself to read quite a bit.
So that comment stuck in my head, and had me pondering. I think what the person meant was not that I should read more books, but that I should read more "diversely". See, I only read indie authors nowadays, and mostly I read books that are free. When one chooses to follow their 'calling' - don't know if it's the right word - and their dream (mine is to write and write and write) one must make certain 'sacrifices'. I can't afford to dish out ten euros on a book when my son needs a new pair of sneakers for phys ed. I can't afford to spend thirty euros on a hyped trilogy everyone says it's a must read when those thirty euros will pay for a month of farmer's market shopping for fruit and veggies. It is what it is, so I don't buy many books nowadays. But it doesn't mean I don't read, I do. Indie authors mostly. Being an indie author myself, why wouldn't I? It's something that still makes me wonder, the fact that most readers still view indies as crap. Especially if their books are currently going free on amazon or any other platform. I happen to disagree, there are gems to be found, I have come across a few. But yeah, only a few. So, in the end what I think the person was telling me to do is read what is currently being read by everyone else, those books everyone is currently raving about. And maybe I should. One day, perhaps, when I can afford to or the local library stocks up on them.
For the time being, I'm sticking to indies. And I've read all manner of genres, there. From romance to historical, from mystery to horror, fantasy to paranormal to magical realism, I've covered a large spectrum. Of course I have my genre preferences - I really don't like Romance - but I find that if a book is well written, it doesn't really much matter what genre it is, I'm sure to be touched by it. I've read romance books that even though I don't care for the plot, the writing is so good I can't help being taken and moved by the novel. Although I prefer Fantasy or Mystery, I've also come across the worst possible books in those genres. It's all about the writing, for me, see. It's all about the quality of the writing. It either resonates with me or its doesn't. I don't much bother with the formatting - although most readers and other indie authors make such a fuss about it, and go about condemning other indies because their formatting is not up to par with their demands, which I find absurd, sorry, shouldn't the story, the writing be more important? I'm also not very hard on the typos and the proof-reading, although I grant it annoys me a bit to go about a book that is riddled with misspelling and typos, but I also cut some slack there. And as for the editing, you can say what you want ("there are rules", "there are books that tell you exactly how you MUST edit", "you need to comply to what X and Y say is proper editing" I don't care a toss for this, editing is a question of trends and fads, which ultimately comes down to personal preferences and herd behaviour, so I also don't really look into the editing with the eagle eye of other indie authors searching for faults to point out about their fellow writers.) I will always prefer books with long, verbose descriptions, books that are slow paced, slow burners, with a bit of action, but frankly, it could have none and I'd be fine, books that are character driven and not plot, books that have a certain poetry in their lines.
Because for me that is what is most important. The quality of the writing. I've come across books that are pristine in their formatting, there's not one single typo in view, they've been professionally edited and proofread, but they just don't do it for me. The writing is of poor quality, and it fails to grip me, to spellbind me, to capture me. Maybe the characters are very well developed and are all short of amazing, but if the writing is banal, simplistic, easy, then the book will be a snooze fest of an eye roller for me. And everyone has their own preferences and their own opinions on what quality writing is. Let me take two rather hyped about books as example. Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches and Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As for the first book, I found the writing really gripping. I bought and read the entire series because of her writing, which for me is frankly good. The story too, I found the basis of it to be quite interesting and it had me curious to see how it would unfold. But then I hated the books. I loved the writing and hated the books. I couldn't connect with the characters, I couldn't care for them, if they lived or died or what happened to them, and I almost DNF'ed the final book. Albeit the writing style being good, I found that the characters were underdeveloped and frankly abhorrent. Maybe the editing did that?
Now take the Riggs' book. The writing was feeble. Simplistic, infantile, childish. It had no magic nor poetics, for me. It was boring. But the characters were charming and interesting, and mysterious, and the plot seemed good enough to keep me going. I never bought the rest of the trilogy, though, because that writing was so lacking in quality I couldn't be bothered. It did not keep me turning the pages like the Harkness trilogy. It took me ages to read that small book, because the writing was so basic I felt like my ten year old son could have written it. I actually felt that it was a book more suitable for my son than me. It reminded me of his beloved Magnus Chase trilogy, the writing of which I also find really childish and uninteresting, despite the many jokes added for interest. So for me, what makes a book is really the quality of the writing. I don't care if the formatting is crap, or if the editing doesn't comply to the trendy rules, or if there are a couple of typos or misspellings - although I'd really love all of us indies took better care of that, really - if the writing lures me and the plot is a good one for me, I am not going to refrain from giving these books a very good rating, am I? Even if they're only indies self publishing the novels they wrote in their spare time. All this to say I was really offended at being implied I don't read enough - or maybe diverse enough? - because I only read self published books. Fact is there are true gems to be found in that universe, fact is plenty of indie books have been professionally edited and proofread and formatted and worked on to be on a par with trad publishing. Fact is plenty of indie books out there are just as good or even better than the trad published books everyone is raving about, they just don't get the same amount of radio time, sadly. And fact is, like Murakami once said (I can't stand Murakami's books, btw!) 'If you only read what everyone else is reading, you only think what everyone else is thinking.' or something like that.
So for me, in my own opinion - the only one that should matter, in the end - I do read a lot. And diverse. Even if it's not the societal approved sanitized trad publishing books. And like I consider myself to read diverse, I also like to eat diverse. Diverse breads, for instance. ALthough I'm all for those multi floured, filled with seeds and bran and what not breads, a fluffy white bread once in a while goes down a treat. So here is one.
- 125 ml lukewarm milk - brought to a simmer with a few threads of saffron
- 10 gr yeast
- 50 gr butter
- 200 gr flour
- 100 gr barley flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 egg + 1 yolk
Turn on the oven at 180º and line a loaf tin with parchment paper. On a bowl combine the flours with the salt and the sugar. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm milk, melt the butter and mix it to the milk once it's lukewarm as well. Beat the egg into it and add the liquid mix to the dry one. Knead for five minutes on a floured surface, then return it to a floured bowl, cover with a tea towel and let it rest for one and a half hours. After that amount of time has elapsed, turn the dough over onto a floured surface again and knead briefly. Place the dough inside the lined tin in layers, cover with the tea towel and let it rest for another half hour. Turn your oven up to 200º. After the thirty minutes have passed, beat the egg yolk with a dash of really cold water and brush onto the top of the loaf. Lowering the temp back to 180º, bake the loaf for 15, 18 minutes - until golden and lovely and hollow sounding. Let them cool over a rack. Serve with a generous spread of butter along with a good cup of your beverage of choice and maybe an indie read.
