This Is Why I Read

I mentioned somewhere some time ago that there are musicians whose entire discography I want to own, yet there are no authors whose entire bibliography I greatly desire to own. I realized yesterday, after pulling away from Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion, why exactly that is. And it may seem obvious.

I don’t approach both mediums the same way.

See, I can usually give a hoot about the lyrics of a song. Honestly. I listen to music for the sound – which is probably also why I have quite a number of video game soundtracks and Celtic instrumental CDs. Even when I sing along with them – and this is absolutely true – I often can sing the entire song, and not know what it’s about. And I don’t mean I don’t understand the artistic language; I mean I don’t actually know what the words are saying. This stumped me for a while, till I realized I wasn’t memorizing the words. See, it also takes me forever to learn the lyrics to a song. Because what my mind is actually doing is memorizing the sound of the words, and mimicking that sound back. Often that happens without me really paying attention to the words. Now, it’s not as pure as I’m making it sound; there is of course recognition of words, or I would never actually learn the lyrics. But my mind is engaging it at any deeper level than sound.

So when I “like” an artist, I like their sound. I like the melody and the flow of the lyrics – and it stops dead right there. One exception might be Casting Crowns, because their message resonates so clearly with me. But overall, I just don’t pay attention to the words.

But books? Books are different. Books I read for the story. I don’t really care how the writer writes – to a point, unless they write badly. What matters to me is what the story is about. Which means, faithful followers, an author might write really well, but I won’t like the story. If I don’t like the story, I’m not going to own the book, and thus I will not own the entire bibliography of an author.

Then we get to Elizabeth Moon. I’m always skeptical of how much I like a book depending on the circumstances surrounding my reading of it. I read Lord of the Rings when I was in Iraq, after several months of never reading a printed word – I drank Tolkien’s words like spiked lemonade on a Pennsylvania summer day. Now, I’ve just come off two admittedly bad fantasy books to Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, book one of The Deed of Paksenarrion. It is incredible. I’m already thinking about reading it again, and I’m not even done with it yet. Her descriptions are amazingly tight, it isn’t genre fantasy, and it doesn’t even have a terribly overt plot-line. There’s something coming together now, two hundred pages into a 315 page book. But even so, Moon isn’t rushing ahead to the climax. This is a days-in-the-life book, and every important moment is savored – even ones that don’t seem (to someone coming off two bad fantasy books) that important. It took me a while to get into it, because it was so radically off of what I anticipated. Now, I’m looking forward to a re-read, so I can read it right.

But don’t worry, I’m still plugging away through my reading list. Finishing Sheepfarmer’s today, then picking 

up The Great Gatsby, a book, I admit, I should have read a long time ago.

See you tomorrow.