Then one night, cleaning out drawers, I found my late mother’s Kindle Paperwhite. I didn’t want to buy anything, not even at half price. Any residual books on the shelf that my mother had owned either went straight into the recycling, or straight to Half Price Books to be converted into spending cash. So he wasn’t any help when it came to reading material.

He has two Daniel Silva novels on the shelf, which he spends five seconds with before falling asleep. Therefore, I’m a hero.īut it did leave a gap in my extended amount of fallow time where Dad was napping, watching Fox News, watching the local news, or watching Bull. I refuse to pay fines to the government for books. If I’d kept them, I would have racked up fines. My wife took home the library books that I’d brought with me.

What had started as a three-day trip turned into three weeks.

But that’s me.I spent most of the month of August in Phoenix, taking care of my ailing father, and I needed something to read. They still have something meaningful and artistic to offer, in addition to being entertaining as heck. I love anything that will make me laugh, wild adventure rides, romances that make my heart melt, and anything fun. But I would put most of my favorites midway down the spectrum. Personally, I like to be entertained by my books. Pure snobbery.īetter question: which do you like better? Yet… obviously the “genre” literary fiction wouldn’t exist if a great number of people didn’t think one was more worthwhile than the other. And besides, different people like different things! Better is an opinion and we’re all entitled to our own. But I would argue all those are in addition to art or entertainment, not separate from.Ĭlearly, a ridiculous question. They might want to educate, or to move you emotionally, or to satirize. Interestingly, I think this same idea applies to most forms of art, especially movies and music.Ĭlearly there are additional intentions an author might have for their book. To me it’s kind of like a continuum with super artsy books like The Color Purple or The Goldfinch on one side, books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or The Princess Diaries on the other side, and the vast majority of books falling somewhere in the middle. Now, obviously, most authors include a little of both. In my opinion, fiction authors have one of two intentions when they write a book.

Books like the goldfinch