The basic trade of fiction is “I will entertain you with an interesting narrative in exchange for your time” almost never works out as reality is consistently more interesting than what the best authors can produce.  Writers can easily brood on what has happened but almost never on what will so the skilled author will almost always lose in my mind to the skilled biographer or historian.  Because of this view, I felt like I was almost indulging myself by reading The Poisoner’s Handbook after finishing A Clash of Kings, part of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy books.  The latter had characters, the former had people, the latter had a narrative, the former had events embedded in actual history; it was so decadent that I finished The Poisoner’s Handbook in a day.  I can visit the tombs of Charles Norris, former chief medical examiner for New York City, and famed toxicologist Alexander Gettler, I have no such opportunity with Eddard Stark.

Yet, I am a completist and will consume the remaining 3000 pages of text penned by Martin across six Audible.com credits, but when one’s looking, I’m going to learn about the history of Biblical translation, read Tina Fey’s biography, and see why Lee Smolin thinks string theory is horse hockey.

For reasons I don’t fully understand the Kindle has re…. kindled my interest in fiction.  Ever since finishing The Illiad I’ve been unimpressed with fiction’s ability to keep its basic promise of telling a compelling story that reveals a part of reality that’s otherwise unknown, unexplored, or at least entertaining as these “revelations” are usually pedestrian or impossible.  But, I maintain an interest in being a generically well-read person despite inevitably turning back to what I consider the vastly more compelling world of fact and discovery that has a roughly 1-to-1 correspondence with reality.

The Kindle upturns this, maybe by reversing my fear of someone discovering my counteridiomatic reading or having to lug around a book that by definition contains something that never happened.  So, I started reading the collected stories of HP Lovecraft and was suckered into paying the extra dollar to get 102 stories instead of the more common collection of about 70.  I started reading the collection and immediately realized why the standard corpus includes 30 fewer stories; because those 30 stories suck.  Every page was supposed to contain tales of the macabre involving beings from beyond the uncaring universe in which we drift.  I’ve read about 10 so far and each one of them absolutely blew.  I’m tempted to do something I never do except with music and “just read the good ones”.