“I sympathise more and more with Kingsley Amis’s view that life is too short to read any books that don’t begin with the words ‘A shot rang out’”. (Jonathan Coe, The Guardian)
I don’t know about you but life is so earnest that my preference is a fast-paced book with an exciting plot that takes me up and away and allows me to forget the list of things I should have done yesterday. My wife shares my preference for good detective or spy books and movies. Thus, we can happily tune out for a time together, saying little or nothing, enjoying neverland. Something really funny is even better, but “funny” is rather thin on the ground. Writers are seldom writing “funny”. Why not, I wonder?
How do you relax?
It’s hard to be funny when writing because so much humour depends on human physicality- expressions, reactions, exclamations. Books also tend to be longer, which makes it harder to be consistently funny. I always find stories funnier when they are told to me by another person, rather than reading them.
Like you, I enjoy fast paced books and movies. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy some things that are slower paced. But particularly in books, if nothing remarkable has happened in the first 100 pages or so, it probably isn’t worth finishing.
My degree involves reading a lot of non fiction, so to relax, I try to read and watch fictitious content. Having said that, I can never resist reading a few political editorials every day: Vox, The Spectator, Mother Jones, New Statesman and Foreign Policy are my personal favourites.