Enough "Comfort Reading" For Now

I wrote on 9/12/16 about reading several novels that were the equivalent of comfort food: not necessarily very good, and not literary fiction, but enjoyable and easy to read. I give all credit and thanks to these novels (which I did not review on this blog); they provided reliable pleasure and distraction during a difficult time involving a family member’s health. But now I realize I have had my fill of that type of novels, for now at least. The first sign of this was when I noticed myself getting impatient with the sloppiness of the writing itself. In one case, I was listening to the book on CD in my car, and that may have magnified the problems with the writing. I noticed a lot of repetition of certain phrases, way too may extraneous adverbs, and a general talkiness, not to mention excessive use of clichés. Not that I had not been aware of these shortcomings from the beginning, but I was willing to overlook them for their easy comfort value. But that could only last so long. I began to hunger for better writing, and so I have, for now anyway, changed my reading diet back to my usual more literary novels and memoirs.