Let me explain.

Growing up, every book I picked up was a good one. There was no deciding factor, no need to read the description on the back more than once or even the need to flip through the first chapter. Books were good.

I can’t remember having a book that wasn’t amazing as a child or even as a teenager.

Now, I feel like its the closest I’ll ever get to dating. I browse book stores, online and I read, I read about the author and I read every snippet I can and all the reviews I can muster before I can commit. I worry, I fear the let down. I’ve prided myself in always finishing my books so if it’s horrible I have to suffer through it, I have to know how it ends and I feel like I destroy a part of myself in the process.

What happened to all the good books?

Well, it seems to me like there are a few issues.

The foremost being the saturation of the market. Getting published is no longer a difficult thing and publishing houses are multi-million dollar companies who grind the stone just like every corporate machine, sure they want good books out there but bad books sell too, why the hell not?

We as readers get hoodwinked by one author writing a good book. You fall in love with someone’s writing style and you want to devour everything else they’ve ever written, but you find their writing boring after the third book and you notice they describe certain scenes the same way, use the same phrasing over and over and then by the fourth book or short story collection you hate the writer and you have no memory of why you ever liked them in the first place. It’s almost as though some authors do not expect you to ever read their other books.

e.g. I read three of an author’s books, in two of them she had the female lead share a name. Evangeline. Really?

Good books are only publicized if the author is well known or it becomes popular after a T.V. show (like the Song of Fire and Ice series) or after the die (no, seriously)

The illusion that everyone can write. I won’t even get into this right now.

I don’t know how to go about acquiring books in a better way but I feel like sooner or later, I’ll run out of books that are known to be good. What do I do then? As is, it seems like I spend as much time researching a book and the author as I do reading it (books are incredibly short these days too). I dearly miss walking into a book store, sauntering over to my area of interest and feeling like I will definitely find something I like. I’ve left stores empty handed. That’s a horrible feeling for someone who’s vice is immersing herself in a book.

Help me out here.