
As a child,
I was a very sensitive, empathetic reader. I had trouble remembering that the
characters in a book weren’t “real.” I saw them as real, so their pain was my
pain, their grief was my grief. Because I learned to read at age 4 or so, had unlimited access to the bookshelves at home (my parents didn't feel they needed to act as censors) and
read voraciously throughout childhood, I began reaching for fairly serious
reading material before I was emotionally ready for it, and occasionally got
hold of stuff that left me feeling helpless, a bit ill, and wanting to reach
immediately for something nice like C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series.

As an
adult, I’m naturally much more resilient, simply because my ability to distance
myself from the story has grown. If a book is fairly well written (I try not to
read anything where the style is atrocious), only two things still have the
potential to seriously spoil my mood: cruelty to animals and incorrigible
character stupidity.

Weirdly,
though, I find scenes of cruelty and torture involving human beings much easier
to handle. I might enjoy the book immensely, feel disgusted or merely disappointed
with the artistic quality (I’m not a fan of gore), but I won’t feel haunted and unable to shake off the images. I’ve learned to distance myself.
There’s
something else, though, that discourages and depresses me, and I’ve already
mentioned what it is: character stupidity.
Not
one-time mistakes, no matter how embarrassing (I’ll skim over them and read
on). Not slight character flaws such as awkwardness in social situations.
Full-blown stupidity that makes the character blithely push on towards a
catastrophe, and ultimately often destroy others’ lives as well. I found
“Madame Bovary” an extremely depressing read for this reason (in case you're not familiar with the storyline: a shallow,
narcissistic woman who fantasizes about being rich gets entangled in two
extramarital relationships, brings financial ruin to her husband and daughter,
and ultimately kills herself). On a lighter note, I was also very disappointed
with “Bridget Jones’s Diary” because Bridget seems such a silly bumbling fool.
Different
readers find different things depressing, and occasionally I’m surprised to
hear that someone felt very sad after reading a book I would personally describe
as uplifting, or at least deeply moving and cathartic. One thing is certain,
though; when I write, I never write stories that have the potential to make me
depressed! If anyone reads anything of mine and ends up feeling blue, then we have a
different threshold of sensitivity.
At the end
of the day, the immense diversity on the book market means it’s easy to find
fiction that fits your taste, whether you prefer dark supernatural horror,
bleak literary fiction about the hopelessness of human existence (I have a
taste for books like that!) or warm fuzzy romantic comedy (the sort of book I
wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole).
Thoughts?
Comments? I’m always happy to see feedback!
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