Ok I mainly read easy stuff. I like having the radio on (CBC or BBC or if in NZ National Radio) ... and a newspaper with me for breakfast. Lately I have given up on newspapers, magazines keep me company at meal times. There is the Guardian Weekly and the Economist for easy informative chatter ... for lazy tired mornings there may be a biking magazine ... and then there are books. I buy lots of books but the only ones I know that I'll read are the mystery novels. In the next few days I am going to write about reading... but I begin with my pleasure - murder mysteries ...
I have a theory , or thinking about my theory or theory, a description of the murder mystery which may explain why I like them...
First, I suspect that reading is like exercise - if you get exposed to it early it takes... and one style of easy reading to which many get attached are murder mysteries. One of my best ever Christmas presents was a collection of Trixie Beldon (sp?) mystery novels. We used to get one 'good' present each year and one year Trixie was mine. Ever since some of my best times have been with murder mysteries.
Second, it is about comforting habits. Read one mystery novel and you have, in a way, read all of them. I like murder mysteries, but they have to follow the format. So, I do not like violence but I can read murder mysteries because the violence is off screen. A friend once asked me why I persist in reading about murders. The reason is the format. The format provides for the treatment of violence, the nature of the
protagonist (ie the detective), the movement of time and the
conclusion... As long as the writer sticks to the format for the story, the book provides a comforting read.
With respect to the violence, the format requires that the death occurs very early in the story, before the reader "knows" the victim and the story is about the why of the violence and not the what, then it seems ok.
Then the basic structure of the narrative requires the protagonist to go forward in time as they work their way, in terms of their understanding, backwards in time to understand what happened. The detective investigates the crime and, in effect, provides an historical account looking backward to the event. The past and present meeting in the final pages of 'yes now we know' who did it and why'.
And then there is the protagonist... the protagonist is always something of a girl. Perhaps because women created the genre, the main character, usually a detective, is gendered female. By this I don't mean that they are women. What I mean is that they have characteristics thought generally to be characteristics of women rather than men. Of course, here we enter gender stereotyping. Some of the best detectives (Hercule Poirot, Adam Dalgliesh) are men... but if the protagonist is a guy, then they are described in terms which make them very sympathetic to women. They are, in effect, special kinds of guys. They are guys who like poetry, opera or cooking. They have friends and are troubles by issues of intimacy... they are not part of the brotherhood of manly things (ex soldiers, hard men have their own genre - thrillers). They are so special that, for me, they are rarely well portrayed on tv. ... but if the protagonists is a women, then they can be very, to be blunt, butch. The woman as detective is a tough chick. She can kick ass. Of course, this raises another problem with tv portrayal... how do you portray a woman who can fly a plane, fire a gun, fight her way out of a bar look tough with a pocket knife without making her look too tough (dare I mention the word 'dyke'?) The standard female on tv is so well made up that anything less than vogue standard looks like a suspect heteo - thinking of that even lesbians on tv look straight... ok this is another story ... back to mystery novels, the point here is that when I read the story, I relate to the action... because in my dreams I am the detective.
And of course the murder mystery always ends... there is a conclusion sometimes happy, sometimes ambiguous, but alway providing that "ah yes, now I see" moment.
But this "aha" moment is possible when reading other stuff... just not so easily.
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