I've been wondering lately if books can affect in you in the same bad way that some relationships can - they leave you so frustrated, angry and emotionally upset that you can't function like you should, or see the world (and your life) in a positive way. Ages ago Oprah had something on about how people in your life could be toxic - they weren't evil abusers or anything but because they were always ragging on you or putting you down or just because they weren't really positive people they could pretty much suck the life out of you by being around them.

I know, it sounds like touchy feely bullshit, but I'm thinking there might be something to it.

I've just thrown the last poorly written memoir in a row across the room and after reading three of them (not from start to finish but enough to know how bad they were) I am so frustrated and annoyed that it's hard for me to concentrate on anything. I'm not going through that mess of "why can they be published and not me" because I've been reading long enough to know that anything can be published (did we all learn nothing from James Frey?), but I do wonder how editors and authors can be so sloppy. And I wonder why we waste our time publishing such poorly written books or books that exist solely to rip on other people and organizations but accomplish nothing good.

I mean, telling me you were raped by your father and then going on about the rape of the forests by developers really only serves to disturb and confuse me. Is there a true correlation here? Are you angry at him, at them, at the gods - who? And what am I supposed to do? And why are you changing the subject like this in a the middle of a whole other discussion?

WTF?

In the midst of this mess I've also been reading Scott Russell Sanders's memoir A Private History of Awe and it is wonderfully done. I'm about halfway through it and he has written something truly heartfelt and sincere and most importantly, it makes sense. There are no sudden bits of dialog between people who were dead before the author was even born (it's a memoir - how can you write stuff you didn't witness?) and there are no strange conclusions or smacks in the face for the reader. He writes what he remembers, he reconsiders certain memories now as an adult - reaccesses and wonders if things were different than how he saw them as a child, and he looks at the present and the man he is now. It's just nice reading what he has written, and his book carries a certain wisdom that has been so glaringly absent in those other books that it blows my mind. How some books get published, why they get published, is really beyond me.

All I know is that I'm sick of reading crap and I'm going to be much choosier about what I open in the future.

Jenny D.'s book Heredity is quite good btw - I'm about halfway through and enjoying it a great deal. I'm also reading Andrei Codrescu's collection New Orleans, Mon Amour for the Voices site and it is as good as I expected, no complaints there. For YA world I'm reading an interesting title from a German author, Shooting Stars Everywhere - very quirky thirteen year old boy and a tiny mystery that has me stumped. I'm looking forward to how things turn out for him. So four books and not one of them toxic. Hopefully that means tomorrow will be a much much better day than today.

Because lord, it really needs to be.