All the books - why would you try write another?

[kev67]

I was in my local branch of Waterstones' bookshops today, looking at the new hardback, nonfiction books. There must have been about 100 of them, each a great, scholarly piece of work. Then there were all the new paperback non-fiction, the new literary fiction. This was in the front part of the shop. Behind that, you had the established literary fiction. Behind that was the crime, sport, young-adult, science fiction and fantasy shelves. Adjacent was the children's section and upstairs was the rest of the non-fiction. This is quite a big branch, but it is not the biggest, and it does not contain all the books I want to read. I thought you would have to be mad to try and write a book. Some of those new hardback non-fiction books looked very interesting, but how many readers will they get? If you tried to write some piece of fiction, you would have to compete not only with living authors who managed to establish a reputation, but many of the dead. I think many people dream of writing a great, popular book, but it is as optimistic as panning for gold.

[Danik 2016]

Ours is not a reading age any more, kev. The pleasure of reading a novel in some countries started in the 18 C. In others much later. If you look at the English Spectator and similar newspapers you will see that the book section occupied a large portion of it.

But today people prefer to finger their smartphones.

[Diggory Venn]

Isn`t there a building in Oxford connected to one of the Colleges that holds a copy of EVERY book that has ever been published ? I am sure that a tour guide told us this once - can somebody please verify ? If this is so, then just imagine that !!!

[mortalterror]

The urge to consume probably doesn't come from the same place as the urge to create, but at some level I'd imagine that every author was trying to create their own favorite book; so that they could read it for themselves. Then you have to think that even with all the great books out there only a few are going to really appeal to your own sensibilities. That is a quite finite number. My favorite author is Ernest Hemingway and he only wrote about twelve books. The world could use another twelve like that. Or maybe you look at your favorite books and think they would be perfect if you changed just one or two details. Say, perhaps you think The Iliad would be better as a novel told from Ajax' point of view. Some people write for self-expression, which seems a little narcissistic but okay. Some people write for money which is a little materialistic but fine too. Some people just love the sport and want to bring their game to the next level because it's challenging and fun.

When you really think about it, most of those books at the bookstore aren't worth reading. Some are boring. Others are too wordy, or they don't get to the point, or they are poorly constructed. Lousy characters. Lousy dialog. Lousy settings. Lousy plots. A great deal of any art is mediocre and we are always seeking for the best things. There is always that chance that this new book could be a revolutionary innovation of it's form and the greatest of it's kind.

[Jackson Richardson]

Isn`t there a building in Oxford connected to one of the Colleges that holds a copy of EVERY book that has ever been published ? I am sure that a tour guide told us this once - can somebody please verify ? If this is so, then just imagine that !!!

The Bodleian Library, the University library at Oxford. like the British Library and the University library at Cambridge, is a copyright library entitled to a copy of every book published in the UK. It is one of the few parts of the University that is not part of any individual college.

I believe that they had a clear out in the mid 1600s and got rid of their First Folio of Shakespeare (after all, it was only soap opera scripts) and since then they take everything.

[Diggory Venn]

Thank you for clarifying this Jackson. I knew I had not imagined it - but it was many years ago that I was last in Oxford. The mists of time, and all that....

[TheArtfulPauper]

Seeing all of the books published en masse, I sometimes ask myself this as well. The problem I have with stopping there is that it is so rare that I can find a newly published book which deals with the issues that concern me.

As someone who aspires to write and be published, I can give you my perspective.

This ties into the debate between two opposing perspectives. On the one hand, as it says Ecclesiastes, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.". On the other, as Shakespeare writes, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Perhaps it depends on which point of view one relates to.

If we could analogize our late moment in history to like old age, then we could hear the words of Tennyson with edification:

"...you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods." [Ulysses]

Finally, I would rather try and fail in noble pursuits than live knowing that I received the call and faltered.

[Aidabaida]

I think of it like this: there are books I read when I was a child, when I was 10 years old, 12 years old, that enraptured me, took me away to another world, infested my waking and sleeping mind. Now, from an adult perspective, none of these books were particularly valuable, well-written, or literary masterpieces, but for me - at that age, at that place, at that time - they were exactly what I needed to read. Objectively, these books weren't better than Tolstoy or Melville or Dickens, but to me at that moment, they were.

So as a writer, I know I'll never better the classics, the greats, but I do hope one of my books, someday, is the book that someone out there needs to read, that at their time in life, my book IS better than Tolstoy or Dickens. In one way, I know I won't write the greatest book of all time, but in another way, I'm trying to.

[YesNo]

I agree with you Aidabaida. Because our human experience is subjective and these texts are objective, the texts, even taken as a whole, cannot completely express all of that subjectivity.

[fudgetusk]

I was in my local branch of Waterstones' bookshops today, looking at the new hardback, nonfiction books. There must have been about 100 of them, each a great, scholarly piece of work. Then there were all the new paperback non-fiction, the new literary fiction. This was in the front part of the shop. Behind that, you had the established literary fiction. Behind that was the crime, sport, young-adult, science fiction and fantasy shelves. Adjacent was the children's section and upstairs was the rest of the non-fiction. This is quite a big branch, but it is not the biggest, and it does not contain all the books I want to read. I thought you would have to be mad to try and write a book. Some of those new hardback non-fiction books looked very interesting, but how many readers will they get? If you tried to write some piece of fiction, you would have to compete not only with living authors who managed to establish a reputation, but many of the dead. I think many people dream of writing a great, popular book, but it is as optimistic as panning for gold.

It becomes more and more challenging to come up with an original concept. How obvious an idea is Harry Potter when you think about it? There are probably equally obvious ideas that haven't been written.

[kev67]

It becomes more and more challenging to come up with an original concept. How obvious an idea is Harry Potter when you think about it? There are probably equally obvious ideas that haven't been written.

Oh, I don't know. I have not read many vampire books, but I've never read one where the vampires had to cope with the practicalities of disposing of the bodies before the police find them, or journalists investigating why people are disappearing. I googled Wind in the Willows today. Someone has written a Marxist response, another a feminist response. That still leaves a post colonial response. I cannot actually remember reading many books about work, unless that work was fighting crime. The problem is work is boring, so you'd need a plot to make it interesting. There's so much science, politics and history to read that could get ideas from. There are so many sections of society which do not have the where-with-all to write about their own experiences. Thinking of an original crime plot must be quite difficult, but even then true crime is so much different to crime fiction. I doubt the problem is plots. I think the problem is writing about them well enough for lots of people to want to read it.

[InExile]

As a writer, I disagree...I feel the same way when I think about music - surely all the good songs have already been written? But then I have no musical talent or aspirations, so it's impossible to imagine. Whereas when I think about writing, it seems the possibilities are endless. I have so many ideas! And hopefully other people do. There will always be people who want to tell stories, and who find original ways of telling them.

[ennison]

Bit like sex. Just because some are at it all the time doesn't mean the rest of us have to say why bother then.