The same, but different

I was looking through a Bas Bleu catalog last night and ran across a reader review of an Anita Brookner novel, The Bay of Angels. The reviewer writes:

Someone recently asked me to list my favorite authors. When I mentioned Anita Brookner (and high on the list), the person asking the question interjected, "Anita Brookner: doesn't she write the same book over and over?" Well, perhaps--but it's such a good one.

The remark reminded me of one made by Bernie Rhodenbarr, Lawrence Block's fictional burglar, in the audio book I'm currently listening to in the car, The Burglar in the Library. The book is set in a faux-English country house (with attendant English country house murders), and the house has a substantial library. Bernie, looking for something to read before bedtime one night, chooses a book that he has already read (an Evelyn Waugh, I believe).

He says that with the thousands of books in the library, he could have chosen any number of books that he hadn't read, but he felt in need of something familiar; he wasn't in the mood for surprises.

It made me think about why I choose the books I do. The past few weeks I've read several Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries--The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza, The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams. Like Brookner, it would be easy to say that Block "writes the same book over and over." They're all pretty similar--Rhodenbarr, having sworn off burglary and determined to make a living in the bookstore--is conned or tempted into committing just one more burglary, and in the process, becomes embroiled in some other, more serious crime (usually murder).

He always solves the crime, and there is usually one of those "I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all together" scenes at the end of the book where Bernie explains everything to all the interested parties, catching the killer in the process.

I read to relax, to escape, for enjoyment. I almost never re-read a book; to me, there are so many books out there that it seems a waste to re-read one. Of course, there are books that deserve re-reading, and sometime I might, but for now, once is usually enough. But when I discover a series that I enjoy, I devour them all, one after the other, no matter how similar to each other they might be. That's part of the fun--it's like reading a huge, long book six or seven times as long as a normal one! It's the book that never ends! Or almost never. It extends the enjoyment.

I had a wonderful time reading the entire Nina Reilly series by Perri O'Shaughnessy at once, in one great long orgy of courtroom fiction. I didn't read them in the right order, because I couldn't get them from the library soon enough, so it was a little weird knowing what was going to happen to all these people before it happened, but in a perverse sense, that was sort of comforting, too. I didn't have to be surprised, just entertained.

I love reading books by authors I already know and love. I immediately raced out and bought S. L. Viehl's newest book, Eternity Row, the day it came out. I haven't read it yet, though. I'm saving it. For what, I'm not sure, but I'm not in a rush to read it, because once I do, it's over. But I've got it. And I know that one day when I'm looking for something to read, it's there waiting for me, a book by an author I know will tell me a good story. I don't know what the story will be, but I know it will be well-told, and contain some characters that I'm familiar with, and that's comforting.

I always have to comment when a new movie comes out that's a sequel of something else, or a remake of an old (or sometimes not so old) movie. I always say, "Can't anyone think of anything new anymore?" I assume the answer is that it costs so much to make a movie that it's easier to sell something that was already a success once before, but it seems weird to me to have all these remakes of old television shows and cartoons, and third and fourth sequels of movies. But yeah, if I like a movie (like, say, Men in Black), I'll rush out to see the sequel, no question. But a movie-version Flintstones? Or Boris and Natasha? Scooby-Doo??!

Anyway, I guess I'm saying that, at least for me, it's different with books. It's one of the reasons I go to the library rather than buy a look of books anymore. Well, one reason is to save money, of course. But I can go to the library and pick up a stack of ten or fifteen books, get anything that catches my eye, and take them home to explore. If I read a few pages and don't like it, it's no big loss, I just take it back. It's not a $25 hardback, or even a $6.99 paperback. But I did buy Eternity Row, because I knew it would be the same, but different. And I like that.