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Comments (39)

• epihelix
  I'd argue that the novels the TFA author reads are boring to the TFA author -- until they're not. If you are reading a novel that works for you, it's often not boring from the opening line.Example: Anna Karenina. Gripping from the opening line (if you like the type of novel that it is; and it's fine if you don't, of course).Or alternatively, Pride and Prejudice. Again, that opener just sucks you in (if this is a book for you, that is; and again, if it's not -- totally fine).Example of a modern page-turner: The Hunger Games. If you are bored with this novel after three pages, you shouldn't read any further, because it's absolutely, certainly, not for you.Or, Jeebus, Harry-Freaking-Potter. There is a reason that an entire generation grew up reading those books.Or: "The Time Traveller's Wife", "The Poisonwood Bible", "The Road", "Interview with the Vampire", "A Room with a View", "Replay", "Of Mice and Men", "Brave New World". The list of books that are gripping from the start, should they appeal to you, can be almost endless.Basically, if you and your book align (ugh, sorry), then there generally shouldn't be any form of "volta" (really, ugh).There are many novels that are boring to me. I've never finished those; I discard and move on to the next one, where the author knew how to write something that isn't boring to me. Someone else might love them, and many people clearly do, but they're not for me.Why do so many people assume that everyone will love the exact same books, and that if you're bored by a book you just have to work at it some more? Life is too short for that nonsense.
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  andrewflnr
  If you want to tell reading-skeptical kids about "the volta", please don't phrase it as "the volta". Just say that a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows.But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that grabs you from the first page. Thriller writers are the most obvious case. A gripping concept or setting can do it, too. This author might think they're too cool for books like that, but we shouldn't keep them away from kids if that's what they want to read.
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  keiferski
  William Gibson is one of my favorite writers, and it's funny because I think he has the exact opposite problem. Most of his novels open on the action, in some interesting location. But gradually they get weaker, with a few (Mona Lisa Overdrive, in my case) becoming a real slog to finish. I've probably read the first 50 pages of Neuromancer 20 times, but only the entire novel 3-4 times in 20+ years.There's the famous opening line to Neuromancer, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." But I actually like the openings of Count Zero and Virtual Light more:CZ: They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT. He didn't see it coming.The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel. Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway The Dutch surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support vat.VL: The courier presses his forehead against layers of glass, argon, high-impact plastic. He watches a gunship traverse the city’s middle distance like a hunting wasp, death slung beneath its thorax in a smooth black pod.IMO some writers are just better as short story writers, not novelists, but are forced into writing longer works by the publishing system.
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  tinkelenberg
  The key to enjoying novels is to read them in long enough sittings to get into the flow state. If you only read a couple pages at a time between doomscrolling sessions, it will feel like a chore. Anything would.
• kenjackson
  The problem with school children is most books that are assigned have no volta for them. Part of it is that modern storytelling has a much quicker volta through tv, movies, YouTube and now shorts. It’s hard to justify to a kid a 90 minute buildup to possible payoff vs getting it in five seconds for a 2 minute video.
• Shuddown
  One collary I'd add to this is that the opposite is also true. There have been plenty of times that I've trudged through the beginning of a novel, only to reach an "anti-volta" and realize that it isn't for me. It can incredibly frustrating and make the slog feel like a huge waste of time, but I still keep trying books. Maybe I'm just chasing the highs I felt when I first read the novels that got me into reading.
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  default-kramer
  I value writing style and pacing way more than any volta. Pride and Prejudice is hardly my genre, yet I remembered it grabbing me immediately. So just now I checked to see if I remembered it correctly, and within the first minute I laughed and I'm hooked again.Life's too short for novels that might get good halfway through, especially when there's plenty Austen I haven't read yet.
• Nition
  The article focuses on novels, but of course many things in life are like this. Learning an instrument for example. It also brought to my mind that famous quote from Ira Glass about creative work.[1][1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to...
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  dimes
  I recently read Dungeon Crawler Carl. It’s pretty much interesting from the very beginning.On the other hand, Blind Assassin was extremely boring to me until the very last page, but that last page blew my mind.
• averysmallbird
  I appreciate Isherwood in this retrospect. Most of this novels have a sort of placid flow about human existence and the tedium of modern life, until the last few pages retell the moral with such rapidity that feels almost physical.
• Aloha
  I call this process ‘threading the needle’ - some novels thread with ease, some do not thread with ease but the payoff is worth it in the end, some thread and then unthread, some never thread at all.
• jojobas
  As a kid I'd often start reading books from about the middle, if I liked it, I'd restart from the beginning before I finished, if I didn't, I got another book.
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  LoganDark
  I used to have a recurring problem with Doctor Who (the newer one / reboot) where some episodes would be so boring at first that I would not get through them. I had some success in trying to assure myself that EVERY episode at least had SOMETHING interesting, and in practice they did. I have been trying to adopt that idea more in life.
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  bsder
  No, NOT every novel is boring from the get go. And some novels ARE boring. And the fact that so many people recommend the ones that are is the bloody problem.The first thing to accept is that different people like different things. If someone likes the Beatles, you wouldn't immediately jump to recommend Handel or Black Sabbath.And, yet, this is EXACTLY what people do all the time with literature. Oh, you liked that Vonnegut story? Here, have some Dickens. ARGHGHGHGHGHG! NO! NO! NO! NO! Give the Vonnegut reader some O. Henry or Roald Dahl--not Dickens or Bronte. Good grief.I got lucky. My father understood this. He always recommended things that he thought I would like--interspersed very rarely with things that were good for me that I might or might not like. But he NEVER gave me anything he thought I would dislike simply because it was supposedly "great literature".And, now, Dear Readers, I leave you with wisdom for the ages imparted from Wallace Stevens via my father: "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45234/the-emperor-of-...