Hush-Hush
Before the new year, I happened across an online article that was about “granny lit.” Trying to discuss that with my sister, I could see that the idea wasn’t coming across correctly.
“Granny’s lit?”
Granny Literature — no link because I can’t even find the article after sifting through my feeds, but Granny Lit, in context, referred to Agatha Christie genre of novels. Something your grandmother would leave behind, a huge library, filled with stately, elegant, books wherein the resolution, at the end of the book, the murderer is either brought to justice, or the two who are supposed to, get married. Murder solved or marriage, granny lit. Predicable, dependable characters, elegant prose, plausible plotting, within our times of war, plague, something that ends like it should is a good thing.
So I was thinking, that’s why I was walking up to a big bookstore to get the latest Stuart Woods’ book — it is predictable, safe, and I know how it will turn out. Plus, the character has a lot of girlfriends.
“Kramer, it’s fiction.”
I like it. Fiction — books to me — offer a way to escape reality in fashion that I can return to, over and over. I put the book down, he was already on a second lover by the end of an early chapter, and I didn’t pick the book up for a few days, business and such. When I did, I was instantly transported back into that fictional, high-rolling world of jets, New York, and political intrigue.
This one started with an exploding laptop. If I still worried about such things, I would be concerned.
It’s safe. It’s predictable. The plot, story, details, none of this is in my world, but I can be — for a few hours — transported it into that world. Easy enough to see. Perfect, for me, granny lit.
The first day it was available in the local, digital,library, there was a six-week wait. It came available in less than a week.
It is a fast read for me. Enjoyable.
