My reading habits changed as my Partner and I faced his cancer journey. We’re both big Pratchett fans. I love dark and doom-laden fantasy novels. He consumes twisting horrors with fantastical plots.
I thought that hours in waiting rooms would at least give me a chance at my To Be Read list, stacking up on the Kindle. But the lingering wraith of impending real-world doom made me seek escape into easier, softer, more soothing reads.
You’d think they would be comforting. Meandering journeys through romances and gentle-drama and other people’s lives. Carefully crafted happy endings. A calm mental retreat from the chaos.
Not so. In the same way that my unplanned running routes always found hills, my unplanned reading choices often find sickness, grief, unescapable and suffocating doom. But usually in sub-plots that my pre-nightmare self probably wouldn’t have noticed.
So, here are my book reviews from the perspective of ‘will this remind me of the horror of brain cancer’ and ‘what is the probability that I will ugly-cry on the sofa’ (and, of course, ‘does the dog die’ – because in this phase of life, I refuse to read the books where the dog dies!).
