Burn Out Is A Sad Thing

I don't know whether this is common for anyone else, but I might as well ask: When you read a book by an author you've never read before, do you find yourself going out and compulsively trying to get your hands on everything they've written up until then? I guess it wouldn't happen if you hated the first book, so I guess we're assuming you did enjoy the first book. It seems to happen to me all the time, with popular literature anyway. The classic stuff, not so much. I'm just obsessive that way, I suppose.

When I was in elementary school, it was those Goosebumps books. Hey, don't judge, everybody read them! My infatuation with them largely ran out in sixth grade, when we had to do a big book report, and lots of other students got to use Goosebumps books, but the teacher told me that it would be too easy for me (true), so I had to pick something more challenging (damnit). My father ended up choosing The Three Musketeers for me. I really need to read it again some day, when I'm not so pissed off that I have to read a hard book (meaning, actual literature), while all my classmates get to read easier fare.

Anyway, after that it was Michael Crichton, which is remarkable to me since the first book of his I read was Andromeda Strain, and I didn't understand 80% of that. I stuck with him for about a dozen books, some good (the Terminal Man), some not so much (The Great Train Robbery, which spent entirely too much time setting up the robbery, and not enough time actually robbing). I think I gave up when I realized the payoff, storywise, didn't match the investment I made in time slogging through technical jargon I didn't understand.

Then there was Clive Cussler and his Dirk Pitt books, which if Raise the Titanic is any indication (I read it again recently), don't hold so up well as I moved out of adolescence, and are not exactly chock full of good roles for women. I suppose that's not who Cussler was writing for, but still, kind of disappointing reading them now. Dirk's still the coolest cat on the block, though. I can't figure what possessed me to go on a Tom Clancy kick in 10th grade. Let's call it temporary insanity and move on.

There was Michael Connelly, Douglas Reeman, T. Jefferson Parker, Arthur C. Clarke. The one thing I remember with all of those authors was when I eventually read enough of their work I could see where they were going with the story pretty early. I'm really bad at solving mystery stories, so at the point I was able to figure out one of Connelly's stories within the first few chapters (I forget the title, but it was the one where Harry Bosch starts looking into his mother's death from his childhood), I knew I'd picked up his rhythm. Actually, I never figured out all of those guys. I have yet to suss out the truth of a T. Jefferson Parker book. He just brings shit out of left field, like "Her husband killed her because he found out she'd had another child when she was a teen, that she thought had been aborted, but actually hadn't been, and is slightly mentally retarded, but had shown up in town, and she was trying to reconnect with him, and her husband got mad, and there you are."

I am completely serious about that description too, all that happened in one book. What. The Hell. It might be more accurate to say, that in the case of these authors, I read enough of their works I got sick of them, which is kind of sad, and probably teaches us a valuable lesson about diversifying your reading material.

About the only two authors that I've consistently enjoyed for years, without feeling burnt out on them, are Stephen King and Issac Asimov. With King I started with the basics: Carrie, Dead Zone, It (ugh), while it was the Foundation series with Asimov, which is probably still my favorite sci-fi series, although in some ways, the science fiction elements seem mostly added on, around a story about choices and control. Which is probably why I enjoy it.

The odd thing is I seem to be able to read both for a long time, then stop for a few years, then read new stuff later, and not feel like I've seen it all before. With King I came back for the Dark Tower, with Asimov it was the Robots series (which helped the Foundation series make a little more sense). I don't know what that means though, or why it works that way.

Does this happen to any of you?