More Dragons

Dragon Bracelet on Etsy

Yup. More dragons. This time ones that my mom thinks look like humming birds. Maybe not the one in this picture, but perhaps the other ones on the sides.

I think they look like dragons, but what to I know?  Their colors weren't the best of choices, though.

Hey, let's talk about dragons.  Actually, let's talk about books about dragons.  See I love dragons (as if you hadn't figured that out already), and so I've read lots and lots of fantasy books about them.  Pretty much you put a dragon on the cover and unless it's highly anthropomorphic I'd read the book; there wasn't much else needed.

Lately my interests in books has changed and I mostly read stuff from small presses, but every so often I find myself in a bookstore and I wander over to the Fantasy/Sci-Fi section (as is my wont), and I think about buying a mainstream book.

But there's a problem.  Actually there are a few problems.  Problem #1 is that I no longer know how to pick out a book.  Used to be you pick the book up, check out the cover, if there's a dragon, you read the back, if it sounds promising, you read the excerpt inside the front cover and if you're still interested you buy the book.

Now, though, now you pick up a book, squint at the cover 'design' until it looks like a dragon, you flip the book over, read a bunch of "reviews" until you find the two-sentence blurb/summary, learn absolutely nothing from it, flip open the front cover to find an excerpt and find TEN PAGES of reviews written by your least favorite authors and/or people you've never heard of, and then finally you put the book down in disgust--still with no idea of what it's about.

Problem #2 is that I've read everything. Well, not everything, because this goes hand-in-hand with problem #3: VAMPIRES.  See, I read so much fantasy as a kid/young adult that I quickly took care of all the best and lasting books.  That means the authors of the world have been trying to catch up with me ever since, which is fine.  Or it would be fine, if it were not for freaking VAMPIRES.

I've never liked vampires. They are at best okay, and while I will read an occasional book containing them, it's more that I will forgive an author for writing about vampires--if the author is already one that I like.  Not like dragons, where I will actively and gleefully seek out new authors of them.

But now vampires are the only fantasy books that sell, so they are the only ones published, and the only ones sold. Thus instead of the publishing world catching up with me as time goes on, they have in fact gotten farther behind on producing books that I will read.

So I go to the bookstore, go to the fantasy section, and walk through the shelves going, "read that; vampires; read that; vampires; read that; vampires; read--wait, is that a ninja? ... oh wait, Piers Anthony liked this book? screw that--read that; vampires..."