Wow, both Before the Coffee Gets Cold and A Gentleman in Moscow sound fascinating! How did you come across the former? I have to add that to my to-read list. The latter also sounds really cool, but I think maybe I'll let myself experience it through your review rather than actually reading it myself. Is it a novel or nonfiction?
I agree with you about cutting down on memoir in nonfiction; we've talked about that. It sounds cruel, but really, if I'm interested in X topic, then that's what I want to read about, not about the writer's feelings and encounters with X, unless they're somehow material to the topic, and really the materiality drops MARKEDLY when the writer starts talking about their divorce and whatever (unless the topic is divorces, I guess). Relatedly, I feel a little bit that way about knowing personal stuff about people whose fiction I read. It's different if I already knew the person personally (as with you, say!), but if I know *nothing* about the person and have enjoyed their writing, sometimes it just feels strange to learn about them as a person. It kind of adds freight to the reading experience that I don't particularly want.
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Date: 2021-02-04 03:26 pm (UTC)I agree with you about cutting down on memoir in nonfiction; we've talked about that. It sounds cruel, but really, if I'm interested in X topic, then that's what I want to read about, not about the writer's feelings and encounters with X, unless they're somehow material to the topic, and really the materiality drops MARKEDLY when the writer starts talking about their divorce and whatever (unless the topic is divorces, I guess). Relatedly, I feel a little bit that way about knowing personal stuff about people whose fiction I read. It's different if I already knew the person personally (as with you, say!), but if I know *nothing* about the person and have enjoyed their writing, sometimes it just feels strange to learn about them as a person. It kind of adds freight to the reading experience that I don't particularly want.