Mourning the Missing (Patricia Potter)

Ah, I don’t know if it’s the years creeping up, or nostalgia or simply frustration with today’s ever shrinking books, but I’m mourning today for yesterday’s music and yesterday’s books.

I yearn for more memorable love songs. Noise seems to have replaced melody, and yelling singing. But most of all, I miss the old epic novels that often stretched through a character’s lifetime.

We have some amazing writers today, but the publishers are pushing to make books ever shorter. Some of it is cost of paper. Some of it is marketing (they want to put five books deep on a shelf, not two). Some of it is the publishers’ perception that today’s readers have neither the time or patience to read larger books. I think Diana Gabaldon’s ‘The Outlander” was probably the last really big book I’ve seen in recent years. Oops, and, of course, Harry Potter, but he’s unique.

What has happen to those big juicy sagas and novels that used to dominate the best seller lists. Books like “Lonesome Dove,” the James Michener’s history/fiction epics (“Hawaii,” “Texas,” and “Centennial” to name a few).” Women’s books like “Forever Amber.” Romances like Celeste de Blasis’s 700-page “The Proud Breed" (My alltime favorite book by the way).” The latter is the only book that drew my tears at the end, and that’s because I had lived the heroine’s entire adult life with her. And then, of course, there’s “Gone With The Wind.”

I was reminded of how much I missed those richly drawn books when I recently ordered Kathleen Windsor’s “Wanderers Eastward, Wanderers West” and Anya Seton’s “Devil Water.” (All of Anya Seton’s books have been recently reissued in trade paperback). The former is a big sprawling epic of some 900 pages, at least I remember it as a grand epic. I read it some fifty years ago and saw it mentioned somewhere. I checked Amazon and, of course, they had an old copy. I’m saving it for a time I have a week or two of uncluttered time (it will probably never happen), but it does my heart good to look at it and dream.

I miss savoring the texture of the longer novel, the time to really get to know the characters, to become as one with them. I hate it when I fall in love with characters and they leave me all too quickly. I love starting a long book and knowing I have days and days of pleasure to look toward, not just a few hours.

I know we don’t have the time that people used to have to read. We have so many more distractions: television, internet, social networking, electronic games and the miraculous new I-phone that can do any and every thing. Men are working longer. Women work all day and come home to more work. Maybe they have time for a few pages before bed. Maybe not.

But as more publishers urge their authors, including myself, to write shorter and shorter books, I feel I'm cheating my readers. I fear we are losing the complete immersion into a time and place. I'm afraid we don't have space to develop richly textured backgrounds and characterization. As publishers continue this trend, we’ll probably end with all 100-page books.

Do you miss those grand epics, too, or do you just not have the time to savor them today? Have you noticed that books are getting shorter? Do you prefer them or do you hope, as I do, for a longer read. Not always, of course, but definitely as part of my reading menu. And do you have a book that lingers in your thoughts?