Books in the Key of Life

Courtesy of Dr Gonzo, Winston Smith and some Lemon Bon Bons

Oct 10, 2024

Fancy some Lemon Bon Bons? Perhaps some Rhubarb and Custard too? **(Author’s Collection)**

Following a lazy summer of reading books, eating too many old fashioned sweets and the naming of two swans Fred and Mary in the picture book toy town of Ironbridge beside the River Severn in central England, I thought it time to spread the good word concerning the lost art of reading a good book, getting lost in the written thoughts and ideas of others as the sturm and drang of life continues all around you.

There’s nothing quite like the turning of the pages on a good book you simply can’t put down is there? Perhaps like me you cheat a little by seeing exactly how many pages are left in a particular chapter? Is there time for just one more luxurious quarter of Wine Gums before you finish? Sections of a book you’ve read so many times before you can recite it word for word? Why has the author disappeared on such a strange tangent? Why does this particular author name swans? Does reading on a Kindle count? Do you smell the inside pages of older books, or is that just my fetish? Are there books you’ve started and stopped so many times, yet you refuse to give in or give up? Do you see parallels to the real world in someone else’s words? Do you instantly turn off and stop reading if you find the author’s opinions vary greatly from your own? Do you have a dog-eared bookmark you simply can’t let go? Do you turn the pages down in the absence of a bookmark like a savage? Do you notate the book you’re reading? Do you read more than one book at a time?

Why does the author here name swans, and why is he asking so many bloody questions?

Fancy some chocolate covered peanuts?

Ah questions eh? Tangents too. But so many questions. So little in the way of answers. I’m a questions man as I’m a curious human being but sadly I never seem to find the answers. Anyway, here’s another question for you:

Where have all the book readers gone?

And I mean readers of real books, actual tangible, hold in your hands books?

I blame AI and social media but then again, I always do. It’s just too easy to link the two of these humanity destroying things together and I know you’ll disagree with this and this is where I’ll piss you off and we’ll part ways and even before we get to the pretty pictures that follow. But it’s so easy now to pretend to read something (especially on a blog site such as this) or engage AI to throw together a few paragraphs on a book, copy and paste it into your social media channels, pass it off as your own, and then get back to whatever else it is that you fill your vacuous time with. I mean, who has the time to relax into a book these days?

What are you, some kind of old person?

Oops, there I go again, posing barbed rhetorical questions whilst desperately trying not to accuse you of being some shitbag “influencer” or “marketing expert” who pretends to read books but never does, instead copying and pasting ideas generated by AI machines rather than engaging your own human brain and inquisitive mind. I bet you didn’t see that tangent coming, did you?

OK, one last question before the pretty pictures. Well, it’s more of a living experiment really. Try it out if you wish, or just go back to Chat GPT and let it do your thinking for you. It’s all the rage apparently.

If you are indeed a book reader and you have a variety of social media channels, post some thoughts on a book, any book (Instagram is your best bet for the experiment as it’s full of wankers, sorry, “influencers”) and use hashtags such as #book #books #booksbooksbooks #amazonbook #amazonbooks #publishing #selfpublishing #selfpublished and I almost guarantee you that within a short period of time a host of wankers, sorry “marketing experts”, will send you the same old tired copy and pasted rubbish such as

“Wow! Your book is generating such a buzz!”

“What an incredible book. Can I promote it for you?”

“I was looking for a book to read and now I’ve found it. Can I promote it?”

Utter fucking AI generated copy and pasted dogshit a child would be ashamed of, but please, don’t get angry if you receive:

“I see the sales and popularity on your books is rather disappointing. Can I help you in any way?”

Makes the heart sing that one, I can tell you.

So where am I going with this?

It’s just an experiment.
I’m a genuine book reader. Reading is food for the soul.
I have books of my own I try in vain to sell.

But whether it’s someone else’s books or my own, whenever I post my thoughts, a paragraph or two that made me laugh/smile/cry, a recommendation of sorts for whomever reads my posts to give the book a try or simply hawking my own self-published books to the void of the internet Matrix, the ONLY responses I ever receive are from some overly keen wankers (sic) who purport to be influencers and marketing experts who can’t wait to read my books and promote them to their thousands upon thousands of followers, a blitz campaign of marketing across all social media channels, an author interview perhaps, a week of my book featured on their home page. My goodness! Hooray! The sun is shining. The goose is getting fat! Please put a penny in the old man’s hat! Because there’s a pricing structure you see. They are so keen (so keen) to read my book that I have to pay them to read it. Fucking genius! So I’m going to give a random stranger who, let’s face it, in all probability is just an AI generated bot account, a bunch of cash through the internet for a load of bogus referrals from an audience of fuck knows who and fuck knows when, and we’ll meet again, some sunny day.

OK, I veered off into some strange old Christmas song and the lyrics of Vera Lynn. Little wonder then that I’m so thunderously unpopular. Shame my popularity only seems to peak when there’s easy money to be made by people (if indeed they are human) selling pyramid schemes for pyramid dreams. What are we going to do with these “people”? I’ve read in dark corners of the internet that they should be rounded up and thrown into cages with ravenous wolverines who haven’t eaten for a week, but I can’t confirm this. Not right now.

No I think the point I’ve tried to make all along is where have the book readers gone? And why do I still cling to the preposterous idea that a reader/publisher is going to read one of my books and think to themselves “You know what, I enjoyed his book. I think I’ll try and contact him and discuss it or pass it to my publisher friend. I’m sure they can thrash out a deal. At least he doesn’t fucking use AI and other humanity destroying machine tools and thinks for himself rather than becoming a slave to the boring, generic, utterly vacuous and vapid AI rubbish the wankers use”

Something like that anyway.

Oh well. Here are the pretty pictures: