BTT: Moody

As usual, the BTT questions come from Deb at Booking Through Thursday.

Do you find that your mood affects the things you read?

Like, if you’re in a bad mood, do you tend to indulge in reading that will support it or do you try to read things that will cheer you up?

Do you pick different types of books on dreary, rainy days than you do on bright sunny ones?

For that matter, does your mood color what you’re reading, so that a funny book isn’t so funny or a serious one not so deep?

♥ Good question/s! Not sure I can come up with definite answers though - they keep changing with my mood... (haha)

♥ Sometimes I choose my reading to indulge the mood I’m in; sometimes to cheer myself up. (The same goes for DVDs.)

♥ The weather can certainly be a factor, yes. Both in the choice and in the experience.

♥ And yes, I’m sure my mood sometimes also colours what I read.

There is one reading experience in particular that I think will forever be connected in my mind with the weather outside, and that is one time when I read the whole book of Jeremiah in the Bible non-stop, with the sound of rain hitting my windows in the background. (I wrote a piece about that afterwards – in Swedish – maybe I should try and translate that into English some time.)

This time of year I sometimes reread Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which I have in an edition with beautiful detailed illustrations by Roberto Innocenti. My copy is in Swedish, but I found this cover picture on Amazon.com:

My choice of books otherwise is perhaps not so much connected to the story being set in a particular time of year. But then a lot of novels span over more than one season; and my reading of them may also extend over several days or even weeks. So my mood might change during the reading!

I have noticed that my choice of DVDs sometimes does seem to relate more to the season. For example in a summer heat wave I seem more inclined to watch people fighting their way through jungles and deserts; while films involving snow usually come to mind in winter. One might think it would be the other way round! But I guess the aim of my brain in those choices is to call up within myself the feeling of  “things could be worse”.

As for my mood colouring what I’m reading (or watching): One example might be that over the past few years I’ve sometimes found it hard to be amused by jokes about old age and dementia, and I’ve also been less keen on certain kinds of crime stories, involving too much death and tragedy, hospital drama and forensics. I think there was just too much of all that in my real world. So any reading or film involving those topics had to keep just the right level of respect and/or distance for me to be able to enjoy it. (Still does, really.)

I find that sometimes when the real world is “too much”, the fantasy genre can be of help to create that bit of distance.

It can also be comforting when the world seems uncertain to reread a book (or re-watch a film) where you already know the ending. I also think that by doing that, sometimes, it is also possible to learn something about dealing with our own personal histories. (Going back over a series of events, and seeing certain details in a different light, because when reviewing, we know the outcome.) 

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Today is 1st December, which means I have started
the Advent Calendar in my Picture Book blog.
There will be one ‘Quotography’ post for each day
until Christmas. There is a button at the top
of the sidebar in this blog to take you there.
Click to open!

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