The Drifter is out of town. The Grinch agreed to fill in:

One reason I can’t stand most mainstream novels written in the USA today is that they are almost all (universally) LOADED (as if drunken) with BAD dialogue, dialogue so bad, so stilted, so wooden, so FAKE, and so obviously expository that reading pages upon pages of it is something I just don’t have time for any more, if I ever did have time for it.

The effect is like Amber Heard on the witness stand.

(The same is true for all AI fiction.)

Another reason I can’t stand reading most mainstream novels written in the USA today is that they are all LOADED (as if drunken) with action that is clearly stolen, unintentionally, from the latest, truly bad Netflix television series.

If I have to watch bad TV I would rather be sleeping.

The third reason that I can’t stand reading most mainstream novels written in the USA today is because they all, both subconsciously and unconsciously, enforce the herd mentality and non-thinking of a blatantly consumerist, post-Christian society.

“Post-Christian” here means lacking the morals of the real Jesus, even as a pretense any longer.

My fourth and final reason (for today) for why I cannot read most mainstream novels written in the USA today is because their middle-class, commercial nature makes them prone to all of the above in an extreme way.

In conclusion, I will stay in my mountain cave with my dog.

This place is stocked with medicinal substances, lamps, and the truly good books.

(I don’t want your things, and for that reason I shan’t be climbing down your chimneys.)