Regarding that last...

Specifically the part about enjoying or not enjoying reading.

I've often compared reading to eating. Some books taste good, but are essentially empty calories. Some books are good for you, but taste awful. Some books are the equivalent of a bag of chips; before you know it, you've eaten the whole thing. Others are like good toffee; difficult to eat too much of, because they're crunchy or chewy. Not only that, but every author has a different flavor, even two authors that are writing in what is ostensibly the same genre or subgenre, no matter how restrictive.

There are writers who write things that are good for you, tasty, and quick to read (does my adoration for Pratchett have an upper limit?). There are writers who write pure tasty treats with little redeeming value, or even with significant guilty pleasure factor (Justina Robson and John Ringo, I'm looking at you). There are the producers of filling, tasty food that lasts for several meals (Cherryh's Foreigner comes to mind). Then there are folks who write stuff that is good for you, and really ought to taste good, but is just so hard to gnaw through that it winds up being just not-quite-tasty enough to enjoy (*cough* Brin *cough*).

All that leads to two points I'm pondering now. The first; my recent worries were mostly based on too much not-quite-tasty in close succession. Two doses of candy, even knowing it's candy, still taste sweet. The second; juxtaposing my mental parallel between reading and eating with my mental parallel between writing and sex might explain things, not least of which why I married Yomiko Readman...

On that note, I'm fleeing before she catches me.