One of my favorite things about summer break is having time to read. I still need to find a book to kick off my reading binge, but there's another one I really want to finish off first. The problem is I've been reading this book for at least a year and a half now.
It's not that it's long. In fact, it comes in at just around 450 pages. There have been a few paperback novels I've read in a day when I've had the time. If I take a trip somewhere, I usually go out of my way to find a book to bring, and I usually have the time to finish it before returning home.
This book is just really, really dull.
I won't say what it is or who wrote it; as I writer who hopes to someday be in a position when I have to be concerned about other people being hypercritical of my work, I just don't think that would be a cool move. I will say the author is very successful, and the book is in the vein of something like The DaVinci Code. The main character is something of a historian who backs into a longstanding governmental conspiracy and is soon way over his head. Most of the chapters are only a few pages long, which seems to be structured to propel the reader forward. My problem is that I'm so unengaged with all that's going on I can't seem to read more than ten or twenty pages in a sitting.
This book has gone for months at a time, sitting on a table untouched and waiting to be revived. I have the hardest time abandoning books completely, and can only think of maybe ten times I've ever done it. It becomes a quest after awhile, even if I don't enjoy the book. That's what this one has become.
If I get to a place where I just don't want to read it anymore, I've started trying to figure out why that is. What is it, specifically, about that book that I find so numbing or bothersome, or even repellant? There have to be good lessons there in that kind of analysis. Here are a few things I've figured out about this one:
1. The main character isn't interesting. He doesn't really have any agency in the story. He's more like a pinball, bouncing his way through the story and only reacting to things as they happen to him. There were early attempts at a backstory, but they just didn't catch my interest. Plus I read that part more than a year ago, so I don't remember much about them. Which is also a statement.
2. He's "in love" with an old middle school crush who came back into his life through the events of the story. The author isn't giving me enough about her to make me share the crush the way I think I'm supposed to.
3. The short chapter thing doesn't always work. Yeah, sometimes there are mini-cliffhangers I want to see resolved, but there are too many times he's not giving a scene enough time to breathe.
4. He keeps telling me about why this conspiracy is such a big deal, and yet I don't really feel it. He hasn't shown why, other than having a lot of characters with a variety of loyalties chase around the greater Washington, D.C. area after each other.
I think I have about 100 pages left. In a perfect world, I'll be ready to start a new book on June 9th. It'll probably be some John Sandford crime story, which is how I've started many a summer in the past. He's not perfect, but at least he's entertaining. And I always finish his books.
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