"...I may never get through the list of great books I want to read. Forget about bad ones, or even moderately good ones. With Middlemarch and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the world, a person should squander her reading time on fashionably ironic books about nothing much? I am almost out of minutes! I'm patient with most corners of my life, but put a book in my hands and suddenly I remind myself of a harrowing dating-game shark, long in the tooth and looking for love right now, thank you, get out of my way if you're just going to waste my time and don't really want kids or the long-term commitment. I give a novel thirty pages and if it's not by that point talking to me of till-death-do-us-part, then sorry, buster, this date's over."- Barbara Kingsolver, "What Good is a Story?"
Wow. I know exactly how she feels. I have gone through a period over the past year when i can’t seem to finish a single novel I start. It’s often not conscious. Even if I basically like the story, I somehow lose interest in following it through. And sometimes I just really dislike the book. (I finally sat down to read “Sexing the Cherry” the other day and after forty pages I was pretty annoyed and displeased, so I let myself stop.)
On the plus side, though, I am enjoying “Middlesex” a whole heck of a lot. I’m told it loses steam toward the end, but so far it’s delightful.
Yes, I’m strange. I know.
Oh, that IS nice. And about sums up why I no longer finish books I don’t like.