Okay, I’m faced with a dilemma – my current reading book isn’t gripping me and I can’t decide whether to keep going (I’m about 150 pages in) or give up on it on the basis that life’s too short to read books I don’t enjoy?
The decision isn’t quite that simple though because this is a well-respected author and I haven’t read any of his work before. There’s a huge voice in my head saying that I should complete the book because it might just be a fairly slow burn and all come together satisfyingly in the end. I’ll be honest, this isn’t my favourite style and I’ve found myself skipping bits. This started with the odd sentence, line, paragraph and last night was several pages. After a strong start I was intrigued to identify the mother of Damian’s child but am now finding the back stories tedious. When the narrator tells us how he knows the woman I find myself just skipping the text, I don’t really care. There are only two questions I want answered – who’s the mother and what happened in Portugal but frankly, I’m not that bothered about either because none of the characters grips me anyway.
To finish or not to finish, that is the question? Another voice in my head says that the author has gone to considerable time and trouble to craft the story and the least I can do is to finish reading it but if that were the case I’d read all sorts of dross (not that I’m saying this is dross because it isn’t).
So what would you do? Are you a ‘life’s too short to read a book I’m not enjoying’ or an ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’?
Chick lit and the library next time, I promise!
alkitaba 