I have been rather quiet of late, Readers! I know. I was doing Thanksgivingy stuff, and then baking cookies with Silvana and getting totally drunk by like 5:30 p.m. and then eating Thai food BUT NOT REMEMBERING IT LATER stuff, and then I was doing note editing stuff (did I finally send that fucker into Harvard Law Review? Maybe. And then I'll send it into other journals who may actually publish it), and then I was doing unending clinic stuff, and then I was supposed to be working on my vibrator paper (yes, I write about vibrators in law school) but THEN Wikileaks did their document dump and it was all over. And I just got back from going out drinking and getting kinda tipsy with all my fellow clinic participants and WHINGING LIKE WHOA.
So I've been busy! And I haven't been writing blog posts.
But the busy isn't really the problem. The problem is this: I DESPERATELY NEED to finish the book I am reading right now, and I cannot get on with my life until I do. This often happens with really good books - you know those books. Those books that you will stay up all night and read, because you will not be able to sleep without knowing the end anyway? Those books that have simply frozen your entire life and anything that you love or care about has just got to wait until you get to that last page?
This is not those books. No, Gayle has an awful illness, you guys, and it is this: she cannot stop reading really shitty books.
I CAN'T. I just can't do it. I know it is stupid, and I know I could just put the damn book down or throw it in the recycle bin or put it out on the stoop and hopefully someone will take it, but I just compulsively CAN'T. The TWO BOOKS that I have managed to start and never finish are The DaVinci Code, which caused me to curse at it in the first sentence ("'Symbology'? Are you fucking kidding me?") and Possession, which I know many Readers here love, but I read the first three pages and thought, "JESUS this book is pretentious" and was able to put it down.
Short of those two instances, I feel like I am in the thrall of some evil spell once I begin a shitty book, and I have to see the book through to the end before the magic is broken. It is super annoying. But, it is a compulsion, what can I do? So I am spending all my spare time reading this book so I can just get it over with already.
And if you wanted to know, the shitty book is Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which is a terrible shame, because I love Calvino's beautiful writing and light narrative tone. But the book is overly precious and entirely too contrived, and it also features a Nice Guy(tm), a lot of possessive dudes, assault on a woman like no big thing, and stalking as romance, so. Hopefully I can just speed through this, and it will all be over soon. PLUS, I have Toni Morrison's A Mercy and the biography of I.F. Stone waiting for me, so I will be delivered into the light in, uhhh, checking . . . . exactly 50 pages. Off I go!
*laughs* It's a curse... but once you're invested... you HAVE to know the end. I actually can't remember at the moment any fiction novel that I've begun and didn't finish, no matter how horrible it was. Though, I have a few times skipped some of the middle sections and gone straight to the end. The first time I read Les Miserables, for instance, I skipped the entire chapter on the battle of Waterloo. I read it on my second read-through though, just on general principle.
ReplyDeleteThere have been one or two others that I've skipped several chapters and gone to the end... but I've always, that I can remember, gone back and read the intervening chapters afterward. Skipping to the end just allowed me to put the book down long enough to do other things, and then I could figure out how that end came about later...
I know that skipping to the end is taboo for most people, but I got into the habit as a teenager of reading the last page or two sometimes even before deciding to read a book. After making some bad choices on my Honors English Class reading list (Scarlet Letter, followed by The Jungle *shudders*), it became a habit of self-preservation. Reading a book that ends in horrible tragedy literally leaves me depressed, anxious, and/or just in a really rotten mood for several days, up to a week or two depending on how closely I identified with the characters. And of course, if the entire book reeks of doom and gloom, I'm probably going to be miserable the entire time I'm reading it also. There's a reason I do not read horror stories!
I think the thing that usually saves me when the book frenzy is upon me is that I read fairly quickly. A typical sized novel I can bulldoze my way through in roughly 6 hours. Still, it's taken me 30 some odd years to develop the willpower to put a book down when I'm in the middle of it long enough to sleep, eat, or do other necessary things before continuing when a spare moment arises. As a teenager, I lost a lot of sleep when making the mistake of beginning a new book too late in day.
Here's to finishing that book soon, Gayle! And moving on to something better.
I'd read the beginning of that book as an example of style for a creative writing exercise years before I read book, and I loved the beginning. So I was SO disappointed in the book that I can no longer remember any details, just that I really hated it. I wish you luck with finishing it.
ReplyDelete(I often have the same thing with shitty books. I haven't finished maybe one book that I was seriously reading this year, which is Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd. I went and read something equally distressing but aware of misogyny (China Mieville's Perdido Street Station- very distressing and triggery, but really, really wonderful) instead of reading about yet another unemployed person of colour dying.
Ugh, I hate it when an awful book steals my time that way.
ReplyDeleteI hope your next book is wonderful enough to make up for it!
When you write about books, it makes me miss reading fiction so much. I used to read a book every week, sometimes more, but since I began university 5 years ago I really haven't been able to read at all. I am in school year round, so I don't even get to read in the summers. Granted, being a single parent takes up most of my non-school related time, I still feel guilty about not reading non-academic books. Still, when I do have some "spare" time, I don't want to so much as look at books because I'm reading 300-500 pages a week as it is.
ReplyDeletePlease tell me that I am not the only grad student that isn't able to read material that isn't directly related to my thesis or course work.