This one's for Oprah
Book #13 - To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper LeeI guess my middle school English teachers were asleep on the job, because somehow I never read this book until now. I started it back in July, I think, and I trudged along a couple pages at a time, until I finally got into it at page 80. So I loved 2/3 of the book and was bored by the first third. That's a conundrum.
I suppose, now that I know and love the characters, I would be engaged from the start upon re-reading. But where do you draw the line on these books? I'm starting to think that maybe I should make a rule about this. Maybe, when I start a new book, I should take it to a quiet place and force myself to read 20% of it in one sitting. If I'm still not engaged at that point, I give myself permission to abandon it altogether. What do you think? Have you read any books that took more than 100 pages to get into, but you still feel were worth the wait?
posted by Carrie Ann @ 10:32 AM
2 Comments:
Back in my reading days I was notorious for beginning gigantic novels (as in 1,000+ pages) and then abandoning them after making considerable progress, sometimes even 600 pages. I vowed to myself that I would never again read a long novel (with the exception of Rushdie) because I have done that too many times. I will never read "War and Peace," nor will I ever attempt to.
One book that sticks out in my mind that I abandoned and then reread and enjoyed thoroughly was "Sometimes a Great Notion" by Ken Kesey.
Yeah, I think my all-time loser in this category is Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. My copy of the book was 650 pages, but I didn't actually become engaged in the story or the characters until roughly page 550. And I trudged through that shit for like four months. I'm no richer as a person for having read it, so it's just not worth it.
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