I did something a bit out of the norm for me, broke free, if you will, and declared my independence. I put down a book that I wasn't enjoying. I've certainly abandoned books before, but this was one that I had been looking forward to, one that I felt that I should read in order to have a complete opinion on something.
I put down (and I say this quietly for fear of sounding like an ignoramus) the new Jonathan Safran Foer novel. I didn't make it very far, maybe 10-20 pages. Part of me feels guilty for putting down a book before getting far enough to really form an opinion on it.
When it came down to it, I couldn't take the narrator. I've never read much Salinger, so I don't feel I can make the big "overly precocious New York kid narrator" complaint, but I decided I couldn't spend 300 more pages with this kid, especially since it just took me four months to read the 200 pages of Gilead, by Marianne Robinson, which was a slow read, but not a four-month slow read.
My reading time has become ridiculously precious. I read forty books over the past two years. This year, I've read two.
So I picked up The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Theodore Roosevelt chasing serial killers. Very cool, and, perhaps more importantly, moving right along. I'll let you know how it goes.
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