In some version of the 1950s Clean Plate Club, I still find it hard to put aside a book, half-read.
As though there are people in a distant third-world country somewhere who’d give up their day’s ration of gruel for a novel, and who’d be grateful to have it, gosh darn it, no matter how bad. Or maybe it’s a vestige of my other life as an English major when I had to soldier on through the reading assignment, no matter how indecipherable.The good news is that I’m old enough now to ignore any number of rules, self-imposed or not.
Yesterday I had made it to page 192 of 324 in The People We Hate at the Wedding when I closed it with a snap. Mark, one of the main characters, was in the loo of a restaurant about to snort some unknown drug in a desperate attempt to prove himself interesting and spontaneous. I’d had enough of needy Mark, his smarmy partner Paul, his shallow and neurotic sisters, his misunderstood mother, and basically the whole kit and kaboodle of them.
Call me old-fashioned, but when I read, I want at least one character that I can like. Several years ago, I plowed through to the bitter end of A Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, unable to find one redeeming feature of anyone in it. It was well-written, had an interesting plot, but by the end I didn’t much care what happened to anyone in it.
Thankfully, yesterday I was able to go to the next book in my library stack and sink into the post WWII England of Ngaio Marsh, where emotions are tastefully repressed, tea arrives promptly, and murders make only a limited mess on the drawing room carpet.
I am with you. I 'mostly' finish books if I have started them, but sometimes it is very satisfying to break that rule. And characters matter a lot to me. I don't have to like them, or approve of their actions, but I do have to care what happens to them.
ReplyDeleteI like Ngaio Marsh's mysteries. Interestingly I didn't enjoy her autobiography. I much prefer her novels to Agatha Christie's but much preferred the latter's autobigraphies and memoirs.
Funny - I've read so much of Marsh's work, but know absolutely nothing about her.
DeleteGood for you! I almost always finish stories, even when they don't grab me right away, and I'm usually glad when I make it to the end. :-)
ReplyDeletewell that sounds just the book for me! I can not handle too much dysfunction at the moment, so I have been reading...nothing!
ReplyDeleteI look at my age and the probable time remaining to me, and it's easy to throw down any book even recommended by friends that isn't earning its keep in my head.
ReplyDeleteThat's fairly recent, sheer force of habit from competitive uni where massive reading lists were the norm. But that was then, and this is now!
That post WW11 book sounds interesting, I've made a note of the title and author.
ReplyDeleteI believe that I rea A Casual Vacancy, but I can't remember anything about it. I do really love her Strike mysteries, however.
ReplyDeleteI just made it through a book where the author wrote too much about things that didn't matter to the plot and when I got to the end only one of about 3 or 4 incidents she spent pages and pages writing about was resolved. snap. not picking up the next one where I assume the rest of the story gets worked out.
ReplyDeleteWell, it sounds like that book was aptly titled, at least! They really ARE "the people we hate at the wedding." I read "The Casual Vacancy" years ago and liked it, but yeah, I know what you mean about the characters.
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