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The Last Two Months

I have been reading the same book for the last two months. AN UNCERTAIN PLACE by Fred Vargas. I started it over the Thanksgiving weekend. I thought, incorrectly, that I would have the time to read between Parades, Turkey, and shopping. I read one chapter. And then proceeded to barely look at the thing for the next two weeks. I picked it up infrequently. I took it with me on our Holiday to England. I don't believe I read a word. January arrived and I picked a chapter or two off every few days. Another airplane trip, this past weekend, meant that I would have four hours of confinement to finish off the last 150 pages. I am still not done. I'm still not done and I am writing a blog post about not be done rather than actually finishing it. 

I am nominally trying clear out all of my 'To Be Read' pile by the end of 2018, and even a chapter in I could tell this was going to be a long read. I should have put the book aside. With 11 months to go, I know that I will not make my goal of clearing out everything I need to read. Even if I didn't buy anything else this year it would be a neat trick to accomplish this goal. But still it is a numbers games, and I can not help thinking I could have read both of the Michael Connelly's from 2017, the new Robert Crais, and likely something else in this amount of time.

Even at the start of last year when I thought about reading everything in the backlog I knew I was likely not going to make it. But I was hoping to fall short of the ultimate goal by a handful of books, not the 25 or 30 books it is now going to be. The answer to why I didn't quit the book is that I like this author quite a bit. She writes a fascinating mystery, and I have enjoyed all of her books up this point. I recommend all her books, especially HAVE MERCY ON US ALL. She writes extraordinary complex and fascinating crime novels. Although writing that makes me realize AN UNCERTAIN PLACE is probably my least favorite of all of them  And in reading I have discovered, not for the first or last time, that there can be a very thin margin between complex and convoluted. 

When I finish this thing.... It will be on to Micahel Koryata's RISE THE DARK.... Then Connelly's, and Crais's.......

Comments

Jason said…
See, that's something I just can't do. If a book doesn't click with me quickly, I just drop it and move on to something else. It's not an immediate thing, I do give the book a fair try, but I'm not one to push on when there are other books out there that I want to read.
2:28 PM
Dan Wagner said…
Hi Jason -- I know what you mean. I have an unofficial 100-page limit...usually. But I knew this author to be a slow developer and her previous entries into the series delivered in the end. Some books you gotta stick with, but I miscalculated here.
5:55 PM
defineloop said…
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