I love books but rarely can get through one. In the last six months I bet I've read the first half of more than a dozen books, but the second half of only two or three. Mostly I'm crippled by choice -- if a book isn't knocking my socks off, why should I spend one second more on it, when there are so many others that might be better?
I used to buy books, and my shelves have grown littered with abandoned novels sprouting receipt-bookmarks from their middle pages. Now I use the library, but still, dropping a book down the Returns chute two-thirds read still leaves me feeling guilty.
The other day I recognized there was a problem when I returned a book by my favorite sci-fi author, Alastair Reynolds, less than half-read. It was a typically good read but I just couldn't plow through it.
So I returned to my favorite book, what Steinbeck called his "first book" (implying that everything he'd written before was just preparation), East of Eden, just so I could remember what it's like when time and page numbers disappear. The writing is so good, I swear it breaks my heart at least once per page. I'll encounter a sentence so beautiful it seems to demand something of me, that I cut it out and frame it or use it to try to cure sadness and hunger. Sometimes I'll go back and read the whole page out loud. Other times, if I'm alone, I'll set the book down and say "Yeow!"
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