Tonight I will be a fake. A charlatan. A rogue. I will be meeting with my book group and I have not finished the book. It has happened before (with me and others) and is always OK. No one is scolded or made to feel bad. But I didn’t just not finish the book…yet. I abandoned it.
I felt I gave it a fair shot, reading almost half. But it just didn’t pull me in. There have been plenty of books that were introduced to me in my book group – books I never would have picked up otherwise, but ones I fell in love with nonetheless. (Pillars of the Earth, The Red Tent, Year of Wonders), and this book group that I have been a part of for more than twenty-five years is important to me for many reasons. But I feel let down and that I am letting them down.
This is certainly not the first book I have ever abandoned. So why do I feel so bad? Maybe because there are many reasons why I should have loved this book. I read other books by this author that I enjoyed (one is mentioned above). The book is full of exquisite writing – rich descriptions and characters that jump off the page. But it wasn’t for me. Maybe just not at this time…but maybe never.
My Kindle would call to me when I would go to bed at night and I would look at it and think OK, maybe just one more chapter. But I realized reading was becoming a chore, and I couldn’t let that happen. So I stopped. I turned my attention to something else. And it has made all the difference.
I felt I gave it a fair shot, reading almost half. But it just didn’t pull me in. There have been plenty of books that were introduced to me in my book group – books I never would have picked up otherwise, but ones I fell in love with nonetheless. (Pillars of the Earth, The Red Tent, Year of Wonders), and this book group that I have been a part of for more than twenty-five years is important to me for many reasons. But I feel let down and that I am letting them down.
This is certainly not the first book I have ever abandoned. So why do I feel so bad? Maybe because there are many reasons why I should have loved this book. I read other books by this author that I enjoyed (one is mentioned above). The book is full of exquisite writing – rich descriptions and characters that jump off the page. But it wasn’t for me. Maybe just not at this time…but maybe never.
My Kindle would call to me when I would go to bed at night and I would look at it and think OK, maybe just one more chapter. But I realized reading was becoming a chore, and I couldn’t let that happen. So I stopped. I turned my attention to something else. And it has made all the difference.
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