Rarely Likable: Some book talk, and some adult ADD

Maybe it's the unemployment thing, maybe it's the I Have A Story In My Head But It's Not Ready To Come Out Yet (Though Later This Week It Might) thing, but I'm reading Kathryn Davis' The Thin Place and it's just not clicking for me.

There's a lot going on that makes me think I should and could love the book. Even the smaller details. There's a relatively minor scene in a school principal's office, for example, that is still very much with me a week or so after reading it. But the book has lots of layers and characters and is very ethereal...I find myself spending 20 minutes or so with it and then going OH LOOK SHINY THINGS!

To prove that I know the problem is me, and not the book? I have some similar feelings reading it to when I read The Year of Magical Thinking. Both books make me feel like I'm touring artisan-level language and voice -- that in every paragraph, I would be able to pull out a sentence or two that could bounce around in my head for a long time. That's true for other books, but there's something about those two -- and a few others -- that makes me acutely aware of it. And, as you all know, I'm definitely not a poet.

Anyway. The usual remedy for my problem (yes, this has happened before) isn't to focus -- it's to read it in sort of a half-assed way, beginning to end, and then go back again a few times. Problem is, this time it's a library book. Depending on the demand, I might have to table the whole concept until I can buy it, or it's off the reserve list.

I've finished The Brief History of the Dead, but I'm going to leave it up on my Now Reading list, because I want another shot at reading the last couple of chapters. The first chapter, incidentally, was in the New Yorker last year and should be titled "Settingporn For Invisible Cities Fans." I think the cover of Brief History was what made me go look at Left Behind analysis earlier this week -- well, that and my fundie obsession, of course.

Also, someone really needs to come up with a new way of whittling society down to less than 1% -- plagues are getting almost as played out as nuclear war. Know of any end-times fiction where there's no barfing, mucus, or empty clothes on airplane seats? Drop me a note, I'll make room on my pile for recommendations.

2 Comments

I reviewed Magical Thinking today, too. Great book, though I wish somehow she was not covered in layers of erudite prose. Of course, then, it would not be a book by Joan Didion...

Posted by: Blue Gal | March 07, 2006 at 10:36 PM