I LOVE BOOKS! I know; you’re not surprised by this revelation, but just to be clear. I LOVE books for just being books; not for the story inside, but literally for the collection of paper bound and presented in the physical world. I love books!
I love big books, heavy in my hand and carrying the weight of substance. I love tiny books that only a chipmunk could read with their minuscule type font and super thin paper. I love old books and the musty smell that lingers around them as I consider how many hands have held them, how many lives have included this book, this story. I love new books and the sound of freshly printed pages tearing apart from each other for the first time. I love thick books and thin books, hard covers and paperback, petite and hefty, eye catching and unassuming. I really love books in all their forms and it was this particular weakness, of being easily seduced by the physical book itself, that brought me to where I am today….
Wondering for the life of me…AM I DONE YET?
For all my love of the physicality of books, I really hate reading long, fat, never-ending books! And yet, here I am almost three weeks into 2018 and my first official Book War stuck in the 730 page “By Gaslight” by Steven Price. Why? Because it seduced me with its soft silky paper cover, its lovely bendable 730 pages and ghostly cover art. Oh and because it sounded like a great story (which it is) and was NPR’s best book of the year (2017 I believe).
But here I am on page 535 and I just want to be done, not because of bad writing, unrealized characters or anything about the book itself. But because I have commitment issues and I just don’t CARE about what happens to these people anymore! I just can’t seem to invest this much time, energy and compassion into the same characters for this long…sigh…but alas this is my penance for being seduced by a beautiful book.
I am already 535 pages in, so I can’t (read stubbornly won’t) stop now…I have just have to hunker down and get ‘er done! And thankfully the story really is great, the writing is excellent and I sorta want to know what happens. Normally right about now I would just read the last chapter and be done with it, but for some reason that feels like cheating, so I will continue to plug along and be grateful I don’t have any other books this size on my “to read shelf.”
Oh and don’t worry, I am keeping my head above water against Haddi with my Audible “reading.” So sister, don’t be getting a big head or anything ;).
