Once upon a time, I thought that not finishing a book you had started was a crime. A social crime on par with stealing, only justified in the most dire of circumstances. Who leaves a story stranded like that? I wondered. What kind of degenerate abandons characters they haven't even met yet?!
(You probably think I am exaggerating, and I understand that, but I am not. I still do not fully trust People Who Do Not Finish Books On the Regular.)
I ploughed through Michel Houellebecq's Atomised on this principle -- come to think of it, that may have been the book that broke me (go read some of the reviews and you'll see what I mean. Whatever you do, do not read it.). A short time later, I picked up a book by Richard Powers, the first pages of which had the vaguest scent of Houellbecq's horrifying imagination, and I noped right out of that first chapter.
So it began.
Next was The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, which I just kind of forgot to continue reading. I was about a quarter of the way through and then I started reading something else, with the intention of coming back to it, and I just never did. This was more a case of neglect than abandonment, but that's still a crime.
Since then, there have been many -- oh so many -- books that I have cracked open and left cracked, with no intention of ever trying to undo my crime, and a small contingent that I plan to visit again. I'm making my way through Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light again (although I confess to taking a quick break to read The Wild Things).
Two of Roberto Bolano's books -- 2666 and The Savage Detectives -- have fallen victim to my Houellebecq-inspired crime spree, as well as The Biographer's Tale by AS Byatt, The Golden House by Salman Rushdie, Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer, Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald, The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West and the second book in the Last Policeman series.
All, according to the critics, good books, but not enough to hold my attention. See, I'm an editor, which means I spend the whole day reading and rereading content, focusing on words and phrases to try to make them as functional as possible. After a solid eight or ten hours of this, it's hard to get out of that mindset. Truly great books lull that part of my brain to sleep, but good or almost great books leave room for that part of my brain to kick.
So, in the meantime, I have reread a few books, looking for that feeling you get when you read a truly beautiful book. I'm a literary junkie looking for a fix. And finding it in works like The People's Act of Love by James Meek, Marissa Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Night Film, Margaret Atwood's MaddAdam trilogy, and most recently, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
Do not judge a book by its movie, folks. Even on a second reading, Cloud Atlas is the kind of book I wish I could write, but since I can't, I'll just read it over and over again, finding something new each time.
I am confessing my crime partly because I hope to stop doing it. But, really, I'm just assuaging my guilty conscience so I can sin anew.
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