Extra Tart

So I’ve been reading Dahlquist’s Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. For a little while, I thought it might be a book I could enjoy; I certainly liked the first 450 pages. The last 100 pages have been an incredibly tedious slog. I don’t see it getting much better, and there’s still over 200 pages to go. It’s unfortunate, because I feel like there’s a good book in there somewhere; the author just needed a ruthless editor to hold a gun to his head and force him to cut out half the damn words.

Do editors do that any more, or do they just pick books to publish and run spellcheck on them now?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s true; maybe I just don’t like novels. It’s strange; I’ve always been a reader. Even though I feel like I never read any more, I still go through at least 20 novels a year, plus 50 or 60 nonfiction books and uncountable magazines and newspapers. (And that’s not even getting into the stuff I read to K.) I just can’t name the last novel I enjoyed reading. Maybe a pre-millennial Terry Pratchett. I enjoyed listening to some classic books on tape (I FINALLY found out how Moby Dick ended, after reading the whole book minus the last two chapters twice, I learned that Brothers Karamazov is actually a fantastic book if you can keep all the names straight, and I discovered that anyone who thinks Wuthering Heights is romantic is not to be trusted even a tiny bit). But that wasn’t reading, that was listening.

I mean, I don’t think it’s books. They haven’t changed, have they? Either I’ve gotten stupid or jaded, but either way, I’m not sure why I bother reading any more.

I guess it does make the idea of writing a novel somewhat ridiculous.