Sunday Salon: On abandoning books
It's been a slow reading week. I've been working through Michael Robotham's third novel, Night Ferry: policewoman Alisha Barba--not on active service because of an injury--investigates her friend Cate's involvement in a baby smuggling ring. The book starts interestingly enough. Having not heard from Cate for years, Alisha gets a note from her asking for help, but before she can talk to her about the problem, Cate is hit by a car and carted off to intensive care. Alisha had just discovered that Cate was pregnant, so the accident is especially concerning, until the EMTs uncover the prosthetic that's been passing for Cate's expanding belly.
Well. I've read Robotham's first two books, Suspect and Lost. I really enjoyed the former (see my review) and was disappointed by the latter (review). I was finding myself generally uninterested while reading Night Ferry--forgetting from one night to the next what had happened. And last night when I picked it up I realized that I just didn't care how it ended. I decided to abandon it.
This pains me. I'm still not used to dropping books mid-read, though I'm trying to allow myself to do it more frequently. Part of it is the investment: I'm 130 pages into this one, and now have nothing to show for it. I can't review it; I can't add it to my list of books read for the year. This is of course silly, a throw-back to the need to be graded, the desire to quantify my existence. But there you have it.
What do you do about books you don't want to finish?
Posted by Debra Hamel on January 27, 2008 | 
