Yesterday was one of those days when I just couldn't motivate myself to go any farther than the mailbox at the end of the driveway. The Honolulu Marathon was yesterday, pretty much precluding any venturing beyond the confines of the valley until later in the day. As it was, the dinner party I hosted Saturday night went way late -- that's a good thing, not a bad thing -- and I thus didn't wake up until after 8. I didn't even hear the fireworks at 5 a.m., and they usually jolt me right out of bed. I managed to get a lot of stuff done in the morning: cleaned up the desk, took pictures of the stuff I need to put up on eBay, finished the dishes from Saturday night, did 6 loads of laundry, straightened my bedroom, all before noon. The best part is that I kept thinking that it was much, much later than it really was.

I made plans to take the remaining Christmas cards off to somewhere more social in the late afternoon to finish up the notes that go in them and get them into the mail. I thought about how much I really want to get to the Academy to see the Remains of a Rainbow exhibition and the Charles Bartlett exhibition before both close. I considered a sojourn to the North Shore, far from the marathon crowds. I thought about a nice steak dinner out somewhere as a treat to myself for surviving an emotionally tough weekend.

I did none of this. Instead, I took the rather boring book I was reading out onto the lawn and sat out in the sun for a couple of hours, then came inside and took a nap. I woke up in time to watch my Sunday night shows. Then I went to bed and started a much better book (so far). It was a wonderful day.

~~~~~

I don't know why I feel compelled to finish boring books, or books that don't live up to my expectations. At work I'm on the distribution list for Publishers Weekly, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review. I quickly skim the latter two; I take a little more time with the first. Each week I end up adding at least three or four more things to my reading list, based on what I see in those publications. My reading list has grown to proportions such that I've had to break it into several smaller lists (two fiction lists, city planning/development, publishing, children's, misc. nonfiction) because the whole list exceeded the limits of my Palm Pilot's memo capability. I have plenty of stuff to read, some of it even queued up on the bookshelf already, just waiting for me to be in the right mood for it. Yet I can't bring myself to give up on a book that's not pleasing me, unless it is horribly bad. I can usually pick out horribly bad in the first few pages, and thus those don't even make it in the front door.

I've learned a few things from my experiences with disappointing books:

1. The people who write the jacket copy generally have not read the whole book, and generally extrapolate one minor plot point to describe the whole book.
   
2. Glowing blurbs from other writers don't guarantee anything.
   
3. I'm usually not going to like the overhyped book of the season.

I'm determined that in 2002 I will learn how to put down without regret any book that doesn't thrill me.
- posted by Lori @ 3:39:00 PM | permanent link | |