October 21, 2005

New book

For those keeping score, I finally have finished the book I was reading, after nearly a month. I don't know why I read the whole thing. But I felt kind of bad of thinking of quitting partway through; once I start a book, I finish it. But I really should have given this one up. I was about halfway through though when I thought this, and I thought, I made it that far, I should finish. So I did. Finally. What a bizarre book. Maybe I read it wrong, since it is supposed to be tremendously funny, but I didn't see that except in brief moments. I got used to the strange writing style. He likes big run-on paragraphs made up of short, fragment sentences. The point of view switches from 3rd person to 1st person within the same paragraph. There are never question marks and commas are rare. He never uses the standard kind of phrase before or after quotations, like "I asked" or "he said." There'll just be sometimes a couple of pages of conversation and there is no narrative to tell you how someone is saying something, or who is saying it to begin with, though it's usually easy to figure out. So, I guess I admired some of his unusual style. But I didn't care much for the story, and it probably could have been about 150 pages shorter than it was. It's all behind me now though and I can move on to a book I have been waiting to read since we got back from the US. And I meant to read it closer to visiting the US so I'd have Chicago fresher in my mind, but I kept putting it off. It'll be so refreshing to read now.