Who Cares?

My last post was a little on the long side. It could have been longer but I decided to quit while I was ahead before it degenerated into a blithering rant.

So, this one is going to be pretty short. My last read was A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby who also wrote High Fidelity (one of my favourite movies) and About a Boy. I was really looking forward to it. My husband Doug read it first and was pretty lukewarm. It was a little discouraging but Doug and I disagree as much as we agree on books. So I tried to go in with an open mind.

Throughout the whole book, I kept thinking…I don’t care. I don’t care about the plot; I don’t care about the characters. I don’t care what happens; I thought the premise was dumb. Four total strangers meet on New Year’s Eve because they were all planning on jumping off the same building. All of the characters are shallow, boring and completely predictable. There are moments where I had some sympathy but I can count them on one hand.

It was kind of like eating a big bowl of pasta that keeps regenerating. You eat and eat but it doesn’t seem like you make any progress getting through that bowl. That’s what reading this book was like. Reading and reading and thinking, when is thing going to be finished? Oh well. They can’t all be Pulitzer Prizes right?

I'm on my way to Europe and I have a couple of things in my bag from my brother-in-law Jim. He's made some good recommendations to me in the past so I'm looking forward to digging in on one of my many flights this week.

A Long Way Down
By Nick Hornby
Riverhead Books