I regret to say that today I have had to do something I almost never do, mostly because I really hate doing it – and that’s abandon a book I had been reading. And I had got almost all the way through, too. I know, I know, this is like the person swimming the Channel who abandons the quest just as they get within sight of the further shore. But I really couldn’t muster the force to continue. I appreciate that many others will enjoy the book. Indeed, there were parts I found enjoyable – even instructive – but it seemed so poorly written, so ill-constructed, so flat, so full of error, with neither structure nor cadence, that I found the prospect of continuing just not worth the effort. No, I am not telling you which book it was.
The last time I abandoned a book, the tome in question was 2121, a dystopia by Susan Greenfield, which I gave up on page 19 (though I was sure I’d abandon it on page 12 – I just read a few pages more because I felt I had to make sure) which combined very poor characterisation with a seemingly total disregard for the entire canon of science fiction that the author sought to enter. Since then I have always always always finished what I start.
I fear I might have been spoiled. One book I shall surely finish is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (I am 7/8ths through its 2,900-page extent). I started earlier this year and it has been a revelation. The prose is so lucid; the arguments so well constructed; the tone so measured (yet not without biting humour in places). Sure, it’s no potboiler, and requires concentration, but it is so well-wrought that most other things seem slack and ill-made by comparison. And I am listening to an audiobook version of The Lord of the Rings, narrated by Andy Serkis, on my daily dog walks. Tolkien, a philologist by profession, a poet by avocation, took infinite care over the words he used, because he realised that words have meaning; they have nuance; they have history; they have impact. They deserve respect.
And yet I feel terribly guilty. About not finishing a book, I mean. I think I need to calm down with a collection of SF short stories. Or just stare at the wall.
