{"id":5414,"date":"2022-11-20T17:37:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T17:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/?p=5414"},"modified":"2022-11-20T17:37:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T17:37:18","slug":"incompletion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/2022\/11\/20\/incompletion\/","title":{"rendered":"Incompletion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em> telling you which book it was.<\/p>\n

The last time I abandoned a book, the tome in question was 2121<\/em>, a dystopia by Susan Greenfield<\/a>, 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<\/em> finished what I start.<\/p>\n

I fear I might have been spoiled. One book I shall surely finish is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em> (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<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/cromercrox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}