Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
— Groucho Marx
When you like to read, nothing is more disappointing than having no new (or good) books to read. Lately, I’ve been attempting to slog through an enormous tome. Every night, I pick it up. Every night I read half a page and fall asleep. At this rate, I should be at page 632 around the turn of the next century.
The problem is that I started the book when I was on a trip. When you fly on a commercial airline, you have nothing better to do than read. The seats are too cramped and uncomfortable for me to sleep. And of course, the micro-bag of pretzels keeps you occupied for about 30 seconds of the five hours it takes to fly across the country. So on the flight, I started reading this immense tome. Since I was a totally captive audience, I got about halfway into it.
The trip was to visit my mother who has a lot of books. (I mean a whole LOT…shelves upon shelves of them.) So I read a bunch of her books. And I rammed a few more of her books in my suitcase and read those after I got back. But now I’ve got nothing left to read, except the huge tome.
With an enormous book that’s only sort of good, you have to weigh the time you’ve already got invested in it against the boredom factor. How bad is bad enough to *not* find out what happens after you’ve spent countless hours just getting to page 422?
I don’t know the answer yet. But I think I may go to the library tomorrow, so I can avoid the question for a little while longer 😉