What I'm (not) reading.

I can't get started on a new book lately. I'm trying to find something to read among the hundreds of unread novels that I have in my apartment - now that it is decently clean - but I can't quite gauge my mood right now. I mean, I tried BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON, in preparation for the movie, but I got 100 pages into it, read to the scene I've always heard about featuring Bridget's interview with the real Colin Firth, then saw that there were 200 more pages and just ... couldn't ... do ... it.



The movie's coming out this weekend, too, so it's not like I have to read the book now. It's like I've run out of time and patience for it, but what I read of it was just fine.

It was the same way I treated THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - which I started, got decently into and then just stopped reading.



With that one, I was interested up to a point, for I'd forgotten a lot of it from when I was 11. But once I'd satisfied my curiosity about it, I just couldn't keep reading it.

I'm tempted to try JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL again, for I feel as though I'm guilty of "plugola" for hyping it up and not reading it myself.

I'm also tempted to try THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES again, THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS again, THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD again and EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED again.



And I wish I could read Sebastien Japrisot's A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT on the first try, for the movie's coming out in a couple weeks. And I want to see the movie really, really bad.



I feel most tempted, though, to read A FAN'S NOTES by Frederick Exley. Because it was hilarious. And brilliant. And challenging. And sad. And complicated. And the only thing that really held me back from reading further was that it had 40-page chapters that I couldn't come to a stopping place on or digest easily before going to sleep. Instead, I'd just keep reading it and reading it, staying up WAY TOO LATE to try and make some headway. It's still next to my bed. I just haven't done it yet.

It's really hard to read about a smart man with a tremendous wit having the most difficult, sad, horrible life ever. But what I read of it was genius. Complete genius. The first page made me laugh out loud.

I recommended it to a lot of my friends, and only Vic was able to finish it. Black got further than me, but told me that he had to stop. Everyone who read even a portion of it said it featured some great, great writing. It's just, at times, really hard to take.

But I still recommend it, if that makes any sense.