“Five Children and It” by E. Nesbitt. This book was fantastic.
“My Grandmother Asked me to Tell you She’s Sorry” by
Fredrik Backman. My sister gave it to me,
with some other books, saying “I liked this one” which is not a resounding
endorsement of the others, but I’ll get through them eventually I guess, mostly
to get them off the footstool in my living room. I read the 1-star reviews on
Amazon, which was actually good in this case, because they gave me the idea
that if I pushed through the first 100 pages or so it would get better. Those
first chapters were too twee for me, but once things started happening this was
a good read.
“Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace. I’d always meant to read this book, just maybe not now.
When I accidentally made it active on the library website and it started
shipping to me immediately, I was stuck. My strategy normally is to get through
a chapter or two every day because I’m afraid if I put it down I might forget
who everyone is. There was no point with this book. Some characters you
wouldn’t see for like 200 pages, which is ten hours of reading, since I could
only read about 20 pages per hour. And I never read 10 hours in one day. Or one
week, to be honest. Except for the weeks when I was desperately trying to
finish this book before it was due at the library.
There are amazing moments in this
book. The scene where Hal is cutting his toenails and describing finding his
father’s corpse, that was brilliant. The scene where someone (forget who,
female) explains to her therapist that depression isn’t about sadness, it’s
about horror, that struck a chord.
I still tried to read some every
day, usually before bed. I thought this might improve my sleep, since the
internet keeps telling me that spending too much screen time right before bed
is bad sleep hygiene. I did not notice any improvement in my sleep.
About 200 pages from the end I realized
this wasn’t going to wrap up nicely, since it was becoming endless fever dreams
of Gately in hospital. And while I had been wondering what had become of him,
maybe I didn’t care as much as DFW did. I cared more about Hal. I suppose I’m
satisfied with his resolution, since I feel like his demise was no real fault
of his own. There wasn’t one of those horrible moments where he made some
absolutely unconscionable choice.
So that’s over.
“Akira” by Katsuhiro Otomo (vol 1). I knew Infinite Jest was fat. This one surprised
me with its girthiness. I picked them up from the library on the same day, and
well, it was a grim walk home. It didn’t take that long to read. Someone else
had listed all six volumes as one book point, but considering that I also read
Infinite Jest, I think anything longer than 40 pages counts as a book for the
rest of the year.