I’m having a problem with literary guilt. I’ve been reading Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. It’s very well-written, and it’s interesting when I manage to pick it up.
Yet lately I have trouble picking it up, and I’ve been working on it off and on for a while now, yet I’m barely a third of the way done. I want to finish it. I feel like I should finish it. Yet I also have a pile of other books that need reading, and I feel like I maybe I should move on. Not all of them as nutritiously literary as Bel Canto, by the way.
Yet, I did that with Wicked, and still feel bad that I didn’t finish it. I was on page 202, and I just didn’t really care to know what happened. I didn’t really care about the characters, so I stopped reading. Sometimes I think I should try again. Yet I know I probably won’t.
What do you do when confronted with something like this? I could just leave the bookmark in Bel Canto, and leave myself open to coming back later while I pick up another book. I’ve been reading books really slowly lately (but magazines I’ve been tearing through). So another reason I feel guilty, because I read like a maniac through much of college, but now that I’m an adult with a Real Adult Job, it’s easier to just crash with a copy of Vogue or somesuch before I go to bed.
All the Blues That's Fit to Print 