Books that take forever...you know the ones, you're sitting there reading and reading soon an hour has passed and how far have you moved? 14 pages. What?!
I have had a few books like that now with my ever expanding horizons.
Currently I'm reading Interview With the Vampire. It has taken me a week to get 120 pages in. A week. I have half an hour at lunch, which is when I do a lot of my reading. My record so far has been 130 pages in half an hour (Destined for an Early Grave by Jeaniene Frost) and yet yesterday I was sitting there for my entire lunch break reading and reading and actually getting pretty engrossed in what's becoming an interesting story, how far did I move? 9 pages.
9 pages.
The average for Interview with the Vampire has been seven pages per half hour.
Beautiful Creatures, Catcher in the Rye and Moon Called all had the same problem...but I didn't like them. Whereas I am liking Interview with the Vampire, it has a pull. So why is it taking so long?
It could be the size of the print, but even so it really shouldn't be taking this long...
What books have taken you forever to read?
8 comments:
I know what you mean. I'm reading Low Red Moon right now...its a mere 196 pages long and has taken me the entire week to get through. When I first got it, I was thinking Oh, good, it'll take me one or two days and I can read another book before my next ARC tour book comes in...nope. I keep falling asleep while I'm reading it!
I know what you mean. I've read a few books like these, but either because I had to concentrate so hard as the subject matter was a bit complex or because I just plain hated reading a book, but had to for a class, like Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, ugh.
Now I'm definitely looking forward to your review of Interview with the Vampire.;)
I've been reading Anatomy of Criticism by N. Frye. I've had it for 3 weeks from the library, and I haven't finished reading the introduction yet :( OK, so it's not exactly light reading, but it's totally fascinating. Too bad I have to concentrate so hard on it, that I feel exausted after as little as four or five pages. Geez.
I read Interview for grade 10 english and it did take a while to read but I understand what you mean about liking it as well and not understanding why it's taking so long. I think that with this book there is so much imagery and information that you go into a little bit of senses overload from it all and it takes a few minutes to sink in before you're able to continue on.
1984. I'm reading this for school and it's taking sooooooooooo long! I might get interested but feel the need for a break and I think, "I've probably read 10-20 pages. A break is ok." Turns out I only read 3 pages!! So annoying.
Hope we both get through these books faster! (:
I started reading Windwalker by Natasha Mosert probably two-three years ago. I just couldn't get into it, so it turned into my porcelain throne book. I kept chipping away at it for about a year or so--a page here, a paragraph there. Yeah, that's right. I'd read a paragraph and then set it aside. I got a little past halfway when I realized, I don't have to finish this. I read the reviews for it(complete with spoilers) and have never looked back.
Yeah, this is familiar. There is actually a passage (about 100 pages) in the Vampire Armand that I skipped because Rice went on about something that had nothing to do with the story. I felt bad later and read that part when I read the book the second time - it was all historical context, no story.
I had the worst time ever reading the first 100ish pages of Misery by Stephen King (my favorite writer). I also barely got though his book Cell. Heart of Darkness dragged on for three weeks (at a time when I was reading three books a week.) My record, though, is Wuthering Heights and The House of the Seven Gables. I've tried reading both books every few years since I was 12 - about 16 years. I'm on chapters 5 and 7, respectively. I don't think I'll ever get through anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I re-read Interview With The Vampire earlier this year and had the exact same problem! It took me weeks to read! And despite that, I loved it (all over again). It's a slow moving book, but there's this kind of slow-flowing movement to the writing? I actually wonder if the sentence structure and the way Rice writes somehow slows you down.
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