February's reading total seems skewed, but that's because of Anna Karenina, which doesn't count as a whole book until I'm done with it.
I also started a book in February that I decided I'm not going to finish. I rarely do that, but after 100 pages, I've decided that the content just isn't something I really want to put into my head. I realized I'd rather be reading more Anna Karenina than this particular book and that was the deciding factor to me.
Here's the thing: The book is good. It was given to me by the author to review and I'm grateful for that. I've been asked to review a few things in the past that were just so bad that I couldn't do it. Such is not the case here. It comes down to subject matter.
Surely, you say, reading is supposed to stretch the reader. Yep, I would agree. But I also know as a reader that I have boundaries. I have things that make me uncomfortable. Sometimes I make myself push through them; such was the case the first time I read "The Cider House Rules."
This book is about inner city youth that get caught up in drug running and violence. The problem for me is that it's too close to what I do. I work for an organization trying to keep good kids from going down that road, to stay on the path to academic success to break the cycle of poverty. When I read the book, my heart just breaks because I know that the circumstances for the main character are too true for too many teenagers today. The violence and hopelessness are just too much.
It's OK to put books down for whatever reason; this title just made me remember this in a new way.
So, here are the February totals:
5 books
2304 pages
82 pages/day
YTD
14 books
4610 total pages
1 comment:
I hate when I have to put down a book, but life's too short and time's too limited to keep reading when there's some stumbling block in the way. I've never read Cider House Rules, but Irving's The World According to Garp is one of those hard to read subject matter books that I just couldn't put down.
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