Quitter

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For years I prided myself on never not finishing a book.  I forced myself through every book I read, no matter how awful.  I figured that there's no way to get the full picture of a book until it's been finished.  I struggled with the first 75 pages of The Lord of the Flies, and had to restart Captains Courageous at least twice (to be honest, I don't remember anything about it, other than that I restarted it several times and it's got a maritime-y theme).  I won't say that I was rewarded for finishing Captains Courageous, but the last 25 pages of The Lord of the Flies made the previous month worth it (yes, it took me a month to get through 75 pages.  I really hate shipwrecked stories).

Then I stumbled on 1Q84.  I made it a quarter of the way through, and decided that I couldn't take it anymore.  Life is too short to read bad books.  Yes, it was reviewed highly by... The Economist?  NPR?  Probably both.  Maybe it was just over my head.  Either way, I found the female protagonist to be too strange, and the male protagonist seemed distinctly predatory.  The writing itself was also off-putting, though that may be a result of the translation (or maybe I just don't meld with the Japanese writing style?  I'm currently reading Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, and that also was translated from Japanese.  The writing style is still not something I'm used to). 

Giving up on 1Q84 seemed to give me permission to quit other books, though I try my absolute best not to.  I recently declined to finish Women Who Run With the Wolves, because I found the Jungian perspective to be absolute nonsense.  Not to mention the fact that the author's focus on women getting in touch with their instinctive, emotional, spiritual inner natures seems to take us backwards in terms of women getting taken seriously as rational, intellectual beings.  Women will never get to be president of the United States if everyone's fussing about us being emotional nurturers who fit into some hokey archetype.

This is all to say that I am giving up on Unexplained Mysteries of World War II because it is, frankly, terrible.  Just terrible.

Currently reading:
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (obviously, a re-read)

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