“What’s to say?
The author is great, and he’s written a lot of great stuff. This one just didn’t do much for me. It was a book where I found myself marking the page, closing the whole thing, and watching the bookmark’s slow march towards the back cover.
It does bring up a larger point that I’d like to think about a bit, however.
My brother started reading this before I did, and when I asked what he thought of it he said that it was a little “overwritten” which may be true, maybe not. I didn’t even ask for elaboration, but once that cat was out of its gilded bag, it was out big time.
The problem with going in after hearing this is that I was looking for it. Either seeing it and thinking, “My brother was totally right!” or seeing what I THOUGHT were the parts that were deemed overwritten and thinking “My brother is an asshole and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
The point, however, is that it made the book very difficult to enjoy on its own merits as I spent most of the time very aware of what I was looking for.
To make a comparison, it’s the same reason I really try to avoid movie trailers for movies that I want to see. New Batman? I’ll skip the trailers, thanks. Because I know I’m headed there anyway, so what’s the point in spoiling bits and pieces for myself? I’ll just be waiting for those parts to happen, and the whole movie becomes about waiting for the fulfillment I’m expecting rather than enjoying the ride.
Previews, trailers, and reviews all leave me feeling this way, and in general I try to avoid them.
With books it’s a little tougher. It’s a time commitment, and there’s so much out there that one can’t reasonably expect to hear about the next great book by word of mouth alone. I do think, and this isn’t another case of The Book v. The Movie, but I do think that a book has to be more attuned to a reader’s taste than a movie because it’s just plain a bigger time commitment and because I can’t read a book in the background while I’m folding laundry. Okay, more like while I’m calculating how long it would take to read all of Amazing Spider-Man, but same principle.
One could argue that audiobooks are an option here, but I find that I can only listen to certain kinds of books on audio. They have to be fast, keep my attention, and also written in such a way that I can zone out for 30 second stretches and then come back in. I rarely sit and just listen to an audiobook while doing nothing else.
So moving forward, learning something from this experience, I think my new plan is to avoid reviews and previews of books that I will probably read anyway. I picked up this book on my own and sort of stumbled into someone else’s review in conversation, which isn’t something I have to avoid too often. But from now on, when something comes out and I am interested based on the author, premise, or book jacket alone, I think that perhaps the best thing is to just give the damn thing a shot and see what happens.”