Waste of Paper

I'm restless, distraught, depressed, put-out. Today I finally shut the cover for good on a truly bad book.

There is a bad taste in my mouth.

I've never been finicky about my reading. I'll crack open anything, granted I may not finish it, but I will give it a good go. And when I was younger, living in a house that was literally bursting at the seams with books, it wasn't so bad. Read a few chapters of this book or that and if it was swill you could simply reach your hand out for something else.

Now that I live in a house with less books (and one that begs order - like you know - actually making the books live on shelves) reading a bad book seems less palatable - more tragic.

This particular book I started months ago, and was instantly struck by it's complete and utter suckiness. I went through whole chapters just letting my eyes fall down the page. I read every word, but had no idea what it was I had read. I would go back and try again only to realize how much I didn't want to know what I had missed.

But still, I had paid $4.95 (bargain book bin!) for this book, and it is about one of my favorite subjects, so I persevered. And a few days ago it finally started to pick up. It had elements that started to interest me. I was fueled by my anger over the first part and my hope for the second. It had some promise. I wanted to know what was going to happen, the writing was still crap, the subplots were still cumbersome and in the way, but I didn't need "Climbing Mt. Everest" willpower to get to the next page.

It felt much like I'd been hiking under misty, cold, clammy clouds and finally the sun was threatening to break through.

And it felt like that all the way to the end. I had this hope that at the next page everything would resolve into something satisfactory. I would be rewarded for my diligence, I paid for the dinner, I would get my time in the sack. Something in the next few words would make it all possible.

Third to the last page - nothing.

Second to the last page - nada.

Last page, last chance, this page is getting very short, where is it, I know there is something here, some gem, some treasure that only is given to those that stick it out. The last few lines will be a wealth of knowledge, of joy, it will bring me satisfaction, it will bring me peace.

Nothing. Trite, sentimental, disjointed crap. That's okay for my blog, but not for a book.

I finished the book right before dinner and have been saddened ever since. All I want to do is curl up and cry, no I want to keen. I want to rock myself until I'm dizzy, I want to wail and moan until I feel less betrayed.

Why? Why? Why would they make this a book? Why would they tempt someone like me with it. Why was it so booky? So alluring and sexy sitting in a box, a shiny cover wrapped around a nice thick hardback. It was such a perfect book, the perfect weight, the perfect size. The promise of a literary adventure, smart, intellectual, the kind of thing to make you yearn for a library. It promised a mind-trip to London, to the inner-depths of the British Library, it promised fun love and reading joy. I could picture myself curled up outside, leaning against a tree, an apple in my hand as I looked down at the sweet words filling my lap.

It tempted me with a reading fantasy of the first order.

It promised so much. Then it committed the ultimate crime, it challenged you. Like a kung fu movie, where the apprentice must go through hell before he learns the secrets of his master, the book made you trudge through bad exposition and stupid characterization before you could learn how to do the five-fingered-butterfly-poke. And so, I read, and was lead on by a good paragraph here and there, a spark of imagination, a promising whisper that the rest of the book would lead me to nirvana.

And yet, for all it's seduction, all it's promising, it's flirting, it's teasing - it didn't put out.

Instead I'm frustrated, saddened, confused. It seems a crime that just any book can get published. I've read many a manuscript from friends that actually are very good. I've read ones that may need a little work, but have great promise. None of them are books, none of them are ever given that great honor. And yet I can go to Borders and pick up a hundred books that deserve to be locked up in a basement and never spoken of again. Don't publishers know that there are people out there who live for books? People who choose to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune only because we know that next book is right around the corner. Do they know how painful it is to realize that the book, the holy thing they hold in their hand, is really only some authors mid-life crisis - published because she has "friends" in the business?

I feel sick, hot, angered and beaten down. I take this seriously, I want to love books, I don't want to hate them. I want that high that comes from completing a story that will live on in me.

I don't want swill to live on in me. I don't want bad characters with bad stories to whisper bad prose in my head. If I'm going to be crazy obsessed, at least allow me to be crazy obsessed with good figments of my imagination.

But mostly, as I curl into a little ball, saddened by my latest literary fix, I feel betrayed. I feel betrayed that I gave this woman the benefit of the doubt - and she didn't come through. I had faith in her, as I have faith in all authors, and she didn't rise to the challenge.

Oh bitterest of disappointments - betrayal of the most henious kind - most disgusting poison of the mind.

What a waste of paper.