Half-read books

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I am not sure if the books aren’t good, or if I am just not in the mood for them, but I have gotten about half-way through many books lately. I suspect it is my mood, because I usually stop well before the halfway point if I really don’t like a book, but it is hard to tell. Here are a few books I may get back to someday:

Boomsday, by Christopher Buckley

I was really enjoying this book, until the guy about to be appointed the Papal Nuncio to the US let himself get snowed by some Russian hookers. The situation wasn’t his fault, and it was one of those slapstick situations where he keeps trying to make the situation go away, and instead he makes it worse. Maybe Buckley was trying to give the Catholic Church the benefit of the doubt, but I find it hard to believe that someone that high up in the church hierarchy is so naive, though. Why didn’t he call the cops and have them deal with it? If some high-up Cardinal calls the police and says during the course of the sacrament of Reconciliation, one of my flock got carried away and called an escort service, and now these people are bothering me, the cops would take care of it. Or, there are lots of other ways he could have exploited his much larger power base than this petty Russian escort service! All of a sudden, this really interesting book became farcical, and kind of unbelievable. I mean, it’s satire, but there is exaggeration and there is mis-characterization. I just don’t believe that men high up in Catholic hierarchy can’t deal with this kind of political situation. I may go back to this book at some point, but I have lost all faith in the it at this point.

When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson

Seriously, when will there be? I generally love Atkinson, but this was just depression piled upon misfortune piled upon despair. I sat down to read this one night and felt like a big heavy blanket of despair descended on me, almost physically weighing me down, so I put it aside and picked up something more cheerful. I am sure I will go back to this sometime, because Atkinson is so good. But the writing was still good, it was just depressing, for no good reason that I could tell.

The Good Fairies of New York, by Martin Miller

I just don’t like a lot of fantasy. This seemed like it could be good, and Neil Gaiman had a nice forward. I like Gaiman, so I thought maybe this would be my kind of fantasy, but I am thinking maybe not. Again, the writing is good, but the characters are a bit caricature-ish.

I think there are some other books I am forgetting, but I have to say, reading 200 or so pages of a book and then abandoning it is doing almost as much to keep my numbers of completed books down as moving did.

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