Boring(o) Books

In the evening the murky shape of another coastal city, the cluster of tall buildings vaguely askew. he thought the iron armatures had softened in the heat and then reset again to leave the buildings standing out of true. The melted window glass hung frozen down the walls like icing on a cake.

Thank f*** I finished this book. Chaz told me that it’s a great book but i cannot see what’s so great about it. It was finishable, but that’s no praise. It was a pain in the ass. Consider this:

This bleak and surreal description above (the first paragraph) is the best part of the damn book. True, this particular surreal description is a beautiful string of words. To describe a negative situation - a burnt-out town. And that’s all there is to the book. A man and his son walking across a burnt America, trying to get to the seaside in hope of better weather. Only to get there when the winter sets in. Bah - I’m gonna stop talking about this. It’s not worth reading.

I only finished the book coz I’m a sucker for that. I find it hard to leave a book unfinished and only did so on two occasions:

1. Interview with the vampire. Good as the story is, it’s much better in film format. At least you only get to suffer the vampire’s moaning for 2 hours, not 300+ pages.

2. A book called “The Vellum” or some other obscure name where nothing seemed to happen, except someone travelling through an empty world - or series of worlds, it’s not entirely evident - without almost ever meeting anyone and reminiscing on the same empty world. Mind-numbingly boring stuff.

On a positive note, I’m now reading “Shangai Nights” - a book about Barcelona (strange title eh?) and activists under Franco’s regime.