Glamorama
I do not know why this happens I have analyzed it to no end. It doesn’t really make any sense.
When I am reading good books I just go like a little rabbit grabbing carrots on strings and because I read so much non fiction I do a lot of pre planning of what I am going to read so that I do not end up reading too many non fiction books in a row. I don’t even know why it matters. But, everything about my books matters. I have a three shelf bookcase that has trade paper backs; those are not in any real order, the books on the selves up on the wall are all in alphabetical order as well as release order. I am so anal about the condition of my books that Adam and I each have our own copies of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I rarely lend books, you have to be extremely special and NO hard cover novel leaves the apartment with its cover on it.
For a few months I was reading so many books my brain was ready to explode with knowledge I was reading good one after good one. And then I started another book Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis to be exact and I got stuck. I was enjoying it and was then suddenly feeling like I had no clue what was going on, and felt lost in the pages. But I had enjoyed it up to that point. I was already over 200 pages in. And books are so expensive that if I start one 99.9% of the time I finish it. Not finishing a book leaves me wondering every time I see it on the shelf and with that comes a feeling of emptiness. Would the book have gotten better? WHAT DID I MISS? What if I didn’t give it enough time and it was the best book ever? For example, had I not been reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for the book club I got kicked out of I probably wouldn’t have been able to get into it as it is slow but has been my favorite book for years now.
After Glamorama got confusing and my friend who had already read it and had read enough books since then that she had forgotten exactly what it was about was no help I put it down. I have never gotten ‘lost’ in an Ellis book before. I love him. I stared at the book day after day after day and didn’t read it. But I didn’t start a new book either. I CAN NOT read more than one book at a time, I have never ever been able to. I don’t get it and it is a silly problem for me. I have a regular size brain I am sure I could retain the information and I have TRIED to read more than one book at once but I CAN’T, it just feels wrong and I get an icky feeling all over, so then I end up going a period of time without reading- anywhere from a day to months. This doesn’t work well for me.
I could not leave Glamorama forever because I wanted to read. Not reading books is boring. I finally after months have picked it up again and plowed through a hundred plus pages and forced myself back in and figure it will all come together but still don’t fully know what is going on though I enjoy Ellis enough and it is interesting enough to keep going and I already discovered I couldn’t quit this book so I may as well finish it. I’ve got about 200 pages to go. I also just love that I get stuck on a 500 + page book, couldn’t have been a shorter one or anything.
