Books I read

After finishing the trilogy "Your Face Tomorrow" by Javier Marías, I took up a novel I'd had on my shelves for a few years, something I bought at the time because it got a good review and because I knew the author was a good writer. But I gave it up after 50 pages -- the story took a turn that I found predictable, and it had been a little bit plodding up to that point, and I just couldn't push myself forward. It's probably an all right book; I didn't think it was a very good one. But the thing is, I don't want to say what the book was, because some day, who knows, that writer might be in a position to do me a good deed, and for all I know a single critical word might be enough to make him fail to do it. Of course, for this to happen, several very unlikely things would have to happen first, the most unlikely of which is that he will ever hear of my existence in the first place. But I've already had one or two experiences where someone held a grudge against me because of some slight I didn't even know I'd committed, and this grudge not only meant that this person cut me dead for years, but even slandered me in return, and in print. So I'm not going to say which book I thought was lacking. Ridiculous, though.

Instead I'm reading another such novel, that is, something by a mid-list writer which I saw well-reviewed. It's only been on my shelves for a couple of months. I'm 40 pages in now, and I'm not turned off by it yet, though it does seem very bourgeois.

Between these two, I read a little more than half of "The Ultimate Intimacy" by Ivan Klíma. I'd read Klíma's "Love and Garbage" several years ago and really liked it. This was similarly well-written, though not quite as... what? Edgy? "Edgy" doesn't really say it. But anyway after about 60% of it I decided I'd had enough.

Meanwhile I'm still working on the first draft of the book I started about a year and three months ago, a project called "Knock Yourself Out."