I spent between a third and a full half of this year “reading” two books. I put reading in quotations because in reality, reading a book that I’m not enjoying ends up with me reading the book less and articles on my phone more. When I’m reading a good book, I get through 10-20 pages a night before falling asleep. I went weeks to months without picking these books up at all.
I felt some obligation to finish these books, so didn’t start anything else for a while. Too long. 2025 rule is that if something is slow for longer than a week, I’m on to the next book.
Anyway, the two books that occupied too much of my reading time this year are:
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
I read this book in high school and recall liking it. I remembered how brutal parts of it were, but not how long it was and slow a lot of it is. About a third of the way in, I dropped it.
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
I loved the first half of this book, then I had a stressful month of moving and when I fully refocused on this book, I found that I’d lost the plot. All the characters started to be named after other characters and the weirdness got less delightful. This reddit thread provides some interesting perspectives and makes me feel a bit better.
So what did I learn this year? I probably should avoid Magical Realism. If I’m not loving the book, drop it. I’m very sucked in to my current read, and it’s very refreshing.